There is so much here for us to feast upon!! Let us begin by basking in the description "beloved by the Lord". What a glorious way to understand your relationship with God! If you belong to Christ you ARE beloved of the Lord... There is no sin, fault or failure that will ever make God feel anything toward you but love. If God has loved you, He will always love you, for He has determined in Himself to love you. But wait a moment! Some will ask, "why limit that to only those who identify as Christian?" Because this is what the scripture says... notice Paul's statement, he is bound (obligated) to give thanks for them BECAUSE God had chosen them from the beginning. For what? FOR salvation, THROUGH sanctification BY the Spirit AND BY belief in the truth... FOR obtaining the GLORY OF JESUS... Further, all of this comes about because of the faithful proclamation of the Gospel Of Jesus Christ... so the "who" of the statement is those who have believed the gospel for salvation... those who have placed their trust and confidence in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But look a little deeper at this for a moment, notice what is the agency of first cause... it is the sovereign choice of God Himself!! It is not our works, our religious activity, our will or our decision, but the will of God Himself who has chosen that we would be His and bear much fruit! And what rich fruit it is!! The specific fruit we are recreated to bear is the glory of Jesus Himself. This is the WHY of how we can know that God loves us. He has loved us because He wanted to love us. No cause but Himself. Period. The end. Oh, my dear beloved of God, fly to the arms of the Savior and cling to Him for your life… He is both the source and the answer of God's love to us; He is both the promise and the fulfillment of the hope that sustains us; He IS the Alpha and Omega of all God's motivation for all that He does; and in Christ Jesus is manifested the glory of God by which we know that we are beloved of the Father!!!