The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing men in Christ is twofold; it concerns at once their _character_ and their _state_: "He chose us out--that we should be holy and without blemish in His sight," and "unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself." These two purposes are one. God's sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons. For this end "we" were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to provide God with such sons[28] and that Christ might be "the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 28-30).
"That we should be holy"--should be _saints_. This the readers are already: "To the saints" the apostle writes (ver. 1). They are men devoted to God by their own choice and will, meeting God's choice and will for them. Imperfect saints they may be, by no means as yet "without blemish"; but they are already, and abidingly, "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. i. 2) and "sealed" for God's possession "by the Holy Spirit" (vv. 13, 14). In this fact lies their hope of moral perfection and the impulse and power to attain it. Their task is to "perfect" their existing "holiness" (2 Cor. vii. 1), "cleansing themselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit." Let no Christian say, "I do not pretend to be a saint." This is to renounce your calling. You _are_ a saint if you are a true believer in Christ; and you are to be an unblemished saint.
Thus the Church is at last to be presented, and every man in his own order, "faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy."[29] God could not invite us in His grace to anything inferior. A blemished saint--a smeared picture, a flawed marble--this is not like His work; it is not like Himself. Such saintship cannot approve itself "before Him." He must carry out His ideal, must fashion the new man as he was created in Christ after His own faultless image, and make human holiness a transcript of the Divine (1 Peter i. 16).
Now, this Divine character is native to the sons of God. The ideal which God had for men was always the same. The father of the race was made in His image. In the Old Testament Israel receives the command: "You shall be holy, for I, Jehovah your God, am holy." But it was in Jesus Christ that the breadth of this command was disclosed, and the possibility of our personal obedience to it. The law of Christian sonship, manifest only in shadow in the Levitical sanctity, is now pronounced by Jesus: "You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God elected us in Christ to be perfect saints; for He predestined us through Jesus Christ to be His sons.