As a pastor, there are several longings in my heart. One of the greatest, however, is that those people, for whom God has made me an overseer, would truly love God from every ounce of their being, would truly know God better than they know all else, and worship him with their lives so passionately that they would give their lives in death if only to make known his glory to the world. And I fear in the church that even if we seek after these things in our lives, we seek them only superficially, so as to possess them enough to ease our conscious but not transform our lives. I fear that we don’t truly want in our lives that which is necessary to worship God in true adoration.
But what is it? I think Paul gives us a taste of it in these first fourteen verses of Ephesians. In the first two verses he gives his introduction, and then begins verse 3 with a sentence that does not end until verse 14 and contains 202 words. And this one sentence has one point, one goal, one purpose, a purpose he wants to achieve while (probably) sitting in prison in Rome chained to a guard – to praise God with everything he is, from the very depths of his being.
This is the heart that I long for all Christians to have. How did Paul get there? He did it by meditating on what God had done (and is doing and will do), how he had done it, and why he had done it.
He meditated on the work of God.
Paul, no doubt, recalling who he was outside of Christ, sat there in the prison, marveling at the work of God shown toward his people. For God had blessed him (and us – those who believe in Christ as the only hope of salvation) with every spiritual blessing, meaning:
God chose him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his presence (1:3-4).
This reality is great enough that we could camp here for the next several weeks. For it is that for those of us who have repented and placed our faith in Jesus Christ, we have been chosen to be holy and blameless before God on that final day. God purposed in his heart, before the foundation of the world, that you (that is, those of you who repent and believe in Christ) will be holy and blameless before God on the day of judgment.
Isn’t that remarkable? I’ll use myself here. God chose me, before the foundation of the world, to be holy in his presence. He chose me, who has done so much in rebellion against God in my life that to tell you of it would make me to never want to show my face again. He chose me to be holy and blameless. I don’t know that I’ll ever get over that, nor should I.
And don’t lessen his grace by reading this text to mean that God chose Christ to be a means and everyone who does enough to find themselves in him receive the same blessings, for that is not what the text says. The object of the sentence, “He chose you” is “you.” Now, yes, the way in which he makes you holy and blameless is by uniting you with Christ, which is the mystery of how he exalts his Son and makes his people right before him (1:10). However, don’t think that God has done anything less than looked upon you as an individual with grace, seeing you in your weakness and sinfulness, and chosen you to be holy and blameless. If he had done anything less than this, then Paul’s writing to the Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. But by his doing, you are in Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:27-30). That is to say, God didn’t simply make possible salvation by declaring it would be in Christ, but placed weak, low, and despised people in union with him for salvation. And this verse speaks of what God has done with us.
Not only that, but he adopted us as sons (1:5).
He has taken us to be his very own sons. He adopted us, giving us the rights of natural born sons, though we were in bondage to his wrath as his enemies.
But if that is the case, then how were we freed from bondage to his wrath and our sins removed? The answer is in what God has also done toward us.
God has redeemed us through the blood of Christ and forgiven our sins (1:7).
Redemption means ‘to purchase with a price.’ Therefore, God, even while we were in bondage to his wrath and needing to be freed from it, manifested his grace toward us by sending his Son to die, shedding his blood, that we might become a purchased possession of God. Therefore, Paul says that we have been redeemed “through his blood.” He chose me and adopted me as his son, though my wickedness, and purchased me with the blood of his Son that I might be his possession and have my sins forgiven.
Not only this, however, but as his sons, God has opened to us the mystery of his will – to sum up all things in Christ (1:9-10).
God has let us, who only deserve death and hell on our own merit, know the mystery of his divine will, to know what many for ages have longed to see – how his plan of redeeming a people as his own would come to fruition. And we have seen that it is by uniting his people and his creation in Christ, who would accomplished redemption on our behalf, reconciling us to God. We have inside information, in a sense, as to the mystery of God’s divine will (inside information that must be shouted by us from the rooftops!).
Finally, he has given us as the Holy Spirit as a seal on our hearts, showing that we are his, making a down payment on us, and guaranteeing that we will be with him as he comes to take us as his own special possession (1:13-14).
Not only are you such a treasure of God’s grace that he chose you before the foundation of the world, predestined you to be his son, redeemed you from your sin and his wrath, revealed to you the mystery of his will, but he has made sure to mark you that when he comes after you he might redeem his treasured possession.
When Christ returns, he knows who he is coming after – God’s own treasured possession. And this is who you are in Christ. This is what God has done toward us.
But how? That is, what has driven God to do this? Was it our strength, or wisdom, or ability, or goodness? No, for we were weak, and foolish, and unable to do anything good (even seek after God). Then how did God go about setting his eyes on me and on you?
The answer is repeated throughout these verses. He did it according to the good pleasure of his gracious will and good pleasure (1:5; 7; 9; and 11).
He did it because he wanted to do it. He did it because he simply wanted to show his grace toward us. It is as God said to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7:6-8, “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on your nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were fewest of all the peoples, but because the Lord loved you …”
God showed this grace toward you because he loved you. And if you try to press for an answer beyond the fact that he loved you, all you will find is grace, for there is no reason why I should have been the object of his affection (and nor should you).
I don’t think we will truly begin to understand grace until we begin to contemplate, “Why us?” and soon realize the only answer is God’s gracious will toward us. That’s why John Newton can write, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” And grace is the only answer given by these verses.
Then why? What was the end God was after in setting his affections on us, by his grace? Why do it?
He did it that we ourselves might be to the praise of his glory (1:5; 12; 14).
He did it so that men might look at my life and yours and praise God for his glorious work of grace. He did it so that we might lie awake at night asking, “God, why did you show so much grace to me when I have only done evil continually?” and only be able to cry when we hear, “It is solely my grace to you.” And that our crying might soon trickle into the words, “Thank you; you are so good to me; oh I love you …” The end result is that we and all creation might praise his glory and ourselves be to the praise of his glory.
“But what does all this do with man’s responsibility?” someone might ask. The answer is that it does not at all nullify it. Man, if he is to know God and belong to him, must hear the gospel, repent, and believe (1:13). And my plea to anyone today who doesn’t know Christ is to turn from your sins and place your faith in his work of dying on the cross, being buried, and being raised from the dead on the third day.
“Then,” we might ask, “why do we even need to understand the things that Paul goes over here and teach them to other believers?” And the answer is the whole theme of these verses, of this one sentence – that we might bless God for his goodness toward us, that we might worship him as we should. That our hearts might cry as Paul’s, even though he was in prison and possibly facing death, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). It is that men might not think they are great because of their work but great because they were created by God and redeemed by God to be his own special possession.
Meditation on this truth is what drives Paul to worship, and it is what will drive you to love God in deep affection, know him better than you know anything, and worship him to the point of laying down your life that men might behold his glory. That is, if we shared Paul’s perspective, we would share in his praise. But I fear that many of us are mentally lazy, wanting spontaneous praise without the work of time in mediation, wanting our hearts to sing without realizing that which affects them must come through our minds.
In this day, it is possible that what we need most is suffering that makes us hunger for the word of God more, for I fear that we are like children, refusing to eat dinner when others around him are starving for lack of it. Maybe what we need is to be thrown into a situation like William Carey, laboring in India, without friends or converts, that our heart might cry for the truth of the Word of God to sustain us. We need to see as Luther that “Testing … is the touchstone that teaches you not only to know and understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely , how mighty, and how comforting God’s Word is.” And he adds: “I myself am deeply indebted to my critics, that through the Devil’s raging they have beaten, oppressed, and distressed me so much. That is to say, they have made me a fairly good theologian of me, which I would not have become otherwise.”1 We might need (more than Christians anywhere) to have ourselves beaten into the Word of God.
But, for most of us, we aren’t in these situations. Therefore, we must simply choose to meditate on the Word of God now, knowing that only in that will our grand thoughts of loving, knowing, and worshiping him as we should ever be a reality. Might the minds of this congregation meditate constantly on the truth of the Scripture that the hearts of this congregation might collectively burst forth in the cry, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Having our hope by his grace, Amen.