BULLETIN 183

Chosen in Christ

Ephesians 1:4

'Before the foundation of the world'

Just  because it (the election of the divine adoptees) is foreknown and indeed pre-enacted (done before our space-time) was so much as created, does not mean that when it is re-enacted in time, it is unreal.

In other words, God's supernatural preliminaries are not stultifying but clarifying.

So far are John 9:41, 15:21ff., and so on, a part of a divine enforcement program that, like Matthew 23:37ff., Colossians 1:19, they are an exhibition of the manifold truth, steadfast in God and indeed inviolable. It is this, which God makes manifest in the focus on His own.

Just as there is One Gospel,  One God, One scouring of the world, investigation of the sheep, One finding of the lost, whose own estate they flee, there is likewise One penetration by God into realities that even man cannot manipulate.

Thus the divinity which made him, seeing beyond the ephemeral, the temporary, the superficial discerns the very truth. Whose are His and who have when He exposes all, in truth, in all freedom, in all reality, the desire for God, not as a part of a mechanical system, psychological moment or emotional surge,  pre-conditioned manufacturing essence:  but encased in the crypt of his soul, and past the office of any psychologist, the heart which receives God's embrace and reciprocates it! God knows His own (John 3:14-18).