(Ephesians 1: 1-14)
There’s this great post that pops up on my Facebook feed every-so-often that I’ve been meaning to print out and put on our bulletin board. It’s a cartoon rendering of two men, one who appears to be in his forties and the other who looks to be in his sixties, standing in the driveway of the older man’s home looking at an open garage full of stuff packed full, from the front all the way to the back, floor to ceiling. The older man says to the younger man: “Son, someday all this will be yours.” Now that I’m that older man with a two-car garage with no room for anything larger than a bike (and I have several), I get it. Now I know where all that junk comes from you find in your favorite thrift store. It meant something at one time, but now it’s barely sentimental. I’m sure my two kids are afraid that this is their inheritance.
And our inheritance is what the Apostle Paul is talking about in our scripture reading for today, not the stuff that represents our past, but what represents our future. My study Bible says that this letter to the church in Ephesus was probably written around 60 A.D. during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome for preaching the gospel, the inheritance of eternal life through Jesus Christ. Paul had visited Ephesus during his second missionary trip and returned on his third trip around 53 A.D. spending three years there with the believers. It’s believed that this letter was a circular letter, intended to be copied and shared with other churches in the area and by this time Paul had been a Christian for nearly 30 years so he had much he wanted to share in this letter of encouragement.
After the greeting Paul starts out by saying: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. Paul packs a lot into this opening statement. Being blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing means that in Christ we have all the benefits of knowing God; being chosen for salvation, being adopted as his children, forgiveness, insight, the gifts of the Spirit, power to do God’s will, and the hope of living forever with Christ in eternity. And it’s because we have this intimate relationship with Christ, we can enjoy these blessings now. By saying that God chose us in him emphasizes that our salvation depends totally on God. We are not saved because we deserve it, but because God is gracious and freely gives salvation. Paul is telling us that there is nothing we did during our lives that influenced God in His decision to save us. He saved us according to His plan. Thus, there is no way where we can take credit for our salvation or allow any room for pride. “I am a great and wonderful person and God has rewarded me for all I’ve done with his gracious salvation.” That’s not the way it works. God looks at us as if we had never sinned and all we can do is express our thanks for his wonderful, unmerited grace and love and live our lives with Jesus as our example.
In verse 5 Paul explains: He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 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. You see, it was always God’s plan to redeem people through Jesus’ sacrifice. The horror of the cross was not a surprise or a plan B after other options failed. God had predetermined that all who believe in Christ, his Son, would be saved. This being predestined by God means that we were marked beforehand, which is another way of saying that salvation is God’s work and not any of our own doing. In His infinite love, God has adopted us as his own children. It was through Jesus’ supreme sacrifice that he brought us into His family and made us heirs along with Jesus. Paul is underscoring this point for his readers, the church in Ephesus, the other area churches, and us to show how strong this relationship with God is. My Wesley Study Bible points out that the plan of salvation to form a group of believers was fore-ordained, but the choice of individual believers to affirm or reject God was not. Your individual freedom remains intact, salvation is yours to accept or reject. None-the-less, God’s prevenient grace, His divine grace that precedes any human decision, is necessary for any person to begin to recognize his or her need for God and to desire to draw near. Once a person chooses to respond, he or she is justified, made right by God’s grace which is freely given and received through no other effort of one’s own. Thus, God’s grace begins and completes the process; believers can do nothing apart from God’s grace. Quite frankly, to receive it we must acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves, that only God can save us, and that our only way to receive this loving favor is through faith in Christ. And those who believe in Christ are now forgiven, freed from bondage to sin and death. Because of this redemption, all who believe are now children of God and will receive the promised inheritance.
Paul continues by saying: In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. God’s purpose is to offer salvation to the world, just as he planned to do long ago, in the beginning. God is sovereign, he is in charge, and his plan was put in motion long before we were born. This knowledge should give us comfort when our lives are in chaos where we can rest in the truth that Jesus is Lord, and God is in control. God’s purpose to save you cannot be thwarted, no matter what evil besets you.
We close out this portion of Paul’s letter with him stating: In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory. What Paul is telling us is that the Holy Spirit is God’s seal that we belong to him, and it’s his deposit guaranteeing that he will do what he has promised. The Holy Spirit is like a down payment, a deposit, a validating signature on a contract. It’s that presence of the Holy Spirit in us that demonstrates the genuineness of our faith, proves that we are God’s children, and secures our eternal life, our inheritance, for us. His power works in us to transform us now, and what we experience in our life in Christ is a foretaste of the total change we will experience in eternity.
For Paul, the full experience of salvation occurs only when believers align themselves with Christ in every aspect of their lives. To participate in Christ is to imitate Christ, dying to sin and living in a manner that brings glory to God. I believe I’ve witnessed the receiving of such an inheritance twice in the last month with the peaceful passings of Dick Shuff and Orene Udd. I had the honor and privilege as their pastor to sit with them during their final days and saw how at peace they were with themselves as they knew the death of their mortal body was imminent. They had lived the best life they knew how, knew Jesus Christ as their Savior, and believed the rest of their inheritance as a child of God was drawing near. These peaceful passings without the fear of death was a great comfort to me and their loved ones. Dick and Orene knew that to be in Christ was to live into a new reality and to grow into a new identity as an adopted child of God and an heir to a life of eternity with him. Now that’s an inheritance worth dying for.
Let us pray.
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in his blood. Gracious and loving Father how we praise you for your unconditional love that has brought us closer to you through the supreme sacrifice of your Son, our adopted brother, Jesus Christ. We praise you for the privilege of leading lives that glorify you here while we are in our earthly bodies knowing that our indescribable inheritance awaits us. Move us to live our lives in perfect submission, with all at rest, with us in our Savior, happy and blest, watching and waiting, looking above, filled with his goodness, lost in his love. In Jesus name, we pray, Amen.