The Torah Club study this week sent me to the book of Ephesians.
Years ago I took a class on the book of Ephesians at Regent College. Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, is a graduate theological school. Regent had a policy of allowing students to earn a graduate level degree without having an undergraduate degree if the student is over 35 years old and able to keep a grade level of 3.0, a B average, or above.
The class was held in a lecture hall that seated about 200 people. It was part of a pastor’s conference so most of the seats were taken by pastors.
The first day of that class the professor expounded on the opening of the book. After his lecture, the professor asked if there were any questions. No hands were raised.
I raised mine to ask him if he could explain more about the trinity. He gave some answer I do not remember because of what happened next. He asked if there were any more questions. Still no hands went up. I raised mine. He acknowledge me.
I asked, “Could you explain more about what you said about predestination our being the chosen before the foundation of the world?”
The professor lowered his gaze, stared at me and said, “No, Madame. I will not.”
Then in a several minute tirade he scolded me for asking such a question. At the end of the tirade he said, “and I suggest, Madame, if you have a problem with that, that you just be glad that he chose you!”
The professor turned his face away from me. I was stunned, shaken, and embarrassed. Staggering I said, “I am thankful. I just wish He would chose my husband, too.”
The professor spun his head back to me thundered, “Then I suggest that 1 Peter Chapter 3 will have something to say to you about that!”*
Class closed. The professor walked out.
The pastor who was seated next to me said something to me about the understanding the trinity. I understood that the pastor was trying to comfort me after what had just happened. Another pastor who was seated in front of me, turned around and told me about a book that might help me understand the difference between five point Calvinism and Arminianism.
I was a 47 year old fisherman’s wife with no education beyond high school. I knew nothing about Calvinism or Arminianism. I was naïve, but loved the Lord and his word. After I stumbled away from the lecture hall, another student, a woman I did not know, put her arms around me and said, “Don’t mind [the professor] He does not expect questions.”
Later I tried to make an appointment with the professor. He had an appointment calendar on his office door where a student could schedule a meeting with him. I scheduled one. The day of the appointment I waited in the atrium until the appointed time. Five minutes before the appointed time the professor walked past me, out of the building, with someone else.
*BTW he could not have thrown a sharper spear at my heart. 1 Peter, Chapter 3 “In the same way wives be submissive to your own husbands. . .” and forward were the verses that sustained me in the 20 previous years of my life, since I had become a follower of Jesus.
Now, today I am led back to that first chapter of Ephesians.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:3-14
As I read it. I was again troubled by the verses that say we were chosen before the foundation of the world. Since I have been learning with FFOZ, I have learned unequivocally that the Jews are the chosen, not the Gentiles. The Jews were selected and sealed by HaShem. Their salvation is secure in the future. Gentiles are different. We have to make the choice to take the gift of being grafted in. So how do I explain these verses about being chosen before the foundation of the world.
I turned to Daniel Lancaster’s book on Ephesians.
See D. Lancaster The Holy Epistles to the Ephesians, pages 45-46.
“After the salutation, Paul opens the epistle with a blessing formulated according to the traditional liturgical pattern for a berachah: Blessed be God who has done such and such. In this case, God is titled the “God and Father of our Master Yeshua the Messiah.” Of all God’s many titles, this one is the most precious to us as disciples of Yeshua. Ordinarily, a berachah refers to God as “King of the Universe,” which is a universal truth that applies to everyone and everything; it expresses everyone’s relationship to God. However, Paul chooses a much more personal title, which applies only to our Master Yeshua and to those of us who are privileged to know God through our relationship with him. He is not just the creator of heaven and earth and the King of the universe; he is the God and Father of our Master Yeshua.
However, as the epistle continues, it now becomes critically important to pay attention to the pronouns. Paul says that God has “blessed us in Messiah with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places” and that “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”
Who is “us”?
Most readers assume that the first-person common plural forms here refer to all Christians as if Paul is speaking generally about what God has done for every disciple of Yeshua. However, it becomes evident just a few verses later that he is differentiating himself and those included with him in this designation from the Ephesian disciples, who he refers to in the second-person pronoun as “you.” That begins in 1:13 when he says, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth… believed in him.”
So it is evident that Paul is distinguishing between two different groups: those to whom he refers as “we” and those to whom he refers as “you.” This distinction is critically important to understanding the entire epistle to the Ephesians and, for that matter, all the writings of Paul. The distinction Paul is making is between Jewish disciples and Gentile disciples. Paul speaks of the Jewish disciples, including the apostolic community, the apostles, and all the Jewish believers in Yeshua, as “we.” He speaks to the Gentile disciples as “you.””
As Daniel said, pay close attention to the pronouns. Paul is making the distinction between “me” and “you”, “us” and “you” plural. “We” are the Jews. “You are the Gentiles”.
This is what that professor missed.