Chosen

Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:4-6

I have a special needs daughter. She has nothing to offer that our culture values in terms of reciprocity. She is not eloquent in speech or even able to engage in fluid two-way conversation with others. Her autistic demeanor can be off-putting to those who don’t know her, and she doesn’t have talents or an education that would give her a footing in life. The concepts of time and money are lost on her, and she has little ability to reason. She has reached the end of her formal education, and while her peers are about to enter college or the next phase in their career development, my daughter’s future is a dead end by the world’s standards. Despite what seems like a great sadness or loss, my hope for her is sure, because I trust the God who promised it. I’m not referencing our future hope of heaven, though certainly that is part of it. I am thinking of the promise God made to us in Jesus that not only secures our eternity but also gives us life and hope in the here and now. We are chosen sons and daughters of God who are daily growing into the identity we have been given.

You see, in God’s eyes, we are no different than my daughter. We have nothing to offer Him that He needs or does not already have. There is nothing that our finite, fragile human selves can give to Him to add value to His world or His well-being (He is the ONLY completely “well” being!). Jesus makes our standing clear in His conversation with the Father in John 17.

Lasting value, we observe, is not found internally (please do not “look inside yourself”) but in knowing the Father. “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent – Jesus Christ” (John 17:3).

Not only is our value found outside of ourselves, but Jesus had to come on a preplanned rescue mission to do a job we were incapable of doing. We hear Him tell the Father, “I have glorified You on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do” (John 17:4).

For all our societal hubris of “You do you”, we see that we don’t even belong to ourselves. Jesus is not reminding God, but us, when He says, “They were Yours, You gave them to Me” (John 17:6b).

Then, lest you, like me, have watched too many action flicks touting man’s ability to self-protect based on strength, skill, and fire-power, we overhear Jesus’ gently humbling plea to the Father, “While I was with them, I was protecting them by Your name (John 17:12)… I am not praying that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

If this makes you feel small and insignificant, that’s good. You’re more in touch with who you actually are than our world allows. Now, consider where all your worth and value lie. You, like my daughter, are a chosen and beloved child of the King.

I love my child dearly. I love her because she is mine. God entrusted her to me. She was not an accident. God did not miss a minute of her prenatal development. What’s more, He chose me to be her mother for this little while. This beloved child helps me to understand who we are before God. We were chosen before the foundation of the world. We are adopted into God’s family, and that comes with a host of benefits (the Apostle Paul calls them “every spiritual blessing”) that we did not earn, could not earn, but were given, nonetheless. David Gibson, in his book The Lord of Psalm 23, makes this statement, “God doesn’t have goodness or love that He might dispatch them; He is goodness and love. God sends these attributes after us as a way of giving us Himself” (p.125).

When we know whose we truly are, everything we do reflects that identity. Our Ephesians passage says that God chose us so that we should be holy and blameless before Him. This is not something we work up with determination. We begin to mirror the Father because His Spirit lives in us. We are enabled to love the world because He loves us. We overlook offenses because He has overlooked ours in the blood of Jesus. We dig into our Bibles because we want to be nearer to the One who loves us. We talk to Him about everything, because that is what children do with a Father they are not afraid of. It is He who makes us holy and blameless.

When Jesus returns to bring us Home, my daughter and I will finally know each other as never before. The difficulty we have in communicating will be gone. More than knowing each other fully, we will know our Father fully. For now, we live, not as orphans fending off threats alone in this world, but as chosen and loved children of God. That is more than enough.