Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:3-6

Q. 6. How many persons are there in the Godhead?
A. There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;
and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

• Westminster Shorter Catechism

“The Father’s love unto the Son, and the Son’s delight in the Father, is the fountain and
prototype of all love and delight; and from this infinite, mutual love flows all grace unto
us.”
-John Owen

It’s because God so loves the world that He gives His only begotten Son (John 3:16). It
is out of His eternal love that the plan of redemption is born. But we would be mistaken
if we thought that the primary or the exclusive object of the love of God were the world
or were the people whom He is pleased to redeem. Because though it’s absolutely true
that God loves us, we need to remember that He loves us in the Son. We are included
in Christ, and the whole work of redemption is a work in which we are seen by the
Father as belonging to the Son. And it’s because of His great love for His Son that we
are included in redemption.
-R.C. Sproul

“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic
replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and
you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
— Richard Dawkins

“Predestination is a mystery. It is a truth we must confess and rejoice in, but it is not a
truth we are to quarrel over. The moment we make it a weapon in argument or a test of
fellowship; we have turned a doctrine of comfort into a cause of division.”
-R.C. Sproul

“Paul is using the doctrine of predestination not to separate believers, not to instill pride
in our being chosen, not to vaunt any special knowledge of how God works, but simply
to assure hard-pressed believers that God has loved them and does love them apart
from the merits of their own… Predestination is for those who already love Jesus to
assure them that their failures do not destroy his love… Predestination was never
meant to be a doctrinal club used to batter people into acknowledgment of God’s
sovereignty. Rather, the message of God’s love preceding our accomplishments and
outlasting our failures was meant to give us a profound sense of confidence and
security in God’s love so that we will not despair in situations of great difficulty, pain, and
shame.”
-Bryan Chapell