Before the Foundation

“…even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him.”

Christian, you are chosen and loved by God before time as we know it began. Let that sink in. This is an awe-inspiring, breath-taking reality. This is the type of grace that is radically life-changing.

God didn’t choose to save you or love you when you decided to believe in Him. God didn’t look forward in time and see you believing in Him and then choose to save you. God didn’t look forward in time and see your good deeds and good behavior and then choose you. No, if anything, God looked forward into time, saw all your faults and failures and disgusting, blasphemous sin, and said, “I want that person in my family. And I will send my son to pay for that person with my Son’s life.” That’s love. That is mega, off-the-charts love. That kind of love defies logic and reason.

But you see, it’s not really even that God looked forward into time and saw our sin and failures and decided to save us anyway because He just loves us so much. But Ephesians 1:4 says, “He chose us IN HIM” – that is, IN CHRIST.

So it is not that God looked forward and saw any good or bad in us, but God saw the blood of His Son and Christ’s perfect righteousness and on the basis of Christ’s finished work alone did God choose us.

We are chosen by God before the foundation of the world on the basis of Christ’s finished work.

Since we are chosen by God on the basis of Christ’s work, we are therefore loved by God as God loves Christ. And THAT is a love unfathomable to the human mind. THAT is a love worth singing about. THAT  is a love worth talking about. And THAT is God’s love for us.

Christian, you are chosen by God before the foundation of the world on the basis of Christ’s finished work – and you are loved by God before the world’s beginning, in Christ – as God loves His Son, because of His Son.

And it doesn’t stop there.

God doesn’t simply choose to love us or justify us, but has chosen, before the world that we be holy and blameless before Him.

God has chosen before the foundation of the world, to make us into something. Before the world began, God had a plan for us.

God does not justify us and then leave us and say we’re good. He works in us to change us, to shape us into the image of His son. He sanctifies us. He finishes what he starts, what he planned to do before the foundation of the world.

When you fail, when you struggle, when you fall, take  heart, fight the good fight, for God is at work in you to perfect what He began. God will never leave or forsake those who are justified by the blood of Jesus. There is endless comfort and joy there.

God makes His children better. God completes salvation – from start to middle to finish.

If your sanctification depended on you, your fighting sin would be futile. But since it depends on God, your fighting sin is incredibly meaningful and necessary. And if God has indeed chosen you before the foundation of the world your sanctification WILL happen – you WILL become holy and blameless before Him.

Christian, you are loved, and chosen beyond time. Period.