Chosen Before Time

We generally learn about life through the window of our experiences. We discover things about relationships, health issues, career choices, and so on as we experience successes and failures, disappointments and celebrations, optimism and disillusionment.

But we know that our experiences are a limited window on the universe and there are truths beyond our experience that we are pretty sure are true. The speed of light is a constant. So we’re told. But our experience cannot confirm or deny this as it is beyond our ability to experience.

So it is with our relationship with God. In our experience we might say something like, “When I was 19 years old, I read some of the Bible and also some C.S. Lewis and I chose to believe in God and Jesus.” Okay, that was my experience. But put that experience up before the ideas proclaimed in Paul’s letters about “election,” God’s choosing before time:

He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world . . . In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself. . . .

–Ephesians 1:4-5 NASB

In my experience, light is something I can barely understand. Is it waves or particles? Is it really the one constant in the whole universe? I just know I’m a touch scared of the dark and very appreciative of light and being able to see.

Likewise, I had no idea I was “predestined” or “elected” or “chosen before time.” That is not how I experienced it. 

But what does the idea of election add to my faith in and love for Jesus Christ?

He pursued me. He enlightened my spirit at the right time, when I was 19 years old, when his unseen hand in my life had (unknowingly) compelled me to search for meaning, to pick up a Bible, to consider the ideas of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. God awakened my spirit and implanted faith and, as it seemed from my experience, I chose to believe.

Yes, we are touching on the mysteries of fatalism versus free will. And many of us are afraid of predestination. It seems to remove our choice, our agency, and make us passive puppets of the Divine Love. Mind you, I’d rather be a passive non-agent beloved of God than an active agent not loved by God (as if it were possible not to be loved by God). Even so, I’m naturally suspicious of any claims that I was predestined to do something.

Douglas Campbell, in Pauline Dogmatics, puts it this way:

The causal process the electing God is directing toward humanity has apparently baked all the freedom out of his subjects, which seems highly counterintuitive, not to mention detrimental to even the most basic ethics. Are we accountable actors or in reality just metaphysically complex lumps of clay?

Campbell says the difficulty results from faulty thinking, specifically, our vain imagining that we can comprehend things like God’s agency and his mind via our own intellect. But God is Eternal and we are time-bound. He is beyond searching out and can be known only in what he reveals. Further, we make God’s agency—his will to choose and act—in relation to our agency seem like a zero-sum game. It is either all God or all us.

What we learn from Paul’s writing is that God’s love initiates, God’s love gives, and God’s love is creative, says Campbell. Similarly a mother and father initiate the life of a child and give that child life. The child has no choice or agency in this matter. The work of the mother and father is creative. It is a good analogy to God our Father who adopted us as sons and daughters, having chosen us before time.

God does not elect people to eternal punishment. God ultimately loves and saves everyone. Not everyone will agree with these statements, but many verses in Paul suggest it. For example:

For as in Adam all die, 

so also in Christ 

all will be made alive.

–1 Corinthians 15:22 NASB

So God’s choosing before time is love. It is giving. It is creation. 

But is it God forcing us to do something we might not choose to do on our own? Is predestination about hard, causal, mechanical fatalism?

You might say to your mother and father, “Why did you conceive me? I did not ask for it or choose it.” But you’d be hard pressed to claim that your parents did you an injustice by conceiving you.

God had a personal, relational influence on us and we were unable to resist the offer of something so wonderful. Campbell suggests God’s electing will had a powerful, irrestistible influence on us. He calls it “a complex journey of love” consisting of experiences beforehand such as God summoning us, chiding us, waiting for us, liberating us, guiding us, gifting us, and blessing us. 

Furthermore, we know God has not removed our agency, has not turned us into puppets. He commands us. He has expectations of us. He acknowledges our agency, our choice in matters, and commands us to choose love and goodness. Campbell says, “a loving relationship without some sort of freedom is meaningless.” 

So, when God awakens our spirits, we choose to love him back. Similarly, we chose to love our mother and father (or grieved a lack of love if the family was broken). We had no choice about being born. And it seems like we had no choice but to be dependent on and in some sense love our parents. 

As for God, “those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29 NASB). God is in this election thing all the way to the end. In our experience, we will have successes and failures in our love of God and neighbor. We will experience ups and downs of faith and hope, versus doubt and despair. We may feel we made little or no progress with the time given to us, progress in becoming loving, whole, healthy human beings soaked in love and grace.

But the outcome is guaranteed. No matter how much or how little progress we make, we will be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ after death. Our New Self already exists as far as God is concerned—God who is not inside time like we are. In God’s experience, we are already Christlike and whole. Chosen before time, we are destined to love and be loved beyond time.