Here (Ephesians 1:3-4 ) Paul states that God chose Christians in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. The "chosen ones" designate the corporate group to whom Paul writes with himself (and presumably all Christians) included: God chose us. The focus is not on the selection of individuals, but the group of those chosen. As Westcott notes, "''He chose us'' (i.e. Christians as a body, v. 4) for Himself out of the world." Paul specifies the timing of this choice—it was pretemporal, before the world was created. God made the choice "in him" (that is, "in Christ"). In other words, Christ is the principal elected one,〔Abasciano notes: "And as F.F. Bruce succinctly states in relation to the 'in Christ' phrase of 1:4, Christ 'is the Chosen One of God par excellence.' The point is confirmed in Ephesians 1:6, which refers to Christ as the Beloved n whom God's grace has been lavished on us (the Church/believers), a term that signifies Christ as the Chosen One, most likely grounded in the title's use as a designation of God's chosen people in the Old Testament (LXX Deuteronomy 32:15; 33:5, 12, 26; Isaiah 5:1, 7; 44:2; Jeremiah 11:15; 12:7) and in the elective significance of love terminology in the Old Testament (e.g., Malachi 1:2), terminology that carries over into the New Testament in application to Christ (Colossians 1:13; Mark 1:11; 9:7 and parallels; Mark 12:6; Luke 20:13) and the Church (1 Thessalonians 1:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Romans 9:25; Colossian 3:12) in various texts" ("Clearing Up Misconceptions About Corporate Election," 60).〕 and God has chosen a corporate body to be ''included in him''."〔Klein, ''The New Chosen People'', 179-180. ''So'' Paul Marston and Roger Forster: "The church is elect because it is in Christ and ''he'' is elect. . . . The Bible does ''not'' say that we are chosen ''to be put into'' Christ, but that we were chosen ''in'' Christ. Our election is not separate from his election. . . . The prime point is that the election of the church is a corporate rather than an individual thing. It is not that individuals are in the church because they are elect, it is rather that they are elect because they are in the church, which is the body of the elect One" (''God's Strategy in Human History'', 149, 150, 155).〕