Scripture: Ephesians 1:1-14
Today we begin a new sermon series, which will take us up to the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The series is on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.
And in today’s scripture, verses 3 through 14 are—believe it or not—one long sentence in Greek. Our English translations divide it into multiple sentences, to prevent it from being one long run-on sentence…Speaking of which, I took an English class in college on William Faulkner. Our professor was delighted to show us that one of Faulkner’s sentences—in a novel we read called Absalom, Absalom!—was 1,288 words long. You can look it up!
Well, Paul’s sentence isn’t nearly that long… But this sentence nicely summarizes the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I want to make three points about it: Point Number One: what God has done for us in the past. Number Two: what God is doing for us in the present. Number Three: what it means to be the “property” of Jesus. For alliterative purposes, you may think of these points as past, present, and property.
But point number one…
Last weekend, my son Townshend came home briefly. For a couple of hours last Sunday night he sat with his laptop and joined a couple of dozen friends and acquaintances to take part in an NFL “fantasy football” draft. First round, second round, third round, et cetera.
But he was really proud of the team he drafted. He kept saying things like, “If this player performs well… If that player doesn’t get injured… If the same thing happens this year as last year…” Dot, dot, dot. “I’m going to have a really good season!” A lot of ifs to keep up with. And of course, one of his high draft picks may suffer a season-ending injury in Week 1 for all he knows. Nothing is guaranteed.
But… one thing is for sure: Townshend was choosing these players for his team based on one main criterion: past performance. That’s by far the most important consideration.
We like judging people based on past performance, of course… It’s only natural.
By contrast, look at verses 4 and 5: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ…” Notice those phrases: Before he made the world… and God decided in advance…Paul says something similar about himself in Galatians 1:15 and 16: “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…” Again, set me apart before I was born.
Think for a moment how wild that statement is! In his life before his conversion, Saul of Tarsus was authorized by religious leaders in Jerusalem to violently persecute the church; he took away their freedom by throwing them in prison… but in some cases, using the legal system and capital punishment, Paul’s actions were responsible for the deaths of Christians! In Acts chapter 9, after Paul encounters the risen Lord on that Damascus road, the Lord comes in a vision to a believer named Ananias and tells him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight” and go see Saul. Surely we can sympathize with Ananias when he responds, “But Lord, I’ve heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem!” Ananias was rightly terrified of Paul.
No one would vote Paul most likely to succeed as the world’s greatest Christian preacher and missionary!
It’s not for nothing that Paul, when writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy, says, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” In other words, Paul, by his own accounting, was the worst of all sinners. And God knew for all eternity that Paul was going to be the worst of all sinners before he chose him. But he chose him anyway.
It goes to show that God doesn’t choose us on the basis of past performance; he chooses us only on the basis of grace. So from God’s perspective, our past no longer matters… Our past no longer disqualifies us… Our past is no longer held against us…
It’s all forgiven! All those shameful mistakes of the past… all those failures… all those sins… all the ways in which we’ve hurt others… Forgiven… Erased… Forgotten.
“But…” you may say. “That sounds great and all! God chooses us to be his children in spite of what’s happened in our past, but what about now? Will God continue to ‘choose me’—will he continue to forgive me and show me his favor and accept me as a member of his family—when I sin… in the future? Even when I sin a lot in the future? Surely God’s love and forgiveness and acceptance of me as his child, comes with strings attached; it’s contingent upon future performance, right?”
Wrong. Your forgiveness is forever… so long as you continue to trust in Christ.
Let’s consider for a moment something that Jesus says in John chapter 13. It’s the night of the Last Supper. Jesus is in the Upper Room with his Twelve disciples. Judas will soon betray him, and he’ll be handed over, first, to the religious leaders and then to the Romans. But this is a few hours before all that begins. Jesus, you may recall, is washing his disciples’ feet.
Washing the feet of guests at a dinner party was such a humiliating act of service only a slave would be required to do it. And when Peter sees Jesus do this, he refuses. “You shall never wash my feet,” Peter says.1 And Jesus says to him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
And suddenly it’s clear that Jesus is looking ahead to tomorrow, to Good Friday, and the ultimate cleansing from sin that Jesus will make possible on the cross. So Peter starts to get it now; he knows that he’s a sinner who needs all of his sins washed away. So he finally relents and says, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 2 “I’ve got a lot of awful sin to be washed away here, Lord!”
But listen to verse 10: “Jesus said to him, ‘The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.’” Did you hear that? Completely clean.
The only exception, of course, is Judas, who refuses to receive the eternal cleansing that Christ offers.
But the other eleven, Jesus says, are already “completely clean” and do not need to be cleansed by Jesus again. Because why? Because his cleansing lasts forever. Through faith in Christ, Jesus’ disciples have already received the once-for-all-time cleansing that they need!
And that includes… even Peter… even the one who—boastful assurances to the contrary—will on three occasions that very night deny even knowing Jesus! Granted, that’s not as bad as betraying Jesus, like Judas did, but you gotta admit… it’s not much better, is it?
Yet, somehow even Peter is already “completely clean,” Jesus says… knowing full well the horrible sin that Peter will commit in just a few hours’ time. Why? Because once Christ has cleansed you from sin, no future sin can un-cleanse you—even the spectacularly large sin of denying knowing Jesus three times!
God isn’t mad at you; you can’t disappoint him; he doesn’t take a “wait and see” attitude toward you… based on what you do in the future; now that God has “chosen” you, drafted you, you can be sure he’s not going to cut you from the team, no matter how badly you perform! That’s not how grace works!
If only I could love people more like that! If only we could love people more like that! If only we could show grace to one another like that! “Love keeps no record of wrongs,” the Bible says. But I often do! When someone says, “I forgive… but I won’t forget!” They probably haven’t forgiven either! Because we’re keeping score! If we’re in Christ, we can be sure that God isn’t doing that!
I have a dear friend who is a retired Episcopalian minister and theologian named Paul. Every time we talk, or write to one another on social media, he goes out of his way to encourage me, to affirm me, to tell me wonderful I am… how thoughtful, how smart, how gifted I am… You name it…Is he putting me on? No… I think he means it!
But here’s the thing: When he tells me these things, his words don’t give me a big head or make me conceited.
You know what they do? They melt my heart. This kind of love is inspiring… and contagious. I just want to give this same kind of love away to others!
And just think, brothers and sisters: God loves us like that. God sees us the way Paul sees me, except even more so!
Listen: Read the Song of Solomon—the same way the church has read it for two thousand years—as at least in part an allegory of God’s love for us in Christ. Read the words of the king to his bride: “You are beautiful, my darling, beautiful beyond words… You are altogether beautiful, my darling, beautiful in every way.” 3
Do we dare believe that God loves us like that? In God’s eyes, that’s who we are. That’s how God sees us. Maybe your parents don’t see you that way. Maybe your spouse doesn’t see you that way. Maybe your kids don’t see you that way… your friends… your fellow church members… Your boss doesn’t see you that way. But God does!
All because of what God did in verse 7: “he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.” Forgave… Past tense.
Point Number Two: what God is doing for us in the present…
You can read about Paul’s three-year stay in Ephesus in Acts chapter 19. It was a difficult three years… in part because Ephesus was the Greco-Roman world’s primary place of worship for the goddess Artemis—one of those Greek gods you learned about in history class. In fact, the temple to Artemis is considered one of the “seven wonders of the ancient world.” And local artisans and merchants who lived in Ephesus made a lot of money selling idols of Artemis to the many people who went there to worship her.
Well… After Paul got there and began his ministry, many local people were becoming Christians and started worshiping Christ instead of Artemis. And they were abandoning their idolatry… which began to affect the local economy. Suddenly the market for Artemis idols was drying up. And one silversmith in the city named Demetrius starts a riot against Paul and his fellow Christians.
In fact, the persecution of Paul and other believers in Ephesus was so intense… listen to what Paul himself says about that experience in another letter, in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 8 and 9: “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers [and sisters], of the affliction we experienced in Asia [Ephesus was in Asia and scholars say Paul was referring to Ephesus]. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.”
That sounds terrible… But listen to what Paul says next: “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
So this painful experience of persecution and suffering, Paul says, was transformed by God into an opportunity for Paul’s own spiritual growth. It forced Paul and his fellow Christians to rely on themselves less… and to rely on God more. It strengthened their dependence on Christ. It strengthened their faith in Christ. It helped them overcome their pride. It helped them overcome sin in their lives.
In other words, God used this experience of suffering and persecution to sanctify Paul and his fellow Christians… And this is one incredibly important thing that God is doing in the lives of believers right now… in the present tense: He is sanctifying us. He is changing us, conforming us to the image of his Son Jesus.
So listen… I want to be crystal clear: I am not contradicting for a moment what I said in Point Number One: Through faith in Christ all of our sins—in the past, in the present, in the future—all of them completely forgiven, erased, wiped out, forgotten… If you are a Christian, God will never ever hold your sins against you. So we can relax. We can have peace. We can have assurance. We can let God’s love for us melt our hearts!
But… because sin remains something that is really, really bad for us, not to mention the ways we hurt others through sin, it would be unloving of God to continue to let us harm ourselves and others with our sins. If sin is such a bad thing, it would cruel of God to be indifferent to its ongoing, devastating effects in our lives! God loves us way too much to simply leave us in the shape we’re in when we first come to believe in his Son Jesus and receive eternal life.
No, God loves us enough to change us! That’s sanctification! And praise God, it’s happening to us right now, in the present.
We see a reference to sanctification in verse 4: God chose us, Paul says, “to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” Which means that God isn’t finished with us yet. He is currently making us holy and without fault. And now look at verse 11: “he makes everything work out according to his plan.”
Putting those two thoughts together means that even when bad stuff happens, even when we’re in the midst of difficult trials—as Paul himself was in Ephesus—God uses the bad stuff to sanctify us, to make us holy.
It is not cruel on God’s part to do this; it is loving.
C.S. Lewis tackles this issue in his book God in the Dock. He agrees that it might seem cruel. Yet, he writes,
I am beginning to find out that what people call the cruel doctrines are really the kindest ones in the long run. I used to think it was a “cruel” doctrine to say that troubles and sorrows were “punishments” [or what we would refer to today as “discipline”]. But I find in practice that when you are in trouble, the moment you regard it as a “punishment,” [or “discipline”] it becomes easier to bear. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad. 4
Listen: Inasmuch as I have suffered in life—and I’m not suggesting for a moment that I’ve suffered as much or more than many of you—but inasmuch as I’ve known suffering in life—the vast majority of which I’ve brought on myself because of my own sin—I also know for sure that God has used it, slowly but surely, to make me a better man, to make me a more faithful Christian, to conform me more and more into the image of his Son,5 to enable me to treasure Christ more and more—to fall more deeply in love with Christ, to experience more and more joy in Christ… And this is wonderful, please remember, because the only place where lasting happiness and joy is available is in Christ!
So if God decides that all the trials I endure are the way to make that happen, I’m all for it. Or at least I should learn to be!
And this brings us to the best thing of all that God is doing for us in the present: He’s giving us Jesus… the very presence of Jesus Christ… a living relationship with Christ… That’s one important meaning of verse 3 and verse 11 when they say that we are united with Christ. It’s one important meaning of verse 13 when it says that we have received the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us disciples in John 14 that because we’ve received the Holy Spirit, Jesus himself lives within us.6
Or you may recall that famous verse in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” This is an ongoing, intimate, glorious relationship that will satisfy the deepest desires of our souls!
And that is happening now! Present tense…
Point Number Three: what it means to be “property” of Jesus…
Let’s look at verses 13 and 14:
And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.
“The Spirit is God’s guarantee…” the literal Greek says that we were sealed with the Holy Spirit. In the ancient world, a wax seal was placed on unopened letters, for example, as a way of identifying whom the letter belonged to… it bore the king’s seal. That’s what the Holy Spirit is like for us: it’s a way of marking us out, identifying whom we belong to… identifying whose we are.
This reminds me of the movie Toy Story. Remember the premise of the movie is that a child’s toys, which seem like inanimate objects to us humans, magically come to life when no one is around. And Buzz Lightyear is the favorite new toy of a kid named Andy. Except Buzz, unlike all the other toys in Andy’s room, thinks that he’s a real life space ranger, not merely a toy. All the other toys know that they’re just toys.
And when Buzz realizes the truth… He’s becomes depressed… despondent… inconsolable…
Buzz says: “I’m just a toy, a stupid, little, insignificant toy.” And Woody, his friend and fellow toy, says, “Being a toy is a lot better than being a space ranger… Look, over in that house is a kid who thinks you’re the greatest, and it’s not because you’re a Space Ranger, pal. It’s because you’re a toy. You are his toy!” And then Buzz looks at the bottom of his boot, and sees that his owner, Andy, has written the name “Andy” on it… as if to say, “This toy belongs to Andy.”
This seal of the Holy Spirit that Paul refers to in verse 14 is like that name written on the bottom of Buzz’s foot.
It means, “God purchased you with the precious blood of his Son Jesus… You belong to God… God thinks you’re the greatest… because you are his child.”
And for all that, how can we not do what Paul says we should do in verses 3, 6, 12, and 14? How can we not praise him?