There are at least two views as to when God chooses individuals for salvation. The first view is that God choose everyone to be saved before creation based on an interpretation of Ephesians 1:4, which says God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. The second view, is that God is choosing individuals for salvation in the here and now and will continue to do so until the end of the age of grace.
As many of you know, I have provided two lines of evidence in support of the second view. Yet not one poster has ever replied, Yes, I agree the election of Ephesians 1:4 must be corporate, and our individual elections for salvation must still be occurring.
So, trying to be diligent in rightly dividing the word of truth, I thought I would add more lines of evidence, hoping there are some who browse this forum with open minds.
1) As many of you know, 2 Corinthians 5:19 says God "was" reconciling the world to Himself. This verb, translated "was" is in the Greek an imperfect active indicative, which describes continuous, ongoing, or repeated past actions. Thus God has been and is continuing to be reconciling is the truth carefully hidden by poor translations which present the action as past, and omitting the continuing nature of the indicated action. Some might say, yes but God could have chosen them in the past, before creation, but only reconciled them in the present. This is consistent with receiving the reconciliation during our physical lifetime, and with our mission as Ambassadors of Christ to beg the lost to be reconciled to God. Unfortunately not one poster has posted, "Yes, I agree God is reconciling those chosen in the here and now rather than when Christ sacrificed His life."
2) James 2:5 indicates God choose individuals who were poor "of the world...." Here the word translated "of the world" is in the Greek a dative noun, indicating the location where they were poor. Thus we were chosen while viewed as poor by humanity, which requires they were part of human culture, again requiring that they were chosen while existing as humans. So we were both chosen and reconciled while physically alive.
3) The last line of evidence uses both Romans 4:24 and 2 Thessalonians 2:13. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 says we were chosen through faith in the truth, thus we had faith at the time of being chosen for salvation. Not one Calvinist has ever agreed with this truth. However, there is more, Romans 4:24 says "faith" (the antecedent of the pronoun translated as "it) will be (present tense, in the here and now) to those who believe God raised Jesus from the dead. Thus the faith used in our individual election for salvation was credited in the here and now, making our election in the here and now, during our physical lifetime.
4) Just as a reminder, 1 Peter 2:9-10 says were once existed as "not a people" chosen for God's own possession, and once had not received mercy. Therefore we could not have been individually chosen before we existed.
