Ephesians 1:1-14 No Conditions

How many of you enjoy games where teams need to be picked first? I never minded them because I was pretty good athletically, but a good friend hated these games because he was usually picked last. If you were good enough, you got picked, if you didn’t have much to add to the team, you were forced onto one of the teams, which often made you feel pretty rotten. It’s no different when you are looking for a job; you need to be able to offer your new boss something of value in order to get the job, whatever that value might be. Relationships are the same thing, whether it’s a friendship or something deeper, we bring different things into these relationships that the other person wants. This is good and wonderful, but what about our relationship with God, can we bring anything of value into our relationship with God? Are we good enough to get chosen for his family? Right from the start, I want to emphasize that we don’t have to earn God’s love because we already have it! That’s what’s at the heart of unconditional election: God chooses us first simply because he loves us. We don’t do anything to earn it.

Joseph Arminius taught that “Through faith Christ’s righteousness would be applied to us: God elects believing sinners and rejects unbelieving sinners. The new covenant that God made with us after the Fall included the gift of all the means of grace that we need to believe in Christ, to repent, and to be saved.” It comes down to saying that God chooses those he knows will believe the gospel. Election is based on God knowing beforehand that we will choose to believe in Jesus. It’s up to us to believe and so then be chosen to be saved. This means it’s the sinner's choice of Christ, not God's choice of the sinner, that is the ultimate cause of salvation.

The problem is that we know in our own hearts that we only choose God when we need him, not because we want him. Then, when we get what we want or need, we go back to the way things were beforehand and only come back to God when something comes up again. Our relationship with God is all based on what he can give us, or what he can do for us. We place conditions on our relationship with God and assume that it must be the same way with God, that he only chooses the people who were going to choose him anyway. There’s no comfort in that, no hope, no peace because this means our relationship with God is based on my heart and changing feelings and needs.

The “U” in TULIP stands for unconditional election. This is all about comfort and peace because as Paul says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” Do you hear the comfort, “he chose us before the creation of the world, in love he predestined us to be children of God, and we have been given his glorious grace?” This is all about God choosing us way before we could ever choose him. We don’t have to fear whether or not we’ve been chosen by God or that we belong, because it’s not up to us, God has chosen us already. You don’t have to worry about not measuring up, not deserving God’s grace, or being afraid of not belonging because God says, “You belong, you are mine, I choose you as my child to be a princess or prince in my kingdom.”

But the comfort and hope go even deeper. Theology and doctrine have to be practical and help us in our day to day life, otherwise it’s just chasing after the wind, as the expression goes. So Article 17 in the Canons of Dordt talks about parents who have lost children at really young ages, or maybe even in miscarriage and they offer this comfort: “Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.” My nephew Aaron died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when only a few months old and we found peace and comfort knowing that Aaron is with Jesus now, we don’t have to doubt that at all. The Canons of Dordt are the only confession I know that talks about tiny babies belonging to God. For this article alone, I love the Canons. The writers of the Canons tell us that we need to teach about election “for the glory of God’s most holy name, and for the lively comfort of his people.”

This doctrine is not a club to be used by us to figure out who is chosen by God and who isn’t; it’s a gift of hope and comfort to offer people the hope that God chooses them even though they don’t measure up and can never measure up. I think of Mother Theresa going into the slums of Calcutta to serve the beggars and forgotten people there, people no one wanted to be close to, people rejected by society as being unworthy, these are the people Mother Theresa went to serve and offer the gift of Jesus Christ, the gift of healing and hope and eternal life with a God who loves and accepts them, who loves them enough to send his own son to earth to become like us and take our sin and brokenness, our soul sickness because of our sin to the cross where he takes our punishment on himself so that we can know healing, hope and acceptance.

A Taize devotional reads, “God chose us “from our mother’s womb,” from the very beginning, before we even had the time or opportunity to do or to deserve anything. God says an unconditional yes to the people he calls “his servant,” whom he “redeemed” from harsh slavery and who now belong to him. He also says this yes to each one of us; he becomes the source of a life that satisfies our thirst for recognition and love, that can spring up even in the midst of our deserts and that will never run dry. When we become aware of God’s yes, we become witnesses to this belonging and we sing its praises just as the witnesses in this text do; we become able to make our own the joyful song that Brother Roger proposes to our soul: “I belong to Christ, I am Christ’s.”

One of the reasons I came back to Jesus was because I was searching for a place where I could belong, where I was accepted for who I was. I found this acceptance in Jesus who has accepted me, chosen me for who I am, but who loves me too much to allow me to stay the same and who has given me the Holy Spirit to keep moving me to change more and more to be like Jesus.

Unconditional election is life changing; leading to lives of gratitude, love and grace because of God’s grace and love. The next question after realizing that we are chosen by God is, ‘What are we chosen for?’ We’re not just chosen for eternal life, but we’re chosen for something. Richard Mouw writes, “God elects us to participate in a covenant community that shows forth his sovereign rule over all areas of life.” We’re chosen to be part of a community of believers that brings the hope of Jesus into the world. The Apostle Peter, an early church leader writes, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

We’re chosen to share our faith in Jesus with others so they can come to know the God who loves them so deeply because he has chosen them to be his precious children. We are chosen to live together as the family of God to give the world a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven is all about, which is why, because of the amazing grace of unconditional election, we follow Jesus with all our heart, we live together in love, we live humble lives of loving service and we share our faith in Jesus so that all those in our lives can know God’s unconditional love for them.