Chosen Before the Stars

The letter to Galatia about the Spirit's fruit was years old now, and Paul had a chain on his wrist. He was in a rented house in Rome, waiting for the emperor to hear his case, with a soldier at the other end of the chain. (Whatever Paul said, the soldier heard. He heard a great deal about Jesus.)

Paul's thoughts went across the sea to Ephesus. He had lived there almost three years. He remembered people carrying their magic scrolls into the street and burning them, a pile worth fifty thousand silver coins. He remembered the day the whole city crammed into the theater and shouted, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" for two hours. (Two hours. Their throats must have been scratchy for a week.)

Most of the believers in Ephesus had grown up bowing to Artemis. Now they belonged to the God of Israel, and Paul wanted them to know how long God had wanted them. So he wrote to them, beginning with praise.

"Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!" Paul wrote. "In Christ he has blessed us with every blessing heaven has."

In Paul's language, everything from here to the end of this blessing is one sentence, about two hundred words long. Paul was too happy to stop for breath.

"He chose us in Christ before he made the world, to be holy and without fault in his sight."

Before the first star was lit, before there was a sea or a single morning, God had already decided who would be his.

"In love he planned ahead of time to adopt us as his own children through Jesus Christ. He wanted to, and it pleased him."

(In Rome an adopted son got the family name and a share of everything the father owned, the same as a son by birth.)

"In Christ we are redeemed by his blood, and our sins are forgiven. God poured out his kindness on us."

Redeemed means bought back. Jesus had died on a cross, and that was the price.

"God has shown us his hidden purpose," Paul went on. "When the time is right, he will bring everything in heaven and on earth together under one head, Christ. And you heard the true message and believed, and God marked you with a seal: the Holy Spirit he promised. The Spirit is the first payment of all that is coming to us, until the day God's people are fully his."

Paul's friend Tychicus carried the letter across the sea. In Ephesus someone read it aloud, and at the part about the seal, heads nodded. Ephesus was a harbor city full of merchants. A buyer pressed his own ring into wax on the goods he bought, which meant "Mine." Then he paid part of the price at once, a promise that the rest was coming.

Wax can crack in the sun, though, and a buyer can sail away and never come back. The friends in Ephesus would wait a long time for the rest of what God had promised. Some would grow old and die still waiting.

Their waiting was safe, because God himself had pressed that seal. Before the stars, God had already picked the one who would hold his children: his own Son, the Beloved. He let soldiers tie his hands, and he paid the full price with his own blood. Then God raised him from the dead and seated him above every power there is.

Jesus never loses anyone he has bought, and he is coming back for them. The ones who died waiting will rise, and every one God chose before the stars carries his mark.