Ephesians 1.3-14 Let us listen attentively to the word of God. 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing and 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 Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the 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, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also 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 unto the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. Let us pray.
And we come with bowed heads and hearts, Lord God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to learn anew the glories of the redemption that we have through You, which You have done for us and continue to do for us, by grace and grace alone, and that is not of us. We read in here, Lord, so many wonderful words and truths of what You have done, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and at the end it finally comes to us in simply what we have done is trusted and believed. For we have, Lord, no part in our salvation in terms of the material effort that somehow what we have done made all the difference, but rather, as we read here, it is all about You and not about us.
And even faith itself is a gift of God, as we’ll see in the next chapter. Our Lord, may this strengthen us and bring us joy, that we should do all things to the praise of the glory of the Trinity, amen. So here in these verses, after Paul’s standard greeting that I preached on a few weeks ago, he begins a topic close to his heart, the blessed God who bestows salvation and redemption upon his blessed church.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he begins his long section here, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. And he’s going to unpack that theme down to verse 14. All of a piece here.
And he doesn’t stop here, verse 3, while describing the great benefits of deliverance granted by God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul pauses three times. I use pause more loosely in the sense that he repeats. He tends to go back to this idea that clearly ties in with the main word here, blessed be the God and Father.
What kind of blessings does he speak of? To the praise of His glorious grace. In verse 6, verse 12, and verse 14. Verse 6, to the praise of the glory of His grace.
Verse 12, we who first trusted in Him, to the praise of His glory. And verse 14, it ends with, to the praise of His glory. I want you to see that.
That’s how I have broken down the sermon to these three points. And it’s not just to the praise of His glory, but to the praise of the glory of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I hope you see here.
He starts out with God the Father, how He has blessed us. He’s the subject, just as He, that is the Father, chose us, and He predestined us. And then He switches after verse 6 to the praise of His glorious grace, by which He made us what? Accepted in the blood of the Son of God.
In Him, the Son of God, we have redemption through the Son of God’s blood. The Father didn’t bleed for us, the Son did. And that we might all be gathered into the Son, in Christ, verse 10, and then it ends that section about the Son of God in verse 12, what? To the praise of His glory.
And then verses 13 and 14 end with the Holy Spirit. Yes, it mentions us, but He quickly, what? I’m not really interested about you guys as much as I am about the Holy Spirit, and how He has sealed you and blessed you, and He is the guarantee, the down payment for your deliverance into heaven, to the praise of His glory. And thus ends my sermon.
It could be, but I won’t. I’ll unpack it. Paul says a lot of things, but that’s the three main points.
I want you to see that, because there’s a lot going on here. There’s a lot of verses, and they’re all tied together by this theme of blessing and praise and honor to God Almighty, or a doxology, a doxology. I don’t mean a song we speak of in the Christian circles when we talk about public worship.
We have these doxologies, and that’s how it’s used historically. I mean the actual components of the word, doxa, for glory or praise in the Greek. And thenology, we know this in school, right? We have anthropology, and we use it for the study of man, although more technically the word just means, well, just that, a word, that which is spoken or speaking, speaking about praise, speaking about man.
We just turn it to study, study of man, the study of creation. We have zoology, the study of animals. So I mean doxology in a more technical term.
I don’t think Paul was planning on making this into a song, but it is a doxology. It’s a theology of praise and glory and honor of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinitarian doxology. This new revelation that he had at the time in the New Testament compared to the Old Testament, although as we shall see, I think, in the next few sermons as I dig into these 12 verses for a while, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are there in the Old Testament as well.
To the Praise of the Glory of the Father
The first point to the praise of God the Father, to the praise of God the Father, verses three through six, to the praise and the glory of God the Father, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is telling us what he intends to do here, as I said, that he’s going to unpack all these wonderful blessings upon the church, who has blessed us with every spirit, us, who, the church, not just Paul, all of us. He’s bringing all of us into his writing here, as he does often, and the heavenly places in Christ, what we have.
And when he says, blessed be the God and Father, he’s not saying that somehow we can add something to God’s glory. We cannot. For whatever we add came from him, from God himself.
We cannot exist without him. In him we live and move and have our being. So the phrase, the word here, blessed, is just another way of describing our honoring and praising and glorifying God.
That if we could give him all that we had, and could ever have, and could ever do, somehow if it would honor him, we would, we would bless him. But we are the lesser, he is the greater, and we can only do what he has granted us. We can still use our lips, as we’ll see, in our lives as best we can by his grace.
So it’s to give praise, honor, and another way of saying glorifying him is what he wants to emphasize here, because all that we have comes from him, and thus all that we should do is honor him, and to sing praises before him for what he has done. But what we have here as well is God the Father, God and Father, excuse me, of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of Jesus according to the flesh, that is, Jesus is the God-man, the soul of and body of a man, is united, but not conflated or confused, and the Son of God, so Jesus Christ is known as the God-man, as we talk about theology. So according to the flesh, he has a Father, he talks about that in the Gospels, he is my Father, I am his Son, but he also speaks of it as a divine thing as well.
Other places, especially in the Gospel or the book of John, which emphasizes the deity of Jesus, when he speaks of the Father and he as the Son, he means that in a unique sense, in a divine sense. And Paul is not specific here, he just says the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have here, therefore, already two parts, three parts of the Trinity, God and Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
God the Father, different from God the Son, clearly there’s a distinction here, yet both have an undivided nature in the Godhead, as we’ll see later on. And Paul is praising him, but not him alone. We saw that in particular and more explicitly in verse 2, in his opening greeting.
In verse 2, we read, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So the grace and the peace is from the Father and the Son. Paul would never do that if the Son was not divine.
Why would he share the peace and the glory and the grace of the Father with anyone else? He wouldn’t. So that itself, verse 2, is already evidence that Jesus is divine. And here we have other evidence as well, although again, not as clear to our, perhaps our upbringing in reading of the Bible often.
The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we’re used to that word Lord, describing Jesus often. But the word Lord can mean, and I believe does mean often in the New Testament, simply God. It’s another way of describing God without confusing the Son with the Father.
Often in the Old Testament, of course, the Father is described, simply called God. Here he’s called Lord in the prophecies that are fulfilled and described as fulfilled in the New Testament, for example. They’ll use Lord in place of the word God for the Hebrew word.
So secondly here, the blessings in the heavenly places. So he switches from us blessing God, that is to say to praise and honor Him, to showing that He has blessed us, because the greater blesses the lesser, as Hebrews reminds us, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. He’s done wonderful good things for you in the church, brothers and sisters.
That’s what he’s saying. And I’m going to unpack that the next 10 verses. Blessings and here, blessing means good things bestowed upon us from Him.
Spiritual blessings, right, in the heavenly places, pertaining to the soul of man in particular. I mean certainly, Paul believes, and the Bible teaches, every good thing comes from God above. The house and the food and the clothing on your back comes from Him and His wonderful and marvelous providence.
But here he wants to drill into the spiritual blessings, not the outward blessings, those are good, great, but especially the inward blessings for the soul, and that’s what he’s emphasizing here. And every, bless us with every spiritual blessing, it’s not as though some of you Christians, you get most of them, and you over here, you get the other 100%. You get 100%, you get 90%.
We get all of it, brothers and sisters. We are all adopted, we are all justified, we are all regenerate, we are all sanctified by His Spirit. That’s what he’s referring to, all that we need to be fully redeemed and brought to heaven is from Him.
And of course, he’s not drilling down into the different graces and gifts given to us, of course. Not all of us have the same level of wisdom or perseverance or insights, spiritual maturity in general, to be sure, that’s true, but you have spiritual life, nevertheless. That’s all the same.
And when he describes heavenly places here, he says we have every spiritual blessing and the heavenly places, he’s not saying that we have to go to heaven to get these blessings, that’s where they are, and we’re down on earth, what are we going to do now? No, he’s just speaking in the way of, that’s the source of it, because it’s heavenly places are heavenly in Christ, who is not on earth, but in heaven before God, interceding for us right now. So the blessings are spiritual in origin, that’s what he’s emphasizing, in particular in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. Everything that we need is through our Lord and Savior, the Son of God.
And the blessings, therefore, already we see, are not on the earthly places, in ourselves, not from our good works, but from a gracious God and the gospel and the good news of Jesus Christ. And so what we have read thus far is that God has been good to us by His mercy and grace, and there’s nothing, therefore, in us or about us in these verses so far. And if that’s not clear enough, Paul’s going to keep talking about God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and explain the points more clearly, that the divine graces and the spiritual blessings that we have come from Him and not of ourselves.
There’s so many ways you can say it, and Paul says it in many ways here. It’s not about us, it’s about Him. And so he moves into verses 4 and 5 here, from the spiritual blessings as a general category to, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
Let me make it clear, Paul writes to the churches at Ephesus, the blessings in the heavenly places have nothing about your good works, your baptism, how sincere your faith is even, although you ought to be baptized, you ought to have sincere faith, I grant all that, but that’s not the material or the warrant for heaven and the blessings that we have, rather because He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. And if that doesn’t tell us that it’s all of grace and none of man, I don’t know what else does. And Paul’s going to hammer this theme home throughout the next few verses.
We are selected from eternity past. The spiritual blessings come from the Father who had chosen us in Him, that is, the Son. He, the Father, chose us, verse 4, in Him, the Son, before the foundation of the world, which is just another way of saying before all creation, before anything was ever made.
There’s nothing about us that made God look down upon us to say, you know, I think I’ll pick you because, you know, she’s a wonderful person, does wonderful things for people, and I’ll save her. God did not look down the corners of time, as some Christians teach, and say, I will pick the Christians that pick me. What would be the point of explaining it that way in these verses? It’s saying, well, you know, God’s picking you because you picked Him first.
Or rather, we believe because He trusted, He saved us and gave us faith itself, as we’ll see a little later in here. He says explicitly, God did it, not man. And He chose us for salvation and deliverance.
What about this choosing that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love? Some Christians are tempted to say, if I’ve been chosen, if I’m saved, and it’s not about me, then I can do whatever I want. I’m going to heaven. I’m predestined to heaven.
So the means are irrelevant now, reading the Bible, going to church, repenting, because whatever, God saved me from eternity past, this is wonderful. That’s not what He means. He means you’re saved unto holiness, unto godliness, to be without blame before Him in love.
And so Paul makes it very clear, the purpose of God choosing us is unto these means and things that we do as believers that we know in our hearts we must do, to pray before Him, to love the saints, to take care of one another, to honor and glorify Him. These are ways to express holiness and godliness. To be without blame, of course, and to be holy without blame, he’s probably reiterating the same idea in two different ways.
They clearly overlap. I mean, if you’re holy, you’re going to be without blame to some degree. We’re holy objectively by baptism that is set aside.
All holy means is to be set aside as special and committed and dedicated to God. And certainly within our hearts and souls by the power of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us, seals us, as we read in verse 14, by His Holy Spirit and power. This thing changes over time, of course.
That is, our sanctification grows. Objectively, we who are saved by Jesus are declared in our justification to be holy by Him, not by our own good works. But, however it is here, his emphasis is that the Lord God did not willy-nilly just choose people to save them and had no purpose.
He had a purpose, to make you like Jesus, to be holy, to be set aside, to be obedient and to follow Him all the days of your life. And He planned it here that we should be holy without blame, verse 5, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself. Remember, Paul is making this declaration, blessed be the God and Father who blesses us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus and keeps hanging off these clauses to describe this main idea of the various ways in which we are blessed and under what circumstances, circumstances of being He chose us from eternity past.
And here, that wasn’t clear in verse 4, verse 5, having predestined us to adoption as sons. Chose us in Him before the foundation of the world is now truncated to one little word, predestined. It means what it says, we were predetermined before anything happened, before we were born, to humble us, brothers and sisters, that had nothing to do with you.
Not why an iota why God chose you and His indescribable will, but His good pleasure, His desire to love you, to save you from your own wickedness. For surely we have nothing to offer in our salvation unless we have another reason to praise Him for His glorious grace that He repeats three times in these verses. And just as the purpose of God choosing us is unto holiness and to be without blame and so being predestined, we are predestined unto adoption as sons by Jesus Christ.
That we are brought into the number of His elect, that we are sons and daughters of the Most High God, we are part of His royal family and His royal law, as James reminds us, and He cares for us as His very own. That’s adoption. Adoption is a wonderful gospel doctrine.
It’s not as though God just said, hey, I’ve brought you out of sin and now you’re on your own. Don’t do it again. Don’t repeat Adam’s error.
But He brings you into His own. The judge says, I want you as part of my family. Yes, you spat on my face, you rebelled against my kingdom and my rule as a king, but as your judge, I’m going to declare Jesus as punished in your stead, and I’m going to adopt you.
I’m going to take one more step, as it were, in bringing you in to my special family. And that before the foundation of the world. What do we have here of man? It’s not.
Our spiritual blessings are from Christ, and they’re from God who chose us from eternity, who predestined us unto adoption. Nothing about my good will, nothing about my free will, nothing about my good works or anything. It’s all of His and none of mine, chosen, predestinated to those who had no hope of redemption without God’s grace and mercy upon them.
And thus Paul concludes, according to the good pleasure of His will, not your will, His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace. This is why you are saved. Not so that you could feel good, although God, you know, will make you feel good, and there’s nothing wrong with that, per se.
I don’t mean physically, I mean spiritually especially. But that you may praise and honor Him. You are here for Him and not the Lord for you, to the praise of His glorious grace.
This is why we sing and pray to the Lord God Almighty in joy and happiness. It is all of grace, glorious grace from heaven above. And Paul is going to repeat this again here, verses 7-12, and ends, should be to the praise of His glory.
There’s the words again, although he dropped off grace, he obviously means of His grace. And so we come to the second point, to the praise of the glory of the Son. Father, Son, in Him we have redemption, through His blood we are saved.
To the Praise of the Glory of the Son
The Father selects, the Son saves, redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, verse 7. Redemption, or being saved, is a very broad word, it covers all the ideas of what it means to be delivered from Satan and his kingdom, and in particular he highlights here, by His blood. We are accepted, verse 6, by His blood, the work of Jesus. By His blood is this shorthand for everything that Christ does for us.
They call it a metimony, which is just another fancy figure of speech to mean by association Right, we talk about reading books, we don’t say I read this book, often we give the author’s name. I like to use the example, I read Shakespeare, of course I didn’t read Shakespeare, I didn’t dig up his body, but he’s associated with books, so that’s a figure of speech, and so with His blood, literally His blood, but it’s associated with the broader work of His incarnation, of His ascension on high, and heaven as well. But the emphasis upon His blood here, I think, is to remind us that Jesus died for His people, He died for you.
That’s part of the work, that’s part of the origins of the spiritual blessings and the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. What He did for us, shedding and dying for us, and the pain He went through, even the forgiveness of sin. Paul hits a lot of themes here in these verses.
It just flows out of him. It’s not a systematic presentation, of course. It’s a glorious doxology, he’s excited, and he’ll get down to business through the rest of the letter, of course, but detailed enough to show us the many and varied ways in which we are indeed given and blessed in the heavenly places.
Predestination, adoption, holiness, forgiveness of sins, blamelessness, being accepted in the Beloved. In verses 7 through 8, on all this, according to grace in Him, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. Before in verse 5, we are predestined according, or because of, the good pleasure of His will, not your will.
And here, another way of saying that is by His grace, and grace alone, unmerited favor, undeserved blessings. It’s a wonderful truth. We don’t deserve deliverance from Satan’s kingdom, but He gave it to us anyway.
And in choosing us, calling us, adopting us, it is by grace, and grace alone. We have parallel truths here, to step back a few verses, look at the larger verses here. Holiness, he mentioned before, and blamelessness in Him, adoption, forgiveness of sins, these are all relevant themes that mutually reinforce each other.
And each of them is from what? God’s good will, God’s grace, God’s good pleasure in Christ, what Christ has done for us. We don’t enter the picture at all, all of Him. According to wisdom, in verse 8, which He made to abound, that is the deliverance, the forgiveness of sins, the redemption we have, being accepted in the Beloved Son, which He made abound, to grow forth, to multiply in bounty toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
No one on earth could have ever found a way to save us and deliver us from breaking the covenant of works, as we’ll hear about this afternoon. Psalm 74, verse 20. Only God could find a way to save us.
Only His infinite wisdom could ever deliver us from sin and death. Only He could hold up His just demands of the law, as well as offer mercy, grace, and love, without the two annihilating each other. And He did it through Christ Jesus on the cross.
It is this wonderful wisdom and knowledge of our God that we see in our salvation. And all under Christ, verses 9 through 10, 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 time, we might gather together in one all things in Christ. So all those go together there, this idea that the revelation that we have, He made known to us the mystery of His will.
The word mystery there again doesn’t mean it’s still a mystery now, but that which was unclear is now clearer and more revealed now. It’s a relative comparative. The Old Testament wasn’t as clear about who exactly Jesus Christ is.
He was just the Christ, the promised anointed one. They didn’t know it would be particularly this man from this woman there in Bethlehem. Right? They didn’t know that, so it wasn’t as clear.
And now it is. And so this is to God’s glory. He made known to these things to us here and now in New Testament era, according to His good pleasure.
Well, there it is again, like in verse 6, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, not in you. You didn’t move Him. He’s immovable.
It’s not what you do that changes mine, but all of His plans from eternity past. That in the dispensation of the fullness of time. Dispensation here, yes, it sounds like, oh, see, Pastor, should be a dispensationalist.
No, no, no. They go a different route altogether. As Elder Martin likes to remind people, they believe in seven ways of salvation, the original dispensationalism.
And they did. Seven ways of God. Each period of time, Adam’s time, Moses’ time, Abraham’s time, et cetera, were different ways to relate to God.
It’s only one way to relate to God, because there’s only one law that we’ve broken, and there’s only one way to be saved. It’s as simple as that. Dispensation here, it’s just an old word for economy or household management of things.
That’s where we get the word economics, actually, in the Greek anyways. It just means a management of things. In this case, of God’s doing things for His church, how He managed the Old Testament and the New Testament era of the church.
And so in the management of His providence, of the fullness of time, that is, things are about to be done the way they should be done, the fullness of time is, now’s the time. Now’s the time for Christ to come. Now’s the time for more revelation and more spirit and a transformation of the Old Testament Jewish church into a Gentile church, or a Gentile slash Jewish church, a universal church that we find ourselves in now.
That’s what he’s referring to. He might gather together in one. Gather what? Common theme in the New Testament, when in doubt, is what? Jews and Gentiles and the great transformation that we don’t have to go to the temple anymore.
We don’t care about the land promises anymore. They’re not special right now. They like to push that sometimes, because it gets them money from politicians who are ignorant or whatever else.
It’s a different question of whether you should support Israel or not, but it shouldn’t be done on theological grounds, period. They’re not special anymore. They should repent and follow Jesus.
And verse 11 to 12, in Him also we have obtained inheritance in the Son. In the Son. We have in verse 11, being predestined.
There it is again. That word is used like three or four times in the New Testament, and here we have like half of it here in Paul’s writing. Very clear, very transparent, chosen before the foundation of the world, predestined by the Father, predestined again according to the purposes of Him who works all things, not some things, according to the counsel of His will.
That’s three times He said that, right? According to His grace, according to His good pleasure, according to His own counsel, I’m sorry, four, which He purposed in Himself. Verse 9, it’s all within Him, and nothing that we ever did moved Him, and could ever move Him, to deliver and save us. That’s what that’s saying.
It’s His own good pleasure to save us, to save His people. And thus we’ve obtained an inheritance, and it’s all in Christ, in Him, and not in ourselves. We have that several times in these verses, verses 7 through 12, which is the section on the Son of God that’s mostly emphasized.
Not exclusively, it’s not as though Paul sat down and thought, how can I really write this out symmetrically? But like probably the rest of us, it just starts flowing from his pen, and out comes this pretty clear pattern, it seems to me, Father, Son, we’re now in the Son section, and then the Holy Spirit. In the Son section, five times he mentions, in Him or in Christ, and of course the work of Christ by His blood and the like, I haven’t added that up there. So that’s what he’s mostly emphasizing here.
Why we should praise God, why it’s to His praise and glory, is because of the Son as well. And so, that we, verse 12, who first trusted in Christ, should be to the praise of His glory. And thus we end this second section, to the praise of His glory, the glory of the Holy Trinity.
The Father who selects from eternity past, the Son who saves in time and space two thousand years ago. And we come, then, to verses 13 and 14 of the Holy Spirit who seals us in redemption and salvation. That’s three.
Each member of the Trinity has their work for the redemption of His people. That we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also trusted, that is Jesus, now He’s talking about us finally, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.
Trusting in Him, there, the word of truth, not just anything else, but it had to be the Bible and only the Bible. Paul brings the blessings home from eternity past. The Father, predestined, predestined, chose us before the foundation of the world.
The Son bled for us and gave us forgiveness of sins. All things are being brought to Him, the church is being united in Him. That was two thousand years ago, His work began, and now it comes to us.
We who believe. We who believe. There’s a movement here through time.
Eternity into time. And now we are doing something. We are believing.
We never denied that for a minute. We do believe. We do think.
We do have emotions. This has not changed at all, but rather we can because God Almighty is behind it all and sustains it all, and we have the word of truth that we believe. We cannot believe unless we hear it in the Bible.
Preached on this already, right? Second Timothy. Here’s another proof text for that. If you want to be saved, you must hear the word of truth, the Bible.
The gospel of your salvation, the good news that we are delivered from sin and death itself. And here then, he moves quickly to the Holy Spirit, and whom also, having believed. So while we were believing, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
You hear about sometimes, if you recall, that the sacraments are signs and seals. And they are. The seal is an impression that you put into the official document from the king, for example, to make sure it’s authentic, that it hasn’t been tampered with, and it’s really from him and it’s genuine, right? That’s the same idea here except for your soul, in that you are God’s, you’re adopted, and the Spirit is that seal.
But the sealing isn’t just in the sacraments, but here, having believed, in the process of believing, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Because the sacraments are just additions to the preaching of the word, outward additions to excite our weakness, our weak senses, so that through the senses, it would strengthen our faith. We should be a little better than that, but we’re weak, and God knows this, so he gives us preaching, which is outward and visible and tangible, as well as the sacraments.
But it’s ultimately the believing in the Spirit of God seals more truth upon us in believing. So it’s not just the sealing through the sacraments only, is what I’m saying here, is the point. And then lastly here, under the sealing of the Holy Spirit is the preservation and the perseverance of the saints, specifically the preservation, we are preserved by the power of the Holy Spirit.
To the Praise of the Glory of the Spirit
Who is? Who? The Holy Spirit, verse 14, is the guarantee or the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. You can put a down payment and your check could bounce. The banks don’t know, the house doesn’t know, but the Holy Spirit will never have a bounced check.
That’s the difference. He’s using an earthly analogy, of course, but with the divine truth that the Spirit of God never lies, God never lies, and you who are chosen are saved, and he’s giving you the Spirit of God, that’s why you see and believe and want to be with the saints and want to learn more of God’s truth. These are evidences of the Spirit working within you, him being a seal, the guarantee of our inheritance.
What inheritance? Salvation! Both here and now, and then ultimately in heaven until the redemption. We get the fullness of the purchased possession that Jesus has purchased for us when he comes back. That’s what he’s referring to, the future.
It’s a wonderful truth. And why? Why are we selected and saved and redeemed and given the Holy Spirit? To the praise of his glory, not your glory. Not about the church, but about him.
And so, brothers and sisters, as we wait for that full redemption of the purchased possession, when Christ comes back and our sins are fully purified and no more temptation, and we have a new body, we’re in a new heaven and a new earth, may we meditate upon these glorious elements of redemption and salvation, of election, of adoption, of sanctification, of forgiveness of sins, of being united by the power of the Holy Spirit, being sealed by him as well. And that he did all these things for us, of God and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit working salvation, that he may be glorified all the more to the praise of his glorious grace. Amen.
Let us pray. Father, Lord God, may we remember this is our purpose in life, to praise you for your glorious grace, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. May we reexamine our lives if we’ve forgotten that fact, that all that we do should be for your good, for your glory, for your blessings.
Father God, may this be true. I pray for everyone here that we would submit our hearts to you. We will cry out for more grace and mercy and power so that we can do all things to the praise of the glory of the blessed Trinity we pray.
Amen.