Featured When do we become "Beloved?"

Being chosen before human creation and credited through faith in one's present. The latter would be when one is among the beloved.

 

Before the foundation. And those in the text were always Gods beloved people secretly in election, the elect gentiles.

 

Scripture is clear believers are beloved of God prior to salvation.

1John 4:10 and 19

“and this is love, not that you loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sin…”

“we love God because He first loved us”

I can reconcile my reformed beliefs with these passages and the passage from Romans.

No need for a cleaver, just a proper understanding of scripture in the context it was written.

peace to you

 

Gentiles were beloved of the Lord and chosen in Christ before the foundation, thats what Rom 9 is about, the call of the Gentiles. Are you denying these Gentiles were not beloved of God before the foundation Eph 1:4-6

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 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: 5 having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved

2 Thess 2:13

13 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:

You dont be thinking.

 

Careful with 2 Thess 2:13. Some just skip from “chosen for salvation through… “..directly to “”belief in the truth”

They ignore work of sanctification (being set apart) by the God Holy Spirit… and make salvation completely dependent on belief as a work that God then responds to by granting salvation.

FYI

peace to you

 

I never really entertained the possibility that God's choice of a people before the foundation of the world was a difficulty, since I read and believed what Ephesians 1 said some 21 years ago when I first laid eyes on it.
But upon thinking about what you stated in the above, Van, I turned in my Bible and read the below:

" Wherefore remember, that ye [being] in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;
12 that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
13 but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition [between us];
15 having abolished in his flesh the enmity, [even] the law of commandments [contained] in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, [so] making peace;
16 and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:
17 and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
18 for through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." ( Ephesians 2:11-18 ).

I understand, in the above, that the Gentiles were strangers from the covenants of promise ( what was promised to Israel in the Old Testament ).
I also see that the "partition" being spoken of here is the "wall" of separation that God put between Israel, as a nation, and the Gentile nations...
An earthly wall of separation between Israel, God's national chosen people, and the Gentiles; which were not chosen to be the recipients of many of the Old Testament promises made to national Israel.


To me, it also symbolizes the spiritual wall of separation between all of the elect and the people of this world outside of Christ.

 

The elect Gentiles ( as God told the Ephesian believers through Paul's writing to them ) were no less chosen in Christ from the foundation of the world...
But, in the earthly sense they were not God's people as Israel is and was.

The Gentile believers ( those outside the physical lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the "fathers" of both physical and spiritual Israel ) are now, by the blood of the cross, "grafted" into the spiritual olive tree of Israel ( Romans 11 ).
In other words, the elect within Israel and the elect within the Gentiles are now both one "nation" ( "world", see John 3:16, 1 John 2:2 and others ) under the new covenant in Christ's blood.

God is not yet done with Israel as a nation, as He is still calling His elect from among the Gentiles.
When that is done, the end of this current world system, run by those who hate the Lord, will come... and national Israel will see their Saviour ( Zechariah 12, John 19:37 ).

I also take note that until the word went out from Israel in Acts of the Apostles 10, there was no wholesale calling of God's elect outside of national Israel.
Then God sent Peter to Cornelius, a Roman soldier.
After that, Paul and Barnabas were sent forth to be used of God to call others of His elect in Asia Minor, Greece and in other places.


Gentile believers...
Still elect, still chosen from the foundation of the world to be His people, yet treated differently in the national sense than Israel; until Christ suffered on the cross for all of them.

 

Peace

 

I notice a poster has no answer for 1 John 4, which very clearly states we love God because He first loved us.

Looks like a “cleaver” is being used to hack away all passages which disprove the theory of the OP. That is typical of some posters.

The only thing missing, so far, is to claim victimhood, which is coming, I’m sure.

As I stated, I can reconcile the passages from 1 John and Romans with my reformed understanding of scripture.

Some ignore the passages they cannot reconcile, hacking away with a cleaver God’s Word in an attempt to force God to conform to their preconceived bias.

Another waste of cyber space while folks are dying and going to hell because of “slacking soul winners” (according to some posters)

peace to you