Ephesians 1:1-6 Sermon Text
Intro
Well good morning, y’all! We have a LOT to talk about today so let’s just get straight into it. We are starting the book of Ephesians this morning and I feel like I’m going to explode because there’s so many glorious things in the book of Ephesians and I don’t want us to miss them. It’s a good thing we are taking 15 weeks to work through this book bit by bit, and quite frankly we could easily take even longer than that. But for now we want to keep the main thing front and center. So what is the main thing? What is Ephesians about? Why was it written? Well ephesians was written to answer two questions: 1) What is God’s purpose for the church? And 2) How do we grow more and more in the knowledge of Christ? And what we are going to see is that these two questions are so tightly interwoven that you can’t separate them.
In the knowledge of Him
See, what Paul is telling the Ephesians and what God is telling us is that God’s purpose for the church is to display his glory to all of creation. That God’s great power and wisdom and mercy and glory are MOST ON DISPLAY in sinners who have been redeemed by grace. In the church, God is able to say “look how glorious I am. I am even able to redeem those who were rebels against me, belonging to Satan, and completely dead in their sin for my glory. Now I have made them alive, renewed their hearts to love me, and adopted them as sons.” In short, through the church God is able to prove that he is more powerful than sin and death and Satan.
And the way that God shows his glory to creation is through our obedience. When we walk in obedience to Him, in maturity and wisdom, in unity toward one another, in love toward the lost it shows the great work that he has accomplished in us BECAUSE WE ARE NOT CAPABLE OF THOSE THINGS ALONE. Which links us to the other purpose of the book of Ephesians. Number one is to show God’s purpose for the church: to Glorify Himself through our obedience. But number two is to show us how to grow more and more in the knowledge of Him.
Paul tells us in Ephesians that if we want to grow in maturity in order to accomplish God’s purpose for us, which is to glorify Him by our obedience, then we can’t do it on our own. There is only ONE way to grow in maturity as a follower of Christ and that is “in the knowledge of Him.” So what does that mean? It means that until we understand what Christ has done for us and in us, we will never mature as Christians. But the more we DO understand, the more and more we will grow and desire obedience to Christ.
What knowledge?
Ok, so is Paul telling us we need doctoral degrees in eschatology and soteriology and demonology in order to grow in maturity? Do I need to understand the complex intricacies of Christophanies and be able to quote theologians like Augustine and Martin Luther? What “Knowledge of Christ” am I supposed to know? Well it’s not just any old knowledge that matures us. There’s lots of things we can study that won’t make us mature Christians. But Paul tells us there are four things we need to understand in order to grow in Christ.
Ephesians 1:17-20 “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places
1) We need to understand the hope to which he has called us. Our hope matures us and makes us grow. 2) the riches of HIS glorious inheritance in the saints. Meaning, we belong to Christ. We are his inheritance. And it is a GOOD inheritance. When we understand that we belong to Christ for His glory we will mature and grow. 3) When we understand the great resurrection power that he works toward us we will mature and grow. The same power that raised Christ from the dead works in you. And finally, this one is crucial. Number 4) We must understand Christ’s love for us.
Ephesians 3:16-19 says “16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Paul’s greatest prayer for us is that we would know how much Jesus loves us. And that is not some trite and cute children’s sunday school feel good statement. It is the single most important ingredient to your spiritual maturity. You have no idea how much God loves you. You can’t comprehend it. Paul says it is beyond human understanding and it surpasses knowledge. In fact he tells us that we can’t understand ANY of the things we need to understand unless God himself enlightens our hearts through his Holy Spirit to give us wisdom.
So the four things: our hope to which he has called us, that we belong to him for his glory, that his power is at work within us, and that he Loves us. Seemingly simple things. And yet if you think you understand them completely, then you don’t understand them at all. The beginning of our growth and maturity is realizing we haven’t even BEGUN to understand them.
Series: in the knowledge of Him
That’s why we are calling this series “In the Knowledge of Him.” The key themes of Ephesians are knowledge, holiness, and glory. God’s purpose for the church is that we would live our lives completely dedicated to his glory, walking in a manner that imitates him in holiness. But that cannot happen if we don’t know Him and know what are the depths of what He has done for us. What we know through the Holy Spirit changes who we are in Christ for the glory of God. We need to understand our calling if we are going to walk in a manner that is pleasing to Him. Our key verse for this sermon series is going to be Ephesians 4:1 and it says this “I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Notice how that works. We can’t walk in a manner that is glorifying to God unless we understand the calling to which we have been called. So that’s what we are going to find out. What is our calling and how do we walk in a manner worthy of it? So when I ask “What is the message of the book of Ephesians this is what we are going to say “To walk in a manner worthy of the calling.” … What is the message of the book of Ephesians? “To walk in a manner worthy of the calling.”
Ephesians 1:1-6
Ok that’s enough preamble. How about we actually crack into Ephesians with the time we have left. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter one verse one.
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
Paul’s prayer
Now remember that the purpose of this book is that Paul wants us to understand what God has done for us in Christ, to understand how much he loves us, how much he has blessed us BECAUSE that knowledge is exactly what transforms us and changes us and matures us for holy living SO THAT we can glorify God. And Paul, my man, does not waste even ONE SENTENCE before he starts telling us exactly that. And even more than that, what we will see is that he isn’t just telling us these things, he’s PRAYING them. ALL of ephesians chapters 1 through 3 is a prayer that Paul is praying over the Ephesian church. And what is he praying? That God would help them understand the riches and blessings of what it means to be found In Christ. And so his entire prayer is FILLED with theologically rich explanations of the blessings we have in Christ. And it’s also filled with the purpose of those blessings.
To the praise of His glorious grace
Starting just before verse 5, Paul reminds us of that purpose. He says “In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” So God loves us, adopts us, chooses us, blesses us, and leverages all of his plans and purposes and will to benefit us… why? So that his plans would be “to the praise of His glorious grace.” In other words, so that he would be worshipped and glorified BECAUSE of his grace. God’s GLORY is displayed in his GRACE toward us.
His plan
And that’s the whole point. God’s grace and plan leads us to be “holy and blameless before Him.” God CHOSE us TO BE holy and blameless to the praise of his glorious grace. So God gets glory by our obedience, but God also gets glory for our obedience. Here’s what I mean. When we live holy and blamelessly it glorifies God because it is honoring and pleasing to him. It gives him glory because it makes his characteristics known to others and also because it shows that we love him. But it also glorifies God because GOD GETS CREDIT FOR IT. We are only obedient because he saved us and showed us immeasurable grace and CHOSE us for holiness and blamelessness in the first place. Our obedience was according to His will and plan to save us, so it’s all for His glory.
What did God do?
I want to do something a little different this morning. I want to break down this passage in a way that really shows us how amazing our God is and reveals just in the slightest way the immensity of His love and grace. Up on the screen will be the entire passage for the morning. Ephesians 1-6. Hopefully everyone can see it. Now I want to show us something. Here is all the things GOD does in this passage. All the things that show His will, his plan, his purpose, his action. Look how many times Paul emphasizes that God is working and planning and purposing. From before the world was created, these plans were already in motion. And all of them have to do with his relationship to us. He blessed us, chose us, predestined us, appointed us, adopted us. All of this is to the glory of God, but WE are the beneficiaries of God’s glory.
All of God’s plans that are designed to glorify himself benefit us. In fact, God has only ever had one plan: to glorify himself through our redemption in Jesus Christ. We contribute absolutely nothing to this plan. It wasn’t our idea. It wasn’t our choice. It wasn’t our ability. It wasn’t our desire. We were dead in our sins. We wanted to rebel, reject, ignore, disregard, and disobey God. This was all HIS doing, HIS idea, HIS plan. HE gets the glory. And yet we get all the benefits. Check this out. God get’s glory but what do we get? Next slide
Blessing
We get unmerited grace in our pardon for sin. God gets the glory. We get supernatural peace that comes from God because of the hope we have in him. God gets the glory. We get adoption as sons who will be given an inheritance. God gets the glory. (And notice that he doesn’t say sons and daughters. We are all sons, even women. Why? Because we are inheritors. We are all considered firstborn sons in Christ. Whatever he inherits, we benefit from. We are called co-heirs with Christ. So calling us sons is not excluding women and it's not male-centric language. It’s a specific word choice meant to show us that we inherit EVERYTHING. God holds nothing back from us because we are firstborn sons.)
In fact, we have so many blessings in our inheritance that Paul is forced to summarize (just for now) by saying EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES. He’ll go on in next week’s passage to tell us what those blessings are, but we already have the biggest clue we need to understand our blessing. We are blessed “in the beloved.” That is, Christ.
In Christ
In fact, look at how often he emphasizes that all we have, we have IN CHRIST. Five times in the span of 6 verses, two of which are just the greeting, Paul reminds us that every spiritual blessing we have, we have because we are in Christ. Now don’t get this confused or you will miss something really critical. We don’t just have these blessings because Christ is the one who gave them to us or because Christ is the one who won them for us. That’s how we often interpret this. Our blessings are BECAUSE of Christ and so we are blessed in Christ. Or maybe we might say Christ IS the blessing and so because of that I’m blessed “in Him.” But that’s not what Paul means here AT ALL. Paul means that you receive these blessings because and ONLY because you are FOUND in Christ. Because you are a part of Christ. Because you are united with Christ.
Do you hear what I’m saying? Being in Christ is how we are blessed by God. No longer are we blessed by being in Israel. No longer are we blessed by being in the temple. We are blessed by being IN CHRIST. By wearing Christ like a garment, by sheltering within him, by abiding in him. Becoming a part of him. Because see, if I am joined with Christ, united to him, IN him… then anything that happens to him happens to me. Anything true of him becomes true of me. If he is righteous then I become righteous. If he has communion with the Father then I have communion with the father. If he lives then I live. If he is holy then I am holy. If he reigns then I reign in Him. If he is a descendant of Abraham then I am a descendant of Abraham in Him, if He receives God’s promises then I receive God’s promises.
In next week’s passage Paul tells us that THIS reality is at the heart of God’s plan for salvation. The way that we are to be redeemed is by being united with Jesus. In chapter 5 Paul speaks of marriage and tells us that marriage is a picture of the gospel because two become one in a relationship of sacrificial love and submission. It’s not just covenant love that makes marriage a holy symbol of the gospel, its covenant unity that shows us how we are one with Christ.
This idea of being found in Christ is so important that in the book of ephesians Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” or “in Him” thirty-two times! That’s about once every 4 verses. In fact, Paul never once calls us Christians. He never once calls us believers. He never once calls us disciples. Almost without fail when he refers to the church, his term for us is “Those who are in Christ.”
Are you in Christ?
Our christian maturity depends on this understanding. We mature as believers, not when we work harder or get more disciplined, but when we understand more and more that we are in Him. Completely dependent on Him. That all the merit belongs to him. All the glory belongs to him. All the boasting belongs to him. All the work belongs to him. It is not my efforts that saved me, so what makes me think it is my efforts that mature me? Galatians 3:3 rebukes that thinking like this “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
And the answer is of course no. Remember what Ephesians chapter 1 said? He chose us, his action, his plan, his doing, He chose us “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” In his grace, in his working, In Christ we are not just COUNTED as righteous people. We are CRAFTED into righteous people. BY HIM.
Remember, we are matured not by our own efforts or discipline or strength of will. We are matured “in the knowledge of him.” The more I realize that HE is the one who does it all, the more I will mature in dependence to Him. It’s not a matter of discipline, it’s a matter of dependence. Spiritual maturity is just dependence. How much am I depending on Him? How much am I seeking to simply be found in Him? Is my hope in him? Do I remember that I belong to Him? Am I trusting his power to work in me and make me alive? Do I understand that all that he does he does in immeasurable love for me?
Practical
So what do we do with all of this? What is the practical next step we can take to be more mature Christians who glorify God better? What are our marching orders? What can we do? The most glorious, wonderful, beautiful answer to that question is that you can’t do anything. By your own power, you can’t do a lick. Paul gives us no instructions here. This isn’t about dos and don’ts. Remember, Paul is praying here. Praying that we would understand what it is that we have been called to as the church. Our calling is to glorify God by being found in Christ.
So I won’t give you instructions, because instructions cannot save you any more than the law could save us. Instead I will simply ask: can you be found in him? Not “did you grow up a christian.” Not “do you go to church.” Not “do you know what Jesus did?” Not even “do you love Jesus?” Can you be found in him? Does all of your being belong to him? Are you completely dependent on Him? Helpless without him? If I look for you, will I find Him instead? Are you in him? And do you know why that is the best place in all of creation to be found?
That is your calling. To be found in Him. Are you walking in a manner worthy of that calling? Let’s pray.
2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 “To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”