Meadowbrooke Church

The God Who Works

Have you noticed that the number three seems to be a big deal for the apostle Paul in Ephesians? For example, in the first fourteen verses we read of the three-fold role our Triune God has in our salvation: God the Father chose us before the foundation of the world (1:3-6), Jesus the Son made our redemption possible (vv. 7-12), and the Holy Spirit sealed us for the Day of redemption (vv. 12-13). We see it in the way Paul prays for the Ephesian Church: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe (vv. 18-19a).
I thought one way to help you see this was to reimagine Pauls series of threes as his answer to a series of questions by Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, a character from John Bunyans Pilgrims Progress, a book first published in 1678 and is currently listed as the fifth most translated book in the world. If you are not aware of who John Bunyan was, all you know for now is that he wrote Pilgrims Progress while in prison for twelve years for preaching the gospel, his book is an allegory on the Christian life.
In Bunyans book, the protagonist, Christian Pilgrim leaves his home, The City of Destruction, to embark on a pilgrimage for the salvation of his soul and to find the Celestial City where he can live for all eternity in the company of God. While on his journey he is helped and guided by other characters such as Evangelist, who is known as a preacher of the Holy Word and is eager to help those who are seriously concerned about the state of their souls. Christian also meets Interpreter who shows Christian many wonders and shows Christian many exhortations on the way he should go. There are others who join Christian on his journey such as Pliant who quits the pilgrimage after facing his first obstacle, and Hopeful, a refugee from Vanity Fair, who proves to be a faithful companion to Christian all the way to the Celestial City.
There are others who Christian encounters that try to turn him away from the narrow way to the Celestial City who go by the names of Giant Despair, Apollyon, Flatterer, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Bunyan described Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, in this way: not an ancient relic of the past. He is everywhere today, disguising his heresy and error by proclaiming the gospel of contentment and peace achieved by self-satisfaction and works. If he mentions Christ, it is not as the Savior who took our place, but as a good example of an exemplary life. Do we need a good example to rescue us, or do we need a Savior?
Imagine what a conversation might look like if Mr. Worldly Wiseman visited the Apostle Paul in prison during the same time the epistle to the Ephesians was written:
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Paul, tell me how you can be sure that you are Christian since you are now in prison?
Paul: Regardless of my circumstance, I am a Christian for these three reasons:
I was chosen by God before the foundation of the world (1:4-6),
I am redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ for sins I am guilty of (vv. 7-12), and
I am sealed by the Holy Spirit for a full and future redemption (vv. 13-14).
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Why spend your years in prison and suffer when you can be free so long as you dont keep blabbing about Jesus in places people dont want to hear it? You know, you can be a Christian and be compliant too!
Paul: How can I be quiet about something so important? Jesus commands me not to be quite about my relationship with Him and how he saved me even though I was,
Dead to God (2:1),
A slave to sin (vv. 2-3a), and
A child of the wrath of God because of the sins I committed against Him (v. 3).
What this means, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, is that I was once like you:
A friend of the world (2:2a),
A child of the devil (v. 2b), and
A slave to my own flesh (v. 3).
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Im not sure if I should feel insulted or pity for you because you believe such rubbish. So, tell me, what is so different between you and me?
Paul: Jesus is the difference between you and me! Jesus lived a perfect sinless life that I could never live; He died a death I deserved on a cross for sins I committed, and He validated all of that by rising from death on the third day. What is true of me is true of every real Christian, and this is why I have chosen to follow Him:
I was dead in my sins, but now I am alive in Christ (1:7; 2:4)
My nature was bound by my sins, but now I have been raised with Christ (v. 6a)
I stood condemned by a holy God, but now I am seated with Christ and am covered by His righteousness (v. 6b).
Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: Come on Paul! I am a religious person and I admire Jesus as a great example to aspire to. We need to do our best and let God do the rest, but you have taken your Christianity too seriously!
Paul: No one can do enough for the kind of salvation you and I need! The only thing God required of me was a faith that was only possible because of His grace. It is a grace that I could not, nor ever will earn, by anything I could ever do! I am the recipient of,
A rich mercy we did deserve (v. 4a).
A great love God was not obligated to give (v. 4b).
An all-sufficient grace no one could earn (v. 5)
All of which is only possible in and through Jesus Christ alone!
So, now we come to Ephesians 2:8-10 and are immediately faced with another set of three words and why it is that God saved us in the first place. If you were asked the same questions or interrogated in the way I had Mr. Worldly-Wiseman interrogate Paul, how would you answer? My two points are in the form of two questions that this passage answers for us in a way that should be deeply discouraging or encouraging to you.
How Does God Save?
Now, considering all that we have studied together, we find ourselves at the threshold of Ephesians 2:8-9. What I want to do with you this morning is to walk you through these verses in light of the context of Ephesians 1:3-2:7. I want us to look at these verses together against the backdrop of my warning at the beginning of this sermon series which was this: Beware of imposing your view and thoughts of what God should be like, upon the text of His holy Word. You must allow the authority of Gods Word to impose its teaching upon your heart for the purpose of shaping it in a way that the eyes of your heart are able to see God more clearly.
Now, before I go any further, let me say first and foremost that I want you to make your own conclusion with these verses based on the evidence of what you see in Ephesians and the rest of the Bible. I am not concerned if you end up seeing things differently than the way I see them so long as you do not impose what you think the Bible should say upon what it actually says. My only concern before you this morning is that I preach and teach the Bible in such a manner that I am faithful to the Word of God so when I stand before Him, I will do so knowing that I was faithful with what He has entrusted to me.
So, here we go! Buckle up because it is going to be a fun ride. Lets start with verses 8-9, For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. The three words I want you to see in this verse are grace, saved (i.e. salvation), and faith. To answer the question, How does God save? we need figure out what is the gift that He gives so that no one may boast. Is grace the gift given by God, or is salvation the gift given by God, or is a persons faith the gift given by God? Whatever the gift is, it eliminates any notion on our part that we did something to get it, otherwise Paul would never have felt the need to include verse 9, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
If I am right about what I see in Ephesians 2:8-9, it will open up verse 10 in a way that will encourage you and blow your mind at the same time. So, what have we seen in Ephesians so far leading up to these verses? Permit me to put what Paul lists concerning our salvation in sequential order from spiritual death to life:
We were spiritually dead in our offenses and sins (2:1)
We know we were spiritually dead because we were slaves to our sin (2:2a)
Because we were slaves to our sin against God, we were by nature children of His wrath (2:3).
But God, whose mercy is rich, love is great, and grace is sufficient, did three things (vv. 2:4-5):
He made us alive with Christ (2:5b).
He raised us up with Christ (2:6a).
He seated us with Christ (2:6b).
As a Christian, you can know that your salvation involved three acts of God
Before the foundation of the earth, God chose to adopt you as His child through Jesus (1:4-6).
In order to adopt you as His child, God redeemed you through the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of all your wrongdoings (1:7-12).
Because God will not lose any who He has redeemed, He has sealed you with His Holy Spirit until your redemption and salvation is complete (1:13-14).
So, in light of all that Paul wrote concerning what God has done for the Christian, what does he mean by Ephesians 2:8-9? Let me offer up some fair and legitimate questions: If I am spiritually dead, how can a spiritually dead person respond to God in faith? If I am able to respond to God in faith in order to receive salvation through Jesus, then is my faith exempt from the kinds of works Paul is talking about in verse 9? If faith is a gift God imparts on me on some level, then how is my trust in Jesus for the salvation of my soul legitimate? Does your brain hurt from trying to process these sorts of questions?
I have wrestled over these verses for nearly 30 years and have understood them in three different ways that I think may help give you some perspective. In my early years, I was convinced that the gift of God was a salvation that could only be received by faith. Sometime after I started reading guys like Jonathan Edwards and St. Augustine, I leaned towards thinking that it was faith that was the gift of God. To be honest, what makes all of this even more confusing is the Greek allows the person interpreting these verses to make either one of these conclusions. Here is where I sit now, and I believe that how I see it fits best with everything Paul has written leading up to these verses, and it fits with the rest of the Bible. So, what is the gift of God? It is His Grace, our faith, and our salvation in that order! The this is Gods grace, our faith, and our salvation.
Think about what grace is for a moment. Biblical grace is Gods unmerited favor; it is favor given to someone who does not deserve it. Do you remember what I said in the second sermon I preached in this series on Ephesians 1:4-6? I told you that at the very least, when it comes to God, what we read in these verses leads to the conclusion that God moved first. We see the very same thing here in Ephesians 2:8! At the very least, it is the sheer grace of almighty God that I had reached a point in my life on July 18, 1991, when all that I heard about Jesus made sense and I surrendered my life to Jesus and was genuinely and categorically saved from the wrath of God and forgiven all my sins! Every step and experience leading up to that moment was also the demonstration of a God who pursued me, found me, and overcame my sin because His mercy was rich, His love was great, and His grace sufficient to do what a 16-year-old teenage boy could not do. God made me alive with Christ, God raised me up with Christ, and God seated me with Christ on that summers day on July 18, 1991, but He did not believe for me; I had to believe to be saved. He did the same thing with you Christian, but He did not believe for you! But my believing in Christ for the salvation of my soul, and your believing in Him for the salvation of your soul is not only a testament of Gods grace, but the proof that miracles happen.
For What Purpose Does God Save?
So, why did He do it? Why did he save you? Why did He choose you, redeem you, seal you, and made you, who were once dead, the recipient of the, boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (2:7)? After all, what Jonathan Edwards said concerning what we bring to our salvation is the resounding testimony of all of Scripture: You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. God didnt have to do it! God was not morally obligated to do it! But God did it; He saved you and redeemed you for the forgiveness of all your sin according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon you (1:7). But why? The answer is found in Ephesians 2:10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
The first word in verse 10 is the word For, which is telling us something. What it is telling us is that considering Ephesians 2:1-9, the following is true! You who were dead in your sins, walked according to the course of this world, lived in the lusts of your flesh, indulged the desires of the flesh and of the mind as a child of the wrath of God (vv. 1-3), God made you alive in Christ, for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that you would walk in those good works. This is exactly why God choose you, Christian, before the foundation of the world; listen to Ephesians 1:4 again: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
What this means, and this is so important to see with the eyes of your heart: We were not saved to coast until we enter into the presence of God in heaven but were saved so that God could reveal His presence through us because of His resurrection power to change us! It is absolute nonsense to think and believe that you can encounter Jesus on the level Paul describes in Ephesians and remain unchanged! It is like saying that you can remain the same after you walk in front of a bus traveling 65 MPH; the force of the bus will change you permanently. Listen carefully, the God who spoke 300 billion suns into existence is the same God who makes alive the spiritually dead through the power of the Gospel of a resurrected Christ! How is it that a person can remain unchanged by a power greater than 300 billion suns? I will tell you; it is because that person has never truly encountered Christ, whose mercy is richer, love is greater, and grace more sufficient than all of our sins and the sins of 8.1 billion people combined!
What we read in Ephesians 2:8-10 is that in light of the resurrection power of God through the redeeming work of Jesus the Son, and the empowering work of the Holy Spirit who seals us, it is the grace of God that leads to faith in God, for our salvation by God, for the purpose of a life of good works that glorifies God. The work that God is doing in your life is ongoing. I feel that it is fitting to close with something Sinclair Ferguson wrote concerning these verses:
Heaven may be the final showroom; but here on earth God is already showing what he can do.. The church triumphant is an art gallery where God displays reflections of his glory. It is a portrait gallery in which the family likeness is seen in countless different individuals who together display his infinite glory.
The church visible, here, and now, is a workshop. The Divine Artist is still painting his likeness on the canvas of our lives, the Divine Potter still has the clay in his hands. The time for final exhibition has not yet come. But one day it will. Then all that God has done in us in secret, invisible to the naked eye, will become visible for all to see. What a day that will be![1]
[1] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Lets Study Ephesians (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust; 2021), p. 53.

Identity Matters

There is a sticker I have seen on vehicles and on the back of laptops that I have seen just about every day since we moved into Cheyenne. The sticker did not capture my interest enough to google its meaning but every time I was forced to notice it at a stop light because it was affixed to the car in front of me, I would wonder about its meaning for as long as the light would last and then I would forget about it. Would you believe that I encountered this sticker for four years not realizing its significance because I never thought long enough about it to realize what it really meant?
It wasnt until a year ago that while at a red light and another car with the same sticker I had seen dozens of times since moving to Wyoming that I realized that the number 307 stood for something; we even have a day each year in the great state of Wyoming to celebrate the significance of 307 every year on March 7th known as 307 Day to celebrate all things Wyoming.
I am not the most observant person on planet earth when it comes to the most obvious things around me, but I do realize that the 307 stickers were low hanging fruit. Of the fifty-two states that make up our nation, Wyoming is one of eleven states that can boast of a single area code. In case you did not know this, area codes are given based on the population and number of phones in a geographic area and not based on the states land mass.
As I thought about the significance of 307 and how that number was always before me for the first four years since making our home in Cheyenne before I ever realized what it truly meant, I cannot help but reflect upon how it is that so many can claim to be a Christian without fully appreciating what it means to be in Christ.
Saved Through Christ from Death to Life
I shared with you last Sunday that if you are a Christian, there are three reasons why you are, alive together with Christ. We, who were dead in our offenses and sins, walked in step with the prince of the power of the air, were disobedient, lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulged in the desires of our flesh and mind, and at the core of our nature were children of the wrath of Godare now, alive together with Christ (v. 5). The catalyst that moved God to, chose us in Him before the foundation of the world (1:4) was His mercy, love, and grace. The catalyst that made available the redemption through His blood, and the forgiveness of our wrongdoings (1:7) was Gods mercy, love, and grace. The catalyst that resulted in God sealing all who belong to Him by His Holy Spirit was the mercy, love, and grace of almighty God! However, it was not just any old mercy, love, and grace that we received from God, no it was His rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace.
In what way is Gods mercy rich? Last week we went back to Genesis 2-3 to discover what Paul meant by stating we were all, dead in our offenses and sins. Today, to understand what Paul means by mercy, we must go to the place he drew the word from, and that place is found in Exodus 34:6-7,
Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. (Exod. 34:6-7)
What you need to know is just before we come to Exodus 34, Moses requested to see God, but was warned, You cannot see My face, for mankind shall not see Me and live (33:20). God did promise that Moses could experience His presence, but Moses would have to remain hidden in a cleft of a rock as a way to protect him from certain death. The reason why Moses could not see the face of God and live was because Moses was sinful while God is holy. God promised Moses that while he was safe in the cleft of the rock, I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion to whom I will show compassion (see Exod. 33:12-23).
There was another man who found himself in the presence of God, but for him it was in the form of a vision. The man I am referring to is the prophet, Isaiah. It happened after Israels king, who had served for over 40 years, died. We are told about the prophets encounter in Isaiah 6, but what we learn in those verses is that even Seraphim had to cover their faces and their feet in the presence of God: In the year of King Uzziahs death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim were standing above Him, each having six wings: with two each covered his face, and with two each covered his feet, and with two each flew. And one called out to another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory (vv. 1-3).
It was only a vison that Isaiah had, and yet his response was appropriate: Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies (Isa.6:5). So, of course Moses could not see the face of God and live, but he could experience His presence, and as he did, he heard Yahweh proclaim: The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin... (Exod. 34:6-7a).
Let me give you four reasons why I am certain that the mercy, love, and grace of God that Paul refers to in Ephesians 2:4-5 was shaped by his understanding of Exodus 34. My four reasons are really four words God declared about Himself to Moses: Compassion (rǎḥm), merciful (ḥǎnnn), faithfulness (ḥěʹsěḏ), and truth (ʾěměṯ). The Hebrew word for compassion means mercy; the Hebrew word for mercy can be translated kindness or goodness; the Hebrew word for truth can be translated trustworthy. There is one more word God used to describe Himself, and that word is faithfulness which is the word used to describe Gods faithful and loyal love; listen, ḥěʹsěḏ is Gods covenantal and great love! What was revealed to Moses while he was in the cleft of the rock is the same God that Paul described whose mercy is rich, whose love is great, and whose grace is sufficient!
But wait! God did not end His description of Himself there, of His rich mercy, kindness, goodness, or his covenantal and great love; for His also told Moses: yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations (Exod. 34:7b). God cannot and will not compromise His holiness and justice so that He is able to extend mercy, love, and grace towards guilty sinners. His holiness and His justice will not permit Him to leave the guilty unpunished. This is why, after seeing and experiencing the holiness of God, Isaiah cried out: Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies (Isa. 6:5).
If God is God, then He must be just as merciful as He is just, He must be equally holy as He is a God of love. If God is God, then He is all that He is in equal measure with no character trait of His in conflict with the other. There is nothing about Him that is lacking and there is no room in Him for improvement. So, if God is God, then can He be rich in mercy and absolutely just in dealing with those who are dead in their offenses and sins (Eph. 2:1-3)? The Answer is found in Ephesians 1:7-8, which states: In Him [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. This is why Paul could write: But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ. (Eph. 2:4-5). At the cross the rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace of God was reconciled through Jesus who bore Gods perfect justice through the full measure of a wrath we all deserve. First and foremost Jesus died to satisfy legal demands our sin required, and this is why Jesus was, Pierced for our offenses, and was crushed for our wrongdoings (Isa. 53:5); this is also why just five verses later, we read these words: The Lord delighted to crush Him, causing Him grief (v. 10). If you are a Christian, you are the recipient of a mercy that is rich, a love that is great, and a grace that is sufficient to address all your sins because of the Christ who, redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). This is why we can sing:
Who could imagine so great a mercy?What heart could fathom such boundless grace?The God of ages stepped down from gloryTo wear my sin and bear my shameThe cross has spoken, I am forgivenThe King of kings calls me His ownBeautiful savior, I'm yours foreverJesus Christ, my living hope[1]
Raised With Christ to Show Gods Grace
As a result of being made alive with Christ, you, Christian, are raised up with Him, seated with Him, and united with Him. You were dead in our offenses and sins, but now you have been made alive with Christ! You were the spiritually walking dead and bound to a nature united with you, depravity, but now you have been set free by Christ and your life is now rooted in Him! You were once a child of wrath, but now you are a recipient of Gods great lovedeclared by Him to be His child!
We who were dead in our offenses and sins, God made alive by the same power that He was able to give life to Adam from the lifeless dirt of the earth. However, our lifelessness was worse in the sense that Adams lifelessness came from the dirt of the earth while ours came from the soil of our own sin and rebellion, and from that polluted soil, God brought forth life out of death. God did what only God could do, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings through the same boundless power that raised Jesus from the grave, God did three things: 1) He made us alive with Christ, 2) He raised us up with Christ, and 3) He seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. Bryan Chapell, in his commentary on Ephesians said of these verses: These are the words of resurrection. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so also, we are filled with the life that is from God. Our spiritual death has been swallowed up in Christs resurrection victory. The guilt and power of sin have been conquered by the Savior who now resides in us.[2]
Oh, can you see it? Can you see that to be a Christian is not about being a more moral person, or a more religious person, or a nicer person, but about becoming a whole new person just as we are promised in the Bible: Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, the new things have come (2 Cor. 5:17). Not only are we alive in Christ, but we have been raised up and seated with Him.
The Greek word that Paul used for raised is synegeirō, the prefix of this word is syn-, from which we get the word sync and is short for synchronize. God made us alive in Christ, and quite literally has synced us with Him. What this means is that if you are a Christian, your identity is not in an area code, your last name, the person you are married to, your employment, or what you are able to do or unable to do. No! Your identity dear Christian is synced with the living Christ; you are not only alive in Him, but now you are raised up with Him. This is why, in his epistle to the Colossians, Paul wrote, Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). Your identity as a Christian is and always will be where Christ is!
But hold on, it gets even better Christian! Not only have you been raised with Christ, but you are also seated with Christ. What does it mean to be seated with Christ exactly? Remember the way Ephesians 1 concludes, for it is in the final four verses that Paul informs us where it is that Christ is: He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (vv. 20-23).Jesus is above all things and all powers, and one day, at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11). It is with that Christ that you are raised with and are seated with!
What this means is that Christs identity is now our identity and now we are seated with Him positionally. What this means is that Jesus victories are now our victories, and because His victories are our victories, death, sin, disease, persecution, hardship, the demonic, and any other front that threatens to undo us does not have the final word or say over all who are raise with Christ and seated with Christ! What this means is that you are the Bride of Christ and regardless of your past, you dear Christian are now the apple of His eye!
Christian, you were once dead in your offenses and sins, and now you are alive with Christ. Christian, you were once among the spiritually walking dead, but now you are raised up with Christ. Christian, you were once synced up with the prince of the power of the air and the spirit of the age, but now you are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.Christian, when you were dead, you lived in the lusts of your flesh and indulged the desires of the flesh, and now you are the recipient of the boundless riches of His grace in kindness in Christ Jesus (v. 7).
Christian, do you know who you are? Because if you do, you will begin to live as though you are alive in Jesus, raised up with Jesus, and seated with Jesus. You will live with the confidence that it doesnt matter what anyone else thinks of you or has said about you because what matters most is what God thinks of you, and to Him, you are His inheritance and His trophy, demonstrating His all sufficient and infinite grace. Christian, you are a testament to the grace of God that is as boundless as is His power that raised Jesus from the grave and brought you from death to life. According to verse 7, for all of eternity you who were once dead will only know the unending benefits of His rich mercy, great love, and all-sufficient grace! For the ages to come we will stand together as Gods trophy of Grace that will forever serve as a reminder that there is no sin so great and no life so messed up that Gods mercy, love, and grace cannot overcome, redeem, resurrect, and put back together through the great serpent crushing, grave robbing, all-sufficient redeemer Himselfnamely Jesus Christ! We sing as the Church not because of how we feel or what style of music we like, we sing because the words we sing are true like the words in the modern hymn, In Christ Alone:
In Christ alone, who took on fleshFullness of God in helpless babeThis gift of love and righteousnessScorned by the ones He came to save'Til on that cross as Jesus diedThe wrath of God was satisfiedFor every sin on Him was laidHere in the death of Christ I live, I live
No guilt in life, no fear in deathThis is the power of Christ in meFrom life's first cry to final breathJesus commands my destinyNo power of , no scheme of manCan ever pluck me from His handTill He returns or calls me homeHere in the power of Christ I'll stand
[1] Phil Wickham and Brian Johnson; Living Hope
[2] Bryan Chapell, Reformed Expository Commentary: Ephesians (Phillipsburg, NJ: PR Publishing; 2009), p. 83.

What Can be Worse Than Death?

Well, we have arrived at Ephesians 2, and the very first thing we are told is that the Christian was once dead. I love the irony in the fact that we are entering Ephesians 2 on the day where all of us are suffering from one less hour of sleep this morning (Daylight Savings Time). So, what I thought I would do before we plunge ourselves into our passage this morning is to first reflect on four of the weirdest ways people have died.
For those of you who are still angry that you lost an hour of your sleep, just know that it is a miracle you made it this morning. It is estimated that 450 people die falling out of bed every year.
According to statistics, you are twice as likely to die from an angry vending machine than a hungry shark.
It is reported that about 24 people die annually from being hit by champagne corks in the face, mostly at weddings. Less people die from poisonous spiders than flying corks from champagne bottles!
The weirdest death I learned about was that of Joao Maria de Souza of Brazil, who was killed in 2013 when a cow fell through his roof and crushed him while he slept.
Whether it is by falling out of a bed, a falling cow through your roof, or the inevitable and eventual failing of your health, all of us are going to die one day.
What does Dead Mean?
I do not need to spend a whole lot of time explaining what dead means. The word the apostle Paul used from the original language means exactly what the word dead means. If you are confused as to what the word for dead (nekros) means, it means this: no longer having life. However, why does the apostle Paul use the word dead to describe who or what the Christian used to be? Paul could have said, you were sick in your offenses and sins. He could have chosen the words, handicap, wounded, or he even could have used the same line from The Princess Bride, which was: mostly dead. The difference between dead and mostly dead is that when you are mostly dead, you are slightly alive. Of all the words the apostle could have used, he chose the word, dead. What if Ephesians 2:1-4, stated this instead? And you were mostly dead in your offenses and sins. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were barely alive in our wrongdoings, made us completely alive together with Christ. But that is not how Ephesians 2 begins is it?
To understand what Paul means by the word dead we need to go to the place the apostle pulled the word from in the Bible, and that place is found in Genesis. You remember the story; in the beginning, even when, the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1-2). Then, after all but mankind was created, on the sixth day God said, Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness (1:26). God created mankind above and separate from the rest of creation, for unlike the rest of creation, mankind was created in His image: So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth (vv. 27-28).
It is from Genesis 2:15-17 that Paul pulls the word dead from to explain what the Christian once was: Then the LordGod took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and tend it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die. The Hebrew word used for die (מות) in Genesis 2:17 means death, and every other time the word is used, it is used for death.
When we come to Genesis 3 and Adam and Even ate the fruit God told them not to eat, they did not physically die in that moment, but what happened next gives us a sense for what it means to be dead in the way Paul describes the Christian used to be. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were tempted by the words of the serpent who said: You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5). The physical death Adam, Eve, and the rest of creation would eventually experience is that which all living things would now succumb to, but it also included a type of death that was beyond physical. They experienced a death of innocence through shame (v.7), they experienced a death of an intimacy and peace within the relationship their marriage was designed to produce (vv. 16-17), and they experienced a death of the kind of peace (shalom) they were created to experience with God and His creation (vv. 8-15; 4:1-8).
The death God warned Adam and Eve about was a spiritual death and it was their sin that vandalized the shalom they enjoyed before their rebellion towards God through their sin against God out of a desire to be like God. This is the kind of death Paul was referring to in Ephesians 2:1 and is the kind of death (nekros) Jesus had in mind when one of His disciples asked to bury his father; Jesus said to his disciple: Follow Me, and let the dead [nekros] bury their own dead [nekros] (Matt. 8:22). What Jesus said to His disciple is to leave the corpse of his father to those who are still dead in their offenses and sinsthis is the kind of death all people are born into before they ever experience a physical death.
How Guilty Where You?
So, what does it mean to be dead? Paul tells us in the first verse: And you were dead in your offenses and sins. Just so that you are clear, if you are a Christian, you were dead, and your deadness was twofold: in your offenses and sins. Again, Paul is intentional with his word choice here, and instead of using only one word, he uses two. We are dead in our offenses in that we were guilty of overstepping Gods moral boundary. The Greek word Paul used for offense (paraptōmo) can also be translated: offense, wrongdoing, sin, transgress, or to trespass.
When I was fourteen years old, my friends and I decided to break into a house we believed was abandoned, to steal copper, and we did it in broad daylight. We thought we were cunning enough to get into the house without being noticed, in spite of the fact that the street the house was on was a very busy road and on the other side of the road, directly across from the house we decided to break into, was a popular Harley Davidson Shop. Well, you probably are not surprised that we did get caught. Within minutes of my one friend finding his way into the house through a window, a big scary man on a Harley demanded that we stand face forward toward the house while 3-4 police cars arrived. The three of us were put in separate police cars after we were interrogated by one of the officers. We knew that we were in big trouble because we trespassed and broke the law. I was also convinced that I was going to be a dead teenager once my father found out what I had done.
When Adam and Eve bit into the fruit, what you need to understand and what you must understand is that it was not just a misstep taken, but a deliberate act of cosmic treason to not only be like God, but to dethrone God! What else could have been the motive for Eve and Adam, who was right next to his wife when she bit into the fruit and gave it to him, to take and eat the very thing that God said would bring pervasive death? The temptation was to doubt the goodness of God because of the fruit He forbade them to eat: You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5). The temptation was to believe what Adam and Eve needed was not God but what was forbidden by God!
Since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, sin, like a terminal disease has found its way into the womb of every woman just as the Psalmist lamented: Behold, I was brought forth in guilt, and in sin my mother conceived me (Ps. 51:5). What does this mean? you ask. It means this: just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned (Rom. 5:12). Or in the words of Cornelius Plantinga: Sin is a plague that spreads by contagion or even by quasimetric reproduction. Its a polluted river that keeps branching and rebranching into tributaries. Its a whole family of fertile and contentious parents, children, and grandchildren.[1]
Your deadness in the form of your offenses and sins was not the kind of deadness that leaves what was once alive stiff and inanimate; no, your deadness expressed itself because, you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (vv. 2-3). You were a dead person walking! You were the spiritual and moral equivalent of George Romeros Night of the Living Dead! Notice how our offenses and sins were manifested:
We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil).
We were disobedient.
We lived in the lusts of our flesh.
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind.
We were children of wrath.
According to verse 2, this is the course of this world. The word for course can also be translated age; the point is that we walked according to the spirit of the age because it was our nature to do so. We were spiritually dead and stood before a Holy God as a walking corpse who, according to Romans 3, not only did not seek God (vv. 10-11) but had no fear of Him (v. 18). As the walking dead, we were enemies of the God of the living (see Rom. 5:10). As children of wrath, we stood before God as objects of His just wrath because of our offenses and sins. If you are not a Christian than Ephesians 2:1-3 is still true of you. You are still spiritually dead, and you are still a child of the wrath of an infinitely holy and just God and the place reserved for you, if nothing changes, is a condemnation you will never recover from; the kind of condemnation we are warned about in Revelation 20:11-15,
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them; and they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyones name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
People are generally okay when it comes to topics such as the love of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God, and even the justice of God. What many struggle with most is the wrath of God. Dr. James Boice said of these verses in Ephesians, The worldly mind does not take Gods wrath seriously because it does not take sin seriously. Yet if sin is as bad as the Bible declares it to be, nothing is more just or reasonable than that the wrath of a holy God should rise against it.[2] If you struggle with just how serious God takes your sin, you need not look any further than the cross of Christ.
What is the Remedy for All Your Sin?
I will spend an entire sermon unpacking what we see in verses 4-7 next week, but for now, let me show you Ephesians 2:4-5 against the backdrop of verses 1-3. We were dead in our offenses and sins, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil), but God
We were disobedient, but God
We lived in the lusts of our flesh, but God
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind, but God
We were children of wrath, but God made us alive with Christ.
How did God do it? Obviously, He did it through Jesus, but the reason He did it was threefold: 1) He is rich in mercy, 2) His love is great, and 3) His grace is sufficient. Mercy happens when you do not get the punishment you deserve, and grace is when you get something you did not earn or deserve. If you are Christian, the reason you received Gods mercy and grace is because His love for you was greater than your offenses and sins against Him.
Permit me to show you something that I hope will bless you as much as it has blessed me this week. Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:18-19; he was praying that the eyes of the hearts of those reading his letter would see and know three things: that you would know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe. The word Paul used for boundless means, to surpass, to go beyond, to exceed. As you remember from last week, that word is used to stress the kind of power that raised Jesus from the grave and made your salvation possible. That power in conjunction with the richness of Gods mercy, the greatness of God love, and the sufficiency of Gods grace is infinitely greater than all your transgressions and sins.
Christian, although you were once a child of Gods just wrath, He has made you a son/daughter because He has done the thing that only He could do, He made you alive with Christ. Romans 5:10-11 is for you Christian: For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, he shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
If you are not a Christian, then you need to hear this: the same mercy, love, and grace that has made the Christian alive in Christ is available to you if you would just receive by faith the Jesus who makes Gods mercy, love, and grace possible; there is no sin that is too great for Gods mercy, love, and grace to overcomeand it is still held out to you by a holy God who has every right to consume you by His wrath.
[1] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way its Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995) p. 53.
[2] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 49.

Greater than the Power of 300 Billion Suns

Two Thursdays ago, my wife and I left our home around 8AM for a doctors appointment in Colorado. Every time I get into our Subaru Outback, I plug my phone into our car so that I can use my maps app and listen to my favorite playlist during my drive, our drive down to Colorado on Thursday was no exception until about 15 minutes into our drive the radio let out a irritating high pitched sound prohibiting me from listening to my newly downloaded navigation voice from one of my favorite movies of all time: Po, from Kung Fu Panda. We have a 2021 Subaru Outback, there was no reason for the audio to have abruptly stop working, but it did. However, nearly an hour later, after stopping for a pit stop, the audio mysteriously was fixed as soon as I started the car to continue our trip to our doctors appointment.
After we reached our destination, I immediately google searched on my phone to see if anything weird happened that would cause the audio in our car to do what it did. Here is what popped up in my search: Two outbursts from the sun occurred as widespread cellphone outages were reported throughout the United States on Thursday morning (Feb. 22). I am not sure it is related, but on Sunday we learned that all but four of our brand-new pagers stopped working over the weekend, our live stream audio stopped working properly, and a sim card in one of our Elders phones weirdly got fried.Thats not all, on Monday while checking out from Albertsons, I was told that they were having trouble with their computers.
Now, I dont know if any of this is related or if it has anything to do with Solar flares or the mysterious balloon that happened to be floating 43,000 feet above, the mountainous Western United States. Here is what did come to mind though: Our electrical grid is fragile, and it is vulnerable. With all our military might and power as a nation, we are not in control! I dont know what happened on Thursday, but here is what was reported in New Delhi, India just this past Wednesday (2.28.2024) on WION with the news caption: Massive sunspot wider than Earth is now aiming directly at us. Is it cause for worry?
Recently, scientists noticed that a hyperactive sunspot, first detected on February 18, is now swelling at a faster rate and is pointed right towards Earth. In 2024, the biggest sunspot named AR3590 first appeared on February 18, on the Suns Earth-facing side. It quickly started swelling into a dark patch, much wider than our planet.
On February 21, AR3950 spit out a pair of X-class solar flares, which are known as the most powerful type of solar flare, with magnitudes of X1.7 and X1.8. On February 22, the same sunspot released a massive X6.3 flare, the most powerful solar explosion recorded in over six years.
All three flares caused temporary radio blackouts on Earth, but none of them launched coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are clouds of magnetized plasma that can ram into Earth's magnetic shield as they fly through space.[1]
We are fragile and we are not in control! You, dear friend, are fragile and have little to say over whether or not you will survive the next 24 hours. Consider that reality against the backdrop of the fragility of your faith and determination to live a life pleasing to the One who made the sun, and billions like it, that has the power to wipe out all of Earths power grid in seconds. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light (Gen. 1:1-3).
Christian, the same God who spoke into existence more than 300 billion suns like ours, is the One of whom we are told in Holy Scripture, has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). This is the God who called you, redeemed you, and sealed you. This is the God who is keeping you because He will receive His inheritance! The question before us and the one that Ephesians 1:19-23 answers for us is this: How can I know that I can rest in the hope of that same Gods calling upon my life; that I can stand on the reality that I am His inheritance because of all that Jesus has done, and experience the greatness of His power through the indwelling and sealing of the Holy Spirit? Let us turn our attention to Ephesians 1:19-23 to find out!
The Christians Salvation is Held by Resurrection Power
The power Paul described in Ephesians, among other places in his epistles, is a power that enables those of us who are redeemed by Christ to fight against sin, doubt, worry, and any other adversary that threatens to undo those of us who have been called by God, are the inheritance of God, and have been raised to new life by God.
To have the eyes of our hearts enlightened in such a way that we know the hope of our calling, the riches of His inheritance, and boundless power toward us who believe, is the kind of knowing involving the mind, heart, and will. After all, Jesus did say that the greatest commandment is, You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (see Matt. 22:35-40). But it is also more than that. James Montgomery Boice said, Christianity is knowledge, yes. But it is also power, power from beginning to end. Without the power of God not one individual would ever become a Christian. The salvation of the soul is a resurrection, the recovery of a person from the dead. Without Gods power not one individual would ever triumph over sin, live a godly life, or come at last to the reward God has for all his own in heaven.[2]
The word Paul used for power is the Greek word dynamis, from which we get the word dynamite; it is used over 100 times in the New Testament, Acts 1:8 being one of them. He used it to describe a raw and supernatural power that comes from God. This power is available to the Christian, and it is described as boundless and great. The word Paul used for great is the Greek word megathos, and the word he used for boundless literally means, to surpass, go beyond, to outdo, or to exceed. This is why almost every trustworthy English translation of the Bible reaches for words to capture the kind of power available to the Christian. Here are some of the ways these words are translated: surpassing greatness (NASB 95), incomparably great (NIV), exceeding greatness (KJV), immeasurable greatness (ESV), and incredible greatness (NLT). It is the boundless, surpassing, incomparable, exceeding, immeasurable, and incredible greatness of Gods power that is available to the Christian.
Paul then describes that this power, along with the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance that he wants us to see with the eyes of our hearts, is, in accordance with the working of the strength of His might (v. 19b). The boundless power is working in you Christian, it is producing a strength to resist the devil and your flesh, and the might is what is required for you to persevere to the end without throwing in the towel of your faith in Jesus. Notice how we get this power from what Paul states next: which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and all of it is from the God who, raised Jesus from the dead (v. 20a). In other words, the Power is Gods, and the victory is yours in Jesus.
What is it that will keep you when everything seems to have been pulled out from beneath your proverbial feet? What is it that will keep you when nothing you treasured on earth remains within your grasp? Who will be keeping who in your weakest and most fragile moments in life?
The Christians Identity is Guarded by a Preeminent Christ
So, how is the boundless, surpassing, incomparable, exceeding, immeasurable, and incredible greatness of Gods power available to the Christian? Paul tells us in the next verse: It is a power available to the Christian, which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places (v. 20).
Before I go any further, you need to understand that what I mean by preeminent is what the Airbus A380 is to a paper airplane. The Airbus A380 can seat between 525 and 853 passengers on its two full-length passenger decks: the Airbus A380 is preeminent to the paper airplane.
There is a reason why Paul emphasizes the phrase, In Christ repeatedly in his epistle to the Ephesians. Your identity as one who has been called by God and who is now the inheritance of God, is solely because of the redeeming work of Christ: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (vv. 7-8). What did our redemption cost? It cost Jesus His life! He was the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 who was, pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed (v. 5). Jesus was crushed because He became our curse: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for usfor it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Gal. 3:13). Jesus, the Son of God, humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross.
Christian, all of your sin was laid upon Jesus for all of your redemption. Isaiah 53:10 states that, the Lord desired to crush Him, causing Him grief and the reason why God crushed the Son was not only for our redemption, but was to redeem a Bride for His Son! This was always the plan and was never plan B! The Lamb of God was slaughtered because of your sin, was then buried, and was raised! How come Jesus didnt stay dead? In his sermon, the apostle Peter explained: God raised Him from the dead, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power (Acts 2:24). The reason why death had no power over Jesus is because He is the author of life! So, Paul wrote to the Ephesians that all of the blessings that now belong to the Christian are, in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places (v. 20).
Listen, just as the cross of Christ is the display of Gods immeasurable love for you Christian, the resurrection is the display of a power that no other power manufactured by or through creation can compare not even the power of 300 billion suns have the ability to do what God did, when He raised Jesus from the dead. This is why Isaiah 53 does not end with the Suffering Servants affliction for our sin, but continues with verse 10, But the Lord desired to crush Him, causing Him grief. The Hebrew word for desired (חפץ) can also be translated take pleasure or delight in. This is the way Isaiah 53:10 should be translated: But the Lord delighted to crush Him, causing Him grief. Why? Is it because God the Father is some cosmic child abuser? No! We are told in the last verse why the Father delighted to crush the Son: Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the plunder with the strong, Because He poured out His life unto death, and was counted with wrongdoers; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the wrongdoers (Isa. 53:12). Do you hear Isaiah 53:12 in Ephesians 20-23? Listen to it again!
He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Eph. 1:1923)
To be clear, Jesus was not exalted because He lacked something before He took on human flesh. There was nothing lacking in Him at all because He is not a part of creation but the agent of creation! This is why Paul wrote to the Colossian Church of Jesus: for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authoritiesall things have been created through Him and for Him (Col. 1:16).
God the Father exalted the Son at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named (v. 21) not because Jesus wasnt exalted before He took on flesh. God the Father exalted the Son because, He emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross (Phil. 2:7-8). In other words, God the Son became human to accomplish all that was needed to make the redemption of a sin-cursed and lost humanity possible.
Jesus is exalted as our Kinsmen-redeemer! What is a kinsmen-redeemer? He is a person that had to meet three requirements to redeem property lost due to a debt; the three requirements were that he had to be related to the family who suffered the loss because of a debt, he had to be willing to redeem what was lost, and he had to have the means to redeem what was lost. Because of Adam and Eves sin, creation is under a curse and every single human being since Adam, have been born into sin. Jesus took on flesh to become our kinsmen redeemer, and as our Kinsmen Redeemer, God, put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Why did Jesus willingly take on human flesh to become our Kinsmen Redeemer? He did it for a Bride! He did it for His Church! Our sun is capable of producing a flare big enough to completely wipe out all of the earths power grid, and yet 300 billion suns cannot do what God did through His Son for your salvation Christian! The reason why Jesus could say to His disciples, they will put some of you to death. And yet not a hair of your head will perish (Luke 21:16-18). The reason Jesus could promise the Christian: My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Fathers hand. I and the Father are one (John 10:2730). And, the reason Jesus has assured us: I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it (Matt. 16:18), is because of His cross and the empty tomb, Jesus has double headship. What do I mean by double headship? I mean that as Kinsmen Redeemer, Jesus is head over Creation by dominion and He is head over the Church by union.
What this means for you, Christian, is that you are His Church, and because you are His Church, you now share in His triumph because He has joined Himself to you as your Groom! What this means Christian is that you are the apple of His eye and not even the power of 300 billion suns can ever change that! Now wrap the eyes of your heart around that! Amen.
[1] Riya Teotia, WION: Massive Sunspot wider than Earth is now aiming directly at us. Is it cause for worry (New Delhi, India: WION; February 28, 2024)
[2] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 40.

The Three What’s of the Christian Life

Let me begin by stating some truths about what it means to be a Christian that most of you already know: because you are in Christ, you are a son/daughter of the almighty God (v. 5), you are forgiven (v. 7), you are a new creation (vv. 9-10), and you have a glorious inheritance waiting for you that will never fade with time, can never be destroyed, and will forever be untouched by sin (v. 11; see also 1 Pet. 1:3-5). If you are a Christian, your reality and identity include all things made new (Rev. 21:1-5), all things for your good (Rom. 8:28-30), and all things for Gods glory! If you are a Christian, the God of Isaiah 46:9-11 is for you and not against you, for He has declared: For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My plan will be established, and will accomplish all My good pleasure. When it comes to your struggle(s) in living out the Christian faith, it has more to do with a lack of knowledge of who you are in Christ or an ignored knowledge of who you are in Christ.
All of what we have read and studied in Ephesians 1:1-14 can only be true of you if verses 15-17 are true of you: For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. The four character traits Paul lists in these verses are true of those who have been saved and redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ:
A faith that is IN Jesus.
A loyalty to the LORDSHIP of Jesus.
A LOVE for those who belong to Jesus.
A pursuit to KNOW Jesus.
Two Types of Knowing for the Christian
Now, I want to show you something that I did not have the time to show you last week, but you need to give me a little space to geek out a bit over two different words that Paul uses in the original language (Greek) that you cannot see in your English Bible; all that you see in your Bible is the word, knowledge (v. 17), and know (v. 18). The word for knowledge in verse 17 is ginōskō, and I made a big deal over that word for good reason. The knowledge of Jesus that Paul refers to in verse 17 is the kind of discovery that involves more than your mind, for it includes the experience of your whole person and is the kind of knowledge that is relational.
The second Greek word for know is used in verse 18, and that word is oida. This kind of knowing can be experiential, but it is also a cognitive awareness of something or someone with certainty; it is the same word Paul used for know in 2 Timothy 1:12, For this reason I also suffer these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know [oida] whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to protect what I have entrusted to Him until that day. In the case of Ephesians 1:18 and 2 Timothy 1:12, you cannot have oida unless you have a relationship (ginōskō) with Jesus. Let me say what I just said differently for clarity: The kind of knowing Paul is praying for in verses 18-19 by way of the enlightened eyes of your heart cannot be experienced unless you ginōskō (know) Jesus (v. 17). In other words, there is no life-giving calling from God (vv. 3-6), no belonging to God (vv. 7-12), and no resurrection power from God apart from knowing Jesus.
Illustrations tend to fall short when it comes to explaining who God is or the dynamics of what it means to know Him. However, when it comes to what Paul means by the eyes of your heart the best illustration I can think of for what he wanted these Christians to discover is the experience Roimaw and I had when we decided to have children. There was a difference between knowing Nathan with the first store-bought pregnancy test that was positive, and the first images we saw of him on the ultrasound. With every test and ultrasound image measuring Nathans development, Roimaws knowledge as a mother and my knowledge as a father grew, and what began as an understanding that we would soon be parents grew into something much, much more. While he was unseen in his mothers womb, we prayed for him, we read to him, and we loved him. But I got to tell you after Nathan was born and we held him for the first time, both Roimaw and I saw him with the eyes of our heart! We saw him with the eyes of our heart in such a way that neither she nor I could ever imagine life without him.
There are three blessings Paul lists in verses 18-19 that he wants Christians everywhere to see with the eyes of their hearts, and it is to these blessings we turn our attention now. I want you to wrap your arms around the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance, and the greatness of His power towards all who believe.
What is the Hope of His Calling
It is Pauls prayer that these Christians will have the eyes of their hearts opened in such a way that they know what is, the hope of His calling. Notice that Paul did not say: the hope of your calling. What is the hope of Gods calling upon your life Christian? Well, we already know something of that calling from what we read in Ephesians 1:3-6; God knew you before the foundation of the world, saw all the rotten fruit of your spiritual deadness, and chose you anyway. To be chosen is to be called, and it is the calling of God that Paul wants the eyes of our hearts to see so that we can know just what that means practically.
If your salvation and faith are rooted in the call of God that predates earth itself, then dont you think that God is doing something in your life that is much bigger than anything that you may suffer on this side of eternity? Paul elaborates on this very point in Romans 8:28-30,
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
What is the hope of His calling? Listen to Romans 8:31, If God is for us, who is against us? God called you therefore He is for you! What does that mean practically? Well, Jesus said this to his disciples: But you will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, other relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all people because of My name. And yet not a hair of your head will perish (Luke 21:1618). In other words, man may do his worst to you, but the worst he can do is kill you; what he cannot do is destroy you because of the One who called you! The hope of Gods calling is this: He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will (v. 5).
Listen, the hope is yours because the calling was His. This is good news because your love is fragile, but His love is infinite! The hope of His calling is rooted in this reality: Gods infinite love for you, Christian, is as great as His infinite sovereignty.
What are the Riches of His Inheritance in the Saints
Just as your hope is rooted in His calling, the inheritance Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts will see so that we will know belongs to God. What inheritance belongs to God? Gods inheritance is all those whom He called, all those He predestined to adopt as His children, and all those who have been redeemed by the blood of His Son. I will say it another way: The Christian is counted as Gods inheritance. Yes, the Bible indeed teaches that God is our inheritance, the apostle Peter even said as much in his epistle: For Christ also suffered for sins once for all time, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18). However, we are Gods inheritance, and that is good news!
In what ways are we Gods inheritance? For starters we are told in the first fourteen verses that God chose us as a Father (v. 4), to redeem us through His Son (v. 7), to seal us through His Spirit (v. 13) to make us His holy and blameless (v. 4) adopted children (v. 6) with all the rights that come with being His children (v. 11)! In Ephesians 1:14, we are told that the Holy Spirit, is a first installment of our inheritance, in regard to the redemption of Gods possession. In 1 Peter 2:9, we read: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy nation, a people for Gods own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 that the reason why it matters what we do with our bodies is that we belong to God: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
It is one thing to understand that we are Gods possession, but Paul explicitly prays that the eyes of the hearts of his readers would be enlightened to know, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance. Yes, it is true that Jesus died for our sins so that we could be reconciled to God, and yes, it is true that we are Gods treasured possession, but to be put into the category that we, who are the redeemed, are Gods inheritance is staggering! How is this staggering you may be asking? Well, if we are Gods inheritance, He will get what belongs to Him and no one absolutely no oneno demon, no power, no authority, no government, not Satan, and not even death will keep God from receiving His inheritance! Now against the backdrop of that reality, wrap your arms around Jesus promises to His people: My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Fathers hand (John 10:2729). If you belong to Jesus, then it is the Father who sings over you as His inheritance: The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will rejoice over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy (Zeph. 3:17).
Listen, the reality that you are Gods inheritance is rooted in Gods infinite love that is equal to His infinite power, and that love has been, is being, and will forever be lavished upon you! Mark my words, the One who, declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My plan will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10), will receive His inheritance!
What is the Boundless Greatness of His Power Toward Us Who Believe
The third and final thing Paul prayed for was that the eyes of the hearts of the Church would be enlightened to know the, boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places (vv. 19-20). Listen to how the NIV translates these verses from the Greek: That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:1920, NIV). Bryan Chapell, in his commentary on Ephesians, said of these verses, The promise of Gods affection is not our only hope; Paul also prays for the Spirit to give eyes to see Gods incomparably great power for us who believe (Eph. 1:19a). The promise is not only of an inheritance to come, but of power, great power for us.[1]
Think about it, who can avoid the power of death? No one can, for death is coming for us all! Yet, there is One who conquered death, and the same power that raised Jesus from the grave is at work in you Christian! This power would be beyond our reach apart from knowing Jesus; but now that you have been called by God, and are the inheritance of God because of the redeeming work of the Lamb of God, this power is now ours. Jesus is our groom and we are His bride; He has declared, I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it" (Matt. 16:18b). nor the grave have any power over Jesus Church, and you dear Christian are the Church!
You have been given the Holy Spirit as a Helper by Jesus, and sealed by the Holy Spirit through Jesus to empower you to live your life for Jesus for the glory of God and the good of all those who are merely hanging by a thread over and the only hope of escape and salvation is the hope that is now ours in Christ! We are a walking testament to the power of God to change lives through the good news of the gospel and can claim with the apostle: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Rom. 1:16). It is the same power that rescued us that now keeps us, and we can know with confidence the same thing the saints of old experienced as the Church:
For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. (2 Corinthians 4:610)
This power that is ours in Jesus, is the power of the risen Christ to fight against sin, doubt, worry, and any other adversary that threatens to undo those who have been called by God, are the inheritance of God, and have been raised to new life by God. Our strength is His strength, and because of that truth, which is now our truth, we can celebrate with the apostle Paul: For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6).
Amen.
[1] Bryan Chapell, Reformed Expository Commentary: Ephesians (Phillipsburg, NJ: PR Publishing; 2009); p. 69.

You Were Saved to Know Jesus

There is a story about a baby eagle who fell out of his nest and into a chicken coop. As the little eagle grew up, he began to cluck like a chicken, strut like a chicken, think like a chicken. But every day he noticed the eagles soaring high in the sky, always sensing that he was meant for something more than the chicken coop, but never realizing who he really was. The difference between the eagles that soared and the one living in the chicken coop was his understanding of who he really was. I think the Christian can go through life in the same way.
I said at the beginning of our series in Ephesians that Pauls epistle answers two questions for us: 1) What does it mean to be a Christian, and 2) what does it mean to be the Church. When it comes to your identity as a Christian, some of you may be living like you belong in the chicken coop.
Think about what it means to be a Christian according to Ephesians 1:3-14. You, Christian, have all the spiritual blessings listed throughout Pauls magnificent sentence of more than 200 words! You, Christian, have been chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless (v. 4). You, Christian, have been predestined to be the adopted son/daughter of the living God through the redemption of Jesus Christ (vv. 5-7). You, Christian, have been completely pardoned of past, present, and future sins only because of the grace of God that has been lavished upon you as a result of the Fathers wrath that was lavished upon the Son for all of our wrongdoings (Eph. 1:8; 2:1-4). You, Christian, have an inheritance that will not fade with time, cannot be destroyed, and will never be stained by sin (v. 11). You, Christian, have been sealed by Gods Spirit as His guarantee of salvation that will be completed and the full experience of all Gods blessings that you will receive (vv. 13-14). You, Christian, are loved by the God of Isaiah 46:9-11, and you are the beneficiary of all His good pleasure.
Christian, you were saved not for the sake of being saved, not for the forgiveness of your sins, not for a pain-free eternity in heaven, not for loved ones who preceded you in death, or for any other reason but for the purpose of knowing Christ, and by knowing Christ, you can know God. I can say this because of the first three words in Ephesians 1:15-23, which state the reason for why Paul prays, what Paul prays, and how Paul can pray for the Christians in Ephesus, and those three words are: For this reason
Now, I know that these verses teach us something about how we can structure our prayers. I believe that the way Paul expressed his thanksgiving for the Ephesian Christians and why and how he prayed for them can serve as a model for how we can structure our prayers for one another, but that is not how I want to use our time this morning. What I want to do with our time together is glean what we learn from these verses.
Why Paul Prays for the Christians (vv. 15-17)
How do you follow one of the most majestic statements about the salvation of lost humanity found in Ephesians 1:1-14? You do it with Ephesians 1:15-23. The apostle Paul begins, For this reason. For what reason, Paul? For the reason contained in the over 200 words that make up Ephesians 1:1-14. For the reason that the Christian has been chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless (v. 4). For the reason that the Christian has been predestined to be the adopted child of God the Father through the redemption of Jesus the Son (vv. 5-7). For the reason that the Christian has been fully pardoned of past, present, and future sins because of Jesus (Eph. 1:8; 2:1-4). For the reason that the Christian has an inheritance that will not fade with time, cannot be destroyed, and will never be stained by sin (v. 11). For the reason that the Christian has been sealed by the Holy Spirit as Gods guarantee of salvation and redemption that will one day be fully complete (vv. 13-14). For all of these reasons is the reason the apostle wrote of the Ephesian Christians that he did, not cease to give thanks for them, while making mention of them in his prayers (v. 16).
Notice what the apostle says about these Christians against the backdrop of the first fourteen verses: having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints (v. 15). What did Paul hear about these Christians? He heard about their faith in Jesus and their love for one another while in prison. In other words, the reality of who these Christians were was expressed through the way they lived. Paul specifically and intentionally notes that the faith of these Christians was in more than facts they agreed with, but in the Lord Jesus and the evidence of their faith was seen in the way they treated each other.
Because Paul heard of the faith and love of these Christians, he prayed for them, and what He prayed also teaches us something about what it means to be a Christian. Pauls prayer for these Christians is simple: That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him (v. 17). Notice what it is that Paul does not pray for; he does not pray for more power, or success, or easy living, or any other thing but that God would give them, a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
The wisdom and revelation Paul prayed for can only be given to them by God; this is why many theologians believe that the word, spirit is a reference to the Holy Spirit. Others believe that the word spirit is not a reference to the Holy Spirit but the spiritual part of us that lives on after the physical death of our bodies. Regardless of whose spirit Paul is referring to here, what is clear in light of the sealing of the Holy Spirit and His work in the life of the Christian (vv. 13-14), is that it is the Holy Spirit who enables our growth through the authority of the Word of God (revelation) when it is applied to the way we live our lives (wisdom).
What does the Word of God (revelation), and its application (wisdom) to our lives, produce? It produces the kind of knowledge of God that Paul longed for in his own life as he expressed in Philippians 3:10-11, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. The same word Paul used in Philippians 3 for know (ginōskō), he also used in Ephesians 1:17. The Christian was saved by the grace of God to have a relationship with God and Pauls prayer is that the relationship would only deepen through a faith rooted in Jesus as Lord of their lives.
What Paul Prays for the Christians (vv. 18-19a)
In verses 15-17, Paul lists four character traits of those who have been saved and redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ; those character traits mark the person who has truly been born again, and they are as follows:
A faith that is IN Jesus.
A loyalty to the LORDSHIP of Jesus.
A LOVE for those who belong to Jesus.
A pursuit to KNOW Jesus.
It is because of these character traits that Paul prays for a deepening knowledge of God that is intellectual, experiential, and emotional - because it is a knowledge that involves the mind, the will, and the heart. In verses 18-19, Paul unpacks what specifically he is praying for. His prayer is that the eyes of their hearts will be enlightened. What Paul is praying for is that the hearts of these Christians would see and understand what God has done for them. The word Paul uses for heart is kardia; he could have used a word for mind as he did in Philippians 2:5, Have this mind [proneō] in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. Or Paul could have used a different word for mind that Luke used in his gospel to describe the way Jesus opened the minds of two disciples who were confused over the death and news of his resurrection: Then He opened their minds [nous] to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45).
However, Paul used the word kardia (heart), and he put an eye on it. What are eyes on a heart good for? They are good for seeing what God has done for you so that you can see the heavenly blessings listed in Ephesians 1:1-14, which are yours, and that you will know that they are yours not only with your mind but with your heart. Permit me to put it in a way you may understand more clearly. At the beginning of this series in Ephesians, I listed several truths that are rooted in the identity of the Christian. I said that if you are a Christian and your faith is in the Lord Jesus, then the following is true of you:
You are saved by the will of God.
You have the grace and peace of God.
You have the blessing of God.
You are redeemed to be holy and blameless before God.
You are a son/daughter of God.
You are favored by God.
You are forgiven by God.
You are rich in the grace of God. You now know God.
You have a future with God.
You are secure because of God.
You are treasured by God.
Listen, if you are a Christian, the reason why Paul does not pray for your adoption as a son/daughter, or for more salvation, or more purpose, or more of the inheritance, or more resurrection power, or more of the Holy Spirit is because they are already yours in Christ.What Paul prays for is the thing that we need, and what we need is to know (ginōskō) that they are ours in Christ (v. 17), and to know that they are ours is that they are ours; as you know it is the word used for when Abraham knew Sarah, but maybe what you have not considered is to have known her was to experienced her fully with a mind, a heart, and will that was bound to her as his wife.Paul uses uses a different word for know in verse 18 (oida) that also is the type of knowing that is tied to a persons experience: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know [oida].I will say more about this next week, but for now, I want to show you what specifically we are to know as Christians.Paul lists three blessings that he wants his Christian readers to know: 1) What is the hope of His calling, 2) what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance, and 3) what is the boundless greatness of His power.I will revisit these three whats that Paul mentions next week, but I will briefly mention what they mean for you now as a way to whet your appetite to come back next Sunday:
The hope of His calling: The calling is the kind of thing Paul described in Ephesians 1:3-6 and 2:1-4. You were not looking for God because not only did you not know God, but you were also dead and unresponsive to God spiritually, and then He called you in the same way Jesus called Lazarus to come out of the tomb even though he had been dead for four days (see John 11:1-46). If you are a Christian, you are only a Christian because God called you by breaking into the tomb of your unbelief to give you life. God called you out of His great mercy to make you alive in Christ!
The riches of His inheritance: Oh, this is so good, and I cant wait to unpack this with you next week, but for now, what I want you to know is that the inheritance is you Christian! I know this grammatically, but also because of what we read in verses 13-14, In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvationhaving also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance, in regard to the redemption of Gods own possession, to the praise of His glory. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit as, Gods own possession and because of what He has done to secure the salvation of wretched sinners through His own Son, we are now His inheritance! If you are a Christian, you are now Gods treasured child and because you are redeemed in Christ, what God sees is not a wretched sinner, but a treasure. The riches of His inheritance are that you are loved and given all the rights that come with being his treasured child.
The knowledge of the boundless greatness of His power: The power is what we already have as those who have been called by God and belong to Him as His inheritance. What sort of power is it that we have? It is the power of the risen Christ. Paul tells us that this is the power that is ours in the rest of these verses: These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead (vv. 19b-20). Think about it, who can avoid the power of death? No one can, for death is coming for us all! Yet, there is One who conquered death, and the same power that conquered the grave is at work in you Christian! What Paul wants us to know with all our being is that because of our faith in Jesus as Lord, we are progressively moving from death to life.
Because you are called by God and because you are His inheritance, the power of God is at work in and through you just as Paul described in Romans 8:11, But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. As one person wrote of this amazing promise that is for the Christian: This power is ours to witness, to overcome sin, to pursue holiness, to fight against the schemes of the Devil, and to have great faith for mission.[1]
There is a magnet on my filing cabinet in my office with one of my favorite quotes from Jonathan Edwards that says, You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. The one who made your salvation possible is the One you were made to know through and in Jesus. If you really know that it is He who called you, that it is you who are now His inheritance and treasure, and that the power that raised Jesus to life is the same resurrection power at work in and through your life then dont you know that you will be with Christ with a resurrected body on a resurrected earth one day and while with Him, with 10 billion years behind us, we will still know only a joy that will increase with every moment we are with Him. Paul prays that we will live our lives in light of a knowledge that not only acknowledges and understands that truth; but with a knowledge that encounters that truth with the eyes of our hearts.
[1] Tony Merida, Christ-Centered Exposition: Ephesians (Nashville, TN: Holman; 2014), p. 39.

The Assurance of Our Salvation

Before we can jump into Ephesians 1:13-14, I must address what or who it is that Paul is talking about in these verses. Until you understand what or who the apostle is talking about in these verses, you cannot understand or feel the gravity of Ephesians 1:13-14 upon your life. So, to feel the full weight of these verses, permit me to introduce you to the Holy Spirit.
The first time we are introduced to the Holy Spirit is in Genesis 1:1-2 with these words: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for Spirit is raḥ, which can also mean wind or breath, but when used in association with God, it often refers to the Holy Spirit, not as a thing or a characteristic like love or holiness, but a person. This same word is used in Ezekiel 36: And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances (v. 27). So, when we read through the Bible what we discover about the Holy Spirit is exhaustive.
Of the Holy Spirit, we discover that He is the giver of life (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6; 104:27-30). As the giver of life, He raised Jesus from the grave on the third day and will give life to the body of every person who is joined to Him by faith, through a physical resurrection like the one Jesus experienced (see Rom. 8:11). As the giver of life, He caused Mary to conceive with the incarnation of Jesus (Luke 1:35, 41-42). The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus before He performed any miracle, after He was baptized by John, as a way of giving life and power to His earthly ministry; it is important to note that at Jesus baptism all three persons were present and witnessed: After He was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him, and behold, a voice from the heavens said, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matt. 3:16-17; see also Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32).
Throughout the Bible, what we discover is that the Holy Spirit sustains and empowers the people of God to do the work of God. The Holy Spirit indwelled and led Israel out of the slavery of Egypt into the wilderness (Isa. 63:11-14), the Holy Spirit empowered Israels judges after they entered the promised land (i.e. Judges 6:34), and anointed Israels kings to lead the nation (i.e. 1 Sam. 9:27-10:1; 16:1, 13). From the beginning Gods plan was to do the same not just for a select few, but for all of His people as foretold in Joel 2:28-29, It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days (Joel 2:2829).
Gods promise from the beginning was that a deliverer would come, and that deliver was God in the person of Jesus the Son; this is the great theme of the Bible. This is why the Bible declares: For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you was not yes and no, but has been yes in Him. For as many as the promises of God are, in Him they are yes; therefore through Him also is our Amen to the glory of God through us (2 Cor. 1:19-20). In other words, there is no pouring out of the Holy Spirit apart from the redemption that can only come through the shed blood of the Son of God for, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (Eph. 1:7).
Against the backdrop of all we have considered so far, I want you to listen to Ephesians 1:13-14, for it will help you feel the weight of these verses for your life today: In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvationhaving also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance, in regard to the redemption of Gods own possession, to the praise of His glory (Eph. 1:1314). But the question still must be answered: Who or what is the Holy Spirit?
Not long before Jesus died to redeem lost sinners by going to the cross, He made a promise to His disciples, and that promise was the coming of the Holy Spirit. We find Jesus promise in John 14; Jesus told them He would be betrayed and would go to a place that they would not be able go (John 13:33). Jesus then consoled His disciples by telling them that He was going to prepare a place for them where they would one day live (14:1-6), but consider carefully what Jesus promised to His disciples that they would receive in His physical absence:
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. After a little while, the world no longer is going to see Me, but you are going to see Me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you. (John 14:1620)
How will Jesus not leave His disciples as orphans? He will ask the Father to send them the Helper who is the Holy Spirit. It is possible that verses 18-20 are referring to Jesus resurrection, but even after His resurrection, He ascended to heaven after He again promised to send them the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). I think that when Jesus assured them, I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you that He was referring to the Helper because of what Jesus said in John 16:13, But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come (John 16:13).
Who is the Holy Spirit? Well, when Ananias lied to the apostle Peter about what he and his wife had sold and given to the Church, Ananias was told: Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the proceeds of the land? You have not lied to men, but to God (see Acts 5:1-16).
The Holy Spirit is not a power, a force, or a character trait of God; the Holy Spirit is a Person, and He is God. As God, the Holy Spirit can be everywhere at once (Ps. 104:30), He is all-knowing (1 Cor. 2:10-11). Jesus said that the one unforgivable sin was the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which I believe is unbelief in the Jesus that the Holy Spirit anointed and affirmed to be the Christ (Matt. 12:31-32). And like the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirt can be grieved by the way we live our lives and how we treat one another (Eph. 4:3-32).
The Holy Spirit is not an awkward member of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is equal to the Father as He is equal to the Son because He is also fully God. In his book, Simply Trinity, Matthew Barrett put it this way: The Father does not exist without his Son, the Son does not exist without his Father, and the Spirit does not exist without the Father and the Son[1] The Trinity is not God divided into three parts as if 1/3 of God is the Father, 1/3 of God is the Son, and 1/3 of God is the Holy Spirit. What we see in Ephesians 1:1-14 is a Father who orchestrated our redemption, a Jesus sent from the Father to purchase our redemption, and the Spirit sent by both the Father and the Son to secure and preserve our redemption.
How is the Holy Spirit Preserving Your Salvation?
Look at verse 13 again: In Him (that is God), you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvationhaving also believed YOU WERE SEALED! What does that mean? To be sealed in the Holy Spirit simply means that I am secure in Jesus Christ and now I belong to God as His child and the only One who has the authority to remove the Holy Spirit from me is the God who chose me in Jesus (v. 4), and who purchased my redemption through the blood of Jesus (v. 7). I am sealed because the blood of Jesus secured for me the forgiveness of my wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on me (vv. 7-8). I am sealed because in Jesus, I have obtained an inheritance by Gods sovereign decree to make me His son before the foundation of the rest of creation was even laid (v. 11), and what is the guarantee that God has done all of that through the Son is the preserving power of His all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-pervasive Spirit.
The moment you heard the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you were baptized by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; Rom. 6:1-7). This is not a mystical event where you feel something strange, but it is a supernatural event where upon your belief in Jesus Christ, you experience what Deuteronomy 30:6 and Ezekiel 36:25-27 spoke of when the Holy Spirit regenerated your dead soul just as Jesus said had to happen for new birth to happen (John 3:1-15). The supernatural phenomenon that happens with the baptism of the Holy Spirit is that you are now able to respond to God in love and faith in a way you were unable to previously.
Why the Holy Spirit Cannot be Manipulated.
For about two weeks now, there has been one thought that has haunted me during the day and in the night hours that I believe that if I did not share it with you, I would be disobedient to my God. Because the Holy Spirit is not a force, and because He is God, you must understand that He cannot be manipulated by cheap tricks or recipes couched in religious language. He is God and nothing less!
There is a passage that has overshadowed my thoughts as I prepared this sermon, and it is found in Isaiah 46:9-10; here is what it declares: I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure (Isa. 46:910). He declares the end from the beginning because He is infinitely sovereign, and what He is doing from beginning to end and beyond is that He is accomplishing all His good pleasure! His good pleasure includes sealing you with His Holy Spirit, which is a first instalment (down payment) of an inheritance that is guaranteed to all He has chosen and redeemed.
If you are a Christian, the inheritance that we are sealed for includes the reality that today you are a son/daughter of the almighty God (v. 5), you are forgiven (v. 7), you are a new creation in Christ (vv. 9-10), and you have glorious inheritance waiting for you that will never fade with time, can never be destroyed, and will forever be untouched by sin (v. 11; see also 1 Pet. 1:3-5). If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit guarantees that your inheritance includes all things made new (Rev. 21:1-5), all things for your good (Rom. 8:28-30), and all things for Gods glory!
Think for a moment what that means in light of all that we have considered in Ephesians 1:1-14,
Why has God blessed the Christian with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ? Because He is God, there is no one like Him, He will establish His plan, and will accomplish all His good pleasure.
Why did God choose you before the foundation of the world? Because He is God, there is no one like Him, He will establish His plan, and will accomplish all His good pleasure.
Why did God predestine you for redemption through His Son? Because He is God, there is no one like Him, He will establish His plan, and will accomplish all His good pleasure.
Why did God seal you with His Holy Spirit as a guarantee for an inheritance we do not deserve? Because He is God, there is no one like Him, He will establish His plan, and will accomplish all His good pleasure.
According to Ephesians 1:1-14, you have all of Gods love you will ever need, all of the redemption in Jesus that you will ever need, and all of Holy Spirit you will ever need. The question I have for you is threefold: How much of your heart does God have? How much of your loyalty does Jesus have? How much of your life does the Holy Spirit have?
We will eventually get to Ephesians 4:30, but consider this verse in light of your identity in Christ: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. In Ephesians 5, we are told: Be careful how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil but be filled with the Spirit (vv. 15-21). When the Holy Spirit has all of you, then you will begin to experience the kind of manipulation that only He can do in your life by shaping you like clay, pruning the dead branches from your life, and applying His holy fire upon your life to remove the dross out from your life. Dear Christian, your sin and unbelief is robing you of the kind of life God intends for you now. How long will you hold back the sin that is sucking the joy out from the life God has purposed for you as His child?
In closing, I want you to consider Isaiah 46:9-10 before each section of Ephesians 1:3-14; I want Isaiah 46:9-10 to settle upon your heart like it has for me this past week as I prepared this sermon. I would like you to see Ephesians 1:3-14 in light of Isaiah 46:9-10 before each statement about the Father (3-6), the Son (7-12), and the Holy Spirit (vv. 13-14) in his majestic sentences concerning Gods role in our salvation:
God: I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10)
Paul: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Chris, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved. (Eph. 1:46)
God: I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10)
Paul: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in the Christ would be to the praise of His glory. (Eph. 1:712)
God: I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10)
Paul: In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvationhaving also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance, in regard to the redemption of Gods own possession, to the praise of His glory. (Eph. 1:1314)
[1] Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books; 2021), p. 144.

The Three R’s in God’s Salvation Plan

What does it mean to be saved? When sharing the gospel with people, we often focus on getting them to decide to follow Jesus which often is concluded with a prayer where the person acknowledges some form of allegiance to Jesus as his or her savior. In sharing the gospel, we rightly focus on the need for a person to believe and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins because after all, the Bible does say: if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation (Rom. 10:9-10). However, biblical salvation and what it means to be saved is so much more than the forgiveness of your sins.
There are over two hundred words in the apostle Pauls long sentence that makes up Ephesians 1:1-14; within these verses we discover what it means to be a Christian. When it comes to what it means to be saved, Paul shares with us the role of a God who is Triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When it comes to the salvation of our souls, we discover that the Father planned our salvation (vv. 3-6), the Son provided our salvation (vv. 7-12), and the Holy Spirit applied our salvation (vv. 13-14). It is in Ephesians 1:7-12 that we now turn our attention where we discover the three Rs of what it really means to be saved, and the three Rs are redemption, regeneration, and reconciliation. It is my hope this morning that by plumbing the depths of these very rich verses, that you will discover that your salvation is so much more than the forgiveness of your sins.
Because you are in Christ, you are saved! But what does it mean to be saved? That is the question I hope to answer with the time that we have left.
Gods Plan for Redemption is by Jesus (vv. 7-8a)
To be saved is to be redeemed. To be redeemed is to be ransomed. And for the Christian, to be ransomed is to be freed from the captivity and slavery of sin; to redeem something is to reclaim or take back something that has been taken away or is held captive. One person said of redemption, Sin (both our personal sin and the sin nature we inherited from Adam) takes away the righteousness God intended to characterize our lives and holds us hostage to Satans purposes.[1] How was this redemption accomplished? Through, His blood. Not through your pedigree, not through your religious devotion, not through your Christian upbringing, and not by showing up to Church today, but through his blood you have been redeemed. No, your redemption is owed to one person through one act, and that one person is Jesus and His one act was His death upon a cross for all your sins.
There are three Greek words used in the New Testament for redemption. The first word is the Greek word, agorazōand means to buy or to buy in a marketplace. When used in the context of Jesus death, it refers to the price he paid for our salvation, and what it cost Him was His own life. The second Greek word used for redemption is closely related to agorazō and that word is exagorazō, which means to buy out of the marketplace; it is the kind of purchasing that once purchased, that thing or person might never return to the marketplace again. When Jesus died for our sins, both words are used to describe what it was that He accomplished upon the Cross:
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought [agorazō] for a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Cor. 6:1920)
Christ redeemed [exagorazō] us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for usfor it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree (Gal. 3:13)
Now, when it comes to what Christ accomplished on the cross, He purchased us as His own (agorazō) and He purchased us from the slave market sin (exagorazō), and Paul no doubt looks back on both of these ways in which Christ redeemed us. It is in Christ that we have been redeemed to be holy and blameless, and it is in Christ that we are, adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself (v. 5).
But there is a third Greek word used for redemption, and it is used here in verse 7, and it is completely different than the other two words. The third Greek word used for redemption is lutrǒsis, which literally means, to fully liberate. The kind of redemption the Christian has is one where he/she has been purchased, but that is not all. The kind of redemption the Christian has is one where he/she has been purchased from the bondage of sin, but that is not all. The kind of redemption the Christian has is full, complete, and guarantees a redemption free from all the curse of sin.
The kind of redemption that you have, Christian, is one that not only includes the forgiveness of your sins and the freedom from slavery to sin, but also the eventual freedom from the tyranny of disease and death, the promise of a physical resurrection, and the assurance of an inheritance that can never be destroyed, will never again be stained by sin, and will never ever grow old (see 1 Pet. 1:3-5). This is the redemption we have through the blood of Jesus, and it is a redemption that cannot be added to because it is complete; it is a redemption that includes, the forgiveness of sins of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace. It is a redemption available through the riches of His grace, which He alone is qualified to lavish upon those whom He has redeemed (vv. 7-8).
Gods Plan for Regeneration is in Jesus (vv. 8b-10)
Regeneration as it relates to the Christian is the work of God where He grants spiritual life to the Christian that raises him/her from spiritual death to spiritual life. It is what is described in Ephesians 2, And you were dead in your offenses and sins. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (vv. 1, 4-5).
Jesus used the metaphor of birth to describe how a person goes from spiritual death to spiritual life in his conversation with Nicodemus in the gospel of John, where Jesus said things like: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (v. 3). Jesus also said to Nicodemus, That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit (v. 6). What was Jesus point? His point was that the way a person is born again is through a supernatural miracle that only God, through His Spirit, is capable of doing.
A picture of regeneration is given to us in Ezekiel 37:1-14 with the prophets vision of the Valley of Dry Bones where Ezekiel was told to speak the Word of God over the dry human bones, and when he did, God breathed life into them. In Ezekiel 37:14, we read these words: And I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your won land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it, declares the Lord. What Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus and what we read in Ezekiel 36 and 37 is picture of regeneration that only God is capable of doing; regeneration is the act where God makes the spiritually dead, alive in Jesus Christ. To be saved, is to be regenerated in Christ.
The mystery of Gods will in verse 9 is the plan God had from before dirt existed to make the dead live through the work of His Son and the power of His Holy Spirit (see 13-14). If you are a Christian, God has regenerated your dead soul to life through Christ! What this means is that if you are a Christian, you are not only born again, but you are a new creation: Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Cor. 5:17). If you are a new creation, then you have a new life and a new heart. Are you seeing how these verses are connected to Ephesians 1:4, He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him. Or how about their connection to Ephesians 2:10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. The evidence that your faith is in Christ is marked by the kind of desire that loves and longs for Christ more than you love and long for sin (see Romans 8:12-25).
The mystery Paul mentions in verses 9-10 is the redemption and regeneration of people that must take place before the rest of creation, under the curse of sin, experiences the same kind of liberation the Christian is experiencing in Jesus. All of history is moving to the subjugation of all things in heaven and on earth under the eternal and universal lordship of Jesus Christ. The first to experience this are Christians, those who have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of their sins and are experiencing the riches of His grace lavished upon all whose faith and hope rests in Jesus alone.
Jesus Plan for Reconciliation is Through Jesus (vv. 11-12)
When I read Ephesians 1:11-12, I cannot help but think of Jesus parable of the lost sheep where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine in the open pasture to go after the one that is lost until he finds it, and when he finds that last sheep, puts it on his shoulders while rejoicing of that which was lost and now is found (Luke 15:1-7). When I read these verses in Ephesians, I think of the parable of the lost coin about a woman who rejoices after find the one coin she searched her entire house to find (see vv. 8-9).
But the parable that overshadows them all, and to me has the strongest connection to Ephesians 1:7-12 is the parable of the Prodigal Son - who left his father to live a life free of all moral constraints, to the point where he squandered his inheritance and seemingly destroyed any hope of reconciliation. The son decided to return not as a son, but as one of his fathers hired hands, he even rehearsed in his mind what he would say to his father upon seeing him: I will set out and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired laborers (Luke 15:1819). But you know how the story ends, for when the father saw his son, he ran to his wayward son, embraced him and kissed him, and said to his servants: But the father said to his slaves, Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, slaughter it, and lets eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found. And they began to celebrate (Luke 15:2224).
Now against the backdrop of these parables, especially the parable of the Prodigal Son, listen to Ephesians 1:11-12, In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in the Christ would be to the praise of His glory (Eph. 1:1112). What is our inheritance? It is redemption in its fullest sense. It is a life regenerated in the fullest sense. It is the eventual freedom from the curse of sin and the inheritance of a new heaven and new earth. It is the city that motivated Abraham to leave his home because, he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:10).
The city Abraham longed for is a resurrected earth free of the curse of sin when all things that started with the spiritually dead are made new. All of history is moving toward that end when, what is mortal will be swallowed up by life (2 Cor. 5:4), for when our salvation is complete, the redeemed will be able to celebrate a new reality where we will finally be able to say: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting (1 Cor. 15:54-55). The Christian will finally know what it means to be saved when our redemption is complete, the rest of creation experiences a type of regeneration we have experienced, and the kind of reconciliation that will culminate is what we read in Isaiah 51:11, And the redeemed of the Lord will return and come to Zion with joyful shouting, and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Conclusion
Christian, all your redemption, all your regeneration, and all your reconciliation to God, is all because of Christ alonenothing more and nothing less! Can you see now how evil and demonic it is to add anything or to take away from what only Jesus Christ can provide? There is no other application or advice I believe is appropriate to give in light of these verses today: Your salvation is owed only to Jesus and nothing else! This is why the apostle could write what we must treasure: For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). Dont you dare try to add to it or to take away from what only God can and has accomplished by hanging on a cross for your sin and defeating death through His resurrection! Amen.
[1] Bryan Chapell, Reformed Expository Commentary: Ephesians (Phillipsburg, NJ: PR Publishing; 2009), p. 34.

God’s Love is Older than Dirt

On January 16, 1994, sometime after I read the verses we are going to explore this morning, I reflected on the tension I felt over how a loving God could choose and predestine a person before the foundation of the world for salvation. I wasnt angry over what I read in these verses, but I was disturbed; I was disturbed to the point of a near crisis of faith even though I had only been a Christian for just over two years.
While I read over Ephesians 1:3-6; I also read similar passages such as Romans 8:28-30; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; John 6:44, and the entire chapter of Romans 9. I read these passages without the aid of books or commentaries, for it was only me and my Bible. I knew nothing of John Calvin or Jacobus Arminius, nor was I aware of their teachings by which we get Calvinism and Arminianism. I share this with you because I want you to know; that if some of you currently struggle with what you see in Ephesians 1:3-6, I also struggled with these same verses, and it took a lot of time for me to work through it, with just me and my Bible. What is clear, however, is that Gods love for you is older than dirt.
There are three words that are linked to what it means to be blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (v. 3) that I want to focus our time on that I believe will help you work through what it is Paul is saying in these verses, and those words are: chose (v. 4), predestined (v. 5), and favored (v. 6).
God Chose the Christian to be Holy and Blameless (v. 4)
What was so hard about my struggle with verses 3-6 is that this verse could not have been any clearer: God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world; the Greek word used for world is kosmos, and it refers to creation. When did God do it? Before He invented dirt. How did God do it? Through His Son, Jesus. Why did He do it? That those who were chosen, would be holy and blameless before Him. Before we can get to why God chose, we need to understand what it means for Him to choose.
To choose is to pick or select someone or something. Every November we vote and when we vote, we choose certain candidates that we hope receive enough votes to be elected to whatever office it is that they are running for. In the case of verse 4, to choose is to elect. From verses like the ones before us this morning and others like it, we get the doctrine of elections (aka the doctrine of predestination). No person or theologian who believes the Bible to be the word of God denies what Paul is saying here, but where theologians, pastors, and Christians throughout the ages have disagreed is how it was that God chose the Christian before the foundation of the world.
Let me summarize the most popular ways people have explained how it was that God chose.
God chose you for salvation because you freely chose Him. You were drawn to him, but it wasnt until you chose Him that He chose you.
God chose not only you but the body of Christ that is the Church to be the group of people who receive salvation freely by faith in Jesus. So, God does not choose individuals for salvation, but he has chosen before the foundation of the world that it would be through Christ that people would be saved.
God chose you for salvation because he sees all things eternally, and because He can see peoples and events both present and future, He sovereignly chose you because he already knew you would freely choose Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.
Of the three views I mentioned, the third is the one I gravitated towards and believed was the best of the three options; I even stated in my journal on January 20, 1994, Due to the Scriptures and that all scripture is inspired by God, my conclusion on predestination is made: God is all-knowing therefore He predestined us for salvation, but allowed us to choose him for salvation. At the time, my conclusion seemed to reconcile Ephesians 1:3-6 and others like it with passages like 2 Peter 3:9, The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
There is a fourth view that I have come to appreciate due to two realities I never considered back in 1994, the first concerns the fact that God stands outside of time because time is a part of creation, therefore He is not bound to time and does not make choices based on what He can see down the corridors of time because He stands outside of time. The other reality I did not consider back in 1994 was Ephesians 1:1-4, which states: And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (Eph. 2:1-3).
In light of Ephesians 1:3-6, how can a person respond to God in faith when that person is spiritually dead? Can the spiritually dead do anything spiritual? Can the spiritually dead will themselves alive just enough to believe in God? What does Paul mean by dead in Ephesians 2:1? The Greek word could not be any clearer, it is nekros. Do you want to know what nekros means? It means this: no longer having life. So how dead is dead? So, the question I had to answer is a question you must answer as well, and that question is simply this: How can the spiritual dead do anything apart from God doing something? Paul gives us the answer in Ephesians 2:4-5, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:45).
The point of verse 4 is simply this: You, who were once spiritually dead. You who once, lived in the lusts of your flesh, indulged the desires of your flesh, you who followed the prince of this world, and you who were once a child of wrathHe chose you before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in Christ. Whatever you are doing with verse 4, whatever you want to do with verse 4, and whatever you plan to do with verse 4, one thing is very clear: God acted first. When you had no ability or desire to find Him, He found you. John Stott was right when he wrote The doctrine of election is a divine revelation, not a human speculation.[1]
God Predestined the Christian for Love (v. 5)
What does it mean to be chosen? It means that God predestined you to something. What does predestination mean? It means, to determine something ahead of time before its occurrence.[2] So, according to verse 5, before God invented dirt, He planned for your adoption as a son or daughter through all that Jesus would do on your account for your sin on a cross that we all deserved.
We know we deserved the cross because of what Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:3, which is that all of us at one point in our lives were, by nature children of wrath, just as the rest. In Romans 3:10-11, we are told just how bad our spiritual deadness is: as it is written: There is no righteous person, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks out God (Rom. 3:1011). Since when have I been spiritually dead? According to Psalm 51:5, Behold, I was brought forth in guilt, and in sin my mother conceived me. Just in case you are not sure what to make of Psalm 51:5, consider Ecclesiastes 9:2, Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of mankind are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives.
So, with Ephesians 2:1-3 and a whole bunch of other verses about our spiritual problem as our backdrop, lets read again Ephesians 1:5 more closely and thoughtfully: In Love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. In other words, among the mass of spiritually dead humanity that has postured themselves against God as, sons of disobedience who walk according to the course of this world, God chose you, Christian, in Jesus, before He created dirt, to be holy and blameless.
God chose you because you were dead, dead, dead, and because you were dead, He did the thing that no one else could have done! God raised your spiritually dead and helpless self. Why did He do it? Well, we are told that He did it In love and if that is not enough for you, Paul elaborates and tells us that He did it, according to the good pleasure of His will. And if that is not enough for you, he further elaborates on that point in the next chapter: being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead made us alive together with Christ (2:4-5). It is because of Gods love, His will, and His good pleasure that you who were once dead, now stand before Him as a son or as a daughter solely because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
Dear Christian, the point of Ephesians 1:3-6 is this: you are only a Christian because of a merciful God who set His affection upon you by sending His son to endure a wrath you deserved for the purpose of adopting you to be His child out of an infinite love no one deserves.
God Favored the Christian in Christ (v. 6)
So, lets walk through these verses now that we have observed the scenery of Gods word that surrounds Ephesians 1:3-6. If you are a Christian, you were once dead in your sins, you were hostile towards God, and there was no real motive in you to seek the true God, and in spite of all of that, God the Father chose to make you alive in His Son, Jesus, before Genesis 1:1 ever happened, and He did it so that you, would be holy and blameless before Him. The point of verse 4 is that God did something you were powerless to do.
Not only did God the Father choose you to be holy and blameless by making you alive in His Son, but He predestined us to be His adopted child with all the rights and privileges that come with being a son or a daughter, and He did it by putting His Son, who kept the Law, on a cross to atone for your guilt from breaking His cosmic Law just as the Bible declares: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for usfor it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Gal. 3:13). If that is not clear enough for you, we also are told in Colossians 2:13-14, And when you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross (Col. 2:1314). You were not only dead in your sins before Christ, but the Bible informs us that we are now redeemed by Jesus who were once enemies of God: For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Rom. 5:10). What this means dear friends, is this: You were once dead in your sins, are now alive in Christ, and are now reconciled to God. You who are reconciled to God, are now a friend of God (John 15:14-15).
If you are still confused as to why He did it, look no further than verse 6. Not only did He save your sorry soul because He simply loved you, and not only did He redeem you as his child out of His good pleasure of His will alone, but He did it, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored you in His Beloved Son (v. 6). By the way, the word favored literally means, to become the recipient of Gods freely bestowed, beneficent goodwill. What this means is that you were saved from your sins, and it was not due to anything in you, but solely because of the love of the Father who sent His Son who willingly became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). In his book, Friendship with God, Mike McKinley wrote what I think is a good way to end this sermon: Your status before God doesnt depend on your performance, or work, or obedience; it depends on Jesus, and he did everything perfectly to make you Gods friend. Nothing can ever separate you from Gods love in Christ (Rom. 8:38-39). Once He has made you His friend through faith in Jesus, you can never be his enemy again.[3]
In closing, permit me to give you some pointers that will help you listen, understand, and submit to the authority of the Bible:
Do not try to bend what you read in the Bible to your will. If you want to grow as a Christian, you must submit your will to the authority of the Bible as Gods Word.
The Bible is one book, therefore read every verse in the Bible within the context of its surrounding verses, chapters, and books.
When you study your Bible, pray to God to help you understand and apply His Word to your life.
Read every verse in the Bible with the understanding that God does not need to get better. So, if you read a story, chapter, or verse in the Bible that you do not like, understand you are the one who needs to improve at being good, not God.
Just because you do not understand or do not like something you have read in the Bible, does not mean that it is untrue.
At the end of the day, what matters is what Gods Word says, not what you think the Bible says, what your pastor says the Bible says, what your family says the Bible says, what your friends say the Bible says, or anyone else says that the Bible says. What matters is what Gods Word says about who He is, who we are, and what we are called to do in this short life we have been gifted.
If you have heard anything this morning, I hope you have heard this: Ephesians 1:3-6 teaches us that you are a Christian not because of what you have done, but because of everything God has done, and because of Jesus, you are now a child and a friend of God Almighty!
[1] John R. W. Stott, Gods New Society (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979), p. 37.
[2] From Lexham Research Lexham Research Lexicon of the Greek New Testament.
[3] Mike McKinley, Friendship with God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway; 2023), p. 11

What it Means to be a Christian

Ephesus was a city whose economy depended on trade. It was frequently visited by people wishing to see and experience one of the seven wonders of the world of their day known as the Temple of Artemis/Diana.
The economy, culture, and ethics of Ephesus all centered on the goddess of Diana and the temple built in her honor. The temple was supported by 127 giant pillars believed to have been given as gifts by 127 different kings. The temple housed many priests and priestesses who operated under a castrated male who functioned as the high priest. The male priests were in charge of offering the sacrifices to Diana, which also included human sacrifice. The female priests were unmarried women given the responsibility to be channels of worship to Diana which was performed through intercourse of any male wishing to worship Diana with her priestesses. You can see why worship in the temple of Diana was so popular.
Because the worship of Diana was the main religion in Ephesus, ritual prostitution was a dominant feature of the religious atmosphere in Ephesus. Spirits, we know as demons, frequently possessed the priestesses as well as the worshiper which should come to be no surprise, for the Bible says: that the things Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God (1 Cor. 10:20). Anytime an offering is given to an idol, it is an offering given to a demon not merely an image Diana was no exception.
When the apostle Paul stopped in Ephesus to preach, the gospel disrupted the worship of the goddess of Artemis/Diana as people in the city heard the good news about Jesus Christ and gave their lives to Him. So profound was the gospels impact upon the culture of Ephesus that some who made their living off the worship of Diana expressed their great concern: in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made by hands are not gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours will fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as worthless, and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence (see Acts 19:2328).
Paul spent over two years in Ephesus where God used him to establish the same church to which he would write the epistle to the Ephesians years later, while in prison. The city of Ephesus was a very scary place full of demonic activity, full of women who were held as slaves, full of all kinds of perverts seeking to get cheap thrills under the guise of religion, radical feminists who distained the existence of men, public baths, and bathrooms, where modesty was considered taboo, all of which were ruled by a demon posing to be a free-spirited goddess. It is in this city that a church was birthed, cultural norms challenged, and lives transformed.
What you also need to know is that years before Paul brought the gospel to Ephesus, he tried to prevent its spread because he was convinced Christianity had to be destroyed. Of his former life as a pharisee, Paul wrote in Philippians 3, If anyone else thinks he is confident in the flesh, I have more reason: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless (Phil. 3:46). Paul approved of the stoning of Stephen, who was sentenced to death because of his outspoken faith in Jesus (see Acts 7). Regarding his salvation and faith in Jesus, Paul wrote to Timothy (who would eventually become the pastor of the church in Ephesus): It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost (1 Tim. 1:15).
What does it Mean to be a Christian?
Fred Sanders, in his masterful book, The Deep Things of God, wrote of the gospel, The gospel so outstrips our created measurements that it can be measured only against something as immense as God himself. Sanders further comments, There is one place in Scripture where this sheer greatness of the gospel is most profusely described: the blessing with which Paul opens the epistle to the Ephesians.[1] In the weeks to come, we will plumb the depths of Ephesians 1:1-14, but for now, I only want to show you who you are if you are a Christian and who you can be, by the grace of God, if you are not.
The Christian is Saved by the Will of God (v. 1)
In the very first sentence to these Christians surrounded by some of the darkest evils, Paul attributes his salvation and apostleship to the will of God. The stoning of Stephen and his part in the imprisonment and persecution of Christians was not too much for the grace of God to overcome. In fact, a survey of the Bible will show you that when it comes to the will of man and the will of God, it is the will of man to run from God and it is only because of will greater than our own that God is able to pursue us and find us.
The Christian has the Grace and Peace of God (v. 2)
Before salvation, Paul and the Ephesian Christians stood before a holy God guilty, awaiting a judgment under the wrath of God, and the same can be said of you and me. The Bible says, because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Rom. 2:5). But now, because of what Jesus accomplished, the Christian has received the grace and peace of God.
The Christian has the Blessing of God (v. 3)
What the Ephesian Christians had before Paul brought the gospel to them was wrath. In fact, Paul describes what it was that they had before they met Jesus in the next chapter: And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:1-3). However, because of the saving work of Jesus, the Christian has received, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
The Christian is Saved by God to be Holy and Blameless Before God (v. 4)
Paul was committed to the idol of his religious legalism while the Ephesians were indulged in their worship of Diana; both were far from God, yet it was God who rescued them from their idols and from their sin. Why did God save Paul and those who made up the Ephesian Church? Why did he save any of us? Well, verse 4 answers that question for us: that we would be holy and blameless before Him. God saved you to change you, and that change is moving you closer and closer to holiness and blamelessness.
The Christian is Made a Son/Daughter of God (v. 5)
Before Jesus, the Christian was a child of devil (1 John 3:7-10) and a child of wrath (Eph. 2:3). But through Jesus, the Christian is adopted, as sons and daughters. As a son and a daughter, you who once stood under a wrath deserved, now stand as a child of God with all the rights and privileges of a God who now takes pleasure in you! Because you are a child of God, our inheritance is no longer condemnation, but the riches of the glory of His inheritance (v. 18).
The Christian is Favored by God (v. 6)
According to verse 6, the Christian is favored by God. But why is the Christian favored by God? The Christian is favored by God because of the Beloved. So, who is the Beloved? The Beloved is the Son of God. The NET Bible rightly translates verse 6 this way: to the praise of the glory of his grace that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son. So, what this means dear Christian, is that the only reason why you are favored by God is because you are now in His Son, Jesus Christ. You are favored not because of anything you have done but because of everything that Jesus has already done on your account and on your behalf!
The Christian is Forgiven by God (v. 7)
You who once stood condemned by God now stand forgiven through the Son. You have been redeemed through the blood of Christ for the forgiveness of all your sins. The forgiveness of your sins through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is owing only to the immeasurable riches of the grace of God.
Lord, I did not freely choose youTill by grace you set me free;For my heart would still refuse,
Had your love not chosen me.
The Christian is Rich in the Grace of God (v. 8)
If you are a Christian, you have redemption through Jesus and nothing owning to yourself! If there was or is any confusion as to what it was that caused a Holy God to look down upon you with favor for the purpose of redeeming you, it is simply this: We have redemption through His blood according to the riches of His grace. In what way did we received His grace and how did the Almighty distribute His grace? He lavished his grace on us (v. 8)!
The Christian has Been Permitted to Know God (v. 9)
When it comes to knowing God, we are told, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4). Furthermore, the Bible informs us that, a natural person [sinner] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2:14). So how does a person come to know the will of God? Only through Jesus according to the good pleasure of God.
The Christian has a Future with God (v. 11a)
The One you sinned against, the One before Whom you once stood against in arrogance, the One you were blinded to, the One before heaven and earth has no place to hid and recoils before His infinite holiness (Rev. 20:11), and of whom the angles declare: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8), you, Christian, are now known and favored by! This is why Jesus said, My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Fathers hand (John 10:27-29).
The Christian has the Security of God (v. 13)
You, Christian, who was once dead in your sins (Eph. 2:1-3) and are now alive in Christ (2:4), are sealed by the Holy Spirit. This means that the One who holds you in His hand will keep you in His hand, and according to verses 13-14, He has given you His Spirit as a seal which serves as a down payment of more to come! Dont you ever forget the words of our savior dear Christian: I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Fathers hand (John 10:28-29).
The Christian is Treasured by God (v. 14)
Finally, you who were once far off, spiritually dead, and hostile towards God are now treasured by God. The apostle Peter put it this way: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy nation, a people for Gods own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). One way to translate verses 13-14 from the Greek is this way: In Jesus, you also having heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the initial installment of our inheritance, until the redemption of His adopted children, who were purchased to be His treasured possession to the praise of His glory.
Conclusion
So, who are you Christian? You are saved by the will of God. You have the grace and peace of God. You have the blessing of God. You are redeemed to be holy and blameless before God. You are a son/daughter of God. You are favored by God. You are forgiven by God. You are rich in the grace of God. You now know God. You have a future with God. You have the security of God.
You are treasured by God. Who are you? If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you are a Christian!
So, I leave you with only two questions. First, how did God save you? He saved you through Jesus Christ; this is why the apostle Paul used the phrase in Christ, in Him, and through Him ten times in just fourteen verses. Second, why did God save you Christian? God did it for the praise of His glory. And he uses that phrase at the end of his explanation of the Fathers role in your salvation (vv. 3-6), at the end of his explanation of the Sons role in your salvation (vv. 7-12), and at the end of the Holy Spirits role in your salvation (vv. 13-14).
Amen.
[1] Fred Sanders. The Deep Things of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway; 2017), p. 105.