Predestination | Calvinists Got Really Wrong
In Scripture, we come across several words that have sparked a great deal of debate within the Christian world.
One of those words is “predestination.” At other times, we see words such as “elect” and “chosen.” Calvinists argue that these passages teach that we do not ultimately make the decision to come to Christ; rather, God chooses beforehand who will be saved. In their view, God determines who will enter His kingdom and who will not.
Put very simply, the Calvinist position can sound something like this: God is walking down the street saying, “I choose you, I choose you, but not you. I choose you, but not you.” Some people are God’s elect, while everyone else has no possibility of being saved because they were never chosen.
The problem, in my view, is that Calvinists have focused heavily on a relatively small group of Scriptures and used them to reach the conclusion that God individually chooses who will be saved, with the individual having no real say in the matter.
To be fair, however, if you take some of these passages completely by themselves, I can understand how someone could come to that conclusion. In fact, when read in isolation, they can appear to say exactly that.
Here are a few examples:
Ephesians 1:4–5: God 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 and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself
Ephesians 1:11: In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will
Romans 8:29–30: For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters; **30 **and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called
2 Thessalonians 2:13: But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.
Now imagine you are sitting in your local church and someone reads one of these verses to you. Then they proceed to tell you that you are either “predestined” for heaven or you are not. Meaning, they are saying that salvation is about individual selection. Not a personal decision to put your faith in Jesus. You’re either in the group or you’re out.
Immediately, you might begin asking yourself: Am I chosen? Am I not chosen? How would I even know?
Instead of giving believers confidence in their faith, this kind of teaching can create uncertainty and doubt. So today, we’re going to look closely at Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and challenge this Calvinist interpretation. My goal is to show you why you never need to doubt whether your faith was a genuine choice you made—and why Scripture repeatedly connects salvation with believing in Jesus Christ.
But before we get into Ephesians, I want to point out a few very straightforward Bible verses that seem extremely difficult to reconcile with the Calvinist idea that God has predetermined certain individuals for salvation while leaving everyone else without any possibility of being saved.
John 3: 16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life
So, who does God love?
Does He love these three people, but not those two? No. The verse says He loves the world. All of us. And then notice the next word: “whosoever.” Whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. That invitation is not presented as being limited to a secret group of predetermined individuals.
Now look at this:
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Again, notice the language. God does not want anyone to perish. He wants everyone to come to repentance.
That creates a major problem for the idea that God intentionally decided beforehand that certain people could never be saved. If God does not want anyone to perish and desires everyone to come to repentance, where do we get the idea that He has deliberately excluded certain people from having that opportunity? Yet the Calvinist are still out there making the argument that salvation is about individual selection, and you don’t have a say in the matter.
Then Jesus says this:
John 12:32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself
Jesus is speaking about being lifted up on the cross. Yes, He is the one doing the drawing—but notice who He says He will draw.
He does not say, “I will draw these three people over here, but not those two over there.”
He says He will draw all people to Himself.
The Calvinist, however, will still point to other passages containing words such as elect, predestined, and chosen and argue that those verses teach otherwise. But I believe that once we examine those passages in their proper context, we will see that they are talking about something very different.
And there is an important piece of context that often gets overlooked.
You do not see lengthy discussions about words such as predestined scattered evenly throughout the entire Bible. Much of the discussion that Calvinists rely upon comes primarily from books such as Romans and Ephesians.
That matters.
Why?
Because Romans and Ephesians were written to audiences that pretty much entirely included Gentiles. And for anyone unfamiliar with the term, a Gentile is simply someone who is not Jewish.
The Apostle Paul was a Jewish man who was specifically commissioned to take the gospel to the Gentiles. That background becomes incredibly important when we encounter statements such as “we were chosen” and “you too.”
I believe this is where much of the misunderstanding begins.
When Paul speaks about people being “chosen,” he is not describing God walking through humanity individually saying, “You are going to heaven, you are not; you are going to heaven, you are not.”
Instead, Paul is explaining something much bigger about Jews and Gentiles and God’s plan of salvation.
To understand that, remember what we see throughout the Old Testament. Who were God’s chosen people?
The Jewish people.
Israel had been given the covenants, the promises, the law, and a unique relationship with God. Gentiles were outside of that covenant relationship.
Paul actually reminds the Ephesians of exactly that:
Ephesians 2:12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise
Put plainly, the Gentiles were outsiders. The covenant relationship belonged to Israel. Gentiles were “separated from Christ,” “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” and “strangers to the covenants of promise.”
That historical reality is absolutely critical when reading Paul’s letters.
So when Paul uses language such as “we were chosen,” I believe we need to ask a very important question before automatically assuming he means, “We are the individual people God predetermined to send to heaven.”
Who is the “we”?
Paul is Jewish.
And throughout these discussions, I believe we will see Paul repeatedly contrasting “we”—the Jewish people—with “you”—the Gentiles to whom he is writing.
Likewise, when Paul tells the Gentiles that “you too” have been included, he is not revealing that another randomly selected handful of individuals has suddenly been added to God’s secret list of people predestined for heaven.
He is announcing something extraordinary:
The Gentiles have now been invited into the family of God.
The people who had once been strangers to the covenants of promise were now being told that salvation through Jesus Christ was available to them as well.
Put very simply, Paul is speaking to non-Jewish believers and essentially telling them:
We Jewish people were the people originally chosen by God and given His covenant promises. But through Jesus Christ, you Gentiles have now been brought near as well. You too have been invited into the family.
Once you understand that foundational distinction between Jew and Gentile, many of these passages involving words such as chosen, elect, and predestined begin to look very different.
And as we walk through Ephesians, I believe we are going to see that Paul’s message is not that God arbitrarily picked certain individuals for heaven and condemned everyone else without a choice.
His message is about something far greater: God expanding His promise of salvation beyond Israel and opening the door through Jesus Christ to the Gentiles as well. Of course, this was always God’s plan. And this is the order in which he chose to reveal it.
With that explanation, let’s move into Ephesians 1 and see if we can agree that the Calvinist got this predestination thing wrong.
Ephesians 1:3 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
Now, if we stopped right there, it would still be difficult to know exactly who Paul means by “us.” So rather than forcing a meaning onto the passage, let’s simply keep reading until Paul himself makes it clear.
Ephesians 1:4 just as He chose “us” in Him before the foundation of the world, that “we” would be holy and blameless before Him.
At this point, I can understand why someone might still be confused. The Calvinist would say, “There it is. The ‘us’ and ‘we’ are individual Christians whom God personally selected for salvation before the foundation of the world.”
But we shouldn’t stop there. We need to keep reading Paul’s entire thought. And when you do, I believe the context becomes so clear that it is extremely difficult to maintain that interpretation.
Paul continues:
Ephesians 1:5 In love He predestined “us” to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will
Clearly, someone has been predestined. The question is not whether predestination exists. The question is: Who is the “us,” and what exactly were they predestined for?
That distinction is crucial.
Remember, God later reveals what Paul repeatedly calls a mystery—something that had not previously been fully understood. And that mystery involved the Gentiles being brought into God’s family alongside the Jewish people. We begin seeing that unfold in verses 9 and 10:
Ephesians 1:9-10 He made known to “us” the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.
Scripture tells us that in Christ there is no longer a distinction between Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free when it comes to our standing before God. Through Christ, believers are being brought together as one.
That was the mystery the Jewish people did not fully understand in the Old Testament: God’s plan was ultimately to unite Jews and Gentiles together through faith in Christ.
Now watch what Paul says next, because this is where the identity of “we” begins to become much clearer:
Ephesians 1:9-12 In Him “we” also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will, to the end that “we” who were the first to hope in the Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
Verse 12 is incredibly important because Paul is beginning to define exactly who this “we” is.
Pause for a moment and ask a very simple question:
Who were the first people given the opportunity to hope in Christ—the Jewish people or the Gentiles?
The Jewish people.
Jesus came first to Israel. The apostles were Jewish. The earliest believers were Jewish. The gospel was first proclaimed among the Jewish people before being carried out to the Gentile world.
So when Paul says, “we who were the first to hope in the Christ,” he is identifying the group he has been talking about.
The “we” is Paul and his fellow Jewish believers.
This is not Paul saying, “We are the individual human beings God secretly selected for heaven while everyone else was passed over.”
He is saying, in effect, “We Jewish believers were the first to place our hope in Christ.”
And then verse 13 makes the contrast even clearer.
Remember what Paul just said: “we who were the first to hope in the Christ.”
Now watch how he immediately turns to the Ephesian Gentiles and changes the pronoun from “we” to “you.”
Ephesians 1:13 In Him, “you” also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, “you” were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise,
Do you see the contrast?
“We” Jews were the first to hope in Christ.
And now “you also” have been included.
Paul is contrasting Jewish believers with Gentile believers.
And there is another enormously important detail in this verse that should not be overlooked: Paul actually tells us how these Gentiles came into this relationship with Christ.
He does not say that they discovered they had secretly been selected for salvation before they were born.
Look carefully at the sequence Paul gives:
They listened to the message of truth—the gospel of their salvation.
Then they believed.
And after believing, they were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise.
That sequence matters tremendously.
They heard the gospel.
They believed the gospel.
And they were sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Yet Calvinism would have you wondering whether your faith was really a decision you made at all—or whether you happened to be one of the individuals God selected beforehand. And that can leave a believer asking, How do I know I was actually chosen?
But Paul isn’t leaving these Gentiles guessing. He tells them exactly what happened: they heard the gospel and believed.
And the distinction between “we” and “you” does not disappear when we move into the next chapter. In fact, Paul continues using the same language.
Now let’s move into Ephesians 2:
Ephesians 2:1 And “you” were dead in your offenses and sins
Again, notice the pronoun: “you.”
A Calvinist might simply read “you” as referring generically to Christians. But we need to remember the context Paul has already established.
He has been speaking about two groups.
First, “we”—Paul and the Jewish believers who were the first to hope in Christ.
Then, “you also”—the Gentile believers who heard the gospel, believed it, and were brought into the same promise.
So when Paul continues speaking to “you”, he is continuing his address to these Gentile believers.
They—the Gentiles—had been dead in their sins and outside the covenant promises of Israel. But through Christ, something extraordinary had happened: the people who had once been outsiders were now being brought into the family of God.
And as we keep reading Ephesians 2, Paul is going to make that Jew-and-Gentile distinction even more explicit.
Ephesians 2:2 in which “you” previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Once again, someone could argue that the word “you” is referring to some specially chosen group—the elect—or perhaps simply to Christians in general. But Paul doesn’t leave us guessing. The very next verse begins to clarify exactly who he is talking about.
Ephesians 2:3 Among them “we” too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest.
Notice the change in pronouns.
In verse 2, Paul says “you” previously walked according to the course of this world. Then, in verse 3, he switches to “we” and says that “we too” lived the same way.
In other words, Paul is saying: You Gentiles lived in sin, and we Jewish people did too.
That is an incredibly important point. Paul is not separating humanity into one group that God chose for salvation and another group that He rejected. He is showing that Jews and Gentiles were in exactly the same condition. All of us were guilty of sin. All of us needed to be rescued.
And thanks be to God, He provided a rescue plan for both Jews and Gentiles.
Ephesians 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when “we” were dead in our wrongdoings, made “us” alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
Notice that Paul now speaks of “us” being made alive “together” with Christ.
That word together matters.
God is bringing Jews and Gentiles together in Christ. The “us” is not some mysterious collection of individuals whom God secretly selected while passing over everyone else. Paul has been talking about two groups—Jews and Gentiles—and explaining how both groups were dead in sin and how both are now being brought together through Christ.
But if anyone still thinks that interpretation is unclear, we don’t have to speculate. We can simply keep reading. By the time we reach verse 11, Paul tells us exactly who the “you” is.
Ephesians 2:11 Therefore remember that previously “you”, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision” which is performed in the flesh by human hands
There it is.
This is not my opinion. This is the Apostle Paul himself identifying the group he has been addressing: “you, the Gentiles.”
So now there should be no question about it. When Paul has been saying “you,” he is literally speaking to a group of non-Jewish people—the Gentiles.
He then contrasts them with those called the “Circumcision,” referring to the Jewish people. Circumcision had long been one of the identifying signs of Israel and the covenant God had made with them.
And notice Paul’s wording: “the so-called ‘Circumcision.’” There is almost a touch of sarcasm in the way he says it. Some Jewish people viewed their physical circumcision as evidence that they were spiritually superior—that they were the special ones, the chosen ones, the people who belonged to God.
But Paul immediately reminds them that this circumcision was “performed in the flesh by human hands.”
Physical circumcision was never what ultimately made someone right with God. The far more important issue is what God does inwardly. God circumcises the heart.
And Paul is steadily building toward his larger point: the Jews cannot boast because they were the original covenant people, and the Gentiles no longer need to see themselves as outsiders.
Both groups needed Christ, and through Christ, God was bringing both groups together as one.
Ephesians 2:12 ** **remember that “you” were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the people of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Do you see it?
God’s calling is not some Calvinist message about individually selecting certain people for salvation while passing over everyone else. Throughout the Old Testament, the Gentiles were completely outside the covenant relationship God had established with Israel. They were separate from Christ. They had no covenant, no promise, no law, no hope, and were without God in the world.
That is exactly why Paul says “you” were excluded from the people of Israel.
And who are the people of Israel?
The Jewish people.
So once again, Paul’s contrast is not between individuals who were elected for heaven and individuals who were rejected. The contrast is between Jews and Gentiles.
Ephesians 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus “you” who previously were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Again, when you read through the Old Testament, who were the people who were “far away” from the covenant promises of God?
The Gentiles—anyone who was not part of Israel.
In fact, look at what the Apostle Paul writes to the Romans:
Romans 2:14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law instinctively perform the requirements of the Law, these, though not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
We have Christians arguing all day long about how believers today must try to keep the Mosaic Law. But Paul plainly tells us that the Gentiles did not have the Law.
The Mosaic Law was part of the covenant God made with the Jewish people. Gentiles were never under that covenant.
Now, that certainly does not mean Paul is saying that because Gentiles were never under the Mosaic Law, we should go out and lie, cheat, steal, or live however we please. That completely misses the point.
The point is that keeping the Mosaic Law was never going to make a Gentile right with God. In fact, our hope was never found in the Law at all.
Our only hope is Jesus Christ.
Now let’s keep reading.
Ephesians 2:14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall
So who are these “both groups”?
Is Paul talking about the elected people on one side and the people God decided not to save on the other?
No.
Group one is the Jewish people.
Group two is the Gentiles.
And through Jesus Christ, God has taken those two groups and made them one.
This is the point I believe gets completely missed in the Calvinist interpretation of these passages. When Paul talks about God choosing, predestining, and bringing people into His family, he is revealing something far bigger than God individually picking certain people for heaven.
The mystery was that the Gentiles were going to be included too.
God’s plan was not going to remain limited to Israel. Through Christ, salvation would be opened to the entire world.
So when I say that humanity has been “chosen” or “predestined,” I am not saying that every person automatically inherits the kingdom of God regardless of faith. I am saying that God predetermined His plan of salvation through Jesus Christ and opened that plan to everyone—Jew and Gentile alike.
Being invited does not mean you are forced to come.
God does not force anyone to believe. He does not force salvation upon us. He is not a puppet master controlling every individual response.
We still have a choice.
And that fits perfectly with everything else Scripture tells us: God desires that none should perish. He loved the world—not merely part of the world—and salvation is available to whoever believes in His Son.
The invitation has been extended to all. But each of us must still willingly respond to that invitation through faith in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 2:15 by abolishing in His flesh the hostility, which is the Law composed of commandments expressed in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two one new person, in this way establishing peace;
This is all of us in Christ being united as one in Christ. The Jews in the Gentiles are now one.
Author: Mike Cynar
Mike Cynar was raised in a church setting where he frequently noticed that many attendees would eventually drift away. The church labeled these individuals as ‘back sliders’ or ‘fake Christians’ just looking for ‘fire insurance’. However, Mike realized the issue was rarely with these individuals but instead with the church’s message itself. The teachings heavily emphasized behavior improvement and one’s flaws, with only a fleeting mention of one’s identity in Christ. It felt as though every sermon was tailored to the church of Corinth, who as we know or committing sins that even unbelievers don’t partake in. This trend was noticeable not just in one denomination, but across Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal, and many other churches. Upon understanding the true essence of the gospel – that our righteousness comes from Jesus’ actions, not our own – Mike was inspired to liberate believers from lifeless sermons and reconnect them with the genuine teachings of Jesus. He believes that one can nurture a vibrant and growing bond with Jesus, unhindered by rigid religious practices. And thus, “Jesus Without Religion” was born.
It turns out that it is grace that leads to repentance. And if our heart is to get others to walk in the Spirit and live a godly life, then the best approach is not a beat down sermon, but rather to remind other that it is only when we understand our true identity in Christ that we will live it out. Yes, it’s true, if you’re convinced that God thinks you’re a dirty sinner, you will ultimately continue a lifestyle that mirrors that view, but if you truly believe that even on your worst day, you are called holy, sanctified, justified, and will be presented blameless in the end, well, it turns out this is the secret to living out on the outside what has been worked in to the inside.
