We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
How do you respond to Ephesians 1:11?
“In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, having…been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.”
This text has frequently been used to support the view that all things happen in accordance with God’s counsel and will. But this reads too much into the text. This passage says that all that God accomplishes is “according to his counsel and will,” not that all that takes place is God’s accomplishment in accordance with his counsel and will.
Scripture is clear that much of what takes place in this world is not God’s will. God detests sin and the gratuitous suffering it produces. But in all things — including evil things — God is at work to further his sovereign purpose as much as possible. Whatever God accomplishes is consistent with “his counsel and will” which Paul specifies as centering on acquiring a people for himself who “have obtained an inheritance…in Christ.”
Category: Q&A
Tags: Q&A, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
Verse: Ephesians 1
Related Reading
What is Open Theism?
Open Theism is the view that God chose to create a world that included free agents, and thus a world where possibilities are real. The future is pre-settled, to whatever degree God wants to pre-settle it and to whatever degree the inevitable consequences of the choices of created agents have pre-settled it. But the future…
How do you respond to Isaiah 6:10?
The Lord tells Isaiah, “Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.” (cf. Matt. 13:14–15) If taken out of context this passage may sound…
What is the significance of Genesis 6:5–6?
Seeing the wickedness of the whole human race which preceded the great flood, the Bible says, “The Lord was sorry that he made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” If everything about world history was exhaustively settled and known by God as such before he created the world, God had…
If God shouldn’t get blamed when free agents do evil, why should he be thanked when they do good?
Scripture tells us that every good gift comes from God the Father who “does not change like shifting shadows” (Ja 1:17). I interpret this to mean that God is always good and that he’s always working for good. In all circumstances, Paul said, “God is working for the good” (Rom. 8:28). We live and move…
What is the significance of Genesis 2:19 ?
“So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was the name.” God wanted Adam to have authority over the animal kingdom…
How do you respond to Ephesians 1:4-5?
Question: Ephesians 1 refers to believers as predestined before the foundation of the world. How do you reconcile this with your view that free actions of people (like choosing to believe in Christ) can’t be predestined or even foreknown ahead of time? Answer: It took three hundred years before anyone in Church history interpreted the…