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Examined Doctrine
PASSAGE · BSB

Ephesians 1

15 positions in the corpus lean on this chapter. Cited verses are marked.

1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:

2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.

4For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love

5He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will,

6to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the Beloved One.

7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace

8that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

9And He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ

10as a plan for the fullness of time, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ.

11In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will,

12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, would be for the praise of His glory.

13And in Him, having heard and believed the word of truth—the gospel of your salvation—you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,

14who is the pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession, to the praise of His glory.

15For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,

16I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,

17that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in your knowledge of Him.

18I ask that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints,

19and the surpassing greatness of His power to us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of His mighty strength,

20which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms,

21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

22And God put everything under His feet and made Him head over everything for the church,

23which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Who leans on it

Aquinas on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Predestination is real and rests on God's will, not foreseen merit — though set within a framework of secondary causes that leaves human agency genuinely operative.Voddie Baucham on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Unconditional election; Reformed Baptist.M. Heiser on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCELEANS°The Spirit indwells at the moment of belief, and that indwelling is identical with the baptism of the Spirit that places a person into the body of Christ. Sealing means marking and sanctifying, not conferring an irrevers…Josh Howerton on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Predestination is taught in Scripture; divine sovereignty and human responsibility are 'not enemies,' and a right grasp of it should strengthen rather than undermine evangelism. Compatibilism affirmed, open theism reject…Tim Keller on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Unconditional election, within PCA confessional bounds.Second London Baptist Confession on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 3.5 grounds election in God's eternal purpose and the good pleasure of his will, with nothing in the creature moving him to it. Paragraph 3.2 rules out the alternative explicitly: God has not decreed anything bec…Second London Baptist Confession on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 10 makes the Spirit's work the cause of the sinner's willing rather than its consequence. The creature is wholly passive until quickened and renewed by the Spirit, and only then is enabled to answer the call; eff…John MacArthur on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Unconditional, grounded solely in God's sovereign will — explicitly not in foreseen faith or anticipated human response. Paired directly with an affirmation that election doesn't remove human responsibility to repent and…John MacArthur on indwelling of the holy spiritSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Indwelling is ordinary, permanent, and true of every believer at all times — stated directly in the doctrinal statement and used there to explain the sense in which the Lord's Supper is 'an actual communion with the rise…Gavin Ortlund on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Unconditional election; Reformed Baptist.John Owen on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The Spirit's saving work begins at regeneration and regeneration precedes faith. Owen argues from Ephesians 1 that the power at work in the believer is of the same kind as the power that raised Christ — "a real physical …John Owen on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Unconditional, and stated in the negative as well as the positive: God chooses whom he pleases out of the whole of mankind, and nothing in the chosen moves him to it. Owen's catechism puts the elect and the reprobate in …Justin Peters on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°God chooses to redeem some of mankind for Himself and as a gift to the Son, and that sovereign choice does not cancel human accountability. He argues the doctrine is commonly misread as God keeping people out of heaven, …John Piper on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Unconditional election; five-point Reformed soteriology.Westminster Confession on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 3.5 rules out foreseen faith by name, and then rules out every substitute for it - foreseen works, foreseen perseverance, 'or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto.' WCF 3.2 h…