Dan Shambro 9/20/15
1 Title: Praising God for His Purpose
Text: Ephesians 1:7–10 7
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10
as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Introduction & Outline
This is our second sermon through Ephesians and we have just started looking at the first of two major sections in the letter. This first section focuses on what God has done to call the church into existence. On the outline of Ephesians that I put together, I’ve tried summarizing the whole first chapter by titling it The Blessing of Christ: Paul’s Praise-filled Preaching. The reason is that throughout the chapter, Paul seeks to lead us to worship God by proclaiming the greatness of who He is and what He has done for us. In other words, he wants us to bless God because of how God has blessed us.
Today’s sermon is titled Praising God for His Purpose. The goal is still to lead us in worshiping God, but this time by focusing on the ultimate purpose of God’s grace— at least one of the ways it can be stated (Paul states it in different ways throughout Ephesians). God’s ultimate purpose is to unite all things in Jesus forever—that’s the main idea of our passage today.
We will see this purpose emerge by looking at: 1. What God Gives (v. 7a)
2. How God Gives (vv. 7b–9a) 3. Why God Gives (vv. 9b–10)
I’ve chosen to divide the points in a way that might seem odd at first. Each one is split right in the middle of a verse (the “a” or “b” after the verse number indicates that it refers to the first half or second half of the verse, respectively). Let me point out three things about this before we move on.
First, the Geneva Bible, printed in 1560AD, was the first English Bible to have verse numbers in both the New and Old Testaments (that’s about 1500 years after Paul wrote Ephesians!). They were added to help in quoting, searching, and studying the Bible, but we can’t forget that they are manmade and not part of the original text that God inspired. So, when we are trying to understand passages of Scripture in their context, it is best to pretend like the chapter and verse numbers are not there because sometimes they might disrupt the flow of the text (the same goes for the paragraph headings included in most translations).
2 Second, I haven’t arbitrarily divided the points for today. Whenever the words “according to” appear, that begins a new point.
For the third and final bit of introduction, I want us to think about the words “according to.” I’m guessing that most of us don’t use this phrase much, but the Bible does. It used to really trip me up and, in case it does the same for you, I want to explain what it means.
The dictionary tells us that “according to” means “something that happens in a manner that conforms to a standard.” Simple, right? Not really… Let me try to simplify that definition. “According to” tells us that an action follows or is consistent with something else.
One example comes from the legal field. Criminals are punished according to the law. This means that their punishment conforms to or is consistent with the standards of the law. This is why we don’t give the death penalty for driving too fast. Another example comes from the scientific/mathematic field. An object falls to the ground according to the law of gravity. This means that people who can do math can figure out the speed at which something falls because it follows or conforms to the law of gravity. This is why when something falls off a table at home, we immediately try to grab it—because we know it fall according to the law of gravity.
So, this phrase shows up twice in our passage, each time introducing the next point. It will tell us that the previous point conforms to or is consistent with the current point—it’s like a bridge between the two. I’ll explain this more when we get to points 2 and 3, but let me give you a sneak peak: we will see that God’s actions align with and conform to His character. Be on the lookout for this. What God does tells us who God is.
Let’s pray now and ask God to help us see who He is in light of what He has done. Point 1: What God Gives (v. 7a)
7
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses…
In this verse, Paul expresses one idea in two different ways. We have “redemption” and “forgiveness of our trespasses,” but these are not really two different things. They are two different ways of explaining the one gift of God’s grace that is ours through Jesus’s blood. Keep this in mind as we look at what God gives.
Redemption
Let’s start with redemption. I’ll define it first and then unpack its significance in this verse. To redeem means “to release from captivity by payment of a ransom.”1 In other words, it means “freedom at a price.” It was used most frequently of slaves
1 William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 117.
3 who were set free because someone else paid for their freedom. For example, if a prisoner of war was forced to be a slave to the nation that capture him, his home country could pay a price in exchange for his freedom and release. So, this verse is saying that those who are in Jesus have been set free at a price, which raises 4 big questions.
The first question is: If we were set free, then what was holding us captive? I want to read two different passages that Paul wrote to help answer this question:
“16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.” — Romans 6:16–17
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” – Ephesians 2:1, 3
Together these verses answer the question this way: we were in the prison of our sin awaiting the death sentence of God’s wrath. When we live devoted to our sin, we are actually enslaved to it—and not just to our sinful acts, but to our sinful natures. As a result, we are also held captive to the fate of God’s wrath. Apart from Jesus, we live under the sentence of death because that is our only inheritance as children of wrath. So, Jesus has redeemed us from both the slavery of sin and from the fate of God’s wrath.
The second question is: What are we free to do now that we couldn’t do before? Jesus does not just free us from something; He frees us for something. Let me name just a few of those things by summarizing what we have read so far in Ephesians: We are free to call God our Father and Jesus our Lord. We are free to receive every spiritual blessing that God gives. We are free to live before God as those declared holy and blameless in Jesus. We are free to receive God’s glorious grace and free to proclaim that glory to others. We are free to live in our new identity as children of God’s grace rather than children of God’s wrath.
The third and fourth questions are: What did our redemption cost and who paid for it? These questions are so tightly connected that we have to answer them together: Jesus paid the price withHis own blood. Think about it this way: If we were in the jail cell of our sin awaiting the death sentence of God’s wrath, then our redemption is like Jesus stepping into our jail cell, taking our death sentence, and giving us His freedom instead. That is the picture of our redemption: our liberation at the cost of Jesus’s life.
Forgiveness
Redemption is the first picture of what God has given us in Jesus. The second is forgiveness of our trespasses. Trespassing means stepping where we shouldn’t step; going where we shouldn’t go. But there are different types of trespassing and we need to make sure we understand which one describes our sin.
4 One type of trespassing is for private places. Sometimes people will put “no trespassing” signs on their property because they want privacy. If you trespass there, you might get arrested and fined because only people with the proper status of family or friend can go to those places.
A second type of trespassing is for top-secret places. You cannot just walk into the White House or the Pentagon and go into any room you want because they are top-secret places. If you trespass there, you will definitely get arrested and probably go to prison because only people with the proper authority can go to those places. A third type of trespassing is for dangerous places. Back around the time when our country was first researching weapons of mass destruction, they would sometimes test them in remote areas of the desert. If you trespass there, you will die from the radiation because the whole area is poisoned. This is the kind of trespassing that we have done.
Sin is like an amusement park built on lethal, radioactive testing ground. We can have a kind of joy there, but it will ultimately poison our souls and kill us. God tells us not to trespass there because we will die, not because we lack the proper status or authority. God tells us not to trespass there because He has non-lethal, life giving joy to offer us within the boundaries of His holy will, not because He doesn’t want us to be happy.
But we have not trespassed by accidentally wandering into forbidden places. We have trespassed by rejecting His warning and the joy He offers. Sometimes we trespass because we think God is lying—we see the warning signs and think they are fake. We think, “If it was really a deadly place, why would there be an amusement park there?” and then we hop the fence. “If sin is so bad, then why does it make me so happy?” People say that because they fail to realize that their source of joy is poisoned.
Other times we trespass even though we know God is telling the truth—we believe the warning signs but we love the amusement park so much that, in the moment, we don’t care if it kills us. So, we totally, rebelliously, and sinfully ignore His warnings. Our trespasses are the reason we are in the jail cell awaiting the death sentence. This is what God has forgiven us of by giving that death sentence to His Son. Jesus—who never once trespassed—shed His blood for our trespasses as though they were His own.
Blood
Remember here that redemption and forgiveness are different ways of describing what we receive through Jesus’s blood. But what is the connection between blood and redemption and forgiveness? How did Jesus’s blood accomplish these things? Why was it necessary? It was necessary because our captivity to sin and our trespasses were real and they required just and righteous punishment.
5 Think about it: If you are driving and someone cuts you off, what do you want to happen next? You want a police car to pull them over—you want justice. But what if you cut someone off only to realize that there is a police car in the next lane—then what do you want to happen next? Not justice, right? You want mercy. You want forgiveness. You want the officer to overlook your offense. That might happen in our world but that cannot happen with God. Our sins against Him are simply too great to ignore. But, thankfully, the blood of Jesus is more powerful than our sins, and the greatness of His mercy in shedding His blood for us is what we see in the next point. Point 2: How God Gives (vv. 7b–9a)
…according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9
making known to us the mystery of his will… Lavishly
Remember our grammar lesson from the introduction about the phrase “according to”? It tells us that the action is consistent with or aligns with or conforms to something. Here “according to” tells us that God’s act of redemption and forgiveness is consistent with, conforms to, and aligns with His richly gracious nature. God has given us redemption and forgiveness because He is rich in grace. In other words, because God is rich in grace He redeems us and forgives our trespasses by the blood of His Son.
God’s actions are consistent with His character. This is the kind of God He is: He is a redeemer and forgiver because He is rich with grace. We associate the word “rich” with money and material possessions, but this verse says that God is rich not with money, but with mercy. He can give and give and give and never deplete His supply. God is able to give never-ending saving grace to every person who has ever existed and still have an infinite amount of grace left. He doesn’t need to budget His grace. He is a trillionaire in grace and lavishes it upon those who repent of their sins and turn to Jesus for redemption and forgiveness. God fills our lives with grace like Niagara Falls would fill a cup with water.
Through gracious revelation
That is how God gives—lavishly. But this verse also tells us that God does this by the means of “making known to us the mystery of his will.” Revealing the mystery of His will is how God lavishes grace upon us. We learn at least three things from this. First, it means, obviously, that God has a will. He has a plan and a desire and a purpose for His creation. He is not making it up as He goes along or leaving things to chance.
Second, it means that God’s will is mysterious.
Which therefore means, third, that we need God to reveal His will to us if we ever hope to understand it. God’s will is not mysterious in the sense of being difficult for us to understand. It is not as though we could uncover the mystery if we would only
6 put forth enough effort. No, it is impossible to understand apart from God’s grace. If we understand anything about God’s will, it is because God has revealed it to us by giving us the wisdom and insight we need to understand it.
This is why Christians are people of the Book—the Holy Bible. The reason we read it, study it, write about it, read about it, talk about it, preach it, memorize it, share it, and love it is because we believe that through these words God reveals His will to us. He does this through His story of creating, redeeming, and recreating the world through Jesus. And as Christians, we should never be arrogant about this, as though by our own efforts, intelligence, or resources we have uncovered some secret knowledge that people must receive from us. No, our boast is in God alone who has graciously revealed His will to us in His Word, by His Spirit, and through His Son. And though it is mysterious, the last thing we want is to keep it secret—we want as many as possible to know that Jesus Christ is the only way, truth, life, and Lord, which leads to our next point.
Point 3: Why God Gives (vv. 9b–10)
…according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
It pleases Him
Once again we have the phrase “according to.” Here we discover that God’s act of graciously making His will known to us is consistent with, conforms to, and aligns with what the ESV—for some strange reason—translates as “purpose.” Almost every other English translation of the Bible translates this word literally as “good pleasure.” It’s not that “purpose” is wrong; it’s just too vague to really capture the essence of what Paul says.
The word “purpose” tends to have a dry, unemotional connotation to it. For example, I can purpose or plan a lot of things without engaging the depths of my heart. I don’t necessarily take good pleasure in doing the dishes or buying new clothes or going to the dentist but I certainly do all of these things according to a purpose. I do dishes with the purpose of having a clean house; I buy clothes with the purpose of being appropriately and comfortably dressed; I go to the dentist with the purpose of having a clean and healthy mouth. Using the word “purpose” here makes it sound like God has lavished grace upon us by revealing Jesus with about as much affection as we have in running errands like these. But lavishing us with saving grace isn’t just “running errands” for God. All of His saving acts toward us happen according to His deep and infinite pleasure. He redeems, forgives, lavishes us with grace, wisdom, and insight, and reveals the supremacy and glory of Jesus Christ because it is His good pleasure to do so. God saves happily.
7 To unite all things in Christ
God gives because it pleases Him—that’s His motive. But what is His goal in doing this? This is where we really see the main point shine through: God intended and planned that everything in heaven and earth would be forever united in Christ.
Paul wrote this letter in Greek, which is an amazing language. Sometimes Greek can communicate in one word what takes English five or more words to communicate. The word translated as “unite” is one of those words. It means something like “to summarize and gather together under a single authority.” It means that God desired that everything in heaven and earth would forever have reference in some way to Jesus as the Ruler of the universe.
“Unite” is a good translation, but we have to understand that it doesn’t mean everything is united in Jesus in the same way. For example, those who love, trust, and believe in Jesus will relate to Him as forgiven sinners who have received mercy and grace they do not deserve. But those who do not love, trust, and believe in Jesus will relate to Him as unforgiven sinners who have received the wrath and judgment they do deserve.
We praise God for this purpose and especially that we will be united to Him by grace, which leads to our three points of application for today.
Application
The necessity of God’s grace
If you are not a Christian today, my plea is for you to know two things. First, know the perilous situation you are in apart from Jesus. Consider that you will be united under His authority one day. But without repentance and faith, it will not be in grace, but in judgment. Second, know that God will happily lavish grace upon you if you come to Him confessing your desperate need for redemption and forgiveness. There is nothing you can bring but your need of Him. If you know and feel your need for a substitute today, receive Jesus as your substitute. Call on Him and He will answer— He will set you free from your slavery to sin and forgive all of your trespasses. He will redeem and forgive you by the blood of Jesus. He will rescue and forgive you by accepting Jesus as your substitute.
I say this to you not only on the authority of God’s Word, but also as a sinner saved by grace. I testify to these glorious things as one who has received them.
The humility of God’s grace
As I mentioned before, if redemption and forgiveness are by the lavish grace of God in Christ, then arrogance is outlawed. But I want to draw out one more application from this point about how we share the gospel with others. We should never say, “you are a sinner and you need to repent” because it sounds like we are implying that we are not sinners and therefore do not have to repent. Usually this is not what people mean when they say it. But God’s grace in saving us humbles us so that
8 when we share the gospel we say, “we are all sinners and we need to repent.” Salvation by grace means we always include ourselves in the gospel call to repent and believe. It is a lifestyle for Christians because redemption and forgiveness are ours (present tense).
The sufficiency of God’s grace
Lastly, I want to share an example of how the sufficiency of God’s grace can address every real or perceived failure in our lives. Our Wednesday night Bible study started this week and I think I led it poorly for several reasons. I bring this up for two reasons. First, to ask you to pray—this will not succeed by my skill, but by God’ grace. Second, to give an example of how this text can be medicine for our souls. I think most people might try to counsel those who feel like they’ve failed by saying things like, “everything was fine, you did alright, things will be even better next time” and so on. But that kind of counsel only focuses attention on our own actions and performance. Through this passage, God helped me—not by attempting to confirm or deny my sense of failure—but by lavishing me with grace, by enabling me to confidently declare, “God has redeemed me through Jesus’s blood, He has forgiven me of all my trespasses, He has lavished me with grace, and He has forever united me to Jesus in peace, mercy, and love.”
What else do I need, really? A thriving Bible study? I certainly want that so that I can witness God lavishly pouring out grace on college students. But if that whole effort fails, God’s flow of grace in my life will not dry up, and the same goes for whatever failure or trial you are facing. God’s grace and our identity as His beloved children does not depend upon our successes or failures in life; it depends on the finished work of Jesus in His death and resurrection.
