(Article for publication week of 3-5- AD 2015)
"According
as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love:" (Ephesians 1:4).
Our text
takes us all the way back to the very fountainhead of our salvation- eternal,
free and sovereign election. Before the foundation of the world God the Father
chose a people in His Eternal Son to be saved and predestinated them unto
eternal glory. Salvation sprang from the Wisdom of God. Salvation is of the
Lord! God from all eternity made a covenant with Himself whereby He gave a
people to His Son. At the appointed time the Son of God came into the world to
make a real atonement for all His sheep. The Holy Spirit comes with all His
quickening powers and effectually calls every heir of promise from death in
trespasses and sin and translates them into the kingdom of Christ. Believer,
here is a truth in which you will eternally rejoice, salvation is all of the
Lord! You are saved not because of anything that you did or earned, but because
of gracious election.
Now let us see
unto what we have been chosen. God has chosen His people to be righteous
("without blame") and sanctified ("holy"). First of all God
has chosen His people to be righteous. That is , in His eternal decree, God saw
His people in their covenant Head, the Lord Jesus Christ Who is all their
righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6). God has imputed the righteousness of His Own
Eternal Son to the account of His people therefore they can never be condemned,
for Christ has died for them and it is God Who justifies (Romans 8:32-34). If I
could introduce a new word into our Mother Tongue it would be the word
"uncondemnable." That is the glorious state of God's elect, they are
not only un-condemned, they are "uncondemnable." God's Holy law
cannot condemn them, for Christ has kept the law for us and His obedience is
imputed to us as if it were out very own. Further, Christ has suffered the
proper penalty for our law-breaking by His vicarious sufferings and He is
raised from the dead for our justification. All the devils in hell can never
condemn one of God's chosen ones , though they try. God chose us to be without
blame and by His sovereign grace we are eternally justified.
But please notice further that God has chosen His
people to be holy. Thus we see that justification and sanctification are always
found in the same characters. There is no such thing as a person being
justified without also being sanctified. Nor can a person ever live a holy life
without the foundation of being justified by imputed righteousness. Our text is
one of many where justification and sanctification are put together.
Justification and sanctification are to be distinguished, but never to be
separated. Every one that God has chosen in Christ to be saved has the imputed
righteousness of Christ, and the Holy Spirit by His regenerating Power imparts
the holy nature of God to them also (II Peter 1:4). Being made a partaker of
the divine nature, with the Holy Spirit working in us both to will and to do of
God's good pleasure, we are enabled to pursue holiness, and imperfectly but
truly be holy as God is holy. Righteousness and holiness are the result of
God's eternal election as our text plainly shows. Therefore, to preach election
without also preaching holiness is only part of the gospel. Let no one imagine
themselves to be among God's elect who is not in pursuit of holiness (Hebrews
12:14) for He has chosen His people to be holy and without blame.
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