Today’s message is from Ephesians 1:1-14. Ephesians has been called the constitution of the church. In Ephesians, the apostle Paul tells us what the church is (the body of Christ, of which Christ is the head) and how we should live as members of Christ’s body (as saints, God’s holy people). The word “church” means “assembly” or “congregation”, by the way. (And I should point out that when I give the definition of a word, of an English word, in the Bible I normally (unless otherwise stated) am giving the definition of the word that’s translated from the original language to that English word. So when I say “church” means “assembly” or “congregation”, that may not be exactly what the dictionary says the English word means. But it’s what the word means in the Bible. So, “church” means “assembly” or “congregations”. The Pentecostals frequently call their churches assemblies—Assemblies of God, for example.)

Also, as always, I encourage each of you to read your Bibles every day so that you have the word of God in your heart and mind so that the Holy Spirit can guide you according to it. You need the word of God in order to keep from being misled by the powers of darkness that Paul is going to talk about in chapter 6.

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, in Christ; ⁴for He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, ⁶to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.

⁷In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace ⁸that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. ⁹He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in Him ¹⁰for the administration of the days of fulfillment—to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him.

Ephesians was written by the apostle Paul. He says who he is in the “greeting” part of the letter. He says that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ by God’s will. It’s not something he would have chosen to do, being an apostle of Jesus. Jesus chose him, he didn’t choose Jesus. We all know the story. (What is it?) And an apostle, by the way, is someone who is sent on a mission, a missionary. Jesus chose Paul and sent him on a life-long mission to save as many as he could by teaching them about Jesus—“that he died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4) Paul didn’t choose Jesus; Jesus chose Paul. But Paul stayed faithful to his mission to death. He said that the love of Christ compelled him. (2 Cor. 5:14)

Ephesians was written by the apostle Paul he says in verse 1, “To the saints and believers in Christ Jesus at Ephesus.” There’s some doubt that “at Ephesus” was in what Paul had originally written. It’s not in some of the early copies. That would make it to all the church, to all the saints and believers in Christ, period. But, what Paul wrote certainly applies to all the church, anyway, including us, not just the Ephesians. It’s the word of God.

In verse 2 Paul says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s really a prayer. It’s a good way for us to greet each other and to say “goodbye”, too. (And some of you may know that “goodbye” is contracted from “God be with you”. Why don’t we just start saying, “God be with you?”)

Now Paul is going to tell us about God’s blessings and grace for us, his holy people. In verses 3 and 4 he says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, in Christ; for He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight.”

This is, first of all, praise and thanksgiving to God—“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...” When you bless God, you are praising him and thanking him. The blessing that we have (blessing in a different sense) in God’s salvation is something we must not take for granted. When we pray to God, we need to bring our requests to him with thanksgiving. The apostle Paul says that over and over. He says that we are to receive our food with thanksgiving. He says that we must replace foolish talk and coarse joking with thanksgiving: “And coarse and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks.” (Eph.~5:4) And maybe you know that the Lord’s supper that we observe every week is sometimes called “the Eucharist”. “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving”. And when we pray, we always have an opportunity to thank God. We should thank God. Have you noticed that Donna always thanks God for our fellowship together and many other blessings beyond our salvation in Jesus Christ? She does.

In today’s passage, Paul is talking about spiritual blessings—every spiritual blessing—in the heavens. Literally he says, “in the heavenlies,” or “in the heavenly places.” The NIV says, “in the heavenly realms. I wanted to point this out because Paul uses that expression, “in the heavenlies” a number of times in Ephesians—“in the heavenlies”. I’m not exactly sure what it means, but it’s distinct from the earthly places where we can see physical events happening. But it isn’t what we ususally think of as heaven. It’s all around us. It’s the place where spiritual events take place—spiritual blessings. But it’s also the place where our ongoing battle with the spiritual force of evil takes place. Paul is going to say more about that in chapter 6.

Paul says that God chose us in Him (in Christ) to be holy and blameless before the foundation of the world. “In Christ” means through Christ, through his death and resurrection. Do you think you are holy and blameless? Does it seem like we are holy and blameless? Paul calls us saints, holy people, and we know that the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. Because Jesus paid for our sin, God considers us to be holy and blameless.

God chose us to be holy and blameless before the foundation of the world. The “world” almost always refers to the society of men. It’s been ruled by Satan the devil since the fall back in Genesis chapter 3. The world in its current form is passing away. (1 Cor. 7:31) But we are no longer part of the world. We are in the world, but we don’t belong to the world. We belong to God’s kingdom. We belong to Jesus.

God chose us to be holy and blameless in Christ before the foundation (that is, before the establishing) of the world (and maybe even before he had created anything). And Paul says in verses 4b, 5 and 6 say, “In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.”

God chose us and he predestined us. Does that mean that only certain people have a chance for salvation, that the ones God didn’t choose don’t? Some people think so. But that would mean that you could do whatever you wanted and it would have no effect whatsoever on your salvation one way or the other. In fact, if you were not chosen and predestined, you would probably not even consider the possibility of salvation. Furthermore, there would be no point in praying for the salvation of others since it would not persuade God to change his mind. (But I’ve noticed that people who subscribe to the doctrine of predestination do seem to pray for the salvation of others, so I’m not sure they really believe it.) But, anyway, these things are all from human reasoning, not the word of God. The short answer to the question of predestination is that I don’t really know the answer.

Paul says that God predestined us to be adopted. I’ve already talked about adoption in Galatians (in fact, just last week). In Galatians Paul made the point that when we accept Christ, God adopts as his children. Under Roman law (with which all the people who read Paul’s letter would have been familiar), you could disown your natural-born sons, but you could never disown the son you chose to adopt. God will not disown his adopted children (that’s us). It is according to his favor and will that he adopts us as his children.

Let’s look at verse 7 and 8: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” Have you noticed the superlative language that Paul is using: “the riches of his grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding? Do you think it’s wisdom and understanding, all wisdom and understanding, for God to sacrifice his son for worthless sinners? And that’s what we were. We were worthless sinners. God says that in his word, too. Romans 3:10-18: “...as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, together they have become useless; there is no one who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Those are all quotes from the Old Testament, too. And they describe each of us before we accepted Christ. (And if you have not accepted Christ, they still describe you. Don’t wait any longer. “In him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”)

Let’s look at verses 9 and 10. Paul is going to tell us about God’s plan that he had from the beginning, his plan to bring everything together through his Son, Jesus. Verse 9 and 10: “He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in Him for the administration of the days of fulfillment—to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him.” It was God’s plan that Jesus, by whom and for whom all things were created, suffer and die and rise from the dead to bring everything in heaven and on earth together. It was God’s good pleasure to do this. He was pleased to have Jesus suffer to redeem his creation. Even in Isaiah 53, the passage that I read sometimes when we have the Lord’s supper—the passage in the Old Testament that foretold the suffering of Jesus, the passage that those who reject the Bible as the word of God said must have been written after Jesus lived on the earth, not hundreds of years earlier, but found out that they were wrong when the dead sea scrolls were discovered—even in Isaiah 53 the Lord says that he was pleased to crush Jesus and to make him a restitution offering. The Lord was not only willing to do this, he wanted to. It pleased him to do it. And Jesus was willing. This is the love of God that he lavished on us.

Verse 11 and 12 say, “In Him we were also made His inheritance, predestined according to the purpose of the One who works out everything in agreement with the decision of His will, so that we who had already put our hope in the Messiah might bring praise to His glory.” The Lord God, in his word, talks about an inheritance that we who believe in Jesus have kept in heaven for us, an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted and unfading (unlike any of the stuff we have in this world). This is our “living hope” through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3, 4) These things are very precious. But our Father God also has an inheritance. We are that inheritance. He is taking what was worthless (us) and making it precious. His purpose: “that we may bring praise to his glory”.

When you place a down payment, a deposit, on something that you intend to buy, the purpose is to assure the seller that sometime in the future you will indeed buy it. If you don’t buy the item, you will lose the deposit. But the Lord has already bought and paid for us. We are already his possession. We have the Holy Spirit as a seal of God’s ownership and of our salvation. God’s intent is for us to be saved and he is able to do it. He will do it. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit.