Preached this sermon on Ephesians 1:3-14 yesterday. Here’s my text, verbatim.
This morning I am tasked to share with you my reflections on Ephesians 1:3-14. The title given to me is “God’s Plan for Unity” but I will be focusing more on the plan rather than the unity because unity is much more the focus for next week’s sermon. Elder Julian’s sermon last week focused on the Mosaic Covenant and I thought that the concerns of today’s passage can easily be summed up as The New Covenant. So, more fully, God’s Plan for Unity: The New Covenant.
The passage is not long and so I thought we might go through it section by section.
SPIRITUAL BLESSING
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
When the Old Covenant was first established with Abraham, it focused on the land, the Promised Land. The land looms large in the history of Israel. It is the physical and tangible evidence of the Covenant.
When you go into the details of the Mosaic Covenant in Deuteronomy 28, you will see that the promises of the covenant are centred on life in the land: the blessing of children, the blessing of harvest, the blessing of food and provision, the blessing of victory over enemies, the blessing of prosperity.
However, the Mosaic Covenant does not promise salvation and eternal life. In fact, Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats have no real value in dealing with sin.
It is tempting to think of the New Covenant as an expanded version of the Old, that on top of a blessed life on earth, we will also have a blessed life in heaven.
Jeremiah 31 prophesied about the new covenant:
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
The New Covenant is about changed minds and hearts, not about a better life. It is spiritual, not physical and so Paul’s introduction to the New Covenant celebrates spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms.
It tells us, who come under the New Covenant, that we should be focused on the spiritual and not the physical, on our inheritance in heaven rather than what we can accumulate on earth. A song that was from my youth says it well:
This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The blessing of the New Covenant is spiritual. The will of God, as we shall see, is not to help us have a good life on earth; it is that we will truly be in essence his children. This doesn’t mean that he is uninvolved in our lives or that he doesn’t care, but we must understand what he desires for us and of us.
As we read on I want us to be aware of the superlatives that Paul uses liberally. Paul is very excited about this and tells us that what God blessed us with under the New Covenant is truly generous and wonderful. The question I wish to pose us today is “How do you feel about this? Is the New Covenant truly everything we could ever ask for or would we much rather a blessed life on earth?” I’m sure we will all say that we want both but both is not God’s choice for us.
ADOPTION TO SONSHIP
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.
Paul explains to us God’s will for us under the New Covenant in two parts: firstly and primarily it is that we should be holy and blameless in his sight; secondly, and consequently, he is pleased to then adopt us as his children, in grace, and in response to our Lord Jesus Christ.
The first step towards this is redemption and forgiveness; the goal, however, is that we become, truly and in essence, not just in theory, not just on paper, God’s children.
Whether we are at the stage where the New Covenant is a means to escape eternal damnation or we have moved to appreciating and desiring to be Christlike in character and life or we are now longing to be free from the pain and suffering of this dark world and find freedom and life beyond the curtain, the New Covenant promises us everything because it deals with every aspect of life—past, present and future.
Whether we truly appreciate the extent of God’s will for us under the New Covenant is expressed by how we see our life on earth to be. For many of us, we are focused on this world and we want God’s will to support our will. This is how we pray: God, please support our will; God, please give us what we want and need.
In all the superlatives that he used to describe the details of the New Covenant, Paul encourages us to reverse the order: that it is our will to support God’s will for us because his will is truly wonderful, truly a blessing.
When it is our will to support God’s will for us we will then make the effort to obey him, to be holy and blameless, to walk in his ways, to love one another, and our prayer would be: God help us.
IN CHRIST
With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
When we read all that Paul tells us about God’s will, rather than be occupied with all that talk about being chosen and predestined, we should be focused on what he has chosen and predestined us to be: Holy and blameless, adopted to be his children. But often we are distracted by the talk about election and predestination.
It is instructive that Paul describes God’s will as a mystery. I think beyond what is disclosed and made clear in detail, God and God’s will will always be shrouded in mystery and we must accept that. The problem is that there are certain matters that we want certainty and we dig away at the mystery and in doing so, distort God’s truth.
Election and predestination are a couple of those matters that for me are mysteries. I have shared this with you before that one memory that has stayed in my mind from my days in high school is a girl telling me that she has tried many times to believe the Gospel but failed and her conclusion was that she was not chosen by God. Often election and predestination is so narrowly defined that it becomes determinism: no matter what a person chooses those who are not chosen will never be saved and those who are will never lose their salvation.
The text that is before us tells us clearly that we were chosen “in Christ” and that our predestination is according to the plan of Christ. In other words, God’s election and predestination is not independent of Christ, and we must not think otherwise.
Paul talks about “we” who were the first to put our hope in Christ and “you” who were also included in Christ when you heard and responded to the Gospel. The “we” who were chosen and predestined and the “you” who also were included in Christ are two distinct groups of people. But all share the Holy Spirit and all have the inheritance. Any understanding of election and predestination must not exclude the second group.
What is the crux of God’s plan? What is the fundamental key to God’s will and choice? It is simply those who are “in Christ”. So, instead of asking “are you chosen by God and therefore confident of your destiny?” we simply ask, “are you in Christ?” because God has chosen and destined those who are in Christ. Do you want to be chosen? Take up Jesus’ offer to be in him.
You may ask, what if someone is not in Christ? What if someone was once in Christ but now not in Christ? Well, the bible does not give you certainty. This is what I mean by mystery.
What about a Christian who does not bother to live in God’s ways? They are baptised and come to church every Easter and Christmas or they come to take holy communion but otherwise are living their own lives? They are, in the eyes of the church “in Christ” (because they are in the church’s membership register) but are they predestined to be God’s children? Once again I will say that the bible does not give you certainty because God chose us to be holy and blameless in his sight. It is true that Christ’s sacrifice provides us with redemption and forgiveness and the Holy Spirit but the bible very clearly tells us that it is to enable us to leave behind the old and embrace the new. It is not that we will always succeed or that success is the determinant. Christ’s sacrifice allows us what I term as “unlimited retries” to use a term in video games. It allows us the opportunity to train ourselves in righteousness over time. If God accepts those who don’t try at all, or only try once in a while, then the old covenant of sacrifices would have been sufficient and Christ needn’t have died.
The bible is clear as to God’s choice: those in Christ who are holy and blameless will be adopted to be his children. It is not for us to negotiate another deal that reflects what we want. Outside of what is clear, we should let them be shrouded in mystery.
This means that outside of what is clear we should not be quick to say a person is going to hell or a person is going to heaven. Babies and children who died, people who have mental disabilities, good people who have always been kind and generous, very pious people who belong to another faith, there are many who fall into the grey areas—we should not be quick to condemn and step in when God has not made his will clear. Let us leave them to the will of God that is shrouded in mystery. In these matters my answer is always, “I don’t know but I know that God is compassionate and God is just and God is holy.”
THE NEW COVENANT
For most of us though, God’s will and choice for us is clear: to be holy and blameless so he can adopt us as his children. We have accepted his choice and the destiny he has prepared for us.
Let me go back to the beginning with Paul saying: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
How do you feel about the New Covenant? Would you be like Paul, who is excited to praise God because the opportunity to be God’s children is everything to him. Would you share this excitement with others so they too may have the certainty of God’s will and choice?
I’d like to end with this passage in 2 Timothy 1 that Paul wrote to Timothy. It was the passage I was meditating on for my quiet time as I was working on this sermon. As I read it to you, take it personally, as God’s word to you:
PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God (in other words, rekindle what you have neglected or allowed to die, or suppressed because of bad experiences or disappointments—rekindle your passion for Christ)*, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel (perseverance)*, by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.
This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.
* brackets mine.
Let us pray.