The Latecomer at the Back

He does the sums without meaning to, and he does them most weeks, and the sums always come out the same.

Fifty-one, he came in. He is fifty-nine now, so that is eight years. The man he sits near has been a believer since he was nine, which is fifty-four years. The woman who runs that Bible study can quote things from memory that Gabe has never read once. When people in that room reminisce about a preacher who died in the nineties, Gabe was not there, and cannot be, and there is a whole shared past in that room that he arrived after.

None of them makes him feel it. That has to be said. They are decent, and one of them in particular has gone to real trouble.

He does it to himself, on the way home, in the car.

And what the arithmetic amounts to, when he lets it finish, is a picture of a household that was formed and running and complete, and of himself as a late addition: taken in, made welcome, treated well, and not part of the original plan. A guest who was given a room in a house that had already been built and furnished.

He would not say God made a mistake. He would say something more modest and more corrosive: that he is a genuine but late entry, appended to a list that was drawn up without him.

Gabe is a careful man and he knows this is not exactly doctrine. He also knows he believes it, in the way a man knows what he believes by what he feels on the drive home.

If you came late, hear the question. Which of those two dates does the verse talk about?

The verse is about a date, and it is not the date he is counting

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.Ephesians 1:5

Set aside the arguments people have about that first word, because Gabe is not asking the question those arguments are about, and this article is not going to adjudicate a dispute between traditions in order to answer a man's ache.

Here is what is plainly in the sentence, and it is what he needs.

Having predestinated us unto the adoption. Whatever else that word carries, it carries this: intention in advance. It is a word about something decided before, and what it says was decided before is adoption specifically.

By Jesus Christ to himself. The mechanism and the destination, both named.

According to the good pleasure of his will. And the motive, which is His own pleasure rather than a response to circumstances.

Gabe has been counting his arrival date, which is real and is 2018. The verse is talking about a different date entirely, and on that one there are no latecomers, because it precedes everybody in that room by a distance that makes fifty-four years and eight years indistinguishable.

You were intended in advance, and it is already the plan rather than an amendment to it, and the date the verse is about is not the one you have been counting. I am not settling a doctrinal argument for a man in a car. It is written in Ephesians 1:5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a word about prior intention and lays it on somebody doing arithmetic on the drive home.

What adoption means about the plan

And here is a thing about the word that would help him specifically, because Gabe's picture is of a house already built.

Adoption is the one form of belonging that is always, by definition, planned. A birth can be a surprise. An adoption cannot be; it is a decision taken in advance, with intent, and then executed.

So the very word Paul chooses for what happened to Gabe at fifty-one is a word that carries prior intention inside it. There is no such thing as an accidental adoption. Somebody decided, and then arranged, and then it happened on a date, and the date it happened is not the date it was decided.

His whole picture depends on the idea that he was a late amendment to a settled arrangement. The word in the verse says the arrangement was made with him in it.

You are in a form of belonging that is planned by definition, and the deciding was already done before the arranging. Scripture calls it the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a word that carries intention do its work in a man who thinks he was appended.

The shared past he thinks he missed

And there is one more thing, and it is smaller and it is about that room.

He is right that he was not there in the nineties. That is true and it cannot be undone and there is a genuine ordinary loss in it, and he should not be told there is not.

But the past that actually constitutes that household is not the nineties. It is a Friday outside Jerusalem, and every single person in that room arrived after it by roughly the same distance. The woman who can quote from memory was not there either. The man who has believed since he was nine missed it by nineteen hundred years and change.

The founding event of that family is one that nobody present attended, and everybody present belongs by the same means, and on the only shared past that makes them a household, Gabe is not late by a single day.

You are equally distant from the event that made this a family, and it is already the same distance for everybody in that room. It is written that we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace (Ephesians 1:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies one Friday equally to a room full of people with different start dates.