Love Made A Way

A Sermon Series on Atonement

“The His-story of Those Who Believe: Part One”

Ephesians 1:3-11

Introduction

This four-week series looks at four atonement images or metaphors in Scripture: adoption (family), redemption (marketplace), justification (legal), and rescue/victory (conquest). A well-rounded understanding of the ways God has provided our redemption inspires us to live well as redeemed, victorious, free children of God.

When I was a boy my favorite television show was “The Greatest American Hero.”  It was a story of a man who was chosen by aliens and given a special suit.  The suit had amazing powers only the hero lost the owner’s manual.  He spends the whole season discovering new powers, new abilities that the suit had, while fighting bad guys of course.

In the Christian life many are like the Greatest American Hero.  They never really know the extent of our abilities through Christ until their season is almost cancelled. The guilt of past sins keeps them from serving because they don’t understand the extent of God’s forgiveness.  They try to work hard so that they can feel worthy of their salvation. They are insecure of their destiny, thinking constantly, “have I done enough, am I good enough?” “Does God love me?”  They never see themselves as God sees them.  They never know nor experience the power that is within them.

This morning we will look at the history of those who accept Christ.  I have entitled the message The His-story of Those Who Believe because it is God who has designed our lives from eternity past until the future of eternity.  How does this apply to my life?  If we understand who we are in Christ it has a great impact on the way we live our lives, establish priorities, raise our children, relate to our spouse, and on and on.

God Has Blessed His Children In The Past (3-7)

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,

Spiritual Blessings

Paul tells us that God has blessed us with “every spiritual blessing,” and that these blessings are “in the heavenly places,” and these blessings are “in Christ.” The word for “in” as “in Christ” are like going into a door. Once I have crossed the door into a building, I am in the building. So a person who places their faith in Christ, has crossed over into a saving faith relationship. In that relationship, there are blessings. To be “In Christ,” is to have a saving faith relationship.[1]

“Many Christians continually ask God for what He has already given them. They pray for him to give them more: love – “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom. 5:5) peace – “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you.” (Jn. 14:27) happiness and joy – “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn. 15:11) strength – “you can do all things through Him who strengthens you.” (Phil. 4:13)”[2]

God has given us everything that we need pertaining to life and godliness. We are complete in him. (Col. 2:10) We don’t need more from God, we need to make use of what we have already been given. Everything that God has, those in Christ have. Christ’s riches are our riches, His power is our power.

Chosen By God

even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

(v. 4) Those who are followers of Christ has been chosen; “No one can come to Me,” Jesus said, “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Helkuo (draws) carries the idea of an irresistible force and was used in ancient Greek literature of a desperately hungry man being drawn to food.

“Salvage yards use large electromagnets to lift and sort scrap metal. When the magnet is turned on it only attracts certain types of metals, iron, steel, etc, while other metals are in no way attracted, aluminum, and brass. In a similar way, God’s elective will irresistibly draws to Himself those whom He has predetermined to love and forgive, while having no effect on those whom He has not.”[3]

My first response to election was “That’s not fair.” “Why would God draw some and not others?”  “Why could he not just draw, and save everyone?” But these questions show a lack of understanding on three characteristics about God.

God is sovereign. He can do whatever He wants to do. (ex. Job 38)

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.  He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.”

Grace by definition is “mercy shown that is undeserved.”

Exodus 33:19 “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”

God allows Man’s Free (ex. Adam & Eve) God does choose us, and draw us, but there is also an element of free will. Somehow, we have a choice in the matter. There are multiple times when humanity is told to choose and to exercise his own will. Joshua 24:15 “. . . choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (paradox, like Jesus being fully God and fully man.)

 Some Are Chosen By God While Having Freedom To Choose God

Our being chosen was “before the foundation of the world ,” The blessing those who are in Christ receive has been planned and established long before they are even born, even before time itself began. It was God’s plan, “that we should be holy and blameless before him,” God’s choice was for a specific purpose, there was a plan for those whom He elected unto salvation. “God’s work of redemption is for His glory, that this world that has fallen and rebelled against Him will be redeemed, and we who grovel in the dirt in the dust of this world will be raised to the heavenly places, participating in the glory of Christ.”[4]

Adopted

5 “he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, . . .”

In Christ we become citizens of His kingdom. He even calls us friends, He says, “All things that I have heard from My father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:15). But in His great love we have been made more than citizens, servants, and even friends.  He has made us His children. “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear,” Paul says, “but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15).

Human parents can adopt children and come to love them every bit as much as they love their biological children. They can give an adopted child complete equality in the family life, resources, and inheritance. But no human parent can impart his own distinct nature to the adopted child. (illus. people calling to talk to my dad, I pick up the phone, and immediately they say, “Tommy . . .”)

That is what God does to every person whom He has elected and who has trusted in Christ. He makes them sons just like His divine Son. Christians not only have all of the Son’s riches and blessings but all of the Son’s nature. That’s why you see a change in a saved person’s life, they are becoming more like Christ.

(6) “. . . to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

Why did God do all of that for us? Why did He want us to be His sons? 1) We are saved and made sons to the praise of the glory of His grace. He chooses, and predestines us for His glory. Philippians 2:13 says “God is at work in [us] . . . for His good pleasure.” Because of his love for His creation; John 3:16 says  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

God Has Blessed His Children In The Present (7-11)

7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,”

Redeemed

Redemption is a legal term and referred to legal acquittal of a charge or paying the ransom in order to release a person from bondage, especially that of slavery. During New Testament times the Roman Empire had as many as six million slaves, and the buying and selling of them was a major business. If a person wanted to free a loved one who was a slave, he would buy that slave for himself and then grant him freedom, testifying to the deliverance by a written certificate.

Every person born since the fall has come into the world enslaved to sin, under total bondage to a nature that is corrupt, evil, and separated from its Creator. God says I want to pay the price to free my creation. What was the price?  His Son’s blood. Death is the price that must be paid for man’s redemption from sin.

In the OT the blood of sacrificed animals was continually offered on the alters of the Tabernacle and then in the Temple. But that blood was never able, and was never intended, to cleanse the worshippers from sin.  Those animals were symbolic, typical substitutes. Hebrews 10:4 “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” But through the shedding of His blood, (v. 10)“we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”

There is also, something else to consider: Paul has already established in the text that we were chosen, and adopted and made a part of God’s family through Jesus. In the OT there is a Kinsman-Redeemer. When a person sold themselves into slavery, indentured servitude, because they were unable to pay their debts. A Kinsman Redeemer was a blood relative who would pay the debt that was owed by the relative. Because the debt was paid the person was now free from the slavery.[5]

Two results of redemption:

Forgiveness – Israel’s greatest holiday is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On that day the high priest selected two unblemished sacrificial goats.  One goat was killed, and his blood was sprinkled on the alter as a sacrifice. The high priest placed his hands on the head of the other goat, symbolically laying the sins of the people on the animal. The goat was then taken into the wilderness, so far that it could not return. In symbol the sins of the people went with the goat, never to return.[6]

Forgiveness means to send away. Through the shedding of His own blood, Jesus Christ actually took the sins of the world upon his own head and carried them an infinite distance away from where they could never return. Because we continue to sin, we need the continued forgiveness of cleansing; but we do not need the continued forgiveness of redemption. That does not mean we will no longer sin, nor that when we do our sins have no harmful effect.  Our sin affects our growth, joy, peace, usefulness, and an ability to have an intimate relationship with our Father.

Jesus was trying to introduce servant leadership to the disciples at the Last Supper and Peter resisted Jesus washing his feet. Jesus responded you don’t need your whole body washed, just his feet. John 13:9-10 “Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.” When we sin, we don’t need complete redemption, just forgiveness for where we have recently sinned. We continually seek forgiveness for sin, but we are not re-saved every time.

8  “. . . which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight.”

Wisdom and insight

Sophia (wisdom) emphasizes understanding of ultimate things – such as life and death, God and man, righteousness and sin, heaven and hell, eternity and time. Phronesis (insight) emphasizes practical understanding, comprehension of the needs, problems, and principles of everyday living. We need both to live a godly life – understanding ultimate things lived out in a meaningful way.

(v. 9-10) “. . . 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 Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in him.

Paul uses the word mystery to mean something that was once hidden but has now been revealed. The plan “to unite all things in Christ,” was once hidden, but in the fullness of time has now been made known to the world. The revealed truth is that the world will receive the gospel – the family of God is expanded beyond Israel and goes into the whole world (Col. 1:27).

11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, . . .”

This mystery that Gentiles are included into God’s plan for the redemption of the world, was again, planned (predestined) – it has always been God’s plan, His will to redeem His creation “to unite all things in Christ.”

A story told by Paul Lee Tan illustrates the meaning of redemption. He said that when A.J. Gordon was pastor of a church in Boston, he met a young boy in front of the sanctuary carrying a rusty cage in which several birds fluttered nervously. Gordon inquired, “Son, where did you get those birds?” The boy replied, “I trapped them out in the field.” “What are you going to do with them?” “I’m going to play with them, and then I guess I’ll just feed them to an old cat we have at home.” When Gordon offered to buy them, the lad exclaimed, “Mister, you don’t want them, they’re just little old wild birds and can’t sing very well.” Gordon replied, “I’ll give you $2 for the cage and the birds.” “Okay, it’s a deal, but you’re making a bad bargain.” The exchange was made and the boy went away whistling, happy with his shiny coins. Gordon walked around to the back of the church property, opened the door of the small wire coop, and let the struggling creatures soar into the blue. The next Sunday he took the empty cage into the pulpit and used it to illustrate his sermon about Christ’s coming to seek and to save the lost — paying for them with His own precious blood. “That boy told me the birds were not songsters,” said Gordon, “but when I released them and they winged their way heavenward, it seemed to me they were singing, ‘Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed!”

You and I have been held captive to sin, but Christ has purchased our pardon and set us at liberty. When a person has this life-changing experience, he will want to sing, “Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed!”[7]

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[1] R. C. Sproul, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Sanford, Florida; Ligonier Ministries, 2023) 11.

[2] John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Ephesians (Chicago, Illinois; Moody Press, 1986) 8.

[3] MacArthur, 11.

[4] Sproul, 14.

[5] Sproul, 18.

[6] the “scapegoat,” see Lev. 16:21-22

[7] https://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/r/redemption.htm