The first twelve verses of chapter one constitute a single complex sentence in the original Greek. After the greetings of grace and peace from God comes forth from the mouth of Paul a continuous outpouring of praise unto God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
We see the focus on the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. First, God the Father is the source of every blessing we receive and enjoy. It is He who has chosen us; it is He who predestined us…to be His sons; He is the one who freely gave us His grace and made known to us His will and purpose in Christ; He did all these according to His pleasure and will, and He is the one who has poured out His love and grace upon us in His Son. It is important to know that the Father loves us even before the creation of the world. We may wrongly conclude that He loves us because Christ died for us and somehow what Christ did made the Father love us. He loves us from the beginning and His love is demonstrated by sending His Son to die for us; Christ’s dying for us, even when we were yet sinners, is the supreme demonstration of God’s love for us in His Son.
Secondly, the sphere within which the blessing is given and received is the Lord Jesus Christ; the phrase ‘in Christ’ or ‘in Him’ occurs no less than eleven times in the epistle. In Adam, we belong to the old humanity but ‘in Christ’, we belong to the new redeemed humanity; ‘in Him’, God has chosen us in eternity, bestowed on us His abundant grace, redeemed us and forgave us, and also ‘in Him’, God presented His plan to unite all things, in heaven and on earth, under the headship of His Son.
Thirdly, we are told that the blessing God gave us is spiritual, not material as seen in the Old Testament, manifested in God’s law written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. Paul qualified the term spiritual with the clause “in the heavenly realms”, indicating the unseen world of spiritual reality; it is the sphere in which the ’principalities and powers’ operate and in which Christ reigns supreme and those who are His also reign with Him. The activity of the Holy Spirit is evident throughout the bestowing of God’s grace and life to His people and this would be elaborated in later chapters of the epistle. Here in chapter one, the Holy Spirit is described as God’s seal on the believers, a mark of ownership and authenticity; God puts His Holy Spirit within His people to mark them as His own. The Spirit is also God’s guarantee of bringing His people safely to their final destination and inheritance; now He is giving us a foretaste of what awaits us in the future, the Spirit being a down payment or a deposit of the future endowment that is in store for all the believers.
Notice in verse four that believers are chosen to be holy and blameless in His sight. This is the intention of God for His people; recognizing this would help us to realize that we cannot adhere to the teaching of Antinomianism which advocates the teaching, “All I have to do is believe in Christ and rely on the grace of God. I can then live any way I want, without any respect to the moral law of God.” This is a dangerous teaching; if anyone comes and tells you that as a Christian you do not have to be concerned about keeping commandments and obeying the moral law of God, he is speaking empty words, words that would deceive you. This is further elaborated in (Ephesians 4:5-6).
In verses 4-5 of chapter one, we are also told that God, in love, predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ. Adoption here is not the same as that practiced in our current context. In the days of Paul, adoption is declaring someone who has come of age as the legal son or daughter in a family. The one adopted is treated as belonging to the family, entitled to all privileges and inheritance of the family. We see the great privilege or being adopted into God’s family and being siblings to the Lord Jesus Himself, sharing in His privileges and inheritance, and also in His glory. The model for all true fatherhood is rooted in the fatherhood of God. The God of all glory not only becomes our father, but wishes to assure His children that this is so. We see here the assurance of salvation and sonship; God would want His children to have the assurance that they are indeed His children and members of His family.
The beginning of verse four reads, “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world…” We have noted the phrase ‘in Christ’, ‘in Him’, repeatedly used in this chapter; our being chosen by God should never be thought of apart from Christ. We who are chosen to be saved were never contemplated by the Father apart from Christ or apart from the work Christ was to do for us – we are chosen in Christ. Union with Christ is there from the outset, even in the plan of God. Here at the very beginning, all human merit is excluded. Union with Christ has its basis in Christ’s redemptive work; Christ came to earth to carry out this redemptive work for His people. It is only because Christ did all these things for His people that actual union between Christ and His own become possible. Through union with Christ we receive every spiritual blessing; Christ not only died for us on Calvary’s cross many years ago, He also lives in our hearts, now and forever. Union with Christ has its source in our election in Christ before the creation of the world and its goal in our glorification with Christ through eternity. Union with Christ was planned from eternity, and is destined to continue eternally. This union is what makes our life as Christians significant, happy, and victorious.
John Calvin puts it this way “We must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us and we are separated from Him, all that He has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us…All that Christ possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with Him.”
Only through the Holy Spirit can we become one with Christ and can Christ live in our hearts. We can only be saved when God makes us one with Christ. The role of the Holy Spirit is to bring us into union with the Lord Jesus, to keep us in that union, and to see that union flourish in communion with Him. The hallmark of the Spirit’s work is ongoing conformity to Christ crucified and raised, causing us to share His death in order to share His resurrection, to taste His suffering in order that we might also taste His glory. The Spirit implants the seed of this at the beginning of the Christian life and nourishes it to the end.
Paul in fact, in this first part of chapter one, is addressing the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ with respect to the salvation of His people. We become His people according to the good pleasure of His will (repeated in verses 6, 9 and 11). He made us His people for the praise of His glorious grace, to the praise of His glory. It begins in His will and ends in His glory; we shall see this more clearly in subsequent verses and chapters. This is where everything begins and ends.