David M.

I have a couple of friends who adopted a child after a few years of being unable to conceive. They now consider all the difficulty and hardship and heartache of infertility to be a blessing, because without them they would not now have this lovely little girl. And who knows what her circumstances in this life would have been had they not adopted her? Probably not very good, and maybe terrible. I thank God that he considered adopting us to be worth the immeasurably greater hardship and heartache he endured to make it possible. Both the Father and the Son suffered terrible heartache and sacrifice to adopt us. It's so special because it makes you realize how highly he values us. I believe He wants us to know this more than anything. Although it's important to understand the reality of the fact that we don't deserve it, I think we sometimes get hung up on that part and don't go any farther. God does not want us sitting around repeating "I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy!" I think He would rather have us walking around in an incredulous daze saying, "I'm loved. I'm loved!" _

The greek word here is defined as "exciting reverence, venerable, sacred", and "pure from carnality, chaste and modest, pure from every fault, clean, emaculate". (In the Old Testament the word translated as holy means "set apart" and "consecrated unto God".) The New Testament definition seems to include the Old Testament definition, but to me seems more personal and individual. Whereas in the OT you would be talking often times about a place being Holy (like the Temple), in the new testament you are almost always talking about a person. The Holiness spoken of here seems to me to be completely credited to us as a result of faith in Christ. After all, it does not say that God chose us as a people that He would require holiness of, but rather that He chose us to be holy. I have known a lot of believers who were completely dedicated to God. I've even met and spoken with numerous leaders of worldwide mission organizations as well as nationally known pastors. But I haven't met one yet that lived up to this greek definition of "pure from every fault, clean, emaculate". At least not for more than five minutes! (And I certainly haven't.) I don't at all mean to say that it's okay to just throw up our hands and be carnal and not care. If our hearts have been changed by Christ we are going to want to walk in purity with Him. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, relying on grace, we will walk in Holiness and Love at times. We may even get to the point where we walk in holines most of the time, or even almost all the time. But regardless of how far we progress we will still stumble in some way or another from now until we reach heaven. That is why I believe, especially given the context, this verse is talking about what Christ did for us rather than what we can achieve through spiritual growth in this life. Blameless is the same way, God has washed us in the blood of Christ and because of that and that only we are completely blameless before him all our days. Again, this is not to say that He won't ever have to confront us, or discipline us, or even rebuke us. That is all part of the relationship in which He is trying to get us to grow. But in terms of our ultimate guilt of innocence, He has already paid the price and determined that we are blameless. And this is not just theoretical blamelessness, (like the "rose colored glasses" people often say He sees us through) it is actual blamelessness achieved by the blood of Christ. As cute as that rose colored glasses analogy sounds, because of it's origin it unfortunately implies that God has to in some way delude Himself in order to see us as pure. The blood of Christ is not a method by which God causes himself to see us unclearly. Rather, it is the agent by which actual blamelessness is achieved. How that takes place exactly I don't know, but it is evidently the endless flow that old hymns talk about that does not just wash us once but continuoulsy washes us and continuously credits the purity of Christ to us by faith.

Predestination as an idea is not in itself scary. But the concept of God that some people strain out of it is not only scary but unbiblical. I am encouraged by many of the posts in this forum on the subject. But it never ceases to amaze me how many people there are in the church who fail to recognize what a gigantic leap it is to go from saying "God has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardens," to making the bald assertion that he has absolutely no reason whatsoever for willing what he wills. I actually once heard a pastor say, (and this is not uncommon) that "His choice is completely arbitrary!" Now, aside from the obvious question, "How can you possibly know that?", we must also ask, "How can you so aggressively declare something that contradicts everything God says about himself from Genesis to Revelation?" Apparently the believers who subscribe to the arbitrary doctrine have concluded that this radical interpretation is the only way to avoid developing pridefulness in somehow "deserving" ones own salvation. Now the whole history of the church reveals that Satan's number one most effective deception against believers has been his accusations of various spiritual sins coupled with the fear of committing any of them. One otherwise great Christian leader spent his entire adult life literally hiding his eyes from the beautiful mountains and lakes that greeted him every morning during his early commute. He did this explicitly out of fear that if he soaked up the beauty of nature he would inevitably commit idolatry and worship it. This is so absurd that most of us are shocked by it, but we have all been fooled by the same tactics, to one degree or another. Accusations of pridefulness are no different, and lead to the same kinds of bizarre behaviors and heretical doctrines. The arbitrary doctrine also leads to an inevitable "tractor beam" theology about our relationship with God. (If you've never seen Star Trek I apologize for the analogy. ) The tractor beam individual emphasizes lots of things like, "He wooed me, He won me, He Drew me to Himself." Now normally these would statements would be fine. But when coupled with tractor beam theology, the meaning of these words inevitably becomes transformed into something like "He wooed (hypnotized) me, He won (kidnapped) me, He drew (manipulated and controlled) me to himself." I know this sounds strong, but it is exactly what many people really believe. Once again, believers put aside the concept of God being in control and exchange it for the notion that he is controlling, which is not the same thing at all. This is very downgrading to the high and beautiful nature of our relationship with God. Whatever constitutes God's drawing us to himself, we can be assured from all of Scripture that it is not manipulation and control. It may represent a pull, a tug, and most of all an earnest, powerful conversation with us regarding his love and invitation. It does not represent forced assent. Moreover, to say that it does represent forced assent is to inevitably make a hypocrite of Jesus himself. For when he wept over Jerusalem, he spoke of how he had longed to draw them to himself, "..but you were unwilling." Now Jesus is God, and completely at one with the will of the Father, so his weeping and emotional expression of loss over Jerusalem is reduced to sheer hypocrisy if, in the back of his mind, he is also thinking, "Yes, you were unwilling because I used my absolute sovereign power over you to FORCE you to be unwilling!"... or even, "You were unwilling because I arbitrarily chose to NOT force you to BE willing." The second thought leads to just as inescapable a conclusion of hypocrisy in his expression of emotion as the first. I am unwilling to make a hypocrite out of Jesus for any doctrine. Indeed, this claiming to know the mind of God so absolutely that you know that he has no reasons whatsoever for choosing what he chooses is exactly the kind of presumption that God rebuked Job for. (In defending himself against his friends' accusations, Job went too far and essentially accused God of having no reason whatsoever for letting Job go through his terrible tragedies.) It is very telling that God's rebuke of Job was primarily focused on questioning Job about how much he knew of the creation of the universe. The emphasis being that if Job didn't even know these relatively small things, how could he be so bold as to claim to know the mind of God himself so completely that he could accuse God of having no reason for allowing his suffering? Some people speculate that God's reasons for choosing is based on his foreknowledge, mentioned by Peter. Although this explanation does have a bit of a chicken-and-egg catch to it, I am not certain why it draws such disdainful responses from the arbitrary crowed. Perhaps it is not sophisticated enough. I have seen a lot of smug condescension towards those who take the foreknowledge approach. But I have not seen the smugness backed up by any serious reasoning. Usually only vague references to 'that not being the meaning of foreknowledge'. Aagain, this is backed up by nothing more than bald assertions and implied claims to more sophisticated understanding. (Foreknowledge in Greek is a simple word that means to know intimately ahead of time. Other meanings are based on the type of arcane extrapolation that these same folks would find appalling if it were applied by a skeptic towards the gospel itself.) But regardless of what you believe about the nature of foreknowledge, it is perfectly legitimate to speculate on what God

Being in Christ - you can't get a closer relationship than that. I particularly agree with the definition of being "in close association with Him". I was in full-time vocational ministry for many years, and unfortunately I have seen concepts such as "under the control of" badly misused and misunderstood. Often people associate it with "control" in the abusive, authoritarian sense, which is completely contradictory to the scriptural teachings about being "set free by the Son of Man". God's love is often downgraded to something more like greedy conquest, which in turn downgrades responsive love and service to performance and forced labor. This controlling theology, though somewhat disguised, is very widespread and in some places even enshrined as doctrine. Because this is so harmful to people's actual relationship with Christ, I tend to shy away from the language of control and lean toward the language of "influence". This is much more in line with the whole counsel of scripture, that is: to see Jesus as both God, and as your great friend who set you free from a deadly trap. Because he is God, I can trust that everything he counsels me with is good and right, and because he is the best of all possible friends, I have no doubt that he has my best interests at heart. There is also the metaphysical, supernatural sense of being "in Him". I believe Paul was addressing both the "positional" truth of our being in Christ, as well as the incredibly comforting, intimate, personal spiritual experience of that position. As we all know, while the position never changes, our experience of it may vary widely. It seems to me that Paul ws clearly experiencing the rapturous joy of his position in Christ as he wrote these words.

Hi, my name's David and I live in Abingdon, Virginia along with my wife and two small children. I loved the introduction to this study and am looking forward to going through Ephesians with you all.