2. The Lamb before the foundation

Before the world had a foundation, a choosing already stood. Paul writes: "even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love, having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved" (Eph 1:4-6). The text dates the choosing before the foundation of the world, and it names both the choosing's ground and its end inside itself. The ground is "the good pleasure of his desire." The end is "the praise of the glory of his grace." Between the ground and the end, the predestination has a stated destination: "adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself." The electing act and the adopting act are not two purposes. They are one purpose, stated before the foundation, carried out in the Beloved.

The Lamb stands inside the same counsel, under the same date. Peter writes of "precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ, who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in this last age for your sake" (1 Pet 1:19-20). The foreknowing stands before the foundation of the world. The revealing stands in the last age. The text holds the two dates apart and puts the whole of the interval between them. At Pentecost the crucifixion itself is placed under the same prior determination: "him, being delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed" (Acts 2:23). The hands named in the verse are the hands of lawless men. The delivery named in the verse is by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. The church's prayer after the release of Peter and John reads the gathering of the rulers the same way: "For truly, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your counsel foreordained to happen" (Acts 4:27-28). Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and the peoples of Israel did what God's hand and counsel foreordained. Their gathering stands inside the foreordination, not outside it. And the gift to the called carries the earliest date of all: God "saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Tim 1:9). The grace was given in Christ Jesus before times eternal. It is received in time by those who were not yet.

Revelation 13:8 is not used as a ground for the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. In the LSB, "from the foundation" goes with the names written, not with the slaying. The WEB renders the sentence the same way: "everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been killed" (Rev 13:8). Beside that verse stands another in the same book, where the attachment is beyond dispute: "Those who dwell on the earth and whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel when they see that the beast was, and is not, and shall be present" (Rev 17:8). In 17:8 the phrase "from the foundation of the world" belongs to the writing of the names, and no other attachment is possible. The reading of 13:8 therefore stands as the book's own pattern, not as a translator's preference. What turns on a rendering, the doctrine does not rest on. The foreordination of the Lamb rests on Peter's sentence, where the text states it without a disputed attachment: Christ "was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world."

The word "foreknew" carries persons as its object wherever the texts use it. "For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom 8:29). The sentence does not say what God foresaw in them or about them. It says whom He foreknew, and it joins the foreknowing to the predestining in one unbroken sequence. Paul uses the word of the nation the same way: "God didn't reject his people, whom he foreknew" (Rom 11:2). The object is "his people." Behind that usage stands the word spoken through Amos: "I have chosen only you of all the families of the earth. Therefore I will punish you for all of your sins" (Amos 3:2). Amos's word is the verb of knowing, which the WEB renders "chosen"; its object is a people, "only you," set over against all the families of the earth. The negative form of the same knowing is spoken by Christ at the judgment: "Then I will tell them, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity'" (Matt 7:23). The never-knowing is spoken to persons, and what is withheld from them is the knowing itself. The object of the foreknowing is not only the people. In Peter's sentence it is Christ: "who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in this last age for your sake" (1 Pet 1:20). Across these texts, the verb takes a person or a people as its object, never a person's foreseen faith. To define "foreknew" from this usage as "set His regard on beforehand" is an inference drawn from the texts, and it stands as an inference: the texts give the object, and the definition is gathered from them.

The lead's own letter carries the close. The choosing of Ephesians 1:4-6 belongs to a will that God has since made known: "making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him to an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in him" (Eph 1:9-10). The purpose purposed in Christ runs from before the foundation to the fullness of the times, and its direction is a summing up of all things in him. Colossians states the same end from the side of creation: "For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things have been created through him and for him" (Col 1:16). All things were created through the Lamb and for the Lamb. The foreknowing before the foundation and the summing up at the fullness of the times are the two ends of one purpose, and both ends are Christ.