Let us turn to our Bibles, to Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 and the following, Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 and the following, 3-14. Yes, it’s the same collection of verses I preached prior, but my intent in preaching is to unpack and express to you, and of course apply, as relevant, what the text is saying, what’s the point, why the Spirit of God is using these words, etc., what does He mean, and what He means, first and foremost, in this collection of verses, is the blessing and praise of God Almighty, and that was the point of the sermon prior, the first sermon I did on this, blessed be the Lord God, right, to the praise and the glory of His grace. That refrain, three times, is the purpose of why He says everything else.
Now I’m going to unpack what everything else is, so I’m digging more into it, but these are overlapping themes here, the Trinitarian salvation that we will hear about this morning, that’s what He’s especially blessing and praising God about. Let us listen attentively to the Word of God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise and the glory of His grace, of which He made us accepted into beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence. Having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in Him.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him also you trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who was the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. Let us pray.
And we do glorify and magnify and exalt Your name on high, God Almighty, and may it not only be on this your day, but throughout the week as appropriate circumstances arise, Lord, as we have opportunity and people would listen, and certainly within our hearts in times of prayer and family devotions, God, to remind and point one another to Your glorious grace and the magnificent salvation that we have in You, and may this sermon, therefore, to that end, exalt Your name and strengthen our weak faith and bring us joy as we understand even more how our salvation is from first to last, of You, through You, and unto You, the triune God who saves sinners. By Your glorious name’s sake we pray, amen. Reformed theology, often known as Calvinism, but I mean more broadly than just the five points of Calvinism, is a theology deeply rooted in the Bible and in God triune in particular.
When I say theology, I also mean, as I mentioned in the prior sermon, my first sermon, a doxology, a theology of praise, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is abundantly clear from this passage. And as we heard in that prior sermon, the main thrust of these verses is to bless, honor, and praise God, to, why all these things? To Him, right? To the praise of His glory, whose glory? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Paul expresses three grand reasons, therefore, why we should worship God, because the Father selected us, the Son saves us, and the Spirit seals us as His people.
The apostle begins with God the Father, expounds upon God the Son, and ends his doxology about God the Spirit, sealing us, each member of the blessed Trinity, clearly shown to be integral to our, to your deliverance, not just the Father or the Son, but all three of the triune God saves sinners, and all that by grace and grace alone, to the praise of His glorious grace. Now, when unpacking this teaching on redemption, that it is Trinitarian, we must learn about the nature of the Godhead. This is important.
The Trinity is simply defined, often by us, as one God and three Persons, or as the Westminster Shorter Catechism explains in a slightly longer form, how many Persons are there in the Godhead? There are three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. What the answer describes here is known as the ontological Trinity, big fancy word meaning the essence of what God is, as near as, you know, we can see by revelation, divine revelation in particular. We cannot fully grasp the depth of it, of course, but it’s that which is of God, that which is God, God triune, and is the nature of God as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit.
And there’s more that could be said about it, and is said about it in theological literature and in our confessions. It is with respect to Himself, describing how there is one Godhead, the same in substance of that Godhead, yet there are three distinct Persons, and that each Person is not the other Person, yet each Person is one God. But what we are reading here in Ephesians, although assuming that, and it’s found, of course, in various parts of the Bible, what we’re reading here in Ephesians is about the Trinity and its relation, not to itself, but towards whom, us, our things external from God, what they call ad extra, from the Latin, outside.
Here Paul describes the various works of the Godhead for the redemption of the church. It’s often described as, here we have another word, the economic trinity. That word economic is used in a specialized manner, as I’m sure you realize right when I said it.
I’m not talking about modern day economics. It’s a specialized manner, meaning a management of a household from a specific Greek word that we actually encounter in verse 10, dispensation. Household economy is the more precise usage of the word, but of course, over time, like all words, it develops related ideas, and that’s the related idea here.
How God manages redemption within the three members with respect to us. That’s what it’s about. That’s what that word means, the economic trinity.
From this, some theologians use the metaphor of a household to helpfully describe the work of each member of the trinity, with the father as the director, as it were, and the son as the middle man, the mediator, and the spirit as the emissary, or the one who consummates the work of redemption. But with this caveat, that, quote, each person has this economic office of his own, not by excluding the other persons, for which reason, not only the father, but also the rest of the persons are creator, Psalm 336, not only is the father called judge, as we all know, but also the son, John 5. Therefore, the add extra operations, that which is outside of God with respect to creation, particularly your redemption, what we are talking about, on account of the fact that they flow from the essence of an, are undivided, and they are worked only in a mode or order that is diverse. And so, that there is one essence, and we’re not making a conflict between the members of the trinity, even in our redemption, as he points out, the father is often described as the judge, and the son, of course, as appeasing the judge, but the son is also described as the judge elsewhere.
So, we shouldn’t exclude either one, as such, although one is emphasized more than the other with respect to our redemption. That’s all he’s saying, and that’s from theologian, Dutch theologian of the 1600s, Petras van Maastricht, who came out with, he’s got eight volumes, he only came out with five so far. I thought I read a lot of systematic theology, that’s a lot, five, and he’s got three more that haven’t been translated.
A lot of good stuff from the last 10, 15 years, brothers and sisters. What are these economic offices, the phrase is, or distribution of the redemption of work, redemptive work? Our text clearly sets before us these three offices, right? You can see here from my outline. The father selects, he chooses who is saved out of the mass of rebellious sinners.
The son saves, he came to earth, took a body in the incarnation, the soul of a man, and lived and died and raised from the dead for his people. And the Holy Spirit sanctifies and dwells each of the elect to change their heart unto conversion and make them more holy and obedient to God’s law. Those are the three activities we see in this collection of verses. Again, not mutually exclusive. The son is also described as a judge elsewhere.
God the Father Selects Us
So here, verses one through six, the father selects us, God the father selects us or arranges salvation for his people.
The father works in creation and providence. So I’m going to unpack these three points in the rubric or the categories of creation and providence as well as redemption. So creation, providence, redemption, Shorter Catechism does that as well.
What are the works of God? Here we are, question seven. What are the decrees of God? Excuse me. The decrees of God are His eternal purpose according to the counsel of His will whereby for His own glory He has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.
And then question eight, how does God execute these decrees? What do we have? The works of creation, providence, and then we know eventually redemption after the fall. The three ways in which God exercises His decrees, and I’m going to use those three categories to show the work of the Trinity, both in creation slash providence, because those two obviously go together, and as this text unfolds for us, especially in redemption. So we see that their works are ready.
Just the details and the way this is written, the outline form they give you, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the things they do, already shows you that they’re each God. For only God can save, and only God can seal, only God can select, because we can’t save ourselves. And so it’s already one big argument for the Trinity here in these verses.
Ephesians 1, 11 through 12 is one of the verses listed here for the decrees of God, as you can imagine. I didn’t look up how many times Ephesians 1 is used as a proof text in our confession, but it’s used a number of times in these categories, in fact. Here’s one of them.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. Here clearly all means all. All things according to His will, not Satan’s will, not my will.
He created all things and guides and directs all things, and that’s part of the context of verses 10 and 11 of the dispensation of the fullness of time in which He gathers all things together and directs all things for the good of the church. So creation. God the Father, it’s not going to probably be as long a subsection because this is pretty standard for all believers, all Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, like, yeah, we believe there is a God the Father.
Pretty much very clear in the Bible, everywhere in fact. But a few things I want to point out here. Often the Father is often attributed with the initial actions, right? So here it’s just as He chose us, He chose us in Him, that is Christ, verse 4. And He predestined us, verse 5, and then 7 to 12 unfold the work of Christ in our redemption.
Acts 4.27, for example, Acts 4.27, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand, the Father, and your purpose determined before to be done. Right, to be done to whom? The Son, by these actors, the Jews, Pilate, and the rest of them. So there, the Holy Scripture attributes this to the Father in contradistinction to the Son, the holy servant, upon whom both Herod and the rest are going after.
Your hand determined, the Father determined concerning the Son. 1 Corinthians 8.6, yet for us there is one God, the Father of whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. And hence, from that verse and other considerations, we have a common refrain in theology that all things are out of the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
We have the three different prepositions, showing there’s a clear delineation, distinction between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the works of creation, the works of redemption, the works of providence, through the Father, or out of the Father, through the Son, by way of the Son, and in or by the Holy Spirit. And 1 Corinthians 8.6, you can see that very clearly, for there is one God, of whom are all things, God the Father, are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus, through whom, he uses there the preposition, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. But we have the Father, and through the Son, and elsewhere, of course, we read often of in or by the Holy Spirit, and the like.
There’s a distinction going on here. So, all that to build up to creation and providence, with respect to the Father, and then redemption. Creation, Genesis 1.1, in the beginning was God, who created all things in heaven.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Clearly, that is the Father, because the next verse says what? The Spirit hovered over the face of the earth. That’s the Spirit.
And we know from John 1.1 what? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word of creation is God. God speaking is actually God the Son of God, part of creation, and working, and forming all things.
So, the speaking, or the Word, Jesus is known as the Word, the Son of God. And, of course, God the Father here. The word God often means the Father, but not always.
And the Spirit explicitly mentioned in verse 2. So, the Father God created all things, and we’ll see later, of course, particular things as well, not just in general. He had a hand in the creation of man, Genesis 2.7. And the Lord God formed man, the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostril the breath of life, and man became a living being. All the other five days in the ultimate form, the finishing, crowning touch of creation was man, and that was by the Father.
Providence as well, of course, Psalm 104, verse 26. There the ships sail about, there is that Leviathan which you have made to play there. These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season.
How are the animals fed? Well, they go out and scurry and get what they want. Sure, but from a human perspective, we tried that, we’d die pretty quick. I mean, there’s too much randomness, there’s not enough moisture, we don’t know where the food’s going to be the next day, things like that.
Somehow they’re able to find these things. God is feeding them. The providential means, to be sure, but He’s behind all the causes and the means and effects.
That’s what we mean by providence, how history unfolds. You do something, and it’s a ripple effect, right? You throw that rock out there, and it goes across the entirety of the lake, and same with your moral decisions, or your lack of decisions, affects your family and people around you. We all know this, but all that’s part of God’s providence, His direction, directing of all things, both animate and inanimate.
What you give them, they gather in. You open your hand, and they are filled with good. The psalmist is saying, God, God the Father, is providing and guiding and directing all things.
There’s many other verses, I just picked a few of them here. The animals and the like are fed by the Lord. Deism is wrong.
God did not just jumpstart creation. You’re on your own. These things somehow survive on their own.
It’s like one step away from evolution. It just exists on its own. It has its own power.
It can’t go by its own power. Everything’s finite. Even atheists believe everything’s finite.
It just fades away. There’s not enough energy. It just dissipates.
It can’t sustain itself. God has to sustain it all. Psalm 33.10, the Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing.
He makes the plans of the people of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations. So there it’s more clearly men and nations, not just animals and inanimate objects and the like.
Oh sure, God can control all that. I grew up kind of being taught that. God isn’t in charge of everything, but not quite man.
God’s like got this force field bubble around man. He can make all these decisions. He can’t really touch them.
It has to be kind of indirect touching. If you think about it, even indirect touching doesn’t work out. It ends up being Calvinism, if you understand it all right.
So they have to end up being atheists at the end of the day. Jumped a lot of arguments there. So even nations are guided by God the Father and His work and His plans for eternity.
God the Father’s work in redemption in particular, which is what we have in these verses, verses three through six. He’s blessing God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing and the like. He designs the work of redemption, as we should say, including election of which the Son was Himself an object, that is, as man in particular.
Psalm 2, Psalm chapter 2 is a very good psalm that says a lot of things here. This is one of the things that brings before our attention. Psalm 2, verses seven through nine, I will declare the decree the Lord has said to me, you are my Son.
Today I have begotten. So the Father and the Son are doing two different things here with respect to our redemption, aren’t they? Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, you shall dash them.
And so there clearly, this prophecy of the Old Testament, we don’t know how much David understood of what he even wrote. The Trinity is there in the Old Testament, not as clear as the New. You shall break them.
God has given our Lord and Savior a power, a kingdom. I preached about the kingdom of Christ. As we go through the verses here, so verse three we have what? The Father blesses us with spiritual blessings.
Literal language there. Spiritual blessings, of course, include all kinds of things. And he unpacks all kinds of things in the next several verses.
Regeneration, deliverance, forgiveness of sin, sealing by the Holy Spirit. These are spiritual blessings. These are good things from the Father of life.
And He chose us from eternity past, verse four, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. This is what the Father has done that the Scriptures wish us to emphasize for us. That is not of us.
And this is why it’s to the praise of His glorious grace. Every spiritual blessing listed in these passages is one reason on top of another reason, piling high of why we should honor and glorify and worship our God. Again, part of verse four.
That, why did He predestine us to salvation? That or in order that we should be holy and without blame before Him and love. That too is a spiritual blessing. Although we don’t always feel like we have those blessings sometimes.
We don’t always feel holy. We don’t feel like we’re without blame. But we are justified if you have indeed trusted Jesus our Lord and Savior and not relying upon yourself.
You are justified. You are declared innocent, indeed perfect by His perfection. Verse five, He granted us adoption.
Adoption is from the Father. Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ Himself. So it’s not Jesus who predestined us to adoption.
It’s the Father. So you’re seeing this economic trinity or they’re different works, not mutually exclusive again, towards our redemption. By which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
Verse six, He, the Father, made us accepted in the Son, the Beloved. Again, highlighting the glorious power and omnipotence of God Almighty and how we are passive. He made us accepted.
We didn’t make ourselves. Yet even in the work of Jesus, the Father’s redemption, the redemptive work is interwoven. Because verses seven and ten we read, in Him we have redemption through His blood, that’s clearly the Son.
The Father did not bleed, the Son did. The forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, that is the Father, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence as God arranged and designed and elected and moved redemption forward, having made known to us the mystery of His will, that is the Father’s, and gathers all in Christ. Who gathers? Not Christ gathers in Christ, but He gathers in Christ.
The Father gathers in Christ. So even here in verses seven and following where it’s predominantly, although not exclusively, the work of Christ being described, the Father is still there operating through these things. That He might gather together in one all things in Christ.
Thus we see the distribution or the economy of the works of redemption by the Trinity, the Father in particular. And they are not mutually exclusive since they all arise from one essence and one power, the power of the Godhead.
God the Son Saves Us
That leads us to point two, God the Son saves us.
The Father selects, the Son saves, verses 6-12. We see the Son in creation and providence as well. John 1, I read that a little bit earlier.
I set it off the top of my head. Verses 3 and following. Verses 1, 3 and 10, excuse me.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There’s already a distinction of clearly God being another name for Father. And here the Son described as the Word.
And the Word was God. He’s meaning two different things here. God as the second member of the Trinity and here the Word was God as the Godhead is the old word from the KJV or the essence of the nature of what it means to be God.
We would say Godness if you took philosophy class. You’d add N-E-S-S and you know some philosophy. The Godness of God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. And without Him, nothing was made that was made.
Verse 10, He was in the world and the world was made through Him. And the world did not know Him. And John goes on from there to express the power of light and illumination by Jesus Himself.
So John by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is telling us there in Genesis 1, 1 is not only God the Father. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the Spirit, as we’ll get to the third point, the Spirit hovered across the face of the earth, the Spirit of God.
But that the Son of God was there as well. Because He’s divine. They’re always going to be there, involved in every activity together.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Blessed be the three. And so when God said, He spoke what? Words or a word, let there be light and there was light.
That’s telling us the Son of God was involved. So it was from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit was creation. Hebrews 1, 3 is another fascinating text as well.
That the Father has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. Right? God is speaking forth, but it’s what? Through, there’s that preposition again, the Son. Whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.
So He’s like, oh, you know, by the way, the same Son who is your deliverer created all things. He’s evolved in creation. That’s an act of God.
Although there’s still that mystery of how is it from and through and by. They’re doing things together, coordinating it. There’s still a distinction.
The Father and the Son both worked in creation. By the Father, through the Son. Providential rule as well.
And it’s there in John 1. You’ve not thought about this before. In John 1, that great theological discourse. John is very, we would use the word theological more than historical.
Although there’s lots of theology in the other ones and there’s history in John. In verse 4 of John 1, in Him, that is Jesus or the Word, in Him was life and the life was the light of men. If anything has life in this world, it’s because of Jesus.
That’s clearly under the providence or the category of what? Creation first, that’s the initiation of all things, and providence which sustains creation. God is the life of all. He’s the source of Jesus, the Son of God, the Word, is the life.
And the life is the light. So He moves and shifts from light, life, excuse me, to light. That is to have existence is to have illumination and understanding that there is a God.
But they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, as we know. So Jesus is there, giving illumination in providence. That’s the point of that text.
So that’s the work of the Son and creation and providence, and we have the work of redemption here in this text. The significance of going over the work of the members with respect to creation and providence is to highlight their deity, their each God, but there’s only one God, every person. Because there are those who read the Bible and read these texts of the Son, speaking of the Father as greater and exalted to Him, and say, well, therefore He’s not God.
You can see that, right? You see a lot of words that Jesus does or actions. You know, no one’s good but God, He says to the young man who comes before Him. He thinks He’s done all these good works.
Jesus is trying to make a point, of course. But as man, Jesus is as man, would clearly say that, but as God, He also is good. But people lose that because you only have, as it were, one picture at a time in reading this, because we are finite and God is infinite.
But understanding the economic trinity reminds us that just because they have different functions and communicate to each other, it looks like in a subordinate way, they’re not ultimately subordinate, really. They’re each equally God, fully God, full of glory and power, should be equally praised. That’s the point.
You make this distinction, it makes a lot more sense here. There’s not a division and confusion in the members of the trinity. It’s just that there’s a multiplicity of objects and people being redeemed.
So, from our perspective, kind of like on Earth, it looks like the sun rises and sets. But when you change perspective, oh, wait a minute, we’re actually rotating around the Earth. We actually have satellites out there, things like that.
You can see that. So it’s our perspective, our finite perspective can confuse things. Christ’s work in redemption, Christ saves us, does not mean, when I use that word save, that the Father didn’t save and neither does the Spirit.
I’m just focusing and honing in on it and, of course, using the three S’s here to make it easy for you to memorize it. That this work of Jesus is what we often think, of course, but it shouldn’t be exclusively that way, as that work of redemption of how we are saved. It’s all of a piece.
Without the Father arranging and selecting us, the sun could have done nothing. And same with the Spirit’s sealing. So we need every piece of this, to speak as a man, mechanism, the plan of redemption.
It’s a glorious plan. So the saving of the sun is, just to highlight the particular work that was proper to him as the Son. He came to earth as the second Adam to live and die for his people.
Paul doesn’t go into all the details of that, but it’s here, hit in high-level descriptions with enough details that we’re like, this is the Son, this is clearly talking about the Son, the second member of the Trinity, in the incarnation because He has a body that has bled for us. In the counsel of redemption from eternity past, in a Trinitarian covenant, the Son takes upon Himself to be a surety for His people and to execute the Father’s plan of redemption. And I already read Psalm 2, that’s a picture of that, where the Father talks to the Son.
And, of course, if they’re talking, it’s eternally past. That’s the nature of what it means to be God. So it’s part of His plan, our perspective, way in the past.
It’s always going to be the case, in other words. Psalm 40 is another text we can use with respect to the Son and His work, not just Psalm 2. Psalm 40, verses 7 and 8, Then I said, Behold, I come, in the scroll of the book, it is written of me, I delight to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart. This is the Son, not you.
This is the Son of God, the Word of God, speaking to the Father, saying, I know my role in the covenant of redemption, and I’m willingly going to take it upon You. And that’s quoted in Hebrews, as you may recall. Hebrews 10.5, Therefore, when He came into the world, He said, Sacrifice an offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for Me.
And burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure, but I will come and be the whole burnt offering for your people. So He works this out more particularly in His incarnation and His suffering and His living for His people, His death. All that described in the Gospel accounts is the work of Jesus Christ and how He saves us.
The Father saves in the way He saves, as I described before. The Spirit saves in the way He saves, as I’ll describe soon. And here the Son saves His way by His body and His blood offered for us, but also raised from the dead, proving His power over sin and death.
Ephesians 1, 6-14, it’s a little bit of 13, mostly. Jesus is our Beloved, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved, verse 6. So that’s part of His work in saving us. He represents us.
He is the Father’s Beloved, as well as our Beloved, of course. But we are in Him, and so the Father sees Him, and we are Beloved in the Son. It’s all packed in that little sentence, verse 6. Verse 7, of course, redemption through His blood.
He shed for us. He died and suffered, brothers and sisters, for your sins. And He did it willingly.
And Christ unites His people in redemption. He gathers together in one all things in Christ, verse 10, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him. That is the Jews and the Gentiles, in particular.
And of course the Church Triumphant, which is in heaven, and the Church Militant, which is on earth, and will be united together when Christ comes the second time. And we’re in Him. I mentioned this last time.
Our union with Christ is the particular mechanism, we are redeemed, and that’s mentioned several times in these verses. In Him we have redemption, verse 7. In Him we are saved, verse 10, heaven and earth. In Him, verse 11, we have obtained an inheritance.
In Him you also trusted, verse 13. That’s why I included that there as well. It’s by Jesus and what He has done, by us being in Him.
Of course, in Him by faith and faith alone, which He tells us in verse 13 and following. So salvation is from the Father and through the Son in His work 2,000 years ago. But of course, as we know, His work wasn’t only 2,000 years ago.
It’s even now, He’s in heaven interceding for us because we’re still sinning, much as we hate it. And then lastly, God the Holy Spirit seals us. The Father saves, selects, the Son saves, the Spirit seals us.
God the Spirit Seals Us
Verses 13-14, although again Paul wasn’t being very precise because he was being excited when he was writing this and so some of the verses overlap in content. In creation, as you may recall, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Already in verse 2, we’re giving little hints that something else is going on here.
There’s more than just the Father who is divine. Job 26.13, by His Spirit He adorned the heavens. His hand pierced the fleeing serpents.
Even Job recognized, probably one of the oldest books that we have, predating in his own life Moses and Abraham and the like. He recognizes that there is the Spirit of God. Psalm 33.6, by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
This is where I remind you that the Hebrew word there for breath is also wind or spirit. It depends on the context. It’s one word.
Hebrew language is very simple in one sense. They don’t have a lot of technical words. You have a word.
It works. We’re happy with that. With the breath of His mouth.
Psalm 104.27, these all wait for you that you might give them their food in due season. So there’s that providence. What you give them they gather in.
You open your hand. They are filled with good. You hide your face.
They are troubled. You take away their breath. They die and return to their dust.
You send forth your spirit and they are created. And you renew the face of the earth. Even in the acts of providence, God sends forth His Spirit and sustains all things.
And, of course, He is the generation of all life. As being is out of the Father and through the Son, so life is mediated by the Spirit. And part of providence, we may not think of it this way, is the gifts and abilities that you have come from God.
Exodus 31.2 and following, see, I have called by my name Abazeliel, the son of Uriah, the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, and wisdom, and understanding, and knowledge, and all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, to work in gold, and silver, and bronze. So he has the wisdom, the understanding, the knowledge, and the workmanship.
He knew how to deal with gold, and silver, and bronze. And it doesn’t say God gave him inspiration that he just knew exactly what to do without training, but rather through ordinary means, I would argue providence, that he was well-trained and understood these things because, of course, the Spirit was especially working on him through providence. He wasn’t given a divine revelation from heaven, I believe, and so that he can be a good artisan of gold and bronze.
That takes work and study. It’s like, well, David said, Lord, you have trained my hand for warfare. Well, not directly.
He trained him through providence. He got a good smacking nowadays by his sergeant, right? That’s how he learned. But he put behind all the effects that we see in nature and said, God’s behind it, and he praised God for it.
That’s how we should live as believers. The Spirit works in redemption. The Spirit works in redemption.
We have it in these verses here. In various works does he work. He dwells in believers with grace and life, 1 Corinthians 3.16. Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? That’s kind of significant.
That’s clearly something that’s different than the Son. The Son doesn’t dwell in you as man. And then he wouldn’t be man.
He has a body. It still has a body and a soul. So it’s in space somewhere.
We just don’t know where. So with respect to that, Jesus isn’t dwelling in us. Elsewhere, of course, we read of Jesus within us, but particularly it’s within us by the Spirit.
The Spirit of God is dwelling in us. That’s very explicit. And the gifts of the Spirit, of course, as we know in 1 Corinthians 12, for the giving of the church, the formation of the Bible.
For prophecy never came by the will of man, but by the holy men of God. So of God, of the Father, so it’s from the Father as they were moved by or through the Holy Spirit who, as it were, finalized the process and made it come to pass. The helper of the saints and the witness of our hearts as well.
In John 15.26 we read, but when this helper comes, this is Jesus, when the helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify of me. So the Spirit has particular redemptive function that the Son does not have exclusive manner over, although they’re not contradictory and there’s some overlap. But it’s emphasized here by Jesus that the Spirit is here to illuminate us, give us truth and light.
And as we come to our text here, finishing the point in Ephesians 1.13-14, in which Paul pivots from eternity past, God, the Father, predestined us, He selected us, to 2000, well in his case, 30 years later, ago, Jesus lived on earth and bled and died for us. He applies it to the then and there or for us the here and the now. We who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
We do believe. The Holy Spirit doesn’t believe for us, but as we’ll see elsewhere at another time, the Spirit grants us the gift of faith. And whom also you trusted, right, into the Son, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
And He comes back, full circle, to the Trinity. Father, the Son, and the Spirit who seals our redemption. He’s the earnest down payment, the guarantee of our inheritance.
This is why we know we are going to heaven, because it’s not of us, lest any man should boast. And thus we see, I hope, brothers and sisters, in this short time, I could have said more, that salvation is from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. Salvation is Trinitarian.
It is not man-centered. And as we are here, finishing this, we see that it is certainly God-centered. It involves the entirety of the Trinity, to all His grace and mercy, lest any man should boast.
Here in the passage, it is demonstrated that Reformed theology, nicknamed Calvinism, is not the result of unnatural thinking born in ruthlessness. It is clearly written in Holy Scripture. Reformed theology is not a head game that arose from cold logic or sadistic reasoning, as our detractors like to say at times, but a true theology of the heart, found even simply and only in these verses.
And that’s all we would need, because it’s the Holy Writ of God. We only need one verse, and we don’t believe it. We have a whole bunch of verses.
I’ve only scratched the surface. When we fully comprehend the majesty and grandeur of undeserving love and redemption etched across the Holy Writ, we will be smitten to our knees and other unworthiness for such deliverance, brothers and sisters. Bringing our hearts, I pray, for all of us, and our lives, to the only One who saves, the Triune God.
Let us pray. Father, You who saved us, You who selected us from eternity past. Blessed Son, You who saved us and are with us even now, and have an interceding for us.
And glorious Spirit, You who seal us and continue to preserve us. Blessed be Your name. May our lives reflect that God.
May our hearts be driven home to this fact. And may everyone here walk away in glorious wonder of Your grace and mercy. From the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.
Amen.