---
title: Ephesians 1:11
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/ephesians-1-11/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/ephesians-1-11.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Ephesians 1:11
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Ephesians 1:11

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will,

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "with whom we are in union and were assigned as heirs, having been foreordained according to the purpose of the one who accomplishes all things as he decides according to his will,"

## JW Usage

The Watchtower teaches that Jehovah foreordained the group — the 144,000 as a class — but not the individuals who would compose it. The NWT 2013 study note on this verse states that position directly. Predestination of individuals is rejected because it is held to make Jehovah responsible for evil and to remove free will, which the Watchtower's permitted-issue theodicy exists to protect.

## Protestant Usage

This is a closing-week argument, not a doorstep one. Do not open with it, and do not try to convert anyone to Reformed theology. The aim is narrower: to ask whether the class-not-individuals carve-out holds. Read the verse in their own Bible. Foreordained according to the purpose of the one who accomplishes all things as he decides according to his will. Two phrases to notice — accomplishes all things, and as he decides according to his will. Then ask which is the harder claim: that God foreknows and chooses the entire pattern of human history, which the Watchtower affirms, or that he foreknows and chooses individual people inside that pattern, which it denies. If the compatibilist mechanism works at the scale of an eschatological class without violating anyone's will, it works at the scale of a person. The carve-out has no independent support. The same structure appears at Acts 4:27-28, where what Herod and Pilate freely did was what God's hand and counsel had determined beforehand. Close kindly. The Watchtower built this framework to protect God's goodness, and that concern is right. Compare Acts 4:27, Romans 9:18, Job 1:12.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Permitted Issue Is Still a Decree](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/watchtower-determinism-author-of-evil.md) — When Watchtower theodicy reinvents the predestination it denies [Authority]