"Eternal life" is a free gift:
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Ro.6:23).
Only those who "believe" receive this free gift:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (Jn.5:24).
"That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (Jn.3:15-16).
Now I will ask you again:
"So are you saying that those who receive the free gift receive it without believing?"
There is eternal life by quickening which creates a new heart in the elect. It is with this new heart that man believeth "with the heart man beleiveth" (Rom. 10:10).
There is eternal life by justification which follows faith. Justification is the reversal of condemnation UNTO DEATH to justification UNTO LIFE.
Hence, SPIRITUAL quickening precedes faith but LEGAL justification of life follows faith. Both are eternal life. The former is eternal life by IMPARTATION whereas the latter is by IMPUTATION. The former has to do with your CONDITION whereas the latter has to do with your legal POSITION as declared by law. The former has to do with your own person as God's "child" whereas the latter has to do with your legal inheritance as God's "son." The former is SPIRITUAL life whereas the latter is LEGAL life but both are ETERNAL and both are LIFE!
John 5:24 contains both. The believing one has eternal life (judicial) because he has passed from death unto life (spiritual) at new birth.
John 3:16 has to do with judicial life in contrast to legal condemnation (Jn. 3:17-18).
I know you will not accept this, but you are asking how do I reconcile it. That is how!
Now let us look at the following passage again:
"But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thess.2:13).
To this you say:
One of the meanings of the Greek word translated "through" at 2 Thess.2:13 is "by" (Thayer's Greek English Lexicon).
There are two preopositional phrases in the verse:
"through sanctification of the Spirit..."
"[through] belief of the truth."
Both are adverbal and they serve to modify the verb "hath chosen."
From the beginning God chose some to be saved and the method he used to determine who He would chose was "belief of the truth" and "sanctification of the Spirit."
First, note how you REVERSE the order of "santification" and "belief" above! You must do this because you understand that sanctification of the Spirit preceding "belief" of the truth could not be affected by the will of man in the Biblical order and so you reverse it.
Second you have changed the means into a CONDITIONAL method for determining who God will choose to salvation. However, the prepositional phrases are not causual. They do not provide any causes for choice but rather consequences. This is clearly proven by Ephesians 1:4 where God's choice is the cause and the consequences are "might be holy and blameless before him in love" rather than they were chosen BECAUSE they were holy and blameless."
The following verse is speaking of the same thing:
"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet.1:2).
One of the meanings of the Greek word translated "according" at 1 Peter 1:2 is "in consequence of" (Thayer's Greek English Lexicon).
That is simply not true! The words "according to" can mean "in keeping with" or "in accord with".
However, let us suppose your interpretation of "kata" is true. Foreknowledge is a consequence not the cause of Divine purpose in Romans 8:28-29. Divine purpose precedes both foreknolwedge and predestination in Romans 8:28-29 just as foreknowledge and predestination precede calling, justificaiton and glorification.
A builder has a blue print and because of that blue print he knows before hand where each room has been predetermined. Likewise, election is based upon God's foreknowledge of His purpose for election. That purpose is spelled out in such passages as Ephesians 1:4-13; John 6:37-37; 17:2-3; etc.
"But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thess.2:13).
One of the meanings of the Greek word translated "sanctification" is "consecration" and that word means "to separate from things profaneand dedicate to God" (Thayer's Greek English Lexicon).
Your problem is that the order (you reverse BTW) given by Paul is that sanctification precedes beleif of the truth and yet it is belief of the truth that consecrates not vice versa! So you are not only guilty of reversing the order but the order given by Paul repudiates your misinterpretation.
The following verse describes this consecration when believers are separated from things profane and dedicated to God:
"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body...the Body of Christ" (1 Cor.12:13,27).
I don't have time here to provide a complete contextual analysis of this text. However, I will just shoot from the hip and tell you this verse refers to the problem and solution for that problem in 1 Corinthians 1-3. They had been divided over their baptismal administrators and Paul's solution is that all baptismal administrator work as ONE under the leadership of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:5-10) in building the congregation at Corinth or any local congregation as a "temple" of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16). Hence, under the leadership of One Spirit they had been water baptized into one body, one in kind, the kind found at Corinth (v. 27) and made to partake of his presence by the very fact that God the Holy Spirit instead of the human administrator set the members in the body as it pleased him (1 Cor. 12:18) even the bad ones (1 Cor. 11:17-18) providing the spiritual gifts that ministered to all the members (I Cor. 12:1-11; 14:1-41).
So this text has nothing to do with your argument.
And that is exactly what Paul is referring to when he uses the word 'in Him" in the following verse:
"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:4).
Another equally false interpretation. Note the consequential phrase "THAT we SHOULD BE" not because He foresaw us to be and those chose us! Furthermore, the baptism in the Spirit occured on the day of Pentecost and yet all the saints prior to Pentecost were chose to salvation as much as those after Pentecost and they could not have been baptized in the Spirit (Rom. 4; Gal. 3:6-8; Heb. 11; Heb. 4:2; Acts 10:43; etc.).
So, I have answered your questions and corrected you false interpretations. However, I doubt if my answers will be accepted.