"God at Work"

  

 

Ephesians 1:1-14  
 

We turn now to The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, one of the greatest letters of the New Testament. Besides Romans, I consider Ephesians to be Paul’s greatest work.

This letter was written about A. D. 61 from Rome during Paul's first imprisonment there. It was written to the Christians in the Roman province of Asia. These were ordinary people -- tradesmen, craftsmen, a few doctors and lawyers, some politicians -- the general run of people. Many of them were slaves. The letter is commonly called "The Epistle to the Ephesians," but this is not found in many of the ancient manuscripts. Most have just a blank for the address of these saints. Many scholars feel that this is a circular letter which was written to many churches, probably those in the region of Ephesus. Some think it may have been addressed to the very churches to which Jesus had John address the letters in the book of Revelation, beginning with Ephesus and ending with Laodicea. It may be of interest to you to notice that, in his letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to a letter from Laodicea. Many feel that this is that letter. It was brought from Rome by Tychicus, to whom the apostle dictated this great treatise. Circulated from church to church, and read in each one, it finally ended up in Ephesus where it was labeled, The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians. At any rate, as we gather from Paul's footnote at the end, it is really a letter addressed to all Christians everywhere. You can read it, therefore, as "the letter of Paul the Apostle to the church at Pixley, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus."

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,

To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 1:1-2)

That is the briefest salutation in any of Paul's letters. There are just three simple things to which I will call your attention here:

First, Paul's credentials: notice how he describes himself, "an apostle ... by the will of God." An apostle was one sent with a message, a messenger. Paul gloried in the fact that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. And, as he tells us in his letter to the Galatians, the Lord Jesus appeared to him directly. Paul did not learn what he knew about the gospel by discussing it with the other apostles. Peter and James and John and others of the twelve were never teachers of the Apostle Paul. The truth which he imparts to us here he learned directly from Jesus Christ. And that is his authority. Therefore, when you read Paul you are reading an authorized spokesman for the Lord Jesus. He speaks by the authority of Christ. He makes this clear in all his letters.

Sometimes a person will read a portion of one of Paul’s letters and say, "I don't agree with Paul." Well, that’s a grave error. Paul is speaking as an apostle. An apostle is an authorized spokesman. What he says is what he has heard. So, if you don't agree with Paul, you don't agree with the Lord either! We need to remember that as we come to this letter.

Paul was always amazed by the fact that it was "by the will of God" that he was an apostle. He had no greater glory in his life than that God, in the amazing wonder of his grace, had called this man who was such a bitter, intense persecutor of the church, had stopped him and changed him, and had sent him out to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Paul could never get over that: "Called by the will of God" -- what a mighty influence this was in his life! Now notice that he gives no other credentials. He doesn't refer to his training at the feet of Gamaliel, nor his Hebrew background and pedigree, nor the brilliance of his intellect, nor anything else. He simply says, "I'm an apostle by the will of God. That is the ground upon which I write."

Then notice how these Christians are described: "the saints …, the faithful in Christ Jesus." Saints is a word at which we all shudder a little. We don't like to be called saints because we have such a plaster idea of what a saint is. We think of them as being unreal -- so beatific, so holier-than-we, so unlike ordinary human beings. But the saints of the New Testament are not that way; they are people like us. Saints are people who are beset with struggles and difficulties, who have problems at home, and problems at work, and troubles everywhere else. They're normal people, in other words!

But one thing is remarkable about them: They are different. That is really the basic meaning of this word saint. In the Greek it is a word derived from the word for holy. And holy means distinct, different, belonging to God and, therefore, living differently. That is the mark of the saint. It isn't that he doesn't have problems, only that he approaches them differently. He handles them in a different way. He has a different lifestyle. That is what Paul is talking about here.

Their characteristic is that they are faithful, which means, of course, that they can't quit. That's what a Christian is -- a person who can't quit being a Christian. A true Christian just can't stop! That is because, as Paul will describe in this letter, there is imparted to us the Holy Spirit of God, and we are sealed by the Holy Spirit so that we can't quit! That is a mark of a believer in Christ.

Then comes the invariable greeting of Paul to these groups of believers: “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 2). The two great possessions of the Christian are grace and peace. These are two things you can always have, no matter what your circumstances. Grace is all God's power, all his love, all his beauty available to you. It is a term which wraps up all that God is and offers to us. It comes from the same Greek word from which we get our English word charm. Grace is charming, lovely, and pleasant. It is something which pleases, which imparts charm and loveliness to a life.

Peace is freedom from anxiety, fear, and worry. These are the two characteristics which ought to mark Christians all the time: Grace -- God at work in their life; and peace -- a sense of security, of trust. Trust is not knowing, and yet still being at peace, at rest. You see, if you know something, you don't have to trust. But trust is not knowing, and still being at peace.

From here the letter follows the usual structure of Paul's letters. First comes the doctrine, the teaching, the great, revolutionary, radical facts that God is setting before us; that is chapters 1-3. And then comes the practice, the application, the working out of these in terms of the normal situations of life found in chapters 4-6.

Now, don't read these first three chapters of this letter as though they were mere theological pie in the sky. They are not! They are facts! They are what God says is real. They are what is actually happening in the world, and what is available to you. And if you once read them that way you won't treat them as merely academic. You'll begin to found your life upon these facts and act upon them. That is why Paul always begins his letters by setting forth the radical facts of life as God teaches them.

Also characteristic of Paul is to gather everything up in one great prefatory statement, and then break it down into its detail. So I'm going to conclude this introductory message by examining the great statement which Paul makes at the beginning of this letter and which gathers up the great themes of Ephesians to which he will return again and again. And then we'll look briefly at these themes. In Verse 3 we have a tremendous summary of the teachings of this letter:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.... (Ephesians 1:3-4)

There are four elements in this summary that I want you to note.

Paul begins, first, with the One who is behind all these blessings, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is his starting point. And when a man begins with God you know that what he is going to say is in line with reality. Our problem is we don't start our thinking with God; we tend to start it with ourselves, with our experience, which is only a partial view of truth. We immediately narrow the range of our vision to what we are going through and what is happening to us, and we don't see this in relationship to the whole reality of life around us. Consequently, we get twisted and deformed ideas of what is happening. The only proper way to view truth is to see it in relationship to all truth everywhere. And there is only one way to do that, and that is to start with God. Only God is great enough to encompass all truth.

This is the difference between what the Bible calls "natural" thinking, as done by "the natural man," and the "spiritual" thinking of "the spiritual man." Natural thinking is always limited, always wrong to some degree, because it isn't large enough and broad enough to handle all the facts. But spiritual thinking is always God-centered, and, therefore, true, and to the extent that it is spiritual, it is true in every way. We need to learn to be spiritual thinkers about ourselves. This is where Paul begins.

The second element is the aim of the work of God. He sums it up in two words: Praise be to God, and blessed are we with every spiritual blessing. That is what God is aiming to do. His goal is to bring about a world, a universe, filled with blessing. Frequently throughout this letter you find the repeated phrase that everything occurs "to the praise of His glory," i.e., in order that God should be praised, in order that his people should be so struck by the wonder of what has happened to them that their hearts reflect without limit and without their being able to prevent it -- the praise and the glory and the blessing of God. We all have learned that God is to be praised. We are to give thanks in all circumstances. But most of us think of that as something we must make ourselves do. We have to do this because God needs it, his ego needs to be massaged every now and then by our praise, and unless we praise him he won't operate. He gets upset and mad at us and doesn't run things right, and we have to butter him up a little bit to get him to work. That is really the basis upon which most of us act, at least much of the time, isn't it?

But that isn't what this is talking about at all! It is saying that God has done such remarkable deeds that, if we once understand them, if it once breaks upon our dull intellects what it is that God has already done for us, what is already true of us right now, there will be nothing that we can do but stand in absolute awe and amazement, and say, "You mean that is true of me, Lord? I am overwhelmed! My God, how great thou art!" That is what God is after. That is what he wants to produce -- that sense of awe and amazement which causes us to stop and give thanks to a great and glorious God who has given us every spiritual blessing.

In the verses that follow, those blessings are listed for you. We are going to look at them in more detail in subsequent messages, but for now let me just gather them up for you. Notice that:

... he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:4)

That is Number 1: It goes back before the beginning of time, before the foundation of the universe.

The second:

In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:5-6)

What a fantastic thing that is! We are members of the family of God, made to be partakers of the divine nature.

Third:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:7-8)

Think of that! Our guilt is removed, utterly gone.

Four:

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment —to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10)

We have been taken into the secret councils of the Almighty. He has unfolded to us what he plans to do, what he is going to accomplish in the future. We have been told something of the details of this plan.

Then look at Number 5:

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.  (Ephesians 1:11-12)

That is why we are gathered here this morning. God has appointed us to be a demonstration of all these great truths, to live for the praise of his glory.

Look at the sixth:

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. (Ephesians 1:13a)

All that comes as a part of the work of the word of truth.

Finally:

Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13b-14)

Those are the things that make life worthwhile. Without these great facts, life is unbearable to man, desolate, dull, boring, and we can hardly stand ourselves or each other. This is a list, if you like, of the incompetence of man. Man cannot provide these. No political party can introduce them. They come from God, and God alone -- God at work. No one else can give them to us. It is absolutely impossible that we ever should achieve them by ourselves. They are the gifts of God.

The third element of this great verse is that the apostle points out that all this blessing is "in Christ." All this comes to us in Christ, in the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus himself. This fact is going to be stressed again and again in this letter. No two words appear in it more frequently than "in Christ," or "in him." Over and over it is emphasized that everything comes to us through him.

A lot of people claim to have God's blessing in their lives, and yet Christ is not central to their thinking. They are deceived, and they are deceiving us if we accept what they say. The only spiritual blessing that can ever come to you from God must always come in Christ. There is no other way that it can come. God accomplishes spiritual blessing only in Christ. Physical blessings are available "to the just and the unjust alike," but the inner spirit of man can be healed and cured only in Christ, and there is no other way.

Finally, notice the locale where all this occurs -- "in the heavenly realms." Now, that doesn't mean heaven, as we usually conceive it. Paul is not saying that when you die and go to heaven you will experience all these things. He is talking here about the present experience of these blessings. We are involved with the “heavenly realms" right now. These heavenly realms, which occur throughout this letter and in other parts of Scripture, are the realm of invisible reality, of things which are true about life in the world but which we can't see or touch right now. And yet they are very real, and they play an important part in our lives now. This is what Paul refers to in Second Corinthians 4: "We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:18) -- unseen, invisible reality.

We live in a world where most of the important things of our lives are not visible. They can't be touched or seen or tasted or weighed or otherwise measured. They are not subject to the scrutiny of science, nor are they available to the philosophies of men, but they are there. We must recognize that fact. And it is in this realm that these great spiritual blessings are to be found. It is here that our life can be changed and we can become different people, by God's grace. All this will be developed in fuller detail as we go on into the letter.

I want to close by returning to that great initial thought of the Apostle Paul and pointing out to you how he underlines the fact that it is God who does all this. This is not the activity of men that we are talking about. In this first chapter there is no demand for us to do anything. Later on, the question of human activity will come in, but not here. He is talking about what only God can do and what God alone has already done. All progress in the spiritual life comes by understanding a truth which is already true. It is not something that God is going to do, but something he has already done. Therefore it is available to you the minute you understand it and grasp it. If you do this sort of thing, take a pencil and underline the verbs of this passage. You will notice that they all refer to God. He chose...he destined us...in him, we have redemption...has made known to us his will. Go through the passage and what you will see highlighted is God at work.

All around us in the world today men are doing things, and it is right and proper that they should. Men are to work and to plan, they are to dream and to hope, and they are to try to accomplish things. It is right for the government to try to govern and for statesmen to try to accomplish their goals. All of us have something to do. But what our age has tragically forgotten is that the only activity which will change anyone ultimately is what God does, not what man does. That is where we need to focus our thoughts. And we need to see what it is that God is doing.

One of these days, we all recognize and know, even though we hate to admit it, all the vaunted, proud, symbols of our civilization as we know it today are going to be brought low, to crumble into dust, to be lost in the debris of the ages. All the knowledge on which we pride ourselves today will be lost in some forgotten tomb. Man's glory shall fade. All the accomplishments of our present day which give us such self-satisfaction will become nothing but obscure references in some future history book, if that. And what will endure in that day is the work of God. These great facts, revealed in this letter, will still be as brilliant and untarnished in their reality as they are today.

Therefore, if we want to endure, if we want to lift our eyes above the plodding, puny circumstances of our own present experience to the greatness of what God is doing, we must give our attention to these great thoughts -- planned before the foundation of the world, begun even before there was an earth, designed to reveal the greatness of God's grace, his compassion, his love, his forgiveness, his power to restore; available through the one Person who in all the scope of history is able to accomplish what no other man could do, Jesus Christ himself, and resulting at last in the healing of all division and the breaking down of every barrier. That is what Ephesians is about. It is a story of how God is breaking down division.

We are so aware of division today. We are divided within our homes, divided in our work, divided into cliques and camps and nations, all against one another, with all the consequent hurt and injury and malice and hate and prejudice. God is at work to remedy that. He is healing it. He has already begun. He is breaking down the barriers, removing the hate and enmity, restoring and bringing together.

The exciting thing about that, according to this letter to the Ephesians, is that it has begun already. It has begun in us. We are the first ones to see it. We, the church, have felt the force of this great movement of God. We have found it in our homes -- the barriers are beginning to break down there, the divisions are beginning to be healed. The harmony is beginning to emerge in our church life. And the more visibly it is evident, the more the world will see God at work. That is what this letter is all about -- how to allow this healing flow from the great God behind all things, through his Son Jesus Christ, to touch our individual lives and heal us of all our illness and injury. No wonder this great apostle cries out, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms."