The Divine election of men in Christ is further defined in the words of verse 5: "Having in love predestined us," and "according to the good pleasure of His will." _Election_ is selection; it is the antecedent in the mind of God in Christ of the preference which Christ showed when He said to His disciples, "I have chosen you out of the world." It is, moreover, a _fore-ordination in love_: an expression which indicates on the one hand the disposition in God that prompted and sustains His choice, and on the other the determination of the almighty Will whereby the all-wise Choice is put into operation and takes effect. In this pre-ordaining control of human history God "determined the fore-appointed seasons and the bounds of human habitation" (Acts xvii. 26). The Divine prescience--that "depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God"--as well as His absolute righteousness, forbids the treasonable thought of anything arbitrary or unfair cleaving to this pre-determination--anything that should override our free-will and make our responsibility an illusion. "Whom He did _foreknow_, He also did predestinate" (Rom. viii. 29). He foresees everything, and allows for everything.
The consistence of foreknowledge with free-will is an enigma which the apostle did not attempt to solve. His reply to all questions touching the justice of God's administration in the elections of grace--questions painfully felt and keenly agitated then as they are now, and that pressed upon himself in the case of his Jewish kindred with a cruel force (Rom. ix. 3)--his answer to his own heart, and to us, lies in the last words of verse 5: "according to the good pleasure of His will." It is what Jesus said concerning the strange preferences of Divine grace: "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." What pleases Him can only be wise and right. What pleases Him, must content us. Impatience is unbelief. Let us wait to see the end of the Lord. In numberless instances--such as that of the choice between Jacob and Esau, and that of Paul and the believing remnant of Israel as against their nation--God's ways have justified themselves to after times; so they will universally. Our little spark of intelligence glances upon one spot in a boundless ocean, on the surface of immeasurable depths.
The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing men in Christ is twofold; it concerns at once their _character_ and their _state_: "He chose us out--that we should be holy and without blemish in His sight," and "unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself." These two purposes are one. God's sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons. For this end "we" were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to provide God with such sons[28] and that Christ might be "the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 28-30).
"That we should be holy"--should be _saints_. This the readers are already: "To the saints" the apostle writes (ver. 1). They are men devoted to God by their own choice and will, meeting God's choice and will for them. Imperfect saints they may be, by no means as yet "without blemish"; but they are already, and abidingly, "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. i. 2) and "sealed" for God's possession "by the Holy Spirit" (vv. 13, 14). In this fact lies their hope of moral perfection and the impulse and power to attain it. Their task is to "perfect" their existing "holiness" (2 Cor. vii. 1), "cleansing themselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit." Let no Christian say, "I do not pretend to be a saint." This is to renounce your calling. You _are_ a saint if you are a true believer in Christ; and you are to be an unblemished saint.
Thus the Church is at last to be presented, and every man in his own order, "faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy."[29] God could not invite us in His grace to anything inferior. A blemished saint--a smeared picture, a flawed marble--this is not like His work; it is not like Himself. Such saintship cannot approve itself "before Him." He must carry out His ideal, must fashion the new man as he was created in Christ after His own faultless image, and make human holiness a transcript of the Divine (1 Peter i. 16).