“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:”
King James Version (KJV)
1:4 As he hath chosen us - Both Jews and gentiles, whom he foreknew as believing in Christ, #1Pet 1:2|.
Eph 1:4 According as. "Even as", in the Revised Version. Chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. This does not affirm that God chose some individuals and rejected others, but that before the world was, before there was Jew or Gentile, God chose to have a people for himself, the whole church of Christ, a covenant people confined to no one earthly race. That we should be holy. God chose them that they might be holy. Holiness is the proof that a church is a chosen church.