Road Trip Radio Free Geneva: Only the Apostles were Predestined!

You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this, God's suffering, God's suffering, God's suffering, suffering, suffering. They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a Biblical truth.

She stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, she says, Lazarus, come out! And Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did, Lazarus came out. Do you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ?

And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin. It shows in this kind of sequential format.

Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things? Um, no.

Some new Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine. Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.

A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it? It wouldn't make any sense to him. A self-righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

You need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge.

Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat. There's a reason to have the choice of that meat.

From our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Saint from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

I'm still, honestly... It still takes me time to get past the Steve Tassi thing. It really does. I'm sorry. Hey, just so you know, Tim Beauchamp is working on a video version of the opening. Instead of just the splash screen, this thing, we will have video.

He's tracking down the video from these clips. He's recording music. I guess they record all the music stuff already. I need to let you know, I hate moving. I really hate moving. We moved into the house we're in right now in 1998.

I told my wife then, we're going to bury me in the backyard because I hate moving. But we're moving the bunker. The lease is up under the New Orleans cafeteria. We've found a new location. I think you're going to enjoy the new location.

For those of you wondering, welcome to Radio Free Geneva. Radio Free Geneva is a feature of The Dividing Line that we began many, many, many, many, many years ago. Before we get into it, I encountered a young man in the Kansas City area just a couple of days ago.

When I get to go out and do this, you meet with people and you hear from folks. By the way, I'm in an RV park. If you hear the dog barking outside, that's why. At least a few other people showed up. When I showed up here today, there was nobody here.

I was feeling a little Walking Dead-type vibes going on out here. You get to talk to people. Again, let me just say very quickly, thanks so much to the folks in Amarillo, St. Charles, Sedalia, and then the two churches in the Kansas City area, both of which were actually not in Kansas.

They weren't in Missouri, I don't believe. Anyway, had a wonderful time with all of them. They were very welcoming, very friendly. Got to talk to a bunch of folks. It's always encouraging. One fellow was talking about how lonely he had felt until he found The Dividing Line that helped him find like-minded churches, things like that.

Had a young man come up to me on Saturday, I believe it was, and he just looked so excited, and he shakes my hand, and he said, I was baptized six days ago, and you and Jeff were important in having that happen.

I don't even know what to say in situations like that other than I've never met the man before. What a day to live in where you can have that kind of influence. It's exciting. It's wonderful. It's awesome.

It's great. I'm very, very thankful to have those opportunities. We're on our way home. Prayer is appreciated. Today was seven hours, a little over seven hours. Maybe eight today? I'm not sure. I'd have to go back through, but anyway, uneventful.

I didn't get really tired at any point in time, and if I can get through the diesel lines with the big trucks without having to wait in line, it's a good trip, and I did that twice today, just straight into an open bay, and you're out the other side so fast.

Those diesel pumps will fill you up really quick. Anyway, got to listen to a bunch of stuff today and had some time to listen, re-listen to a video that we're going to be summarizing and responding to on Radio Free Geneva today.

On the way home, and we'll be preaching, Lord willing, next Lord's Day at Apologia, and I think I know what I'm going to be doing, but I got to check to see if I've ever done it before. That's the rough part there.

There's a certain collocation of texts I like to go over that's exciting in regards to the Advent season and Christmas and stuff like that, and so we'll see, but that's this coming Sunday, which will be my birthday, by the way, so I'll be preaching on my birthday.

What else? What more would you like to do on your birthday than to get to preach the Word of God to wonderful people in a church that loves Christmas? So it's going to be great, and maybe I'll wear a coogee while preaching on Sunday.

Why not? It's Apologia. We do things our own way. All right, so months ago, I don't remember exactly when it was, I was sent a link to a video, and I started to look at it, and I was sort of like, yeah, okay, and then this guy started showing up on Twitter, and so I downloaded it, and I listened to it on the trip out, and then today, I listened to it again, and then voice-recorded some notes so that we can make it worthwhile.

The fellow who's doing this has John 17 Apologetics Ministry, I guess is what it's called, and his name, I guess, is Nick Craig. There's a screenshot from the video that we're going to be looking at from Ephesians 1.

Nick Craig is his name. I thought he might be some guy on Twitter, so I asked the guy on Twitter. He said, no, that's not me. We'll be looking at some of his stuff. He has a thing called, because Nick Craig does have a Twitter thing, but a couple times, it almost seemed like the Calvinism is a lie guy said stuff that sounded like he was claiming that what he was posting was his own, so maybe I just, I may have just misunderstood him, but anyway, that's why I asked the question.

So Nick Craig will pop into some of my threads and say things like, yeah, well, you don't know what election means because you haven't responded to what I said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so he's posted a few videos, not many.

It's not like Layton Flowers where you've got, Google has had to build three or four server farms just to keep up with all the stuff that Layton puts up saying the same things over and over again. And so, but he'll pop in once in a while.

And so I thought, all right, well, we'll listen to it. Thankfully, it wasn't three and a half hours long. Give him credit on that one. It does start off with, everybody wants to try to make themselves look really fancy by throwing in stuff from, you know, movies and things like that and having a little fun.

Okay, fine. I don't really get into all that stuff. We've got too much stuff to cover. So anyway, in essence, the argument we're going to be looking at, and then I'm going to look at some other stuff.

I want to look at the Calvinism is a Lie guy on Twitter. Make a few comments on the Acts 1348 stuff. We've covered a lot of that before. There's a whole section of discussion of that, if I recall correctly.

I know I covered it in The Potter's Freedom, but I'm pretty sure I also covered it with Dave Hunt many, many, many moons ago on that subject too. But the essence of the video, and of course I can't do video editing and indexing and stuff like that at 65 to 70 miles per hour, 18 ,000 pounds, 51 feet long, playing tag with trucks.

Or today I was just trying to stay in draft of trucks to get the best gas mileage I could. It's just such a long day in the saddle. Anyway, here's the essence of the argument that Nick is presenting to us.

First of all, he begins, he literally claims at the beginning of his comments, he has not found anyone that goes into the depths on Ephesians that he's going to go into. He hasn't found anyone in the past 180 years.

And he says no one has gone as in-depth as he's about to go in covering Ephesians since the invention of the internet. How do you even respond to that? I don't get the feeling that our dear brother, for example, is Greek literate.

And so maybe what he means is no one on the internet has done something like this since it was invented or something. I don't know. But obviously his commentary can't go nearly as deep as the vast majority of critical commentaries and things like that because he's just not aware of what the issues are.

But he starts off. You can listen to it yourself. I will link to it when I blog this after we get done. He claims he has used this argument with Calvinists for years and they cannot overcome it. So without this, there must not be anything else.

He does put up some other videos where he sort of piggybacks on this that I haven't even bothered to listen to because this is woefully deficient, exegetically speaking. So if that's what it's all based on, then why even waste the time with what comes afterwards, basically?

Here's the thesis. It's not the standard class interpretation of Ephesians 1 where you have a class of people, an impersonal group of people. He says I'm right about that. His argument is that Ephesians 1, verses 3 -12 is only about the apostles.

It's only about the apostles. It's not about the Ephesians. They come in down in 13 -14, down that area. But all the stuff about eternity past and predestination and all of this is only about the apostles.

And then he spends the vast majority of his time demonstrating that in some of Paul's epistles, he, for example, talks about the apostles as a group or the apostolic band or the individuals ministering with him who weren't all apostles, by the way.

I mean, you have Demas and the sad story that that is. And so there were people that were associated with Paul that were not apostles. And so there isn't anything that I heard in this first video anyways where he seriously defines what apostle means, how apostle was determined, when was the last apostle.

Would this include Peter and people that aren't with him while he's writing? But does it include Luke? Does it include Timothy? Is Timothy an apostle? If it's the apostolic band, then if Ephesians 1, 3 -12 is only about the apostles, what about Timothy?

What about Demas? Epaphras. Other people that Paul mentions as a part of his apostolic group, but are they apostles? There is some discussion of how you even define that term as it's used, for example, in Acts.

Or does Paul use it in more than one way, depending on what he's addressing? So those are some of the issues. And so it's pretty easy to go into places, the Corinthian correspondence, Paul's having to deal with the super apostles.

He's having to defend his apostolic authority. Certainly in Galatians, same type of situation. And then in other epistles, he's writing to the Philippians or the Thessalonians, and he's commending their faith, and so he'll make a distinction.

And so he spends a lot of time proving something that isn't really relevant, because if the issue in Ephesians 1 is that the only ones who are predestined are the apostles, then what we should see in Ephesians 1, 3 -12, is the apostolic ministry, and what makes the apostolic ministry unique, different from what anyone else would have.

So the things that are said in that section should be unique to the apostles. That would demonstrate his point, but the reality is that that's not the case. And then I should say he makes a huge deal out of we who were the first to believe in Christ, and he spends time going about, well, it's the Jews first, and then the Gentiles, and the Ephesians are way down the road, and they couldn't have been included in all this stuff, and he goes on and on and on and on.

And seemingly feels that that's sort of the ace in the hole. That demonstrates, yes, this first section, only about, evidently, the Jewish apostles, and even though Paul comes later, he's one of the 12, and so we'll include him in there.

And he does deal with that as well. He recognizes that very clearly there were believers in Christ who were not apostles, who were believers before Paul was. So this whole chronological thing, we'll look at it, and we get to verse 12, and I will suggest a little more obvious meaning to it when we get there.

So the whole thing is, all this election stuff, later on, I'm sure, because he mentioned it somewhere else, it's election unto service, and these are all partial truths. God does elect, what does Ephesians 2 say?

That foreordination of God is unto good works, which includes service. And so, sure, election is unto service, but that doesn't mean that it's not unto the other things that it said, inheritance, adoption, all the things associated with salvation itself.

And so there's the thesis in a nutshell. And so let's, and I did try to, I'm hoping that I was successful here. I tried to fix our little window with a little help from my friend, Rich. And so let's see what we can do here.

There's that. And a little bigger, a little easier to see. Now realize, I have to look down here to see it, and so if I'm scrolling and some of it ends up on the wrong side there, please forgive me as far as covering over the Greek.

And I'm a little scared to touch the button to move it around. It's not broke at the moment. I'm not going to fix it. So let's just go with it where it is there. So Ephesians chapter one is where we're going to be going.

And so let's just think about, let's walk through the text and let's take the thesis as it has been offered and let's see how it works, okay? This is a gentleman who, by the way, is, in my opinion, is not balanced in his criticism of Calvinism.

And in fact, sort of what we're doing on the program today, by looking at this and then looking at some of the responses that were given to Brother Ron on Twitter when he wrote a fine thread going through the Acts 1348 middle passive issues.

He went through Dan Wallace, who lays out criteria for how you determine whether something's to be taken as a middle or passive, and none of which works for Acts 1348. Some of the responses. There are, sadly, lots and lots of people on Twitter who are marked by what they're against more than what they're for.

Some people say, well, you're an apologist, that's all you do. Except fair-minded people, even on the other side, will admit that I'm much more clearly for what I'm for than against what I'm against.

I will be very clear in being against what I'm against when it's against what I'm for. But I give a positive presentation of an orthodox, Trinitarian, Reformed understanding of salvation and the inspiration of scripture and resurrection and so on and so forth, and I'm much more focused on that.

There are people on the internet, sadly, whose lives are marked by their detestation of Reformed theology. The Calvinism is a lie, guys. There's just no balance. There can't be joy in that. There can't be fulfillment in that.

I really feel sorry for people like that. Our friend here is not overly balanced in his analysis, and I think that's what leads to this kind of interpretation. Let's keep in mind, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and there are some early manuscripts, by the way, I'm not going to expand on this too much, that omit at Ephesus, and I think that's reflective of the fact that, and this is one of the things that our friend misses here, that Nick misses, Ephesians, Paul spent years at Ephesus, and yet there's nothing personal in Ephesians.

I firmly believe that Ephesians is the letter referred to in Colossians 4 .16 coming from the Odyssey. It was a circular letter, and that's why it doesn't have the specific personal address to the many, many, many, many people that he could have named there at Ephesus.

You can tell from Acts 20 how deep his relationship was with that particular church, but that impacts the nature of the address and the audience in Ephesians, is that this is meant to be circulated around the churches.

To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I would just ask, I mean, that's standard introduction, but when it says grace to you and peace from God our Father, is it our Father as in the apostles' Father?

Or is it our Father as in all of our Father? Or is it all of us who are saints? Is God the Father of all who are saints? That's what I would say. If you're in Christ and you have God as your Father, there's no distinction there, right?

Is God Father of the apostles in a way that he is not of everyone else, or in a special way, or in a predestined way? I wonder if this has been thought through. So, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, if 3 through 12 is only about the apostles, so evidently they have a special relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ that the Ephesians don't have, right? I mean, it's supposed to have a distinction here, right?

But it's our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us. So, if you're going to say, oh, no, no, it's all of our, all of us are included in our Lord Jesus Christ, but who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven and places in Christ?

Yeah, that's just the apostles. That's just the apostles. That's the perspective that would have to be presented here because this is every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. So, what are the heavenly, what are the, what's every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place?

And remember, Ephesians 2 is going to say, we are seated in the heavenly places, in Christ, and that's everybody, or at least I thought it was everybody, but maybe he would say it's, that they're more special or they have a better place in heaven, I don't know.

But the idea is, who has blessed the apostles with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose the apostles in him before the foundation of the world, that we, the apostles, would be holy and blameless before him.

Now, I think in love should go with the next verse, but that's not something to argue about here. But, so you hear what's being said. So, God chose the apostles in Christ before the foundation of the world.

So, let's just stop for a second. What is actually accomplished in taking this perspective when in reality, what you're fundamentally saying is, yes, Calvinism is true, but it's only true for the apostles.

So, the apostles didn't have free will? How did God choose the apostles, but not the Ephesians? Because that's what's being said. The predestination, all this stuff, it's about the apostles. It's not about a regular believer in Christ, the way such as the people at Ephesus would be.

And so, this creates a two-class system. So, evidently, you're free to get into Christ by your free will choice, but the apostles weren't? Did the apostles have free will? Ask Paul about that. As he's laying blinded on the ground, talk to him about his free will.

So, the apostles are denied free will? And how did the apostles come into existence? So, remember, soteriology, your soteriology, your doctrine of salvation is going to be dependent upon previous commitments, whether you recognize that or not.

Most evangelicals, I will confess, don't get that part. They don't see that part. And what I mean by that is most evangelicals have a doctrine of salvation over here, and then they've got their doctrine of God over here, and they never bring them close enough to see if they're actually connected to one another.

And so, if we're going to say that God predestined certain people to an office of service, in this case, every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, and here to be holy and blameless before him. So, holy and blameless, that's soteriology.

That includes atonement, that includes removal of sin, there's going to be adoption as sons, verse 5. This is all soteriology. This is what it means to be saved. And so, that doctrine of salvation has to have a foundation to lay on in regards to theology proper.

Does your God have an eternal decree? Does your God have perfect knowledge of future events? If God can predestine certain people, then you need to realize each one of us is the result of literally millions of quote-unquote free will creaturely choices that came before us.

All of our ancestors might have made decisions, all of our ancestors may have done things that would have changed who we are. So, you can't just simply say, God predestines such and such a person to do such and such a thing at such and such a time, but then say, but everything else beforehand was just a free-for-all.

It was just all, you know, God let everybody do whatever anybody wanted to do. No, if he's going to bring you into existence, then everything that came before you has to be ordered just as much as your existence is.

And so, if you're going to say, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, there is a huge theology behind that. It's Paul's theology, it's Romans 8 and 9 theology, it's Ephesians 1 theology, it's Isaiah theology, it's John theology, it's Reformed theology, it's God's decree theology, it's what, unfortunately, Nick detests, but he doesn't seem to realize that if he's going to say, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, and you're going to say the us is specific people.

Okay, you're going to say it's not the elect, it's nobody today, it's just the apostles. You haven't gotten anywhere. You still have to have the same Reformed theology behind all that. You can't escape it.

So, and then, that we would be holy and blameless before him. He provides that which is necessary to accomplish that. So, before the foundation of the world, before time, in Christ, so the role of Christ, his incarnation, his sacrificial death, the result of that sacrificial death, that's all certain.

That requires a decree. That requires the meticulous sovereignty that brings about the existence of certain individuals at certain times. You can't escape it. So, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him, and so everything that is necessary to make us holy and blameless is a part of that decree that results in this choice before the foundation of the world.

And simply saying, but it's just for the disciples, just for the apostles, doesn't change anything. It's still the fact that the only way to be holy and blameless before him is made by God, unless you're going to say they are holy and blameless in a special way that we are not.

And I don't see how you could avoid ending up with a bit of a two-level salvation system here. Because if the apostles needed God's eternal choice to make them holy and blameless, we don't? I don't know.

In love, he predestined us to adoption as sons. Oops. I didn't keep the Greek scrolling. Forgive me. He predestined us. I'm sorry, I've got to read it the way that Nick says to. By predestining the apostles to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he graciously bestowed on the apostles in the beloved one.

Okay? So, the apostles are chosen. The apostles in love are predestined unto sonship. Now, have you noticed one thing that's totally missing here? None of this is specifically and only about the apostles.

There's nothing here about apostleship. There's nothing that is defining apostles over against anyone else. And in fact, the reality is, if you just step back and go, Paul, is there anything you describe here about adoption as sons, receiving inheritance, forgiveness of sins?

Is there anything here that is not the common experience of all who are in Christ Jesus? The answer is nope. Nope, there's not. So, what is gained here? Absolutely, positively, nothing. Because the predestination is to adoption as sons.

So, you have people who from time immemorial were predestined to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ to himself. That's what he's affirming. Now, he's just simply saying it's a small group. And evidently, other people can be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ, but evidently, is that by their own free will?

The apostles couldn't do that, but we can. So, there's two different groups that are adopted. Those that were eternally predestined, and those that were not predestined. Did the apostles need this because they were particularly stiff-necked or something like that?

Or is this just a special blessing that no one else has? And so, they're the super Christians. They're better Christians than anyone else will ever be. And they're just going to be closer to the throne of God or whatever because they were eternally predestined to adoption while the rest of us weren't.

This is according to the good pleasure of his will. The praise of the glory of his grace. And the vast majority of Christians down through the ages have recognized that all of our salvation is to the praise of the glory of his grace.

But this has to be limited to just the apostles. We can't have that anymore because this is just about the apostles. Which he graciously bestowed on the apostles in the Beloved. So, the apostles are in Christ seemingly in a way that the rest of us are not.

Even though the results are the same. There's no distinction being made. In him, we have redemption through his blood. So, the apostles have redemption in Christ through his blood. Now, that's a true statement.

But has anyone ever dreamed that what's actually being said here is in him, the apostles have redemption through his blood? In a way, you don't? Because they were chosen to receive this but you weren't chosen to receive this?

Again, redemption through his blood is how the church is formed. And the point of Ephesians, by the way, in Orthodox interpretation, one of the primary elements of focus in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians is the doing away of the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile.

And so, the unity of the body of Christ is emphasized and the foundation really is here in Ephesians 1 that anyone who has redemption through his blood, forgives our sins, has been chosen from eternity past and that destroys all the self-made, man-made distinctions that we might try to introduce into the body of Christ.

You can't have... One of the clearest dangers that the apostle was very, very concerned about was a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church. That's self-evident in Romans. It's here as well.

And so, the destruction of that dividing wall is yet to be mentioned in Ephesians but the grounding is found in that all of us, stepping aside from this forced interpretation, in Christ, we, all believers, have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of his grace.

And so, we all stand on the same ground, Jew and Gentile. We all have the same imputed righteousness. We were all dead in our transgressions and sins but God made us alive together with him in Christ Jesus.

That's the experience of everybody. Not just the apostles, but everybody. But that also then means that since adoption and all these things are the common reality of all believers, then it was all of us were predestined.

And that predestination shows itself in time as God calls his people unto himself. So, in Christ... So, these are all in Christ and as soon as you try to then introduce distinctions as to how people are in Christ, you're going directly against the apostle.

Because that was, again, his whole point. He fought against the divisions that people are trying to introduce by pointing to the fact that we all stand on the exact same level ground. Jew or Gentile, that's what the beginning of Romans is all about.

Ephesians is just wrapping it up faster and putting it back in eternity. Paul does that in Romans 8 and 9. But we all stand on level ground. Our equality before God is due to the fact that we had nothing to do.

It was not something we contributed. We are totally the recipients of grace since this was given to us long before we took our first breath even though God knew exactly what we were going to be like. And again, there's a theology behind that that non-reformed people just don't want to even accept or even consider.

But it's there. So, he has forgiven our transgressions and the level of that forgiveness, katata, plutas, tes, karatas, autu, the standard of that forgiveness is according to the riches of his grace. Can never be exhausted.

That's how perfect forgiveness is. Which he caused to abound to us. To us, the apostles? Well, that's what we've been told. Which he caused to abound to the apostles in all wisdom and insight. And this is exactly where he goes.

Because he says, making known to the apostles the mystery of his will. Well, there you go. He made known to the apostles. And didn't he do that? And he did. But of course he's done that to every single believer because to believe in Christ is to have at least some knowledge of what the will of God is and where that leads.

I need to make sure that we... I'm seeing everything... I'm not seeing anything coming from... Okay. Um... Ha ha ha. Uh... If I... I do have a second monitor I can set up when I have the time to do it.

But when you're only at a place for one night, you don't necessarily want to put... I did, by the way, I should mention, I do have the other camera up tonight. So maybe once I get off of this thingy here, I'll use it again.

All right, back to the text. Sorry. Um... He did make known to the apostles the mystery of his will. But he makes known to all of us the mystery of his will. According to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him for an administration of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth, in him.

There are many believers who will read that text and don't have any idea what it's talking about. And maybe he would say, See, but all the apostles did. Okay, even though... Even Peter says there are things in some of Paul's letters that are difficult to understand.

The reality is, 1, 10, and 11 is an overarching statement of the theology of reformed Christianity. This is sovereign decree. This is an actively sovereign God. He sums up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on the earth, in him, an administration of the fullness of the times.

The times are under his hand. They're under his control. He is administering them. He's summing all things up in Christ, things in heaven and things on the earth, in him. We also have been made an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Now, if you translate it that way, we also have been made an inheritance. Or we have obtained an inheritance. Oops, I'm sorry. Again, it's hard to see that stuff up there. It's right here in front of me, so it's easier for me to look down here.

I apologize for that. But in whom also we have, and the LSB says, been made an inheritance. If it's made an inheritance, what does that remind you of? Maybe the promise of the father, the son, ask and I'll make the nations your inheritance.

If it's obtained an inheritance, then that would take us down to verse 14. Because inheritance is used down here in verse 14, as well as in verse 11. So how exactly are they related together? According to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Even if you say, well, this is just the apostles. You still have in these verses, starting at the end of 9 through 11, the entire reformed theology of God. He is the one working all things according to the counsel of his will.

And the only way that he can predestine even a small number of people, instead of a big number of people, instead of as many as the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky, even if you want to limit to a small number of people and not gain anything by so doing, but even if you want to do that, it doesn't change anything.

Because the theology that has to exist to bring them into existence and to make certain they take their roles and they do the things they are to do in this decree of the one, the purpose of the one who works all things according to the counsel of his will, he's still sovereign over all this stuff.

And so if you're going to say, yeah, but everybody else it's their free will or something like that, you're not accomplishing anything. You still have the decree as the necessary element of bringing all this about.

But in him, we also have made an inheritance. We have obtained an inheritance. We know that this inheritance language is common throughout Paul's letters in reference to what believers receive in the fullness of their salvation and the presence of the Holy Spirit and their participation in the body of Christ.

So he works things, all things according to the counsel of his will. And then here's his key to the end that we, the apostles who first have hope in Christ to be the praise of his glory in him, you also see there it is.

There for him is the smoking gun. We, the apostles believe first and you then afterwards, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, having also believed you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit promise who has given a pledge of our inheritance under the redemption of God's own possession of the praise of his glory.

Now let's leave aside the fact that clearly you look at verse 14 and that harkens back to what's before that. But this is now about the Ephesians and it's God's own possession, the praise of his glory, that praise of glory came earlier.

It's not like there's this clean break. It actually is a unified text. Let's leave all that aside because it obviously shows that Nick's position isn't being drawn from scripture. But for a moment, let the strongest part of the argument.

So the idea is, we who first have hoped in Christ. So this is supposed to be, the idea is, well, you can draw a chronological line. And since the Ephesians are way down in like Acts chapter 18, well, actually think about that.

There were already believers there in some sense. The people of John the Baptist. But the point is, there was at least one apostle that comes later. And so that has to be sort of a special case. And I'm not going to really even waste my time on that.

There is a really more natural way of looking at this. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people miss this because we do tend to, I don't know, we put ourselves into the same timeline as the apostles.

Here's how I understand it. To the end that we who have first hoped in Christ, that is this first generation of Christians. The apostles, the Ephesians, this is still the very first generation of believers.

The apostles are still alive. This is the apostolic age. So we are the first who have hoped in Christ. And what is that then communicating? We're not going to be the last. We are this foundation. We are the beginning.

There's going to be a discussion of foundation, apostles, and prophets later in Ephesians. But we are at the start. And God isn't done yet. And you want the example of that? In Him you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.