God Without Religion_ Can It Really Be This Simple_ - Andrew Farley [26]
Worley attributed his lucky opportunity to “God’s will.” And he fell for the idea of advancing a large sum of money to the African businessman in hopes that he would receive a promised sixteen million dollars in return.
Needless to say, things didn’t work out the way Worley had planned.
Maybe you’ve received an email like the one Worley did. I get one nearly every day. This Nigerian letter is a multi-billion-dollar scam that began decades before the advent of email. The selling point is that for simply sending some money in advance, you are promised a much larger sum in return.
What’s the first mistake victims make? Perhaps it’s assuming that the email was sent to them exclusively. They think they’ve been singled out. If they were told that thousands had received the same email, they might not be so quick to be scammed. If we don’t know any different, it’s only natural for us to assume that an email like the one Worley received is the result of someone singling us out. We want to believe that we’re the lucky one, that we individually hit the jackpot. It’s this type of thinking that opens us up to errors in judgment, wrong conclusions, and poor choices.
As we’ll see, it’s not much different when it comes to Paul’s letters and predestination. In Ephesians, for example, we read the word you and might assume that it means us, individually. And with that idea as our starting point, it only naturally follows that God engaged in individual selection by choosing each of us for heaven and leaving others hopeless.
But what if the truth of the gospel is simpler than that? What if “you” is plural and doesn’t mean individuals were picked while others were left for eternal damnation? And what if it takes no mental gymnastics at all to fit the pieces together? With so many thousands of pages written on the predestination puzzle, could it really be simple?
A Tale of Two Teams
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians opens with God choosing someone for adoption, and the term “us” is used:
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ. (Eph. 1:4–5)
A popular interpretation is that Paul is referring to “us Christians,” saying that God chose us Christians and predestined us Christians for sonship. But I wonder if that’s the best reading of the passage. Of course, Christians are holy, blameless, and adopted. But it seems that the “us” in this passage is a bit more specific than just “us Christians.” Let’s see if we can figure out what Paul really means:
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. (Eph. 1:11–12)
Again we see the words chosen and predestined describing a group called “we.” The “we” here refers to the first people to put their hope in Christ. Of course, the first people would be the apostles themselves and their fellow Jews. They believed first.
Then things get really interesting. Paul mentions a second group of people. He directly addresses this second group by saying:
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. (Eph. 1:13)
Of course, by “you also,” Paul means his audience—the Ephesians, who are Gentiles. As we read on, we see Paul contrast the two groups again:
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. . . . All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. (Eph. 2:1, 3)
Paul says the Ephesians were dead in their sins. Then he says “all of us also.” So what’s this all about? Why does Paul refer