After his opening salutation, Paul's very first statement in Ephesians sets the tone for everything that follows:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing" ... and in that tone of rejoicing, we are led on a conducted tour of those blessings.
It's as though you're shown over a stately home of large and ample proportions, lavishly appointed, furnished in exquisite taste, set in grounds that are a paradise on earth ... and then told, when the guided tour is over, "This ... all this ... is now your home. This you have inherited. It's all yours." For we're presented in this chapter, you see, with a statement of what is true for every one of us from the moment we were engaged to be the Lord's. It's like a title deed that's put into the hand of every child of the Kingdom the day he first enters through its gates. It's all fact, not fancy.
In the first fourteen verses we're shown what has already been given to us, and, in the remaining nine verses, the difference it will increasingly make in our experience.
After the general statement in v. 3 that we've been endowed with the entire wealth of heaven, some of it is itemised.
First, "you were chosen from before the foundation of the world".
Ponder that a moment. It's no accident that you became a Christian. It wasn't only your decision for Christ that made you one, it was His decision for you. Remember that, when you're tempted sometimes to wonder if you're a Christian at all. That you are a Christian rests on a foundation much more solid than your own wish to be one.
Before the material out of which our planet is fashioned began to whirl around in the cloud out of which it condensed - that long ago - God had you in His mind: He already loved you, and had decided to have you for a son or a daughter. That's how far back your history as a Christian reaches. You don't imagine a mere mood or two of yours, or a few patches in your life when the lamp of faith burns low, are going to change that, do you? You are the Lord's: that's been settled long since. God Himself picked you for His team. You are elect.
People have problems with this, I know. But it ought not to be a problem - it ought to be a reassurance! ('tis darkness to my intellect, but comfort to my heart) The doctrine of election is one of the best antidotes God offers to a lack of assurance. Grasp hold of it: feel the strength of it around you (as the insurance ads invite us to do!).
Second, we're told God "destined us in love to be His children".
You're one of the family. Do you know that song in the Musical "Oliver" when Fagin's gang welcomed young Oliver in?
Consider yourself at home;
consider yourself one of the family.
We've taken to you so strong:
it's clear ... we're going to get along.
Consider yourself well in. Consider yourself one of us".
You're "in" - well in! God hasn't given you a shed down the bottom of the garden! He's given you your own room in His own House. He's made you one of the family - not in kindly pretence, but in solid truth.
Paul drives home the point by saying that we've been adopted into God's family: that's the word he uses in v.5; literally it reads, "predestinating us to adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to Himself". The idea of adoption carried a great deal more force in his day than it does in ours, because the Roman laws of adoption were far more water-tight and favourable to an adopted child than they were even to the natural first-born.
"New birth" isn't the only way to describe what happens when you become a Christian ... indeed to people in New Testament times, the word "adoption" meant more. Let me explain why.
In the Roman Empire there was what was called the "Patria Potestas" - the authority over his family that a Roman father had. He had absolute power over his children: power of control over them (who they married, what job they took and so on), over the disposal of their fortunes, and even over life and death ... and there was no court of appeal to which children could turn.
This made adoption a very serious step. It occurred in fact more often for adults than for children: it was way in which an older man could express his admiration for a younger, so that to be chosen for adoption was a very great honour. Its seriousness was emphasised by the ceremony that took place when it happened: it was in two stages:
1. The "Mancipatio" - three times, with scales, the former father sold his son, and only twice bought him back.
2. The "Vindicatio" - the adopting father went to the Prætor, the Roman Magistrate, and filed the transfer papers of the son into his own "Patria Potestas".
There were four consequences of the procedure:
1. The son lost all rights in his old family, and gained all rights in the new. He literally got a new father.
2. He became heir to his father's estate - nothing could ever undo his title to it, and his title took precedence over that of all other natural-born children.
3. His old life - all his debts, his crimes, everything - was wiped out of the records. Even his name was changed. He became a new person with a wholly new identity.
4. He became his new father's son in the most complete sense the law could define. When Claudius wanted to adopt Nero, for example, who then wanted to marry Claudius's natural daughter Octavia, the Senate had to pass a special law to get round the law that prohibited a man from marrying his sister. So real was Nero's adoption that Octavia became, in law, his sister absolutely.
5. Seven witnesses were required - in case the adopting father should die.
Now you carry all that over into the meaning the metaphor had for Christians, when it was said that God had adopted them into His family. It meant:
1. Their past was completely wiped out.
2. They became a new and completely different person.
3. They got a new Father.
4. They got undisputed title to his entire estate, and ...
5. The Holy Spirit was the "seven-fold" witness!
You are an adopted child of God. You are His child, in the most complete sense it is possible to define. You can go to Him anywhere, any time, about anything. He has taken full responsibility for you, so you never need want for any necessary thing, and in His Name you can do things and claim things you would never dream or dare to do or to claim in your own name.
If you hesitate to believe all this because, perhaps, you've behaved badly in the Father's house (or out of it!), and like the prodigal son you're not sure of your welcome in it any more, then you're assured next, that you "have redemption through Christ's blood"; and that means the entire forgiveness of all your sins. Nothing you have done will be held against you. You are as welcome to God's heart as if your own were pure as driven snow. Indeed, you're as welcome to God's love as His own beloved Son Christ Jesus is! You are - if you will not misunderstand the phrase in a falsely sentimental way - "the apple of His eye". You are. You have no idea how unspeakably precious in the Father's eyes you are ... yes, you!
For as you're assured next, God hasn't merely been kind to you, He "has lavished the riches of His grace upon you". Like a fond father who settles his entire fortune on a favoured son, God has settled the entire wealth of heaven and His own huge love upon you. God didn't forgive you your sins so as to tolerate you - He forgave you your sins so as to delight in you. His purpose in forgiving us is to establish real fellowship with us. He doesn't forgive us merely to spare us; He forgives us so as to enjoy our friendship and fill our cup of happiness to the brim.
It's inconceivable ... isn't it? ... that Christ should have suffered as He did to secure our forgiveness if He had no more interest in us than the settling of some merely legal problem. If He willingly shed His blood for us, He wants us: wants us for His friends, esteems our fellowship a thing more to be desired than His own life. "The Father seeketh such to worship Him" ... "Christ loved the church, and gave Himself up for her" ... "with great desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you my friends" ... He "rejoices over us as a bridegroom over his bride."
Fifth, Paul tells us we're "sealed with His promised Holy Spirit".
That means God has invested Himself in you. It's not as though He's merely risked some cash on you, so to speak. He's risked Himself by transplanting His own Spirit into you.
He has put His Spirit on you the way merchants and princes in the Roman world used to put their seal - their trade-mark - on goods that belonged to them - to guarantee their quality, and to give them the protection of their own name.
God's gift to you of His own Spirit is:
He sends His Spirit into your heart so you'll be "for real".
He has put His Spirit upon you to mark you as His. Now you belong.
The Holy Spirit is God's "guarantee of your inheritance, until you acquire the full possession of it". In other words, the Holy Spirit is God's "down payment" on the goods He has promised to deliver - the deposit given as a guarantee that you'll later be paid in full. Bless my soul, if the gift of the Holy Spirit is only part payment ... what is to come?!
It is because God loves you like this that He has admitted you into His inner ring. That's right ... He's let you in on His secrets.
That's evidence, if you like, that His attitude toward us is no mere formal one, but a real, personal relationship in which He shares deeply with us the things that lie closest to His heart. "He has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of His will."
The thing He was doing in and through His beloved Son in the cradle of Bethlehem and the cross of Calvary and is doing still now that He is crowned in glory, is a thing He has "let us in on" ... "His plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in Christ".
One of the special things the Gospel does is give you a philosophy of life - truer, more satisfying, more thorough, more exciting than any merely human philosophy can begin to offer. It answers to life's severest problems, the problem of pain included, more fully and satisfyingly than any philosophy or ideology the thinkers of this world can supply. In the Gospel you have a light in which you can perceive the strengths and weaknesses of them all. In the Gospel you are given a light in which to see all life - clear and meaningful.
God has let us in on His secret. He has made us His sons.
That's why the prayer can be offered, as it is in vs. 15-23 of ch.1, that we be given "wisdom and revelation and enlightenment" for one thing, and "hope" for another thing, such as no earthly tragedy can eclipse ... and more even than that, that we be given "power".
For in this grand design for humanity God has given us, not only a sight of His strategy, but a place in it!
His conflict is with the powers of darkness that have spoiled our race: and so, to equip us for our part with Him in that warfare, He has infused into us the very same power that carried Christ through death to life, and to victory over all the powers of evil.
He has done that. Think of it. That power - the power displayed in the raising of Christ Jesus from the dead - is the power He has connected you to. God wants you to know that.
That's why Paul prays, in verses 18-20, "that the eyes of your hearts may be enlightened that you might know what is the immeasurable greatness of His power in us who believe ..."
That power is available to us.
Two things I want to draw out of that.
First, Paul says, "His power in you" - not "your power in Him".
There's a difference; there's a world of difference. I'll come back to this more fully in another chapter. Just note it now.
In your service for God, you don't have to work up spiritual power: you only have to let it flow.
It's God's power, not your power.
He supplies it; you don't have to generate it.
You trust, and obey, and the power comes in.
We're like the organ blowers at the church I pastored in Cambridge. The organ had an electric blower, but it also had a hand-pumping apparatus, and when there was an electricity strike (they have them in England!), we had to use it. Hard work it was, too, for the young people who heaved on it to give the organ enough puff! Wouldn't it have been stupid, though, if we'd always heaved on the hand gear when there wasn't a strike!
But that's what we Christians so often do - we try to work up enough puff, when all we have to do is throw a switch - the switch labelled "Trust and Obey" ... just lean back on God, and do it!
I repeat, the power is His, in us - not ours in Him.
Second, the "you" is plural: "that 'yous' (!) might know". It's to the church the power is given, rather than to individuals.
Of course, if it really is given to the church, then individuals will experience it, because the church is people: but it's in togetherness we're to know and exert it.
As we saw in the previous chapter, 'togetherness' is the ruling theme of the entire epistle ... and the dimension of togetherness is one of the lost dimensions in modern-day evangelical thought. We have this habit of mind in which we refer all the promises and assurances of the New Testament to individuals. That's not the New Testament habit of mind - the apostles referred all the promises and assurances to the church. As we've said, that does mean that individuals experience them all ... but in togetherness.
I do ask you to take note of this. How shall we appropriate the promises made to us in Ephesians as a church? For that's how we're to reckon on doing so. There must be real togetherness among us, or we shan't experience it, you see.
How really together are we? How earnestly do we aspire to be a truly united company of people in our love for, our trust in, and our obedience to the Word of God? Are we really together?
If we're not, the power won't flow.
Why? Let me show you. A deacon of the Cambridge church I served supplied the perfect illustration. In the factory where he worked as an engineer, they had two identical motors, he said, both wired up to the same power source. When you switched them on, one purred into life and delivered its power with smooth and cool efficiency. But the other spluttered and fizzed and sparked and smoked ... turned over sluggishly for a bit, then roared into life only to hiccough again, and grew so hot you'd think it was going to explode with frustrated effort!
The reason? There were some wires crossed inside its coils somewhere, and this created too great an electrical resistance for the current to flow smoothly through it.
And the reason churches splutter and hiccough and generate clouds of smoke and grow heated with frustration is because there are too many crossed wires among the coils of their membership ... members who can't get on with each other, leaders who are jealous of each other, deacons who aren't with their pastor, pastors who are paranoid about their deacons ...
It's crossed wires of illwill that foul up the works of a church more than any other thing.
No real togetherness, you see. No real reconciliation of Christian with Christian ... so there's warm, genuine affection and appreciation of one another, the way there is between Christ Himself and each of us.
Remember what we saw in the last chapter - the Church is called into being by God to demonstrate, and to promote the reconciliation He achieves by the Way of the Cross. That is supremely what a church is to be. That is what your church is to be. If it isn't that, whatever else we want it to be will be beside the point - quite beside the point.
If only we could see how pathetic are the things we allow to obscure the goal. Like Esau, we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. We forfeit the limitless possibilities God offers us at the price of childish trivialities. Is it because our eyes have not been opened to the shining splendour of God's purpose for us? Do we need, like Bartimæus, to pray that we might receive our sight? ... for with it, we shall receive also strength for the day.
Let it be our prayer, this prayer of Paul's, that we "might receive that inner illumination of the heart whereby we see
... how great is the hope to which God has called us" (that hope, remember, is the "mystery" Paul has already referred to - God's Grand Design, which is unity, community, cosmic community)
... how great is the hope to which God has called us ...
... how magnificent is the inheritance of God's children, and ...
... how tremendous is the power available to us who believe."
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