This verse completes the sentence started back in verse 3, but the last couple of words (which I have not included here) actually belong to the next verse. Eh, I didn't make up the verse numbers, so don't blame me. I am, after all, blameless (see below).
But anyway, if you'll remember from last time (eons ago), Paul started off by exclaiming blessings upon God for blessing us with "every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," so I figure that the "just as He..." part here is intended to tell us that he chose us in Christ just as he blessed us in Christ. It's all God in Christ here, folks. You and I haven't done anything. God chose us and He blessed us, all in (through) Jesus Christ, and not because of anything we've done or anybody we are or anything we think or say or accomplish. God chose us. Us. You and me.
Why, you ask? I have no idea. But thank God (literally) he did! I guess it's just because he loves us, no? He loves us, so he chose us.
And, to prove that it isn't because of our accomplishments, Paul goes on to point out that God actually chose us "before the foundations of the world," which means, I assume, before God created this here existence, he had already decided that we were going to be his.
I only have one little problem with this, and here it is. God is eternal, and I've always sort of had the notion that means that time has no meaning for God. Eternity for God doesn't exactly mean that he existed eternally in the past and will exist eternally in the future, along a sort of never-ending timeline, but rather that God exists everywhere at once along that timeline, and apart from it, transcendent from a time/place existence, if you please. He exists in an eternal NOW where he is in the past and the future at the same time, so that for God, "before the foundations of the world" coincides with our present and beyond our future into eternity...all at the same eternal moment. It's a tough hunk of meat for me to chew, but to me it means that the concepts of before and after, then and now, now and later, and other such time-sensitive expressions have no real meaning to God...other than as he understands it through his creation, which now that I think about it is a rather important point. God may not be tied down by a timeline, but he knows that we are and understands the way we see things. "Before the foundations of the world" might mean very little from God's perspective, but it sure means something to us, and tells us something about God and the way he works and thinks - he knows what he's doing and has known all along. He has a plan that was laid down before the foundations of the world (from our perspective, at least) and since he exists eternally (then and now, now and later meaning nothing to him), his plan has already been accomplished and fulfilled in Christ Jesus for all eternity. Why would I not trust him???
So no, I don't really have a problem at all. Sometimes I just have to remember that the bible, though God inspired, is written by people, to people, from a people perspective, and although God has revealed himself through it, he did it in a way that we can understand from our limited, timeline-constrained existence.
So anyway, on to the good part: "that we would be holy and blameless before Him." So this is why he chose us? Yeah, I think so! This verse reminds me very much of something I just read in Gensis: "Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless.'" I had read that verse many times before, and somehow had the idea that when God said "be blameless" it was sort of a command, like "Make your bed!" or "Take out the trash!" Like God was telling Abram that he'd better stop messing around clean up his act: be blameless! But now I see that God wasn't telling him to be blameless, God was saying that Abram WAS blameless!! Now, Abram wasn't actually blameless, you know. I mean, he screwed up time and time again by failing to fully trust God to keep his promises. But God declared that Abram was blameless in spite of anything Abram had done, good or bad.
You might say that God chose Abram before the foundations of the world, that he would be holy and blameless before Him. Just as he chose us. Abraham was declared blameless. We are declared blameless. You are declared blameless. I am declared blameless. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. I believe I'll believe God, too. How about you?
Remember now, these are simply my thoughts here, and I write them down as they come to me. Don't expect consistency or great prose or good writing at all. I'm not really worried, since nobody is ever going to read this but me.
