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Skip Heitzig: First on the list, who forgives all your iniquities. Second, who heals all your diseases. Now, we usually start with the second category, not the first. It's the physical blessings, but the most important and profound blessings are the blessings in the heavenly realms, spiritual blessings in Christ. And now he lists the first blessing. Verse four, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.

Now, let's pick that apart. Praise God for His spiritual blessings. Blessing number one, God chose us. God picked us. He made a sovereign choice to save us. For some reason, some people just have a problem with that. What do you mean God chose us? How dare He? I get the freedom to choose God. What do you mean God chose us before the foundation of the world?

Well, you have the right to choose things, do you not? God has given you the freedom to choose what you want to eat, where you want to go, whom you want to marry. Aren't you glad for that? Instead of God saying, listen, you're going to marry that person whether you like it or not. Well, I don't like it. Tough. So if God has given you the capacity to choose, why should we look at God who has the capacity to choose and say that's not fair that God can choose?

And while people try to wrangle with this and argue with it and foment over it, why not just rejoice in the fact that God chose you? It doesn't bother me that God chooses people for salvation because if you were to bet on the horses—not that you would—but if you were to go to a horse race, would you bet on the winners or the losers? You would hope that you would bet on the winners. You wouldn't cognizantly on purpose say, I'm going to choose that horse because I know it's going to lose. No, you will want to pick and bet on the horse that is going to win.

So God makes a choice, and God chooses winners. And here you are in the winner's circle. You are chosen in Christ. That's the first blessing. And notice you were chosen before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. How can God choose people to be saved before these people are even on planet Earth? How can God choose people before people are people?

Well, God has one of His characteristics is He is omniscient, which means He's all-knowing. Now, if God is all-knowing, can God learn anything? Can't learn anything. He knows all things, so He can't learn anything. He knows all things in advance. Because He is all-knowing, not only is He omniscient, but God has a special feature of that omniscience called precognizance. He knows things that will happen in advance. That's why prophecy is so powerful.

In the book of Isaiah, God says, look, I know things in advance and I'll prove it. I'll announce what's going to happen so that when it happens, you'll know that I've spoken. Jesus said the same thing. I'm going to tell you in advance so that when it comes to pass, you might believe. So God has the capacity of foreknowledge and First Peter chapter one, verse two tells us this: we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God.

God knew your life in advance. In fact, Psalm 90 in the Old King James says we live our lives as a tale that has been told. He sees your life all in advance. He knew that day that you were filled with anxiety and call on the name of the Lord and He chose you before you chose Him. Jesus went to His disciples one day who had chosen to follow Jesus and said, hey, word up here, boys. You didn't choose me, but I chose you. And I've ordained you that you should bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.

Now, I'm sure they were puzzled when Jesus said you didn't choose me because they did make a choice one day to choose Him, but only because Jesus had chosen them before they could choose Him. So which is it? Does God choose or do we choose? Answer, yes. Yes. God chooses you, you choose Him, and both cooperate together. As Paul will show us in the verses ahead, He chose us before the foundation of the world. He has foreknowledge.

And I love this part, because He mentions it a few times, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Now, are you without blame right now? Are you perfect in this state in which you are in? No, but when you are presented before Him, you will be perfect and without blame. Jude, verse 24: Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the throne of His glory with exceeding joy.

When you are presented to the Father in Christ at Judgment Day, when Jesus says Father, my perfect child, my holy without fault child, you will be on that day presented as faultless, all because of the work of Christ. So you were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world and one day you will be presented without blame before Him in love.

Verse five, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. Second spiritual blessing, adoption. You are adopted sons, adopted daughters in the family of God, in the new society called the church. Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, the monogenes, the only begotten of the Father. We are adopted children and the word adopted refers to placing a child in a family as an adult child, being given adult rights, being given the full family blessing and all the rights of being in that household.

You know, in some ways being adopted is better than being born into a family, because when you're adopted by a family, you're picked. They choose you. When you have your kids naturally, you get what you get. But when you're adopted, you're chosen. You're picked. You've been chosen before the foundation of the world. And then when you came into being, when your life is as it is and you said yes to Jesus Christ, you were then placed, given all the rights as an adult son or daughter in the family of God.

Predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, and I love this because He mentions it a few times, according to the good pleasure of His will. In other words, God does whatever God wants to do because it pleases Him. And because He's holy and perfect, whatever pleases Him is always holy and perfect. According to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

You are accepted in the Beloved. The Beloved is Jesus Christ. It's a reference to Christ. Because of Christ, you are in Christ, you are accepted in the Beloved. God accepts you. You know, we talk about accepting the Lord. Have you accepted the Lord? Have you accepted Christ? I don't love that terminology. It's almost like, okay, well, let me think about this. Okay, I'll accept you. No, I don't accept Him. I have received Christ as my savior. And the reality is, you don't accept Him, He accepts you. God accepts you as His son, accepts you as His daughter, accepts you as an adopted adult in His family. You're accepted by God. Wonderful truths, spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.

In Him, next blessing, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. Now, redemption is a term from the slave market. It's to go into a slave market, pay a price, buy the slave, and set the slave free. So it's to set free by paying a price. The price was paid not by you, but by Jesus on the cross so that you and I who were enslaved to sin, Romans chapter seven, could be set free. We have been redeemed, set free by Him paying the price.

And it's through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence. I love the word abound. In the book of Romans, Paul says where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. Better translation, where sin abounds, grace overflows. So God's grace, unmerited favor, doesn't have a limit. It just keeps being poured out, poured out, poured out over the top, over the walls, into your life, through your life, into the lives of others. It abounds in all wisdom and prudence, that is, understanding, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.

Guest (Male): This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Your support helps reach people every day with biblical truth that speaks into real life. And this month, we'd love to thank you for your gift with a meaningful resource designed to encourage restoration and connection in your home and family relationships. When you give today, you'll receive Reconnecting with Family, a powerful book from Pastor Skip that addresses the pressures families face today and offers practical, scripture-based guidance for navigating life together with grace, wisdom, and hope. Your gift helps extend the reach of Connect with Skip Heitzig, connecting more people and families to God's unchanging truth. Request Reconnecting with Family when you give $50 or more at connectwithskip.com/offer or by calling 800-922-1888. Now, here's more from Pastor Skip.

Skip Heitzig: You do have to get used to a couple of words when you read Paul. There are certain words that Paul used a lot, liked a lot, expounded on a lot. One of them is the word mystery. He used it in a few different places, musterion. Now, when you hear the word mystery, you think spooky, mystery. Or, you know, it's like a police drama, gotta figure out the clues to understand the puzzle, the mystery. That's not the meaning of mystery in the New Testament.

In the New Testament, musterion or mystery means something hidden in the past that's not hidden anymore. Now what was hidden in the past is now brought out into the open and revealed. And you go, well, what mystery would that be? Glad that you asked. Verse 10 tells you: that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in Him.

The center of all of life, all of the universe is one person, Jesus Christ. When Paul wrote the book of Colossians, he said of Jesus Christ: for by Him are all things. So He made everything by Him are all things and for Him are all things. He made them all and ultimately He will be the center of all things. Philippians says at the name of Jesus Christ every knee will bow, every tongue will confess of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So the mystery is that at the right time, Jew, Gentile, those dead, those alive, those in the future will all be under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ so that every single tongue will confess that He is the Lord. And moreover, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, i.e. the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, the millennial kingdom, that's when it becomes a reality for a thousand years on this earth. That's in Paul's mind the dispensation of the fullness of times, called by several different titles in the scripture, but all speaking of the same thing.

So that's the mystery, that it was kept hidden in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, God had one people, Jewish people, Jewish Messiah, promises for Israel. Those things are still in effect, but added to those promises for Israel are Gentiles and Jews brought together into a new society called the church. This new society called the church was a mystery in the Old Testament. It's now old news in the New Testament. It's His church, the new society.

In Him, verse 11, in Him we have obtained an inheritance. Yes, we have. Being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, God's sovereign will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. Now we have tension, once again, in a couple of different truths. I just want to show you the tension. The tension is in the previous verses, like verse two, three, and four and verse 11, talks all about how we're predestined, chosen, all this happened before we were born. This is God's sovereign choice. This is His will. It almost sounds like it's irresistible.

And yet in verse 12, that we who first trusted in Christ, that's a decision and a choice that you make, should be to the praise of His glory. Also again in verse 13, in Him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. So here's the tension. It's throughout the whole New Testament. On one hand, you have appeals that are made to engender and to include human choice, human volition. Come to me, Jesus said. It's an invitation. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Or John the Baptist and Jesus saying, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Or like in the book of Revelation, whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely. All of those are appeals to the human will to make a choice, which is included in verse 12 and 13. You first trusted after you heard the gospel. You made a choice to trust Him. So on one hand are all these appeals to human choice. On the other hand, you have the indication that God makes His sovereign choice way before you were born. So it almost sounds like you got no say in the matter. God chose you and you can't change that. You can't do anything. You are just irresistibly drawn and saved.

And it is that tension that has caused churches to split, movements to split, theologians to argue, people to get mad. And for the last 2,000 years, we've tried to solve that conundrum unsuccessfully. And so people polarize, and I always hated when people polarize. I say let's harmonize. Let's say that not this is true and that's not true or this is true and this isn't true. How about saying both are true at exactly the same time? And let's just say that predestination is from God's viewpoint, from heaven looking down because He has foreknowledge and omniscience. And human choice or volition is from a human perspective where my will is engaged.

Both can be true. It's like a suspension bridge. So a suspension bridge has tension. It's what holds it up. You have opposite forces in a suspension bridge pulling in opposite directions. If you take one of those things away, the bridge collapses. Take the other force away, the bridge collapses. Both are necessary to pull against each other for you to walk across that suspension bridge. Predestination, human choice, personal belief are both true at the same time. Let the tension remain. Don't try to solve and take away the tension. Let the tension remain. Walk across the bridge.

So both are true. You trusted. The best little example I've heard of this, if you've ever gotten a little book by J.I. Packer—if not, let me recommend it to you—it's called Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. It's a booklet. It's small. It's by a Calvinist who's balanced, and that's rare. So he believes in election, sovereign choice, predestination. But he also says that in evangelism we should compel people to come, invite people to come, because human choice and sovereign election meet at the moment of salvation.

And the example that J.I. Packer gives in the book is from physics. And this helped me because I had studied radium physics for a number of years, and so I got this immediately. He talked about an antinomy. An antinomy is an apparent contradiction that works. And the example is photon energy, light energy. It is apparent, if you study light, that it travels in wavelength. But it's also particle. Now, in science, particles and wavelengths don't happen at the same time. So there's an apparent contradiction. And yet photon energy proceeds in wavelength pattern even though it's both particle and wavelength.

So it's an apparent contradiction, but it can be studied and shown that it's both wavelength and particle at the same time. So you have an apparent contradiction, but both are true. So it is with this: sovereign election, human choice, apparent contradiction, no contradiction at all. Wavelength and particle at the same time. God chose you, you were predestined, you also trusted after you heard the gospel, the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom having believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory.

We're going to close the book. I thought I'd get through at least chapter one. Didn't happen. It's okay, there's always next week. As we close, here's another example. If you're in—I was going to say the Rio Grande River drowning, but I don't even think that's possible because it's only like this deep. But let's say you're in the ocean and I'm on the shore and a tide is sweeping you away and you're drowning and you cry out for help. I throw a rope out to you. Are you saved just because I threw a rope out to you? What do you have to do? Gotta grab it. So God's sovereign predestination and election, He supplies the rope, throws the rope. Your choice, you grab the rope. Now you have both working together to save you.

Guest (Male): We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, here's a reminder. When you give at least $50 this month, we'll send you Reconnecting with Family as our thanks. It's a powerful new resource from Pastor Skip that offers biblical wisdom and encouragement for navigating real-life family challenges with faith and grace. Your support helps keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting more people and families to God's unchanging Word. Give today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your April resource. See you next time on Connect with Skip Heitzig.