Predestined Adoption

Ephesians 1:5

We have only just gotten started digging into this epistle and already we have learned some amazing truths. In verse four alone we saw that we serve a God Who chose us. We serve a God who planned the death and resurrection of Christ before the foundations of the world. We are called to serve this God by being holy and blameless in our love for Him.

Next we will look at verse five and see what other deep and wonderful truths we can find. Paul writes, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”  Again, it is always a good idea to go back and look at the context of Scripture to understand what it is saying. Verses can be twisted to fit people’s views and traditions. It is absolutely vital that we do not try and manipulate Scripture. We must seek to understand what His Word says, not try to figure out how to fit it into our views.

I say all that because “predestined” is one of the words that tends to be avoided in Scripture. It is certainly a controversial word; however, it is the word the Bible uses. We cannot change it to a word that works better for our traditional beliefs. Therefore, we must understand what it means and what God wants us to understand from it with the aim of knowing Him more deeply, glorifying Him more passionately, and utilizing it to become more holy and blameless.

The Greek word for predestined is  προορίζω (proorizo) which means “to predestine, to foreordain” and is defined as “to limit in advance” which, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, means to determine before. I doubt this is new information to many, but it is important to ensure we understand what predestined means.

Going back to the verse we see that it says, “having predestined us.” Who predestined us? It is clear in the previous verses that it is God who predestined us. It is God who blesses us with every spiritual blessing (1:3); it is God who chose us before the foundation of the world (1:4).

What has God predestined us for, or what has He already determined for us before? And before what? Going back to verse four, we see God chose us before the foundation of the world. So God, before the earth was even created, chose us. Therefore, God has determined before the foundations of the world. What has He determined? Let’s go back to verse five. It says, “having predestined us to adoption” [emphasis mine]. So He has determined before the foundations of the world that we were to be adopted.

Now let us look at the next part of this verse, the most exciting and amazing part of the verse. Paul writes, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself” [emphasis mine]. So God predestined us before the foundation of the world to be His adopted children! And He did it through the death and resurrection of His Son! There are so many amazing truths in this one statement.

First, and we looked at this in the article He Chose Us so I won’t linger on it too long, but God chose us to be His adopted children before anything had ever occurred! What this tells us is that we believers are absolutely unworthy of being His. He chose us because He did, not because of anything we had ever done. It should humble us greatly when we see this truth. We love to believe that our “good” deeds help us to earn favor with God. It is natural for us to feel like we have to work for it. We may even believe that we earned salvation. This truth emphatically tells us that we have not! We were chosen before the foundations of the world. We were chosen before our first words and our first act, before our first breath, even before Adam’s first breath. If this does not humble us and help us to see how we had absolutely no say in being chosen by Him I am not sure anything will.

The second truth I want to look at again from this verse is how sovereign God is. Before Adam sinned we were chosen to be His adopted children through Jesus Christ. He knew, He always knew, that Jesus would have to die for our sins. Nothing ever throws Him off. He never has to call an audible. He does not have a plan B. He is sovereign, and in His sovereignty, He created the world, chose us, and chose to send His Son to die for our sins. Why? We will see that later on in this epistle, but for now let’s revel in His providence.

What we do know is that it was all “according to the good pleasure of His will.” Again, He willed it. This was all part of His good will. It was all part of His plan, and His plan was never altered. It has been determined since before the world was created.

I hope you will read through these verses without a predetermined mindset. I fear we all miss truths in scripture because we are afraid of how it may challenge what we have always been taught or cause us to dig deeper to determine hidden truths we don’t want to find. The most important thing we ought to do is read Scripture prayerfully, asking the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom (James 1:5 is a great promise to claim when doing so) and discernment, and taking God’s Word for what is says. Trying to comprehend everything won’t always be possible for us because we have finite minds and serve an infinite God. We have to be willing to humbly accept that. We also must be careful not to draw up our own conclusions from one truth. It is my opinion that inferences are the cause for a lot of the controversies we see in scripture, specifically surrounding the word “predestined.” We ought to be very careful when stating that something is "Scriptural truth" when that so-called truth is not clearly taught in Scripture.

I hope that these truths we have seen today will both fill you with awe that God would chose us to be His children and humble us at the same time. He is an incredible, all-knowing, powerful God, and One that we should be both excited and humbled to get to know. Finally, let us remember our calling, to be holy and blameless before Him in love. He is certainly worthy of it!

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