“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Ephesians 1.3-4).
Lately I have been reading Ephesians chapter one over and over and I just cannot shake the wonder that comes over me every time I read verse 4 in particular, that God chose to save us, to make us blameless in Him before the foundation of the world. I think it hits especially hard because I can actually go and read about the foundation of the world. Just turn to Genesis 1 and you get the account of God laying out the earth’s foundations. He speaks everything into existence. He creates night and day. He separates the water from the heavens. He makes the mountains rise up out of the sea. He shapes the first man and woman out of the dust. He creates the entire universe and before all of that takes place Paul is telling me that God was thinking about me and my salvation. Before all of that happened, however many thousands of years ago, He knew me and knew that I would one day be found in Him.
What an insane concept, that God’s knowledge of us, His love for us and His concern for us began before the world began! If we ever think that God doesn’t care about us, Ephesians 1.4 should blow those thoughts out of the water. We have been on his mind since before there was an earth to stand on. And if we ever think that we are not worthy of His love or that somehow we need to earn His love, again this verse should lay those thoughts in their grave. He foreknew our redemption before we took our first breath, which means His love could not have been based on anything we did or didn’t do, but solely based upon His sovereign and ageless love.
Before the foundations of the world. Think about that.