Saved by faith, elected by logic

The Westminster Confession of Faith compared to Ephesians 1. The words are the same, but the meanings are often quite different.

The Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. The horizontal lines are the concrete foundations of the buildings where prisoners were housed.

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Ephesians 1.3-14

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.

With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.

In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

The point of Paul’s introductory remarks to the church in Ephesus was not to give a lesson on election. Paul wrote from within the work. Never was he formulating a doctrinal statement. Everything was from life and for life; nothing was for paper.

If Paul was not teaching in order to get people to understand a point of doctrine then we miss his point badly if we do. Election is difficult thing to understand, but it is made impossible when we approach it academically: separate from the work.

Why would Paul open a discussion about election with people who had no better ability to understand the topic than us, and probably even less since we have more extensive education possibilities than them? If it confuses us, wouldn’t it have confused them too? Why would Paul write above their ability to understand?

The answer is: he didn’t. Our inability to understand is because we have changed it from a practical teaching to a philosophical one. It’s a similar problem to Matthew 6.25. Jesus telling us to “not worry about what you will eat or what you will wear” is impossible to do so we create an explanation that allows us to provide ourselves with everything we need. But of course that’s exactly what Jesus was not saying. The explanation of how we can get Jesus to say something he didn’t is so complicated that only the educated can follow the logic, so the people “down here” assume it’s understood only by the PhDs and give up thinking about it. But then we have to ask: why would Jesus say something to the people if they had no hope of understanding? He wouldn’t. His intention was for people to understand and to do what he said.

Certainly there were times that Jesus hid things from the people, but from the educated, not the uneducated:

I thank you, Father, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have re­vealed them to infants.

To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not per­ceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’

Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.

And when he corrected mistaken beliefs, it was not because the people had twisted the Scriptures, but because the experts had:

You have heard... but I say to you...

If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guilt­less.

For the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God, teaching human precepts as doctrines.

You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.

Jesus didn’t talk above his listeners: he talked to them. Those that didn’t understand were blinded by their own hostility and parochial beliefs.

Neither did Paul speak above his listeners or write above his readers. Paul spoke because he expected the people to change how they thought and lived. Never would he have dropped a doctrinal difficulty on them. What he said was simple and clear. The fact that today we leave the discussion to the experts is because we have lost track of what Paul was saying.

When only the experts can understand doctrine, something is terribly wrong. And especially—as in the case of election—when the people of God divide over what Scripture says, then we are in dangerous territory. There should be no reason that believers should be so at odds with one another over Scripture that they can’t tolerate one another.

This is what Paul was not telling the believers at Ephesus: He was not telling them that God has predestined some to everlasting life and others to everlasting death, that the number of the elect is certain and cannot be increased or diminished, or that those that are predestined to life are assured of everlasting glory.

This is what Paul was telling them: He was telling the believers in Ephesus that they were in no way inferior to the Jews. The Jews were telling the Gentile believers that—although it was possible for them to be accepted by God without observing the Jewish laws on circumcision and sacrifice—they were nevertheless not on the same level as the Jews because the Jews were the true people of God and the Gentiles were of lesser quality and privilege.

Paul says that’s nonsense. God purposed to do this before there was an Israel, before there was an Abraham... before there was an Adam! In spite of the priority the Jews claim for themselves—and the low level they assign to everyone else—that is not how God sees it. Ephesians 1 is the Gentiles’ Sermon on the Mount: “you have heard... but I say...” ­Before there was divorce, there was marriage, so marriage trumps divorce. And that’s the same thing here. Before there was Moses there was Abraham, so Abraham trumps Moses. And before Abraham was, I am, so Christ trumps everything.

When we look for technical language in what Paul is saying we miss the message. Yes, Paul said God did this before the foundation of the world, but not to start a discussion of what happened before there was such a thing as time, but to push it so far back that the Jew no longer had no argument. It is unfortunate that we do not spend as much energy dissecting Paul’s other words. Paul also said that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Why not spend some time discussing that?

Paul’s long list of the main points of election are not to provide a step-by-step theological treatise, but to list each advantage the Jews claim for themselves and directly apply it to the Gentiles: those that the Jews claim have no such privilege. Paul says yes you do! Paul says that you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Paul says Christ is our peace; he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall. Paul says that through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. Nothing could be more clear: Paul was telling the Gentiles they were full-fledged members, having equal status with the Jew and sharing completely in every benefit and privilege. There is no missing this, and so that has to be the reason—and the only reason—Paul says what he says in chapter 1. We can’t make it into something else.

While this may have no direct connection to the decision of the Jerusalem Council, the problem is the same: the Jews assuming they not only have priority, and a position over the Gentile believers that allows them to no dictate how they act, but also the right to keep the Gentiles only marginally (or at least distantly) known as the “people of God”.

Paul destroys this with a vengeance. Not only are the Gentiles full members of the people of God, they are equal members! The Jew has no higher status. Few Jews in Paul’s day would have accepted this (including Peter) and few Gentiles would have accepted it either: everyone knew the Jews were the people of God.

But Paul says no, the Gentiles are not inferior, and attacks item-by-item each privilege the Jews claim is theirs:

He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

“Every spiritual blessing” means every spiritual blessing. There is nothing the Jews have that the Gentiles don’t.

He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him.

Paul starts with possibly the most scandalous topic of all: that the Israelites are not the chosen people of God. He says that the Gentile believers are also chosen, and defends it by saying this was all done by God long before there was an Israel. It did not start with them, it is not exclusive to them, they have no right to claim any ownership or position of authority. It was done because of Christ, not because of Abraham. This makes the Gentile believers just as chosen and just as holy as the Jews. Keeping them out of the Temple in no way limits the Gentiles’ access to God. There is no taint, no stain, no Gentile gene that makes them unclean or unworthy.

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.

This is what sticks in the throats of the Jews possibly more than anything: that the Gentile believers are true children of God. The constant correction of John and Jesus is this: do not say you are the children of Abraham! It means nothing. And now Paul says it too. Sonship is through Jesus Christ. Only. If you keep repeating this "we have Abraham as our father" mantra you will be lost. Your first birth means nothing.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

The Gentile believers have full and genuine redemption. Israel was redeemed out of Egypt through the blood of animals, but that was only a shadow of the true sacrifice: the blood of Jesus: the blood of a man: the blood of God. Where is the advantage of the Jew? When they continue to sacrifice in the Temple, what claim to superiority do they have? There is none. The Gentile believers, in their simplicity, “in him”, worship rightly. The Jews contaminate the sacrifice of their Lord and offend the Father.

With all wisdom and insight

Since, in the wis­dom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe: Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews (because there is only one God and he can’t die) and foolishness to Gentiles (because we are saved by faith, not logic).

He has made known to us the mystery of his will.

The Jews do not have private access to the thoughts and words of God. He reveals his most intimate secrets to people they refuse to accept.

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance.

All the promises to Israel are equally promised to the Gentiles.

In him you also were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people.

Circumcision means nothing. The Gentile believers have a more strong promise.

The point: No Jew except Paul would shower the Gentile believers in such heaped-up, lavish blessings. James and the others at the Council decided (as if they had the right!) to not bother the Gentiles any longer and to ask them only to abstain from idols and blood (to not offend their sensibilities), but certainly not to declare them heirs and full-fledged equal members in the people of God. Paul welcomes the Gentile believers freely, genuinely, gloriously—and wants them to know they are blessed and loved by God, even if they are not treated so well by the people of God.

But in fact it is they who need to stay away from idols and blood. The Temple is an empty relic. The curtain of the temple was torn in two. God did it, from top to bot­tom, to send notice to the Jews that he had left the building. It was no longer him they were worshiping, but a heaped-up pile of stone. It was just a building, and if they used it as a place of worship then it was an idol because to continue that worship meant that Christ was not who he said he was. How much punishment is deserved by those who profane the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified?

No, the Jewish believers, virtually to a man, were dismissive of the Gentile believers as true brothers and insistent that Christ did not signal a significant change in course for Israel. Paul would have forfeited his own soul to save them, but in no case was he going to let the Jews take the Gentiles down with them.

The second point: Paul was not laying the groundwork for speculating on who God elected, when he did it, the balance between sovereignty and free will... all those things are academic extensions of what Paul was saying because they overlook why Paul said it. Certainly our doctrine is never constructed from just one passage of Scripture, but our doctrine must reflect what Scripture says, so if Ephesians 1 doesn’t support our doctrine then we need to rethink things. The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter III, says:

3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.

4. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.

5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, has chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto: and all to the praise of His glorious grace.

6. As God has appointed the elect unto glory, so has He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy, as He pleases, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.

This is not necessarily what Ephesians 1 teaches. Yes, Paul says all this happened before the foundation of the world, but he said that not to start a discussion about infralapsarianism but to assure his Gentile readers that God’s choice was not what the Jews claimed it was. It did not start with Moses or Abraham, but with God. God is before anything, so they needn't worry about anything they are being told: only what God says. And yes, Paul said God destined us for adoption as his children, but not to establish a predestination doctrine but to assure his readers that they were no less true sons of God than the Jews.

The promises that Paul says God is making to the Gentiles were also made to the Jews. That means the bold assurance of the Westminster Confession is not certain at all. Paul is telling the Gentile believers in Ephesus that they are in no way inferior to the Jews, but it is a reckless stretch to say that the assurance God gave the Jews was provisional while the assurance he gives the Gentiles is inviolable. In Romans Paul approaches the discussion from the opposite direction and says that the Gentiles are no better than the Jews, and in fact the same thing that happened to them can—and will—happen to us. Therefore no doctrine we formulate can go beyond this boundary: no assurance is iron-clad; what God did to Israel he can do to the church:

1 Sam 3:

The Lord the God of Israel declares: “I promised that your fam­ily and the family of your ancestor should go in and out before me forever”; but now the Lord declares: “Far be it from me; for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt. See, a time is coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your ancestor’s fam­ily, so that no one in your family will live to old age.”

Isaiah 44

I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.

Ezek 33

If they trust in their right­eousness and commit iniquity, none of their right­eous deeds shall be remembered.

Another problem: It is important to look at the text and determine its limits: a teaching cannot be extended beyond its intended limit without good evidence. For example, in Malachi 1 God says, “from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations.” We know this is not scientific language: it does not teach that the sun revolves around the earth. But what if Eph 1 is not scientific language either? What if it was never intended to be studied letter-by-letter to develop some highly-technical doctrine? What if by doing that we go as far off the mark as insisting that the planets rotate around the sun based upon the "apparent" language Malachi 1? Certainly Malachi 1 and Eph 1 are not the same thing, but the point is valid regardless: we cannot extend Scripture beyond its intended limit. So here, where Paul was trying to solve one problem, we are at great risk when we use his words to develop a doctrine that is not anticipated in the text.

Certainly our definition of election is based upon more than just Eph 1, but if Eph 1 is taken in the way Paul wrote it there is not much there to support our definition. We can look elsewhere in Scripture, but since much of that was also written by Paul, he would have to find something very far away from his teachings in Eph 1 to claim he thought something different.

Paul said what he said to correct the mistaken and hurtful claims of the Jews. We need to leave it at that. To extend it beyond what Paul intended is to stray into very dangerous territory. Paul wrote it to address a problem. It is speculative at best to assume that Paul would want us to carry it beyond that, and it is downright unlikely that he intended it to be taken into the universities and seminaries for deep deliberation. It was written to, and intended for, everyday believers who were oppressed by mistaken beliefs from people who were haughty and exclusionary. When we take it to heights that Paul never imagined then we inevitably turn it into something it cannot be, if for no other reason than it was written by Paul, who is nothing like those who want to tell us what he was saying.

Paul was trying to correct the mistaken beliefs of everyone that the Gentile believers are inferior to the Jews. It was a serious and weighty task because all the Jews, most of the other apostles and disciples (certainly the most important ones), and even the Gentiles believed it. But, if we no longer have a Jew-Gentile controversy, then we need to ask how—and if—we should apply these teachings. If Paul never had in mind the stratospheric heights the discussion has now taken, then possibly it’s time to get it back on the ground, where Paul was.

Paul wrote to enlarge the work and strengthen tender Christians. When we take his writings and use them to pinpoint exactly when it was that God elected, and to identify who he did and did not elect, then we have so missed the point of what Paul said that we need to start over and ask if any of our theorizing has actually hit the target... and if it hasn’t then we need to take back the arrows and try again.

When Christ told Nicodemus he had to be born again it was because he believed that being a descendant of Abraham automatically included him in the people of God—and automatically excluded all others. Jesus told him no: physical birth means nothing: it’s spiritual birth that determines your standing before God. So for us, who do not think we are children of God simply by being born, saying we must be born again is a bit silly. Nicodemus had to be born again because he thought his first birth meant something. To us, who don’t think our first birth means anything, saying we must be born again makes no sense.

And so we have the same thing here: If we have no fear of being second-class citizens to the Jews, why do we need to be told that we aren’t? We don’t. Obviously. But rather than leaving these writings of Paul to say what they said, we force them to fit a different situation and thereby make them say something Paul never said. We formulate a doctrine based upon a too-deep interpretation of what Paul said and then group ourselves into denominations over these self-invented doctrines that he never anticipated, and then worse: we turn it inside out and divide over a teaching that Paul wrote to heal.

If the problem no longer exists, can the solution? Is it legitimate to take the solution and apply it to things that never were part of the problem? Possibly it might, but it is more likely that it shouldn’t.

The third point: Paul wrote to solve a serious problem so the work of God could continue without interference or weight. Church doctrine rarely does that. Doctrine is created by a lot of people spending a lot of years poring over writings that were intended for the benefit of the reader, turning them into elevated books that are intended to benefit the writer. Yes, it is good that people have spent time forming the Canon and determining what is true and what is not. Yes, it is good that we have skilled language experts to tell us what Scripture says. Yes, it is good to have a foundation for our faith. But beyond that, we get into serious trouble when we keep a cadre of scholars to turn out thousands of books that do almost nothing except make a name for the writer. You can argue that there are many good books that you have enjoyed and have deeply enriched your life. I say fine, and what did you do with it? Give me the title of the book that moved you to give up your life and do something serious i the work of God.

No person should sit down to write doctrine or a commentary or a theology for no reason. If it isn’t written to accomplish something, it shouldn’t exist. Ask anyone who is doing real work: to what extent does your work depend upon such and such a book? When you encounter a difficulty, what do you use to get through it: a commentary? a confession? Show me the missionary who used the Westminster Confession to solve a problem in the work or to bring people to Christ. Find one who was convinced to go to the mission field by studying TULIP.

Our doctrine is used to divide into denominations and to filter out people who might want to be missionaries but can’t affirm themselves as full-fledged adherents of our church doctrine.

So we have to ask ourselves: If our doctrine does not send people into the work of God but instead filters out the non-denominationally-convinced, if it does not enlarge the work but instead divides the people of God, if it does not streamline and enhance the expansion of the Kingdom, then why have it? Seriously. If our doctrine does not accomplish real work for God, then what good is it? If the work could go on without it, why have it?

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#Eph_1.3-14

#Westminster_Confession of Faith

#TULIP

#election

#chosen

#foreordained

#predestination