Eph 1:15-23:15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. 22 And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Someone was telling me about the great benefit of praying in tongues. “Brother,” he said, “I used to labor in prayer, but now I can pray for hours.” I asked him, “But what do you pray?” He replied, “I don’t know what I’m praying, but I am praying for one hour in tongues.” I told him to read the marvelous praise of Paul in Ephesians 1. Paul prays, filled with the Holy Spirit, but also with full understanding, knowing what he is praying. His head is so clear and active while his heart is burning. You can decide what kind of prayer will be pleasing to God. I don’t want to learn to pray for hours in tongues and waste my time, not knowing what I am praying. I want to learn from Paul to pray so not only my heart burns with emotions, but my mind burns with enlightenment, because it is by the renewing of our mind that we are transformed and live for God’s glory.

At last, we have come to the end of the praise section of Ephesians. What a glorious, thrilling passage, and I never saw this treasure all my life! My personal praise and worship have been so transformed by this passage. With whatever sadness, I go to prayer and start seeing on the left side: election, predestined to sonship, redemption in time, administration now, and eternal inheritance for the future. To assure that I have all this experientially, I have the sealing of the Holy Spirit inside me. Oh, that lifts my soul immediately in praise and worship, and we experience a foretaste of the bliss of heaven. I sincerely feel sad Paul had to end his glorious praise in just 14 verses, but comforted myself saying it is this praise that will expand infinitely and go on forever and ever endlessly. I think Paul was caught up in the spirit to the heavens in verses 3-14, that is why he wrote that long sentence without any comma or full stop. He ended this section realizing he is still in the world with several burdens and needs. He not only has to praise, but he has to pray for needs.

So far, we have learned to praise God; now let us learn from Paul to pray for our needs. We all need help in prayer. When we praise God like Paul, we are kind of caught up to taste eternal blessings, but when we come back to the world, what do we face? We face only discouragement and disappointment on every side: discouragement at home, at work, in the world, and even in the church.

Discouragements at home: we try to evangelize our unbelieving family members and children. Discouragements of parenting: from childhood, we teach God’s word, but they continue in unbelief and are careless about their souls. As our children grow older, we discover over and over again how little control we have over them. We can compel their outward obedience, but we cannot compel their hearts. We argue, plead, cajole, threaten, and quote Scripture, sometimes even yell, all to no avail. Or you may be struggling with an unbelieving wife, husband, or parents. What is their main problem?

Discouragements at church: you can never imagine the discouragements of a pastor who does spiritual parenting. Childishness not only at home, but even in church after years and years of feeding, but no progress or growth. I still wonder whether some members are truly saved; I cannot see any fruits or signs of saving faith. Will our labors go in vain? Most people think church is like going to a cricket stadium, sitting in the last row, watching the match, and then going home when it’s over. That is all their Christianity—a little religious inconvenience on Sunday. They still don’t realize God has called them to be players, not last-row watchers or Sunday Christians.

There is so much false teaching; the true gospel has to spread, but no one is preaching the true gospel. God has taught us so much. Is this one man’s work? Most of my weeks are continuously busy; I don’t get a few hours or minutes to relax. I have a daily groaning: “Why can I not do more?” I wanted to share the gospel with two people last week, but I couldn’t get the time. I don’t know when I will burn out and fall sick, and I don’t know what will happen after that. With such a burden, sometimes I get so frustrated, “Lord, how long!” When will our church become a vibrant, gospel-participating church, with every member in the body doing their work and using their talents to build the kingdom? Why do we do so little for the gospel and the growth of the church? Why are most of you last-row watchers? I teach, I exhort, I rebuke, but nothing moves… nothing changes. Even leaving a comment “thank you” on YouTube so our truths can reach more people is so difficult. Why? You just hear, grow in knowledge, and go. The days are going by. What is our great problem as a church? What is the great problem in our families, with our unsaved children?

The problem is spiritual blindness. The god of this world has blinded them. The devil is a great beggar’s mafia; his great work is to blind us and make us keep begging in the world. This is a picture from Pilgrim’s Progress: all our eyes are on the sweeping broom, and we never lift up our head to see the great crown and glory God gives. So we stumble blindly through life, making one dumb choice after another, wasting our lifespan without the realization of eternal consequences.

So what do we do? Will it continue like this? Will there not be a revival? If we feel that way, can you imagine how much Paul must have been discouraged? It is like going to high heavens and when you come down, what a discouragement to see the state of family, community, and church. Do you know what Paul does? He prays for the most important need of the people. Because he knows all this can change if this prayer is answered, and when we learn his prayer, get into the spirit of his prayer, and pray like him, there will be a great revival in GRBC church.

The central petition of his prayer comes in verse 18, to state simply, “God may open the eyes of their heart.” All this state is because of their blindness. Everything will change if eyes are opened. Oh, this is a great need for each one of us in this place.

He doesn’t ask, “Lord, give us new blessings,” but “Help us to realize the blessings we already have.” Not “Give us new truth,” but “Help us experience the truth we already know.” Most of us have more knowledge; even our children know more Bible than most Old Testament saints. But the eyes of the heart are closed to the truth of God. And until those eyes are opened, all the yelling in the world won’t make much difference. Just knowledge doesn’t transform anyone. But the thing we need is for the Holy Spirit to do what only the Spirit can do—open our eyes, to make the truth come alive in our hearts.

This is the great need of our families, community, and church. Opening blind eyes is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. He and he alone can do it. This is our only hope in the sea of discouragement. But when the Spirit of God comes and opens eyes, and the light floods in, they will never be the same again; there will be a radical change. They will get into the stadium and play for the Lord. We will have an army in the church saying, “Lord, I’m ready to do whatever you say.” But how does the Holy Spirit open eyes? Where does he open eyes?

Though the Holy Spirit works sovereignly, he always works in the context and atmosphere of earnest, acceptable prayer. So if we want to see eyes opened in our families, churches, and communities, we have to get into the spirit of Paul’s prayer and pray like Paul. We need to deeply grasp and personalize this prayer, praying and praying, keep on praying. Pray for each other: husbands for wives, wives for husbands, parents for children, Sunday school teachers for students, pastors for members, new visitors.

Yes, we have seen glorious truths from 3-14, but we have to realize it is not learning these truths that will change people, but after teaching, you’ve got to pray that God will make it alive and energize these truths. That’s why, in Acts 6, the apostles said, “We will give ourselves continually to the ministry of the Word and prayer.” Why? Because the ministry of the Word must be energized by the Spirit of God, and that is sought in intercessory prayer on behalf of the people. So this great prayer of Paul will be the focus of our study for the next few weeks. It is a marvelous, unceasing, earnest prayer.

As an introduction to this prayer, we will study verse 15 today. The second major paragraph in the letter, which begins in verse 15, continues down through to the end of the chapter, 23. Like the first paragraph, this is also one long, complex sentence with the most lofty, most profound, mind-stretching concepts to be found anywhere in the Word of God on petition prayer. So we will go at a pace to not only grasp this, but also allow the Holy Spirit to see the depth of this prayer and fill us with the spirit of prayer.

Verse 15 tells us the news that motivated Paul’s prayer. 15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. This new section starts with the connector word in verse 15: Therefore. This word tells how Paul knew for sure these Ephesians were truly the recipients of these blessings in 3-14. The glorious blessings listed 3-14 are not for everyone. All of you should not deceive yourself into thinking these blessings are all mine. On what basis did Paul know these were loved and elected by God before the foundation of the world, predestined for their adoption? How did he know Christ redeemed them by his blood, forgave all their sins, they had eternal inheritance, and were sealed by the Holy Spirit? Verse 15 starts with the word “therefore” and tells us two signs by which, without a doubt, he knew that they are elect, adopted, sealed, and had received all the blessings from 1-14. How can you know for sure that you are truly saved and not deceived about your salvation like millions today? Here are two indispensable evidences of every elect of God: faith and love.

15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. Notice he says, “I heard of your faith and love.” This church was formed by Paul’s tremendous efforts and tears for three years, publicly as a church and privately house to house, as he says in Acts 20 with tears and humility. If a man built a church with his sweat and blood, he can never forget those people wherever he goes in the world. Leaving them, he will always bear them in his heart and want to know how they are doing spiritually. After many years, he left them, and now though Paul is in prison, he is trying to know how they are doing. He gets a report that the church is growing and they are all continuing in faith. He must have heard many things about them, but interestingly, he specifically points out two important things about them. These two things give Paul assurance they are elect of God and will receive all these blessings.

There are many other signs of salvation, but the supremely indispensable signs are faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and love to all the saints. For Paul, if these two are not there, you do not have a basis to say you are a believer. If there is a true work of God in a person’s heart, it always reveals itself in faith and love.

As a church, it is so important to learn and examine ourselves because anyone who comes to us can say 101 things about us. No church is perfect. If they cannot see these two signs of faith and love dominantly in our church, we can never be a true church of Christ. There is no work of God happening in our midst. To make it personal and individual, if you profess to be a Christian, growing in grace, these are the two characteristics that should dominate above all others: faith and love. These are the acid tests of true conversion. Let us look at each of them.

First, Faith. Young people are wonderfully sharing the importance of sola fide, faith alone. You not only have to share, but you have to really believe and exercise faith. Many are not truly saved because they don’t understand this concept of faith. Lots of people say, “Well, I have faith in Christ. I believe in Christ.” They really don’t know what they are saying. Demons also believe and tremble, but they will go to hell. The Bible says many people will be surprised on the day of judgment because they thought they believed, but their faith was false faith. How do we know we have true faith and not false faith? What, then, are the characteristics of true saving faith?

This passage gives us four characteristics of true saving faith. Saving faith is Tangible, Accurate, Exclusive, and Continuing faith. T-A-E-C.

The first thing we see about the faith that these Ephesians had is that it was a tangible faith. If something is tangible, it is visible or observable, the opposite of something that cannot be seen. Now, notice what Paul says about the Ephesians’ faith. He says here, “therefore, I also after I heard of your faith.” How can someone hear another’s faith? Does it make a sound? Someone came to Paul in jail and told him about the Ephesians’ faith. How could they tell him about their faith? Because it was something which they had observed. It had outward manifestations that were reportable and describable by a third party. They could tell him about it because there was something to tell, something they observed.

Can I ask you, do you have a faith that people can observe? What tangible evidence do you have? Do you speak of Christ as a real person who is precious to you? Do people see you happily take personal risks and suffer inconvenience for Jesus and his church selflessly, for no human reason, but only because of your faith? Can others report your faith to someone? Hebrews 11 again and again tells us the faith of people by what they did. Their faith was able to be reported by the tangible actions that they did with personal cost and risk, like Abraham, Moses, and even Rahab. It was the visible manifestations that proved the reality of their faith. You can see their faith in their obedience, faithfulness, and commitment. They took risks to obey the commandments of God because they believed the promises of God.

Now let me ask you this question. What could someone report about you as the result of your faith? What could they say was an act of faith that they had observed in your life? If someone were writing Hebrews 11 today, could they mention your name because there was something in your life that could be seen as an act of faith? A time when you took some risk for the sake of obedience to Christ, a time when you took some risk for the sake of ministry to others, a time when you suffered inconvenience to help promote the work of God, or endured some weariness for the advancement, or suffered loss for his name’s sake? Could these things be reported about you? You see, these are the things that make up tangible faith. The people in Hebrews 11 gave their reputations, possessions, family security, and even lives for their faith. And we can’t suffer the inconvenience of coming to church twice on a Sunday. Who can write about our faith? James says faith without works is dead; it is not saving but deceiving faith. If people can’t see our faith in our works, risks, and sacrifices, please don’t deceive yourself. So the first trait of Ephesians’ saving faith, which proves they are elect, is that their faith was a visible, tangible, reportable faith, something that can be talked about to other people.

Secondly, it was accurate faith. Notice in verse 15, Paul says, “I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus.” Many have faith—in what? Faith in faith; that is all. No, saving faith will be accurate faith, with an accurate object. The object of saving faith is the Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus is not just a name. The two terms are packed full of theological truth and significance. It points to the uniqueness of his person and the sufficiency of his work. This is where people go wrong.

We live in a time where people view doctrinal precision and theological accuracy with either indifference or outright hostility. No one cares about what we believe; if you just believe, that is more than enough. Someone was telling me, “Oh, I go to all denominations, and we don’t discuss doctrines; we just discuss Christ.” Listen, a Christ who is stripped of doctrinal truth and doctrinal distinctives is no Christ at all. He is merely reduced to a vague, content-less ethical influence and a name used for bringing fighting people together. You cannot talk about the Christ of the Bible for two minutes without talking about doctrinal truths, because John 14 says Jesus Christ is the truth. You can have all kinds of loose faiths in 101 Jesuses in the world; it is not saving faith. There is one true faith of God’s elect. If you ask me, “Is doctrinal accuracy important when it comes to legitimate, true saving faith?” It is indispensable. If your Christ is not the accurate Christ of the Bible, then he is an idol of your own imagination and an idol useless to save your soul. The sooner you throw away that Christ, the sooner you will be closer to the kingdom of God.

Notice the object of the Ephesians’ faith was accurate. Paul says their faith was “in the Lord Jesus.” These two titles, Lord and Jesus, comprehend the two aspects of his unique person and work. Though he is the glorious eternal Son of God, he manifested amongst men in the flesh as Jesus to be a Savior from sin. To save us from our two great problems: I am born in sin, I have a sinful nature. Because I have a sinful heart, I commit sinful acts. Those are the two great problems of every human being: our person with a sinful nature and our sinful acts. This sinful condition separates us from God. Not only have I done bad things, I do them because I am a bad person. I am unfit for heaven not only because of my conduct but because of who I am by nature.

Jesus as Savior not only takes all my guilt and punishment and dies a sinner’s death, solving my problem of actual sins, but also lives a perfect, sinless life, solving my second problem of a depraved nature. Jesus not only died a substitutionary death, he also lived a substitutionary life upon this earth. The word Jesus shows this Savior lived a perfect life and died the sinner’s death. The word Lord covers that he also was raised from the dead, ascended, exalted to the highest glory, and now reigns with all authority in heaven and on earth. You can never have saving faith unless you believe all this about him which is covered in the title “Lord Jesus.” The Ephesians believed in his work as Savior on earth. They believed he is Lord, the sovereign master of their lives. They didn’t just call him “Lord, Lord,” but submitted to his commands.

You see, many people want Jesus, but they don’t want the Lord Jesus. According to their own desires, each one has their own Jesus: a baby Jesus, a superhero Jesus, a friend Jesus, a peace-giver Jesus, a healer Jesus, a prosperity Jesus. Some want him as Lord to solve their political problems separated from his cross, and they never preach his cross. Some want only the cross without his sovereignty. All these are the wrong object of faith. The accurate object of faith is fusing together Lord and Jesus—his sovereignty and his work on the cross.

If you do not have the Lord Jesus of the Bible, your Jesus is an idol. Do you have this saving faith? Ask yourself, “Am I recognizing the rule of Jesus Christ in every area of my life and seeking to submit to that rule?” In every area of your life, the question is, “Lord, what should I do?”

The Ephesians had not only tangible but also this accurate faith. Thirdly, it was exclusive faith.

It was faith in who? In the Lord Jesus, period, full stop. You see, these people believed in the Lord Jesus Christ plus nothing. No plan B. Faith alone in Christ alone. A saved person does not trust in Christ plus something else. He has no faith in himself, in his works, in his church, in his baptism, in his own faithfulness, no faith in anything other than Jesus Christ, in him alone. The essence of saving faith is a wholehearted reliance upon the Lord Jesus as their only ground of acceptance before God. I found an acronym for faith. Forsaking All I Trust Him. Remember, forsaking all, I trust him.

We are continually in danger of moving away from this one exclusive object. God has ordained man to be saved only through faith because faith is an emptying grace. Faith alone gives God all the glory. Faith in Christ alone can give us full assurance of salvation. If we add our works, we destroy our assurance because we will never know if we have done enough; our works are always defective. But when you realize that salvation is grounded entirely and exclusively upon the work of Jesus Christ, he purchased and gives a perfect, finished, and complete salvation. We don’t have to add anything to that. Then you can have the assurance that the work has been done right, the work has been done perfectly, and the salvation is finished and complete.

If I ask on what grounds you believe you are accepted by God, and if those grounds are anything other than the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, I am sorry to say you are not a Christian. Because a Christian is one who has an exclusive faith. It is not enough to believe in Jesus; you have to believe in Jesus alone.

So saving faith is Tangible, Accurate, Exclusive, and Continuing faith.

Paul started the Ephesians church several years ago. Now after many years, he says, “I still heard about your continuing faith.” This faith that these Ephesians had was not a temporary, rocky-ground or thorny-ground faith—faith so eager for a few years and then becoming lukewarm. With the same tangible, visible evidences, accuracy, and exclusivity, they continued even after several years. It was an ongoing faith in spite of the difficulty, trials, and satanic opposition in the midst of the evil city of Diana temple worship and the grossest form of idolatry and witchcraft practices. These people persevered in the faith.

You are not like many who start in faith in the Lord Jesus and move on to other things. This was the problem with the Galatians. They began by “forsaking all, I trust Him.” Then they listened to some Judaizers, started trusting in circumcision and ceremonial law, and became Pharisees; their Christianity became dead. He rebukes them, “Foolish Galatians, you have moved away from faith.” When you move away from faith, you move away from grace. Grace and faith are joined together inseparably. Then all kinds of Arminian works come in, with no grace, and life becomes dead.

But Paul is rejoicing that the Ephesians were continuing to have as the object of their faith the Lord Jesus. Some claim they are saved by some experience years ago; they don’t continue with any tangible evidence or accuracy and stop following Christ, yet they believe they are saved. If your faith is not continuing and persevering, it is not saving faith.

Can I ask you why you believe you are saved? If it is because of some experience in the past and you don’t have an active faith now, you may not have saving faith. Conversion without continuance leads to condemnation. We see years after, the Ephesians are still growing in faith.

So the first sign of salvation is faith. Saving faith is Tangible, Accurate, Exclusive, and Continuing faith. Now let’s see the second indispensable evidence of salvation.

Notice in verse 15, “your love for all the saints.” Love is the second sign. If there is a word more perverted, more prostituted, more misunderstood in our day, it is the word love. The world mixes infatuation, lust, and family bonds with love. We need to understand that Bible love is different. Just like true faith has some traits, true love also has three traits: Selfless, Tangible, and Impartial. S-T-I.

First: It is selfless love. The word for love is agape; it is selfless love. A good definition of love is that principled divine affection which seeks the good of its object even at personal cost. This agape love doesn’t rise up out of fallen Adam; it comes down from Christ. It is not sentimental, emotional gushes and oozes; it is principled. It acts intelligently and volitionally. Its outstanding characteristic is that it’s selfless. It seeks the good of its objects even at personal cost. It’s 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud…it does not seek its own.” Love shows itself by its passiveness sometimes, its ability to take hurt and insult. With its passive graces, it “bears all things.” By its active graces, it “hopes all things,” and “believes all things.” When he says “your love for all saints,” the Ephesians were seeking one another’s well-being volitionally and intelligently, even at personal cost, and practicing the traits of 1 Corinthians 13.

Second, it is always a fruit of saving faith. Notice the order: he first says “faith” and then “love.” This is a beautiful balance in the order. When talking about faith alone, we can go to the extreme of easy, cheap belief: “Yes, pastor, faith alone, nothing in my hands I bring.” That is why anyone who says, “I believe,” we should immediately take them into membership. “Why are you adding anything? You are legalists, adding to Christ.” That is an extreme reaction against “faith plus.” We should not add. No, no, you don’t correct one error by spawning another. You just end up with two errors. On one side, you need to hold tenaciously with a death grip to this fundamental principle: faith alone in the Lord Jesus, don’t add anything. But on the other side, this faith should not be an easy, dead faith; it has to be saving faith that always reveals itself in good works of love. A man cannot have faith in the Lord Jesus without loving those for whom Jesus died and to whom he is joined by the Spirit of Christ.

Scripture is very clear that an inseparable and distinguishing mark of true conversion is love for the brethren. Scripture categorically declares that we are unconverted if we do not have it. 1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He that loves not his brother abides in death. Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him… We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” So this agape love is always a fruit of saving faith.

Thirdly, it is also tangible. Just as we saw faith was reported, here someone can say the Ephesians had love because they saw acts of love. If the Ephesians’ love was all gushy feeling, sentimental words, “Oh, how I love,” and nice greetings and words, they cannot be reported. As 1 John says, “Let us not love in word only, but also in deeds.” The Ephesians displayed their love in deeds that could be seen and reported.

Fourth, it is impartial and universal.

Though we will love everyone, the priority of the objective of love will be for saints, meaning believers in the church. Notice the impartiality of this love. The love which they showed was toward “all the saints.” They loved all members in the church. Like our church, the Ephesians’ church would have had a different set of people. There will be lovable ones, some not so lovable, the mature and the immature, the extroverts and the introverts, some shy, some patient, some short-tempered, some thoughtless, some thoughtful, some irritating, some comforting. They will have all kinds of people in every church. But this agape love loved everyone in the church. You see, Paul not only loved Timothy, but he also loved the Corinthians. One was a great blessing to him, and the other a great irritation to him. And you see, it is the nature of biblical love to love with impartiality everyone in the church.

The four traits of biblical love are Selfless, Tangible, Fruit, and Impartial. S-T-F-I.

Two traits of salvation: Faith and Love.

Application Imagine if some new visitor comes to our church. They have never heard anything about us and don’t know reformed truth, but they are just an impartial observer. They simply sit in the service, and after that, observe all the members for three or four weeks, and then someone asks him, “How is the GRBC church?” As he thinks of words to describe it, he may mention this and that, some weaknesses, but two things stand out above all else. “It is obvious they believe only in the Lord Jesus revealed in Scripture; you can see their faith in acts. Secondly, it is obvious that as a fruit of their faith, they have genuine love for one another.” Oh, my church GRBC, this is what we need to strive to achieve every week. Otherwise, we can call ourselves a church, but we are not. Our Lord himself said, “By this men shall know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The Bible commands us to make our election and calling sure. We all rejoiced when we studied those blessings in 3-14. But this verse calls us to make our election and calling sure. How do we know if we are partakers of all the blessings in 3 through 14? Two great acid tests: Faith and Love. Oh, eternal souls; may God save you from your blood guiltiness. If you don’t display these signs, let me clearly say you will not go to heaven, and don’t dream of any of the Ephesians 1 blessings.

So the great business of our life is to make sure if we have these signs. “Have I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ?” “Ah yes, I am coming to church…” No, no.

Is my faith tangible? Is there something more than just a religion of convenience of coming to church on Sunday? Do my pastor and others see that faith? Can they go somewhere else and report my faith to a third party? Is my faith in the Lord Jesus visible in the way I worship, in the way I hear his word when preached, in the way I meditate on those words and make sure I obey and follow his commandments? Is it visible to people in the way I live my life? Do they see me obey and serve my Lord, whatever the risks, even at personal cost? The only explanation for my service and taking those risks is my faith.

Is it accurate? Is it not satisfied with some old, sentimental, vague Jesus that I dream up in our own minds, but my faith is daily renewed by reading about the Jesus of the scripture, and it is becoming stronger and accurate by a growing knowledge of God’s word?

Is it exclusive and continuing—one that perseveres in good times and in bad, through trials and difficulties? One that no matter how it is beaten upon, continues to rise up and remain faithful to Jesus Christ?

Persevering faith in the Lord Jesus is the offense of the gospel. It is foolishness to the world. Today everyone says “faith in Christ,” that’s just sort of the starting point. Even some of you say, “Oh, it is the same thing, I know. Now we go on to something else.” No, you don’t. You go on in that, not from it. No matter how spiritual it may appear, that was the deceptiveness of the Galatian heresy; it seems spiritual to say, “Look, Christ was enough to get in. Faith was enough to get in. But now if you are to go on, you need Christ plus.” And Paul says the minute you start putting your plus signs, you have gone the wrong way; you’re in the realm of the flesh.  You’ve moved from the principle of grace. 

One preacher very profoundly says your salvation depends upon grasping two principles. The first is that as a sinner, I am accepted by God entirely on the basis of the doings and sufferings of Christ. That’s the first leading doctrine of the Gospel. The second is this: as a saved sinner, I can enjoy and partake of the benefits of the doings and sufferings of Christ entirely on the basis of continuing in that same faith.

Do you see how these two principles are crucial for our salvation and growth in Christian life? We are not only saved entirely by faith but also enjoy the benefits of Christ’s work entirely by continuing in that same faith. These two principles should be engraved in our consciences. The moment you move away from that faith, you become a self-righteous Pharisee and stop enjoying the benefits of Christ’s work. I should not mix my works, my obedience, or my virtue with my faith. As the hymn says, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” This is so very important because most of us fail here. We think we start right, with all Christ, and then we add our own works and become like the Pharisees and the Galatian church.

Many people can start right, seeing nothing good in themselves and placing their faith in Christ, but then they go wrong and start living a Pharisee’s life. Once the spirit of the Pharisee and self-righteousness takes hold, it creates indifference, satiety, a feeling of being used to it, and a distaste for the doings and sufferings of Christ. A Pharisee never runs to Christ; he’ll flee to his own resolutions, his own resolves, and his own determination to make himself better, trusting in an outwardly decent life. Then faith goes away, and we become dead Christians. When faith goes, all graces go away, for faith is the mother of all other graces. You and I must be very careful of anything that will change the object of faith.

But when Paul sees people who started right and continue in the same faith, it is great evidence of the supernatural work of the Spirit being done in their hearts. This is because the Holy Spirit doesn’t just remove all self-righteousness and trust in ourselves and put our faith entirely in Christ once; He continuously works in our hearts to show us how helpless we are and takes away every self-refuge and self-trust, so we continually put our faith only in the doings and sufferings of Jesus Christ. Our own pride, with remaining sin, the world, and the devil, constantly tries to move us from this pivotal resting point of Christ to something else, but the Spirit will continually bring us back to this point, forsaking all and trusting in Him and Him alone. Oh, may God help us to have this trait of saving faith.

Think about the four traits of biblical love. Do you love the saints?

• Selfless: It’s not about what they did to me. Agape is selfless love that seeks the highest good of the other person, regardless of the cost to oneself. This is how Jesus loved us, and this is the standard He holds up for us to follow. He says in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” How? “As I have loved you, that you love one another.”
• Tangible: Does your love go beyond saying hello and shaking hands? Do people see that you love the saints? If you run away as soon as church is over, it actually shows you don’t love the saints at all. When we love the people of God, it shows itself, and then we have an attachment. You love to be with them. You are drawn to them. You see, love is never content to have its object at a distance. If you love your wife or husband, you want to be with them. The more love, the greater your effort to always be with them. If you love the saints, every time the doors are open, every time you have a free evening, you have to be with the people of God.
• A Fruit of Faith: This is a test for some of you to seriously examine: Do you love to be with church people, or do you prefer the company of the world and its entertainments and the ease of Pharaoh’s house rather than to suffer affliction? Do you see meeting as a duty or a delight to be enjoyed? If you don’t enjoy it now, how will you enjoy it for all eternity with the people of God when one or two hours a week is all you want now? Listen, if the seed of the matter is not in you now, the fruit of it will not be born in eternity. David said in Psalm 84:10, “A day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the wicked.”
• Impartial: “Oh yes, I love, I have two friends who are alike.” Both of them every week discuss what wrong things the pastor did or what wrong clothes others are wearing. Is that love? No. Love is for all the saints. Do people see you love everyone in the church? When you love the people of God, you long for their good growth. You labor for it in ministry. You cry out for it in prayer. You take thoughtful initiative in seeking to help them grow and labor. You are not content to merely be fed yourself. You seek to feed and build up your Christian brothers around you. You say, “But it’s hard to minister to the people of God.” Well, then, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. We weren’t called to a life of ease when we became Christians.

We were called to carry a cross. “If any man will come after me,” Jesus says, “let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” To deny yourself means to get your body off the bed or the sofa in the evening, to switch off the TV, and to come to church on Sunday evening. Don’t keep missing services and say you have faith and love the church. Hebrews says not to make it a habit but to meet as often as you can, lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. May God stir you to obedience in these areas.

If you have these two signs of faith and love, even if not perfectly but faintly, blessed be God! You can have all the confidence that you are elect and partakers of all the blessings of Ephesians 3-14. Otherwise, can I plead with you to work on expressing this faith and love visibly?

In him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

When Peter fixed his gaze on Christ, he was able to walk on any storm calmly. When he took his eyes off our Lord, he was filled with fear and tension. The reason we get so shaken, tense, upset, confused, and filled with grief and bitterness is that we are over-focused on ourselves and this world. God’s great desire and will for His people is that we be focused on Him and His unchangeable blessings, so we feel completely secure in Him. Even if the whole world seems to be shaking, God wants us to be unshakable in Him.

Everything else in life may be unstable—our health, our family, our job, our society, our world. You may feel as if you are in a building on the 100th floor and there is a big earthquake, and you are falling down, down, not knowing what will happen next. You feel yourself losing balance and falling, and everywhere you try to keep your feet, you slip and fall down; every brick you grab comes out of the wall, and you feel yourself falling down without control. Even then, God wants His children not to fear and to feel 100% secure in God, like the Psalmist in Psalm 46:1-3, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling.”

Apostle Paul lived such a fearless life in God. He summarizes his life in Christ in 2 Corinthians 11:25-28, “Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.” How can such a man, instead of dying from tension, a nervous breakdown, or a heart attack, be so stable and powerful in his soul? How can he plant and strengthen many churches, write letters that will change world history, and, while jailed for preaching the gospel and knowing his head may be cut off at any moment, still dream of going to Spain to spread the gospel if released? The unshakable stability, determination, and assurance of the apostle Paul came from one great discovery: even if the whole world shakes, we can be unshakable in God. God’s will is that we feel so fully secure and assured in Him. That is what God wants us to feel today in verses 13 and 14.

In verse 13, the key word is “sealed,” and in verse 14, the key word is “guarantee.” Both words are used to give unshakable, infallible assurance in our hearts of God’s grace. But you may say, “Pastor, that is how I want to feel about God’s eternal love and security, but there are some verses of warning or some messages you give that seem to shake that assurance.” There are many warning verses in the Bible, and some tell us to self-examine. It would be wrong to avoid those texts; the way to have biblical assurance is not to avoid them. It is a misunderstanding to think those verses take away our assurance. In fact, they are given as a warning not to feel secure in anything other than God. This is because our default mode is to base assurance on worldly things. If you find security in your feelings, devotion, pride, self-righteousness, good works, circumstances, family, job, or money, those texts are given to make us turn away from those things and feel 100% secure only in God and His grace.

So today, we come to verses 13-14. Paul concludes his praise—he praised the Father for election and predestination and the Son for redemption and administration. Now he finally moves to the work of the Holy Spirit. The key phrase is “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” We will cover three headings: 1. The meaning of sealing, 2. The means of sealing, and 3. The goals of sealing.

The Meaning of Sealing

“Sealing” was a common word in those days, and Paul takes this common word to show us what a glorious work the Holy Spirit does in us. A seal in biblical times was used for three things.

1. A Sign of Ownership: Something marked a slave or an animal to show “this is mine; this is my purchased property.” In the old days, we would engrave a seal on steel. Today, companies put a patented trademark on a product to show ownership.

2. Authenticity and Authority: Kings would seal a letter with their signet ring to place their authenticity and authority behind the message. If someone says, “We have a letter from the King,” how do we know the message is not false? Because the seal confirms its originality and his authority. In our currency, the only difference between a counterfeit note and an original is the seal.

3. Security and Protection: This involves keeping something valuable safe and inviolable. Revelation 7:3 mentions the seal of God put on the forehead of God’s servants both to show His ownership and to protect them from the wrath coming upon the world. In Matthew 27:66, the tomb of Jesus was secured by a seal of protection. Anyone who broke that seal would face the wrath of the Roman government. Even books were sealed to protect them so no one should violate the message.

These are the three basic uses of a seal: ownership, originality, and protection. So when Paul says you were sealed, he means three things. By giving the Holy Spirit to you, firstly, God marked His ownership on you. You belong to God, bearing the mark of God’s own possession. You are His trademark, and He is working in you; you are His product. God says, “Hands off, this is my property.”

Secondly, out of millions of Satan’s counterfeits claiming to be God’s people, God has taken His royal signet ring and marked you as His original. There is a true work of God in our lives; the Holy Spirit’s seal is God’s patented mark.

Thirdly, God not only marked you as His own and authenticated your originality, but this seal secures you now and for all eternity. This seal makes you an indestructible, protective seal. In Revelation, there are billions of cruel, torturing demons in the world who want to enter and control us and destroy us, with millions of false teachings, but the Holy Spirit as a seal is protection against all those evil forces. No demons would dare to enter a person bearing the mark of God’s own possession. In a way, demons come rushing, but they see this mark and stand back, thinking, “This person is sealed with the Holy Spirit.” That is why you are daily protected in this world. The seal makes you off-limits to evil forces.

There are millions of temptations to sin that we could easily fall into every minute and perish eternally, but the Holy Spirit will not allow us to continually go on sinning and apostatize and perish. The reason you have not fallen and you persevere, and the reason you continue to this day in His truth and you came to church today is this seal. This seal will protect us until He completes His full work of redemption in us. So the next topic of Paul’s praise is God sealing us with the Holy Spirit as His own, original, and protected treasures.

Paul uses a particular aspect of the Holy Spirit’s ministry to give us assurance. The word “seal” is used because God wants us to feel an unconditional guarantee, secure and safe in His love and power. “Don’t worry about anything, I have sealed you.” This should provide a solid foundation for peace and safety.

Last week, in my teaching about assurance, I taught that infallible assurance rests on three pillars. The first comes objectively from the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospel. The two other pillars are the inward evidence of the graces of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit’s work in us that gives us that unshakable, infallible, certain assurance in our experience that we are truly saved, our sins are forgiven, we are justified, and we are adopted. Do you see what a blessing the sealing of the Holy Spirit is? Oh, may He give that assurance today for every child of God.

Notice He is called the Holy Spirit of promise. Why? The gift of the Spirit was a great promise of the New Covenant (Ezekiel 36:27, Joel 2:28-29, and Jesus’s own promise in Acts 1:4-5). We have seen earlier that the giving of the Holy Spirit is the crowning blessing of redemption promised in the Old Testament. Christ could have come, died, risen, and gone to heaven, but if He didn’t send His Holy Spirit and we were not sealed with the Holy Spirit, none of the work of Christ could be applied to us. We would not experience any of those blessings. All the blessings stored up in Christ are conveyed as an experiential reality inwardly by the Spirit. Everything we enjoy right now in salvation is because of the Holy Spirit. He brings into our experience all the promises of God: the joy of forgiveness, the peace of justification, the acceptance, the witness of our adoption, and the assurance of our inheritance.

So as you go home, and your week becomes dull, when you are washing dishes, working at a low-paying job, or struggling, meditate on this blessing from God. God has put His original seal on you. You are His own; you are His original product in the midst of 101 counterfeits. Anyone who teaches you touches the apple of God’s eye. You are protected. “Blessed be God, I am sealed by the Holy Spirit.”

To those of you who are not sealed with the Holy Spirit, do you not want to be? There is no greater gift in the universe than the sealing of the Holy Spirit. What a wonderful, invaluable gift the Holy Spirit is. It was promised by the Father to Christ in an eternal covenant as a reward for His great work. Christ did all His work of redemption to purchase this gift for us. Christ said He would be “better than me.” All the rich blessings and inheritance I have purchased for you—my peace I leave you, my joy in fullness, my power, my glory, my love, my grace, my eternal life, benefits flowing from my sacrifice, resurrection, ascension, and session—He will make them an experiential reality for you, indwelling you in a way I couldn’t, so it is better. He is the Spirit of all gifts; He will give you gifts to serve, enlighten you, sanctify you, make you wise, and give you boldness and the right words to make you a powerful witness. The Holy Spirit is Christ’s greatest legacy wealth He left for us as believers. The Holy Spirit was sent to apply all the blessings Christ purchased for us in our lives. What an incredible promise. All should desire this sealing.

Revelation shows that there are only two groups of people in the world: those who have the seal of God and those who have the mark of the beast. The seal is put on the forehead and hand, indicating that you love to think of God’s word and you have a desire to obey God’s word. Those of you who do not have the mark of God are also sealed by the devil, with the mark of the beast on your head. You are always thinking of the world—the lust of the world, covetousness, anger, and bitterness—and that mark is also on your hand. According to the mark on your forehead, everything you do is against God; you disobey Him. Revelation 14:9 says, “If anyone receives a mark of a beast, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.” This is the future of whoever receives the mark of the beast. I fear some of you are receiving that mark. Wake up before it becomes a permanent mark. Now, the great question is, how can anyone be sealed with the mark of God?

The Means of Sealing

How is one marked with the ownership, originality, and protective divine seal of God? Oh, this is a great question for the ages. What should we do? Should we climb a mountain, do ten years of penance, or perform 101 rituals? Pentecostals say we have to fast for 40 days, wait for the Holy Spirit’s baptism, fully surrender to God, do this and that, and then you get a spirit that will make you jump for joy and speak gibberish. That is wrong because the Holy Spirit is not given for anything we do but is given as a gift of Christ’s ascension. How were the Ephesians sealed? Notice Paul mentions two steps in verse 13: hearing and believing. “In him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.”

The first step is hearing. What did they hear? The world spends all their time hearing useless things. The Ephesians heard useless things all their lives, but one day they heard something. No one in the universe can be sealed without hearing this. What did the Ephesians hear that led to sealing? Paul uses two phrases: “the word of truth” and “the gospel of salvation.” These are not two different things; each phrase explains and supports the other.

“Word” means a verbal message. What message? The message of truth. Truth is the proclamation of ultimate reality. Then, the gospel of salvation is the good news of deliverance from sin and all its consequences. Why does he say “the word of truth”? It’s not a myth, a philosophy, or men’s opinion, but God’s absolute, unchanging truth about humanity’s condition (sin) and God’s provided salvation (Christ). The world never hears the truth because they always live with the devil’s lie that there is no one absolute truth. When we tell them the truth, they keep asking Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” They think there is no absolute truth. They think whatever one thinks or feels is truth, their tradition, circumstances, surroundings, troubles in life, or felt needs is truth. Paul says no, beyond all that, there is ultimate reality. Not only is there ultimate truth, but that truth can be intelligently expressed or spoken in human words. That is why he uses the phrase “the word of truth.” Some people would say, “Yes, there is absolute truth, but it’s somewhere up there and no one knows it or can tell us.” Paul says, “I told you the absolute one truth.” Paul also affirms that truth can be intelligently understood. He doesn’t say you felt or experienced it, but you “heard and understood.” Our blessed God has stooped to reveal truth in human words in such a way that they can be expressed and understood. People say, “Oh, you have to experience the truth; I cannot explain it.” No, no. Ultimate truth can be expressed and understood.

Then he uses the phrase “gospel of salvation.” The truth that can be spoken and understood through words is focused on the gospel of salvation: the good news of salvation. “Gospel” means joyous tidings, and “salvation” is deliverance from sin and all its consequences. What is the content of the gospel of salvation? He summarizes it for the same Ephesians church in Acts 20:27 as the “whole counsel of God.” It comes from God by revelation; it tells us how holy God is, and how sinful man is, and what God has done through His Son, Jesus Christ, for us. In Acts 20:21, he gives a summary of that gospel command: “testifying both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here is the substance of his gospel.

The gospel not only tells us that God is our creator, provider, and judge and how we destroyed that relationship with our fall and sin, but it tells us that the relationship can be restored by two things: repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. This is faith in who Jesus Christ is and what He has done for sinners. His unique person and unique work are the only hope for sinners. We must fully believe in Him, forsake all other ways to God, leave our arrogance and pride, and humbly come as you are. You don’t have to achieve anything or do anything; just cast yourself upon Him as He is revealed in the gospel. When you do, you will be sealed with the Holy Spirit. This is the word of truth, the good news of salvation that the Ephesians heard through Paul. And what did they do? Unlike a few of you, you hear and don’t even give a proper response, but they believed it as the very word of God, as the ultimate truth.

What does “believe” mean? It is saving faith. Some have said that saving faith is self-commitment to Christ in all the glory of His person and in all the perfection of His work as they are so freely and fully offered to us in the gospel. They believed He lived the sinless life we can never live and died the death for our sins and drank the wrath of God for our guilt, and that He died, was buried, and rose again and ascended to the Father. Now, He is the only priest, king, and prophet through whom I can come to God. When this message came, they didn’t reject this message in arrogance, pride, false religion, or love of sin. They believed. They left all their false religion and ideas and believed the truth as the ultimate truth, transcending their problems, situation, and wrong religion. They didn’t wait for any experience or feeling to come to prove this message, nor did they wait until they became better to earn this salvation. No, they believed. They heard, they believed, and so as a result of that, they were sealed with the Holy Spirit.

The only means of sealing with the Holy Spirit is hearing and believing the gospel. Anywhere you see this in the New Testament, whether in Acts 3 on Pentecost, or 10 when the gospel went to the Gentiles, or in the epistles, it is always when the gospel is preached, when people hear and believe, that they are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17). If you read Acts properly with context, you will not see any foolish ideas of a second blessing, a second experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or waiting for the Holy Spirit to be given only to advanced, committed Christians. No, when common people heard the gospel and believed, they received the Holy Spirit. This is because the Holy Spirit is not given based on our commitment and godliness as if we earn it, but it is the purchased possession of the ascended Christ and is given as the highest gift of the ascended Lord. Yes, there is an aspect of the Holy Spirit’s filling that depends on our obedience and walk with Him, and not grieving the Holy Spirit, but the gift of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with our commitment and obedience. He is given freely and graciously as a promise of the gospel if you hear, believe, and repent.

Notice the phrase “we are sealed with what? the Holy Spirit of promise.” He is mentioned as the Holy Spirit of promise. There is so much confusion about the works of the Holy Spirit, and so many demonic activities happen in the name of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, in His work of sealing, seals as the promised Holy Spirit. What does this mean? Whatever the Holy Spirit does in His work of sealing, He does it in complete consistency with all that is promised about Him. In Ezekiel 36:27, He is promised as someone who will cleanse us, take away our heart of stone, give us a new heart of flesh, and make us walk in God’s laws. In John 14, Jesus Christ promised, “When I go away, I will send the promised Holy Spirit.” What will He do? When He comes, He will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He is the Spirit of truth; He will lead you into all truth, remind you of all I taught, and He will come to glorify me.

You can completely go wrong into all kinds of demonic counterfeits if you don’t realize what the promised works of the Holy Spirit are. He was not promised to make us giggle, laugh, or jump, or to make us speak gibberish, unlike the actual understandable foreign tongue. People from different nations understood what was spoken. No nation, no country in the world will understand the gibberish of these strange blabberings. He came to reveal and glorify Christ, to apply Christ’s redemption, and to make us like Christ. As His name itself suggests, He comes as the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t come to make us put on a show in church, pushing ladies, screaming, shouting, or acting like disorderly demons, and then secretly robbing money in the church and having wrong relationships with women. No, He comes to make us holy.

The Goals of Sealing

There are two goals for sealing: one is related to us, and the other is related to God.

Goal of Sealing for Us

Verse 14 says, “…who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.” “Guarantee” can also be translated as “earnest,” “pledge,” or “down payment.” It is the price given as a part of the guarantee for the whole payment in due time. We go to a car showroom, and how does the salesperson know we are serious about buying and not just window shopping? We will pay a down payment. That down payment gives the salesperson the assurance that I will come back and make the full payment. In the same way, notice that the Holy Spirit’s sealing is a down payment. A guarantee of what? Of our glorious inheritance. Is God serious about making me an heir of His glorious kingdom? Is there a truly imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance waiting for me? God says, “Here is My guarantee.” It’s amazing to see how much God wants to make us feel 100% assured. Not only is it a predestined inheritance, not only is God working all things according to the counsel of His will to accomplish that—all these objective assurances—but He goes beyond that to give a subjective, experiential assurance of our inheritance as a guarantee. He sends and seals us with the Holy Spirit. The sealing of the Holy Spirit is actually a foretaste of our eternal inheritance.

It is that Holy Spirit’s sealing that gave us the salvation experience. He made us see our sin and hate sin, gave us the joy of forgiveness, and witnessed that we are children of God. It is the Holy Spirit who gave us the desire to read His word, makes us understand things that even great people cannot understand, and fills us with divine joy when we grasp some truth. It is that Holy Spirit who is sanctifying us, making us more like Christ. It is through the Holy Spirit that we will experience more glorious joys as we grow in Christ in the coming days. All that experience is an installment and will make us yearn and be restless for the full payment. We have some of the Spirit’s joy and peace, but we want more. God says this is a foretaste and a guarantee, but much more is yet to come. This is the first fruit; the harvest is coming. God says, “I am not playing with you. I am dead serious about giving you the inheritance with all its eternal rich blessings. The Holy Spirit’s sealing is My guarantee.” So the goal of sealing for us is the guarantee of our inheritance. Verse 14 goes on to talk about the goal of sealing for God.

Goal of Sealing for God

The second goal of sealing for God is the praise of His glory. When does God get His full praise of His glory? When we obtain our final inheritance and experience our full redemption, that is when God receives the full praise of His glory. This will happen, as the verse says, “until the redemption of the purchased possession.” Ephesians 4:30 says, “Sealed with the Spirit unto the day of redemption.” The day of redemption is Christ’s second coming. At that time, we will experience our full payment of the inheritance. We will be completely redeemed from every last effect of the curse and the fall, perfected in holiness with resurrected bodies, sinless souls, a new heaven and a new earth, and we will reach a state of glorification.

Yes, God has purchased us as His own and sealed us with the Holy Spirit. But God’s goal for sealing is that we become His purchased possession in such a way that it is to the praise of His glory. What did He purchase us to be? A people such as we now are? Loving Him feebly, serving Him so poorly, sometimes being downright disobedient, bringing reproach to Him, and other times wondering if indeed we are even His own by the way we act? Is that what He purchased to have? A people in this divided, poor, stumbling state? No, no. He died to have a people who would be so completely redeemed that the whole universe will praise Him.

So the sealing of the Spirit, with the first fruits of His working, gives us a hunger for holiness, makes us realize how sinful we are, gives us a desire for His truth, and helps us little by little to overcome sin and grow in truth and holiness. You may sit dissatisfied today, wondering, “Where is all this taking us?” A day will come when we will be so pure, spotless, and holy—purified and presented without spot and without wrinkle. We will be to the praise of His glory for all eternity!

Will that really happen? Now, all the Holy Spirit’s experience inside you, transforming you, is God’s guarantee that it will definitely happen. The Holy Spirit’s experience is God’s guarantee that the complete redemption will be realized. And if God had no intention of completing it, He never would have given the first installment. So the ultimate intention in the sealing of the Spirit is this pledge of certainty that the redemption will be completed. Paul says we’ll receive it as God’s special possession, and it will result in the praise of God’s glory.

The glory of God is the outshining of His attributes. What is praise? It is a conscious, adoring recognition with thanksgiving of those attributes. So the ultimate purpose for which God has sealed us is that God Himself might be adored and praised and honored for all the outshining of His perfections in the great blessings of salvation. The whole universe will praise His love, wisdom, power, and grace in saving and transforming such dead lepers to such a height of glory that they become God’s purchased possession for all eternity. This is the outshining of the perfections of God’s character through us, and seeing that, the universe will acknowledge it, perceive it, and then praise Him for it. So we see the meaning, means, and two goals of sealing.

Application

This should make us bless God in the assurance He gives. God gives us a sealed guarantee. You may not have an easy life or a happy life; through many tribulations, you must enter the kingdom. Everything in the world may seem shaky. God says you can find complete joy and feel secure in Him. Fix your eyes on Him.

Behold, not only have I chosen you, predestined you to sonship, and redeemed you by my son, and his administration of summing up all things in him is working for your good, and I have given a glorious future predestined inheritance and am working all things according to the counsel to grant this to you. I am not just stating all this objectively; I went a step ahead, and to make you feel this assurance, to give you subjective, experiential assurance, I have sent my own spirit, the third person of the Trinity, into your hearts, not temporarily, but permanently sealed you as my own original, secured possession, never to be taken away. I have done this as a down payment for your future inheritance, giving you infallible assurance here on earth. We don’t wait until we reach heaven to enjoy all those blessings. The Holy Spirit is a foretaste of all those blessings. Then I have tied your inheritance to my eternal glory. As determined as I am to glorify myself, so determined I am to bless you with my inheritance. This is the greatest way to love you. Therefore, rejoice in this assurance. You are not only elected and redeemed, but sealed!

The Holy Spirit is a down payment from God. Some buyers may give a down payment and then lie and not pay in full and escape. Our God is a God who cannot lie, faithful even to keep His word; how much more to His down payment? Some men give a down payment and then die and may not make the full payment. But our God is an eternal God. He binds His eternal glory to our inheritance. How sure! Oh, if we can feel this certainty of full redemption and assurance no matter the circumstance, you will jump for joy and praise God like Paul in prison! How horrible is unbelief if we don’t believe His word. It is a lack of this assurance and doubt that spoils joyful praise in our life.

Romans 8:31-39: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

The idea is that if God overcame the greatest difficulties and enemies to save us and give us a down payment, it should give us assurance that He will certainly overcome every difficulty so we might receive the full redemption. Think of the chain of the redemption story. Redemption had to be accomplished, applied, and completed fully. Think of the things God did to accomplish our redemption. What were the great hindrances? On one side, our oceans of sin had to be atoned for to purchase a perfect righteousness for us. How did God accomplish it? The difficulty of our sin in God’s justice seemed insurmountable and impassable that it caused the enfleshment of His Son, a mysterious fusion of God and man. He lived for our righteousness and died for our sins. Redemption was accomplished.

Then the story is not over; redemption had to be applied. What are the hindrances? We were not weak or sleeping, but dead in our sins. We were, in the opposite direction, so alive to sins, so perverted in our sinful minds that we loved the very things that would damn us and hated the very things that would bring us blessing. But what did God do? By the power of His own Spirit and His effectual call, using the same power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead, He gave us new birth. He opened our blinded eyes and deaf ears, enlightening our minds, renewing our wills, taking away our hearts of stone, and giving us hearts of flesh. He made us feel and see our sin and see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He brought us out of spiritual death into spiritual life.

If God overcame all those impossible difficulties to accomplish and apply your redemption, how much more will He overcome any difficulties to complete that redemption? Oh, may the Holy Spirit make us feel the assurance and certainty of our inheritance. There is a song, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God.” Tell me why we should not be extremely happy in God.

I am not asking you to be happy in yourself, your family, or your job; that is when the problem comes, and God warns us. Although everything may be falling apart and shaking, your hope in God is steadfast. As we endure life’s shaking, we can be assured and happy in God. Shout for joy! His ultimate salvation is absolutely certain. Our inheritance is certain because of the down payment from God, who never lies or dies. No power in the universe will stop the full payment. The Holy Spirit’s witness inside us is a constant monument that God has committed Himself to the full payment. You can sing with us, “When peace like a river attendeth your way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever your lot—I have taught you to say, ‘It is well, it is well, with your soul.'”

Warning to False Believers

While I want to give assurance to God’s children, I want to remove false assurance from others so you can experience true assurance. This happens through self-examination. The Holy Spirit’s fruits are a down payment of a future inheritance. The down payment is given now as a foretaste. Heaven completes the work of grace begun now. If you don’t have any signs of the seal, do not live in false hope. Without the fruits of the Holy Spirit, you should not deceive yourself. I have taught the signs of salvation: love and a desire to learn God’s word, obedience to His commands, love for the people of God, not continuing in sin, and perseverance in all of these. These are signs of the Holy Spirit’s fruits. Galatians 5:22 lists the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Is the quality of your life, not perfectly, but at least to some measure, showing this? Are you growing like this? Are you the same as you were five years ago, with no growth in love at all, always bitter and hateful? Do you have no joy, always grumbling? No peace, always restless? Do you lack patience and self-control, always bursting in anger? Are you never satisfied or grateful, with an uneasiness of spirit? Do you control yourself? Are you never content, always wanting something more, a new device or some novelty? Are you dreadfully scared of disease and death, of leaving this world? I do not want to give you false hope. These are not foretastes of your inheritance; they are a few sparks of that eternal fire, a foretaste of hell, not heaven.

These are the marks of the beast, not the mark of God. In the same passage, Galatians 5:19-21 says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

My heart breaks when I see some of you who live like this, because we can never say you have not heard the gospel. You have heard it again and again. God alone knows the number and has noted it in His judgment book to increase your punishment in hell, thousands or hundreds of thousands of times. You have sat here and heard not just my ideas, myths, or experiences, but the authoritative word of the living God. The word of the truth has come to you week after week, month after month, year after year, yet you do not have a single sign of any of the blessings of the sealing of the Spirit. There is still pride, anger, and covetousness. There is no self-control in your mouth or your life. Why do some joyfully enjoy the message and live with joy every week, with their lives changing, but it does nothing to you? Why? It is the same message, I am the same preacher, in the same place.

Why? Because although you have heard it many times, you have never once believed. All your relatives and friends may have an excuse on judgment day that they haven’t heard the word of truth; you cannot say that. You cannot blame God that He didn’t save you; no, God blames you. You know in your conscience that the reason you don’t believe the gospel is because of your love for the world, your love for sin, your arrogance, and the perversity and stubbornness of your heart. You are fearful of having to give up your covetousness and your love for these animal pleasures. It’s your love of sin that keeps you from believing.

As we saw, you have to truly not only understand the word of truth but believe it—believe it as God’s word. What I am saying is not my gospel; God’s authority is behind it. Only when you believe it as God’s word can you be sealed. See the grace of God; you don’t have to do anything. All that you need to do is believe the gospel. He calls upon you to repent and to believe the gospel. You’ll never know anything of the blessings of the sealing of the Spirit unless you hear and believe the word of the truth. You can go out blaming God that He is not saving you or fall prostrate before God like the blind beggar and beg, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” until He saves you.

You will be sealed and experience the Holy Spirit’s work inside you and deliverance from your sins. Otherwise, like a leper, in a few years, you will not be able to live with yourself or bear to see how horrible you are. May God open your eyes.

Important Lessons for Gospel Ministry

This should teach us important lessons for gospel ministry: a full zeal to preserve the purity of the gospel’s content and a full zeal to proclaim that message to all people. Our forefathers persevered in the purity of the gospel and proclaimed it, even to the point of death. If we truly want to do God’s work, not just satisfy our conscience that we are doing some gospel work and feel good about ourselves, we must have a zeal to preserve the purity of the gospel’s content.

Since the sealing of the Holy Spirit is closely connected with clearly hearing and believing the word of truth, we must be careful. Today, people tell us, “Don’t be so careful about the truth; just pressure them to believe somehow. Say something that will appeal to their needs and make a decision.” But true doctrine is the gateway into a true experience. The sealing of the Holy Spirit is an authentic Christian experience. If you don’t preach the truth, you are giving people a false experience. The gate for a true experience is the truth, the gospel of salvation. When someone tampers with the gate, Paul says, “let the curse of God fall upon them.” In Galatians 1:8-9, he says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be eternally condemned!” In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul says that they all might be damned who believe a lie. They have faith, but faith in the wrong thing, and he says that brings damnation.

That’s why he again and again repeats the basics of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, the irreducible elements of it: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” And he says it is by that gospel you are saved if you hold it fast. If you leave that, you believe a lie, and you are damned. The gate for a true Holy Spirit experience is truth and theology. Don’t shut that and make people believe a lie and send them to hell.

The Bible calls the true church the pillar of truth. In this day, which is full of apostasy, we must stand and persevere in the truth of the gospel. Since the sealing of the Spirit comes by means of the truth preached and heard, we should be zealous in proclaiming that truth. We all have to be actively engaged in sharing this gospel because no one else is doing it. They are all telling lies. There are hundreds of churches in our city with no truth or gospel, but they say they experience the sealing of the Holy Spirit. We must be suspicious of anything that claims to be the work of the Spirit in which the word of the truth is not loved. God should open our eyes to see people who are without the sealing of the Holy Spirit. People in traditional churches say, “Oh, they go to church and are happy. So what?” See? They may have religion, they may have morality, and some degree of ethical respectability, but if they do not have the Spirit, they are deceiving themselves and going to hell.

God will not automatically save. Romans 10:11, “For whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But “how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” If they are to believe, they must hear. If they are to hear, there must be a proclaimer, someone who comes with the word of the truth.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence. He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.

When you get sad or discouraged, I don’t know what you do. Some people listen to songs, some go shopping, some eat nicely to deal with depression, some watch mobile/TV, or you may go on a vacation. People do something as a pick-me-up to encourage themselves. Ephesians 3:14 was Paul’s pick-me-up, and it is becoming my pick-me-up.

Remember Paul’s condition was worse than any of our conditions. He was like a horse, unable to stay in one place, running around the world preaching the gospel. Now, his legs are chained, his hands are chained, and he’s arrested with a Roman soldier always with him. How discouraged must his great mind be to be stuck in one place? But the man is filled with joy and a blazing zeal. He rises in praising God. How can a man in that situation praise God?

Because a mature Christian learns an important lesson through the years: no matter what his circumstances are, he finds his happiness in things that do not change. Those things that do not change are only found in two words: In Christ. So Paul, though in a sad situation, instead of grumbling, sees the panorama of his salvation. He goes before the foundation of the world, starting with election, and goes all the way to glorification. He lifts up the Ephesians and us with him in this praise: “Hey discouraged believer, lift up your eyes, behold all these blessings. In the world you may not be great, not have great value; in Christ, you are so valuable. You were chosen before the foundation of the world. The central plan of predestination is to adopt you as His child. All this was done not because of who you are or what you will do, you were accepted in the beloved. Come on man, if you know your heart…” As a Christian grows, he knows how bad his heart is, and that makes him wonder at God’s grace more and more. For a wretch like me, God has done this, and not because of me, but to the praise of the glory of His grace. Realizing this should pick you up from any hole.

If that is not enough to pick you up, look at history. He has executed His eternal plan by sending His Son and purchasing a perfect redemption on the cross, paying a ransom. This was bought with the very, very expensive, greatest price of the blood of the Son of God. Not only historically, but experientially, God’s grace in your own personal experience gave you the joy of the forgiveness of sins. This salvation was not only planned in eternity and accomplished in time, but an overflowing grace came to us, revealing this salvation.

How did this salvation reveal itself to us? Verse 8 says, “in all wisdom and prudence.” In which form did it come to us? Verse 9 says, “having made known to us the mystery of His will,” which indicates the gospel. Why was it revealed to us historically, geographically, and effectually, and not to so many other billions? Verse 9: “according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.”

Paul is using all these truths to lift us higher and higher in worship. If we argue, “Oh, we teach too much theology,” how can you ever have such high, true biblical worship without explaining and understanding this theology? Oh yes, you can have empty, mindless, sentimental, repetitive chorus, musical concert manipulation and call that worship, but God hates such worship.

I agree these are very tough. I told you this is one of the most difficult passages. So what do most pastors do? “Why trouble and break our heads, labor in the Word for hours, and struggle to make people understand these difficult passages? No one will clap, crowds will not listen, we won’t get many likes.” Someone said from the 19th century onward, a big curse which led to the downgrade of Christianity is the disrespect it shows to Bible expositors. There is no market for them, because this generation is like Isaiah 30:10: “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words.”

You watch most popular preachers; they are not Bible preachers, just motivational self-help speakers. They just use Bible stories and words to give success, prosperity, and motivational dialogues. A verse’s context will say something, but they just remove verses out of context. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is just used for landing dream jobs, achieving big things, or getting healing. It’s for self-confidence, motivation. “I can do all things, hallelujah.” Last week, our friend Johnson used “The Holy Spirit will flow as a river; a river brings fruitfulness on both sides.” What fruit? “A couple for 10 years had IVF and many treatments with no child. Last week, they got children, hallelujah. I said, ‘Don’t waste money with doctors anymore, put it in the offering bag.’ I tell you today, God’s river will bring healing.” What a horrible distortion of the Holy Scriptures! Blasphemy! And hundreds without any brain or discernment are sitting and clapping. It shows so many don’t even know the basics of theology, how to read and understand the Bible. So big crowds run to listen to this in the name of worship and Christianity. That is the trend and market today.

I could also be tempted to go with the market, but 2 Timothy 4:1 keeps ringing: “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” The time has come now.

This is what controls us. So even if I don’t get claps, whistles, or crowds, and maybe some of you even go to sleep when difficult Bible passages are explained, I have to fulfill the ministry God has given me. I have to preach the Word of God in season and out of season, because my claps will come in the end. So far, we have studied till verse 9. Now we come to verse 10.

Verse 10 answers: What is the ultimate purpose of the redemptive plan? “That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.” In this verse, Paul goes beyond our personal salvation and covers God’s great redemption plan for the whole universe. This, many agree, is the most difficult verse in the entire New Testament. Even translations make it difficult to grasp. You see, each commentator will give a different meaning. Reading many, doing my own study, seeing the context, and the analogy of scripture, I have come to a final conclusion of the meaning with the help of great commentators like Lenski and William Hendriksen. It will be theological trekking and climbing a tall New Testament mountain. Trekkers know that only when we sweat, trek, and go up, do we see the most beautiful scenes, which will be worth all the efforts that lazy people can never enjoy. So I am calling you to join me trekking. I promise you will see such a glorious perspective it will thrill your heart. So, ready for the morning trek!

Vision of Christ’s Government

The first word is dispensation or NASB administration. It is oikonomia, which means God’s divine arrangement, ordering, and working in the world. It is God’s management; the way God runs things. When a Prime Minister/President takes office, he puts his administration and cabinet members together to carry out his plan. He executes his plan through his administrators. Just as Pharaoh appointed Joseph as administrator of Egypt, he was in charge, he ordered, ruled, governed, and controlled. During those seven years of famine and prosperity, Egypt was under the administration of Joseph. Even today, our country does not use it much, but you will see America and other countries using this word. “This happened under the Biden administration,” but “this Donald Trump administration, we corrected that.” The idea is executing a plan through administrators.

In God’s administration, who is God’s administrator for this plan? Verse 7, “In Him we have redemption,” it is the same person. God has given this administration to Christ. So the word has the idea that Christ has been appointed as the administrator by God. All of God’s gospel purposes are under the administration of Jesus Christ. So we see the vision of Christ’s sovereign government.

The word also means “Law of the house; order of the house.” It is like an architect who draws a plan for a house. A good architect will plan where the electrical wires, water taps, pipes, cupboards, beds, and walls go. As the house is being built, it all looks so messy, dirty, ugly, and confusing. But once the whole house is completed, we stand in awe: “Wow, it has come out so nicely.” So God is the architect of the plan, and He appointed Christ as the administrator to execute the plan. Christ came, died, redeemed us, finished His earthly ministry, and ascended. Christ is doing ministry in heaven. God is still building the house, but it still seems so confusing, sometimes messy. The house is yet to be completed. When the full work is done, it will all look perfect.

The verse talks about the time of this government: “That in the dispensation/administration of the fullness of the times.” What does “fullness of times” mean? It’s like an old-fashioned hourglass. You would have seen it. “I give you one hour,” and you turn the glass. The top, full of sand, will slowly trickle down. When the last grain of sand falls, it is one hour. After all the sand fills one end, it is the fullness of time; the glass is full; time has arrived. That is how it is used.

The same word is used in Galatians 4:4: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son.” The same period the Bible also calls the “last days.” Hebrews 1:1-2 says, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.” “Last days” doesn’t mean the end of history, but the last days began when Jesus came for the first time into the world. 1 Corinthians 10:11: “These things are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” So this phrase, the fullness of the time, is the time period which began with the first coming of Christ and will end with the second coming of Christ. The first words our Lord preached in Mark 1:15 were: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Joining the two words, administration of fullness of times, is the rule of the time period between the first and second coming of Christ. Based on the context and other Bible passages, Christ is the administrator of this time. This is also called the gospel age. The reign of Christ is not just future, but now in this gospel age. When history records the administration of Donald Trump, it will have a time reference: “First presidency between 2017 to 2021 and second 2025 to 2030.” When Ephesians 1:10 speaks of the administration of the fullness of times, it speaks of the time between His first and second coming.

This understanding is consistent with the Bible and context. If you fail to grasp this, when explaining the next phrase, “summing up of all things in Christ,” you will go in 101 directions and into confusion, even to extreme universalism, “Oh, then the Bible teaches Christ will save everyone at the end.” So we see His sovereign government.

Final Purpose of This Government

Verse 10: “He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.” The first phrase, “gathering together in one all things in Christ,” means to unite everything under one head. It means to “sum up all things.” You take many different numbers and add them up to one big number. That is the picture. So the final purpose of this sovereign government is to unite everything under Christ. What all things are to be united? The next phrase tells us: “all things in heaven and all things on earth.” This is a sweeping description of the totality of the universe. Every realm of the universe, visible and invisible creation. All in heaven and on earth are united under Christ, under His reign.

Look at Ephesians 1:20, where we have an expansion of this thought. He’s speaking of the greatness of God’s power, which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

You have a parallel passage in Matthew 28, where Jesus said, “all authority has been given to me,” where? “In heaven and on earth.” “I have absolute authority.” So we see Christ’s sovereign government and the final purpose of His sovereign government.

Putting these things together, let us capture the big picture. This is God’s great, final, ultimate purpose. Human minds can never think of anything greater. This is the Mysterion, a mystery hidden for ages. People have been searching for where world history is going, what the purpose of all these different nations and civilizations is, but God invites us in this verse to see His glorious eternal purpose. God’s grand purpose is that “He might gather together in one all things in Christ.” There is a grand purpose of God, and all thousands of years of world history are moving toward this. This has a present personal aspect and a future universal aspect.

Present: Paul has said that God elected and predestined us in eternity and that His grace accomplished perfect redemption in time. How did redemption grace overflow to us? “In wisdom and prudence,” and in what form? By “revealing His mystery,” through the gospel. Why did the gospel come to us? It was God’s good pleasure. How was God’s good pleasure effectually worked in our lives? It worked because of the powerful administrator Jesus Christ and His mighty sovereign mediatorial government.

Ephesians, you were dead in sins, worshiping ugly Artemis, it was impossible to save you. You know why you are saved and now blessed with heavenly wisdom. You know why you have this now while millions are listening to these motivational, stupid preachers and being deceived for years. You know why God saved and opened your eyes? Because Christ is the powerful and efficient administrator of every purpose of God in this gospel age.

The Father plans, elects and predestines, and appoints Christ as the administrator to implement the plan. He first purchases a perfect redemption on earth and goes to heaven. Now with all authority in heaven and on earth, He reigns, intercedes, and effectually applies and implements every one of God’s redemption purposes. It is because of His mediatorial reign that you and I were snatched from the devil’s mouth and are sitting in God’s house today. This powerful administration will go on until He saves us to the utmost. No power in the universe will be able to resist this sovereign government.

This is grand beyond comprehension, but the thought is clear: anything in this life is not left to drift or operate for itself. They are all under the government of Christ. He, as the administrator of God, takes all things in heaven and on earth and makes all things work together for good for them that love God and for His church, and for every individual in it. Yes, it may all seem confusing today because the house is under construction, but when the final house is completed, you will be amazed at His work.

Future: There is a future universal aspect of this government. That is why it says everything in heaven and on earth. See, God has a huge, huge plan. We are so narrowed and small-minded. God is broad, large-minded, and His administration and plans are so beyond our imagination. God’s plan to manifest the riches of His grace to the eternal praise of the universe not only involved personally saving us but also to completely restore the universe, all in heaven and on earth, to a glorious and perfect state and give us new heavens and a new earth as our eternal inheritance.

The first step of that is to redeem us personally and forgive our sins. That is the first stage, but there are great universal implications of Christ’s work. His work will not just personally save us, but restore the whole universe from the power of evil. We need to realize the cross of Christ had a tremendous impact on the whole universe. It made Him the only eligible administrator to redeem the whole universe again and make everything new. He will restore new heavens and a new earth for His people as an inheritance. This is all part of the gospel. This is the amazing mystery of the gospel. Yes, we know the gospel a little bit, but so much of the glory of the gospel is still mysterious, so hard to grasp, and tremendously unbelievable.

All in heaven and on earth are summed up in Christ; everything becomes perfect. That is Utopia realized. Thomas More wrote a novel about an imaginary island where everything was perfect: politics, laws, people. The world has been trying to get to Utopia for thousands of years. Every politician who comes to power promises a Utopia. They all fail. Why? Because the Fall has affected not only mankind but even the world’s environment, animals, and land; the world is cursed, a sin-diseased world. The whole creation groans in childbirth for deliverance. This is a cursed, decaying world. You know why you and I get frustrated in life? We expect Utopia on this cursed world. Ladies, you expect perfection from a sinful husband. We expect perfection at home, at work, and we get upset.

Utopia comes when all is summed up in Jesus Christ. It is beyond our imagination, so glorious. Isaiah 11 talks about such marvelous things: the whole creation will be reconciled, not only man with God, and man with man, but man with the whole creation. Utopia! God’s administration is working out a definite and pre-purposed plan in our time. All the movements of history, governments, wars, and every small event in your life and mine are all moving toward this grand purpose: to be all summed up in Christ.

Applications

I titled this section “Vision of Christ’s Reign.” Our greatest need is to get a vision of Christ’s sovereign reign, just as Isaiah, whose life was so troubled with all the events, went to the temple and saw God on the throne, and that changed his life. So many things will change in our life if we get a glimpse of the powerful sovereign reign of Christ. Oh, may God open our eyes to get a vision of Christ’s reign! It will fill our life with praise, trust, and peace, whatever happens, and a new zeal for the gospel. Praise, trust, peace, and zeal for proper gospel work.

Praise: We need fuel to kindle the fire of praising God. This truth gives us several reasons to praise God. The central message of the Gospel is who Christ is and His work.

• Behold who Christ is, His uniqueness and the glory of His person in this verse. If the government/administration of all that God is doing in the gospel age, from the first advent to the second advent, is committed to Him in such a way that He has absolute power in heaven and on earth to carry out the Father’s purpose, this truth reveals the uniqueness and glory of His person. He is not just someone who shamefully died on a cross, but now the sovereign government of God is in His hands. All kings, governments, and all authority are under Him, and He will redeem the whole universe by His work. No created being; no angel, not even an exalted archangel, can do such a universal, impossible task. No one is worthy of this. He alone is worthy to open the seals of God because He is God Himself.

Have you taken time to grasp the exalted view of Christ that Scripture gives, developed very high thoughts of Christ, looked at Him deeply, stood amazed at His glory, and fallen prostrate before Him and worshiped Christ? Oh, the vision of Christ’s reign is our greatest need. Think of everything on earth, the vast earth, heaven, all billions of galaxies, all reduced to one sum in Christ. Christ is above all. How mighty He must be? Colossians 1:17 says, “in Christ all things consist,” or they hold together. God has put all rule and all authority under His feet. Not that He “shall,” but He has already put. So as we come today, we need to worship Him from the perspective of Ephesians 1:10. We worship a Christ who is God; we should fall at His feet with fear and trembling. Even in His humiliation, demons trembled and fell at His feet. The apostles were blown away at times by His power, rebuking the mighty sea, creating food, and healing all diseases. “Who is this?” And finally when He conquered death and stood in front of them, they fell down saying, “My Lord and my God.” He is King of kings and Lord of lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Worship His majesty! All hail the power of Jesus’ name, let angels and the whole universe prostrate fall.

• Behold the glorious work of Christ. We often focus on Christ’s work in the past, and we focus on the future that He will return, but His present work is so often obscured. We have no clear understanding. But Paul says to these Ephesian believers, if you view your salvation rightly, you will not only praise Christ’s work in the past, for complete redemption and forgiveness of sins (verse 7), and praise Him for eternal inheritance in the future (verse 13). But you will praise Him for your present experience of grace as the fruit of Christ’s present work as the administrator of the gospel age.

It is Christ’s government that rules now. His administration doesn’t work as we think. This government is a mysteriously sovereign government. God should open our spiritual eyes to see that. All things may seem to be working against it, but it is actually fulfilling His plan. The Bible from the beginning shows us a model of how that government works. Joseph realized this wisdom in a small picture of his life and Israel. He said, about all the wrong things that happened to him, “You did it for evil, but God was ruling all this for good.” This is how you should remember the cross of Christ triumphed.

When Israel was downtrodden by Rome as slaves, Christ was born as a poor baby, grew, started His ministry, many followed initially, but most left Him. Religious leaders caught Him and killed Him on the cross. The disciples were so confused. “Nothing makes sense. What is happening? Jesus has completely lost. Where is His sovereign government?” You’d say it doesn’t seem to make much sense. There seems to be so little order, so little plan. “What is all this?”

Our Lord explains what is happening behind the scene in His high priestly prayer. He is not a little bit frustrated about events; very calmly, John 17:1-2 says, “Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.'” It doesn’t say “shall give authority in the future,” but “You have already given.” What is the purpose? To bring peace among the nations? No, “that He may give eternal life to those you have given.” Wow! Do you see how His administration works? When all seems visibly against it, it is actually winning and triumphing.

Psalm 2 majestically talks about His government: “Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision. ‘Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion.’ ‘I will declare the decree: Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.'”

God is saying, “I will establish my administrator upon the throne and nothing will frustrate His purposes in working out My eternal decree.” Psalm 110:1: “The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool.” Now notice this last phrase of verse 2: “Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.” He reigns in the midst of His enemies and uses His enemies. All governments, men, angels, and demons, including Satan, are His slave dogs accomplishing His purpose now.

So worship Christ for who He is, and worship Him for His mysterious sovereign reign. We are so small-minded. Selfishness blinds us. God is large-minded. God has a glorious plan He is accomplishing. These are huge concepts: election, predestination, administration. We are part of that. Oh, He is a big God. Come on man, how glorious these things are! Not stories, but the infallible Word of God. When you start believing this, you will serve God even in prison.

• Praise God by tracing your conversion to the government of Christ’s power. The great central purpose of this administration, according to John 17, is to give eternal life to those whom God chose. In Acts 5, Peter says, “Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance and forgiveness of sins.” It requires all authority in heaven and on earth to save a soul. That should tell us what an impossible task it is to save any of us. Paul is full of praise because he was able to trace back his salvation. How did a Christ-hater, Saul, become the bond-servant of Christ, Paul? He never even dreamed of it. It was not by any accident, but because Christ is the mighty administrator of the gospel. How did the Ephesians, living such horrible paganism in the fortress of the devil, the Artemis temple, were able to come out into the gospel light? Think of yourself. How did you come to Christ? I was attending a relative’s marriage last week, remembering all my upbringing, our culture, our religion, which people have built for thousands of years. I wondered how I could leave such a strong religion, with its many attractions, the power of the devil, the attraction of the world, and flesh-pleasing ways holding us. How can anyone leave flesh-pleasing, proud ways and come humbly as a depraved sinner to Christ? Why didn’t we run into 1001 false teachings, but came to the true gospel?

Paul helps us to see the mighty spiritual power that happened in the conversion of the Ephesians and in our own conversion. You were brought into the blessings of the gospel because of the mighty Christ, who runs an administration with all power in heaven and on earth. Such an almighty government was needed to save you. That is the only reason you are in Christ. The devil, the world, and the flesh held you as an eternal captive and said, “I’ll not give them up.” And the world said, “We’ll not give them up, we will hold them captive.” And King Jesus said, “They are chosen by the Father, and I have redeemed them by My blood. I, with all My authority, will release them.” And He stretched out His mighty power, and all those 1001 enemies couldn’t do anything. We were released from 1001 chains and bound as captives. We were freed. Oh, praise God for this Christ’s sovereign government.

Join the apostle Paul and praise God for verse 10, as he traces his salvation and all that grace saving you and the grace continuing to come to you even today is a result of the all-powerful administration of Christ. It is a result of the success of His administration. Christ is the mighty administrator of the gospel.

• Trust this government/administration all your life. You will live with divine peace and comfort. If Christ is on the throne, all is well. God has a determined plan. Nothing can change this plan. At a personal level, the great purpose of His administration is to grant eternal life to you—not like these false prophets who promise blessings, money, riches, and healing. He will bring every event in life for your sanctification. He will control everything to achieve that. Learn to see that is what He is doing in your life.

At a universal level, all world history, nations, wars, our government acts, political tensions, confusions, every confusion in your life, troubles, and trials, may all seem like a mess. All of it may seem meaningless, purpopseless, and chaotic, even in our own lives. Life seems so confusing. Great thinkers pull their hair out, asking “Why is this happening or that happening? What is the meaning of all this?” If you understand Ephesians 1:10, you understand something that has completely bypassed the great thinkers of our day: behind all this seeming confusion, an administration is working to sum up all things in Christ.

If Christ’s administration is true, then there is nothing really accidental, haphazard, or meaningless happening in this world and in our lives; not even the hopping of a sparrow or the loss of a hair on our head. Verse 11: “who works all things according to the counsel of His will.” All men are unconscious agents in His hands, even governments and politicians. Herod, Pilate. Pilate said to Jesus, “You don’t talk to me? I have the authority to release you.” Jesus said, “No, you are not in charge. You cannot do it unless it is given from above, unless my administration allows you to do it. My Father’s plan is that I should die on the cross. You with all Roman power cannot stop it.”

Think of all that God used for His plan. The envy of the Jewish leaders, the treachery of Judas, the timidity of Pilate, the cruelty of the Roman soldiers were all subservient to God’s designs and all fulfilled His inscrutable purposes. Who would suppose that these were successive steps to fulfill God’s plan, so that Christ dies, rises, and is exalted to the throne of heaven and the means ordained for the salvation of His chosen people? Yet that is what happened. By all these confusing events, many conflicting prophecies were fulfilled. That is how precisely His administration works in your life and the world now.

All confusing and innumerable events of every day seem to happen randomly and pass away without any particular effect. But He who sees all things from the beginning has ordained that a sleepless night, a traffic jam, forgetting a key, every sickness, every financial problem, every family problem, every disappointment, every trial in life, and even the sins of people will all accomplish His glorious plan.

In your life, it may all seem very confusing, even painful. But realize that the house is still under construction; we may see it as messy and confusing. On this side, we may say, like Jacob, that all these things in my life are happening against me. But a day will come when we will see from the other side, like Joseph, and say, “You did it for evil, but God used everything for the greatest good.” You will see how all this led to your sanctification and glorification. Let us strongly trust the promise of this great administrator: “All things work for our good.” Oh, what a different perspective a vision of Christ’s reign will give. It will fill us with praise, it will fill us with trust and peace in the midst of life’s different storms. Thirdly, this vision will give zeal to do gospel work properly.

This vision will give zeal to do gospel work properly. I say “proper gospel work” because there are thousands of wrong kinds of gospel work. The sadness of Christianity in our country is because of those wrong kinds of gospel work. This verse should teach us the right gospel work.

First, this truth shows us why the gospel triumphs in the hearts of men. Why does the gospel still triumph? It triumphs as the fruit of the administration of Christ. There is not one single gospel triumph that is not a monument to the mighty administration of Jesus Christ in this gospel age. We are all witnesses of Christ’s government’s success.

If we are to do proper gospel work, we must learn to base our expectation for the success of the gospel not upon our administration of the gospel, but upon Christ’s administration. All of your prayers, expectations, and efforts for the success of the gospel are not upon your cleverness or lack of it, your skill, or favorable circumstances for the gospel. No, the success of the gospel is rooted in the mighty government of Christ. That’s the core of its success.

Instead of making us lazy, what zeal and confidence this should give us to share the gospel in any circumstance with anyone. It is not purely based on how cleverly or nicely I said it, using the right words, at the right time and in the right place. No, if I faithfully share the gospel truth in the most simple way I know, the government of Christ will use it as a means and bring success.

That is what God taught Paul and made him a great missionary. He looked at Corinth. It had a grand pagan temple and was a city of uncleanness. He became scared, wondering if anyone would listen to him. The Lord comes to him at night and says, “Don’t be afraid, don’t stop preaching the gospel. I have many people in this city. I am the administrator of the gospel. Never forget it, Paul. You are just an instrument.” So he stayed for a year and a half teaching God’s word. A church started. How? Because of Paul’s wisdom? No, he says he came to them in weakness, fear, and trembling. It was the government of Christ.

This is the secret of the gospel: Keep looking at the government of Christ. When we look at ourselves and our situation, we will be scared, but when our focus is on Him, we see that He is reigning. He can even use a donkey’s speech to change people. He will give success. I just need to obey Him and share the gospel the best way I know. Then, souls will come, churches will be formed, and Christ will grow His kingdom through me.

Oh, a vision of Christ’s reign is the secret of all gospel success. Can I tell you this is the secret the Lord taught the apostles, which made them turn the world upside down? How does our Lord begin the great commission in Matthew 28? He didn’t begin with “go and preach.” Notice how He begins in Matthew 28:18: “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.'” This is a clear explanation of Ephesians 1:10. These are His last words; they should ring in the apostles’ ears always as they go into all the world. The first words are not “go,” no, first you must realize, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” First, you need to get a vision of Christ’s reign.

“Therefore go,” under what canopy and perspective? The perspective that “I am the administrator of the gospel task.” The success and accomplishment of your mission rest not upon you, but upon My government and authority. I, as the Lord of heaven and earth, command you. You must obey. When I go and I find men’s minds blinded, not at all interested in the truth of the gospel, what shall I do? Shall I accommodate the gospel to make it a little more attractive? Shall I decorate it with false promises, “if you believe, He will give you money, healing, give you what you want”? Shall I become a conman or a clown because no one listens to the gospel? Should I become a motivational speaker and make the gospel palatable to unregenerate nature? Never. I will go out in the consciousness that He’s the administrator with all authority in heaven and on earth. Success is in His hands. My job is to obey.

What is gospel work? It’s not going and saying something with blind zeal and somehow getting decisions, and then making a person a “double child of heaven” with false assurance. No. Preach the gospel, make disciples, then don’t leave them as orphans. No, baptize them. That is a technical term to gather them as a community of believers/churches and plant churches, visible communities of believers. The Great Commission is not to just go around and preach the gospel, but you are to plant churches. “I’m the administrator, not you. Do it as I command.” You may think you can do the job better by going out, preaching minimal basic truth, manipulating people to make decisions, and then going to another person or town. No, no, I am telling you, make disciples, baptize them, and don’t stop there. Verse 20: “teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” Establish a teaching ministry that builds them up into practical godliness. Not just teaching them theory, but teaching them to observe. Then comes the glorious promise of His presence and success in the work: “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.”

Do you see how this vision of Christ’s reign will fill us with zeal to do gospel work properly? Isn’t the lack of this the reason all the wrong gospels are rampant in our country? Paul says Christ has appointed us, the church, for the task of the administration of the gospel today. How should we do it? We just follow Him. Even in our work, we obey the boss. He tells us, “This is my company. You are the manager. This is how you should manage this, step 1, 2, 3, 4.” If we just do one step and tell him, “Boss, I thought other steps were not required, non-essential, impractical. I just carried out what is practical.” He would say, “Fool, your job is to follow the administrator’s orders, not to evaluate and pass a sentence upon what was essential and non-essential. I am the boss. You are fired.” The Lord Jesus, the great administrator appointed by the Father, speaks to us and gives us an administration. We should obey His orders and rule, not do what we like and call it ministry.

Our weakness as a church is that we are not active in gospel work. Oh, may God give us this vision of Christ’s reign, fill us with zeal and confidence and energy for praying for souls, and boldly sharing the gospel. When a church, like the New Testament church, gets this vision, that is when revival starts.

Practical Step

We planned this many years ago, but we didn’t continue. We need to revive a GRBC Gospel Sharing Experience. We share stories of how we shared the gospel. This is what many good churches do to encourage one another and train one another in gospel work. How do we share with a person from a traditional Christian background, or a person from a Muslim or Hindu background who has been saved?

Recently I have adopted a method with people from traditional Christian backgrounds. “Can I ask you a question? We all will leave this world. Do you believe that as soon as you die you will go to heaven and enjoy eternal life? John 3 says, ‘God loved the world that anyone who believes Christ will not perish but have eternal life.’ Do you have that assurance?” There are only three answers: “No,” “don’t know,” or “yes.”

If they say no or don’t know, then you can say, “You have not truly believed. See, you can hear about Christ your whole life and never truly believe.” You can share a story about looking at Christ in faith. A look of faith is about who Christ is and what He has done on the cross. That is what will save you.

If they say yes, I ask, “On what basis do you believe you will go to heaven?” Most times, they say, “Because I go to church, I am good.” “How good do you have to be to get to heaven? How many good works?” The Bible says you have to be perfect. We can explain the standard of the law, how lust is adultery, and how anger is murder. “Can you be so good?” As Spurgeon said, “Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins.”

When they are thinking, I mention the only way to go to heaven is by GFC, not KFC: by Grace, through Faith, and Christ alone. The only way you get to heaven is by trusting in God’s grace and believing in Jesus’ perfect work. He imputes His righteousness to me and takes my sin on Him. A transfer happens. One person who had been going to church for 40 years said, “I never heard that in my whole life.” I will tell you that is the sad condition of these traditional churches. They never teach the true gospel because once they hear the gospel and get saved, they cannot be kept under the bondage of their religion with its prayers, tithes, church attendance, and other religious practices. Most churches in our country teach that it is Christ plus this and that. No, it is GFC. It is all grace, it is only through faith, and you go to Christ alone. We have a great responsibility to preach this gospel of grace, because no one else is doing it. That is why our country is like this. Remember, the goal is to faithfully present the person and work of Jesus Christ in a clear, loving way, leaving the results to God.

A Few Words of Warning

You may be sitting here, thinking, “Okay, Christ is an administrator. What does that have to do with me? I don’t care.” My friend, you feel that way because the god of this world has blinded you. Just as a Christian rejoices that Christ is the administrator of the gospel age, so every unconverted person has to tremble that Christ rules, and you still have not submitted to His Lordship. His administration will bring terrible judgment and an eternal, unimaginable, unbearable punishment for you.

If God opens your eyes and makes you see one glimpse of Christ’s government, you will run to Christ. Because the CCTV camera of Christ’s government is watching you day and night under this administration, and it is continuously printing fine challans and punishments for every crime against this government. Imagine a big list. Nowadays, we can go to a website and see how many challans and notices from traffic police, or income tax demands, debts, defaults, and interest pending. We can even check our Cibil score. Traffic police don’t catch you immediately; they just update your record. A few years ago, I saw I had four traffic challans for 6,000 rupees and was shocked. I didn’t even know it was a no-parking zone, but I parked, so there was a challan. In the same way, if God opens His website of your challans, IT demands, debts, and interest, you will faint. Your Cibil score is bad because your sin debt has mounted to heaven, and in the gospel age, too.

You know the final work of Christ’s administration is to summon you into His presence, judge you for all your sin debt, and punish you until every last cent is paid back to His justice. You cannot, so He will eternally damn you into hell. Today you may be sitting here, and all this about Christ reigning and His government seems like a dream. But one day, Philippians 2 says everyone sitting here, this same knee, will bow, and this same tongue will confess, “Jesus Christ is Lord, He is the reigning king.” God will bring that confession out of your mouth. You will worship Him. He is worthy of all of this. God will wrench that confession from every being in heaven and on earth. If that confession doesn’t come from your heart now, in this gospel age, it will come out on the Day of Judgment. By then it will be too late. Christ’s administration will result in one of two things for every man, woman, boy, or girl. He will either be your Savior now or He will be your judge to send you to hell.

Can I beg you this morning not to just hear and go? In your mind’s eye, look to Christ, keep looking at Him until He opens your eyes to see who He is, and what He did for you. That look of faith will save you from all your sins. May God open your eyes to see His glory and submit to Him in faith and repentance.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.

We all love secrets. Someone says, “Let me tell you a secret,” and all our ears perk up. When we tell a secret to someone, it no longer remains a secret because they’re like all-India radio. Today, I’m going to tell you a unique secret—it is the secret of God. But you know what? God wants us to become the all-India radio of that secret because it’s the mystery of God revealed. Our tendency to blab is actually encouraged; our inability to keep a secret is a blessing here. So, prepare to become a divine all-India radio of this secret.

We’re looking at Ephesians 1:14, and in these verses, we see one of the most profound, staggering, and mind-stretching concepts to be found anywhere in all of human literature. It’s true, these are amazing verses. A whole panorama of salvation stretching back to past eternity talks about concepts of election, redemption, and the blessings of redemption, and it sweeps to a vision of future eternity—the summing up of all things in Christ. These are mind-staggering concepts for any great mind.

We might imagine Paul must be writing to the most brilliant, educated people, but if you go and see the Ephesian church, it will surprise you. It was made up of ordinary people, some uneducated slaves, working fathers, housewife mothers, and children—families who were previously worshipping in the temple of Artemis. Paul could write such great truths to ordinary people because our teacher is the great Holy Spirit. This teacher has a miraculous way of teaching the most difficult things even to the most ordinary believer. That is the confidence with which we are studying these difficult passages. So far, the Holy Spirit has staggered our minds, and we’ve been struck with awe as we’ve followed the thoughts of the great mind of the Apostle Paul.

He is praising God, listing salvation blessings and the grace that elected and predestined us, purchased redemption, and gave forgiveness of sins. It’s enough—what else do we need? That grace has overflowed in all wisdom and prudence. Last week, we saw in verse 8 that grace has abounded in wisdom, which is penetrating insight into divine realities, and prudence, the ability to apply those realities to life.

In the next verses, he tells us, “How did this wisdom and prudence come to us?” and “Why?” and “When?” and “What is the end goal of this?” Today, we will focus on verse 9, which answers two questions: “How did wisdom and prudence come to us?” and “Why did it come to us?” First, how? Verse 9 says, “having made known to us the mystery of His will.” We see the word “mystery” of His will was made known to us. It’s a very predominant word in the New Testament, used some 27 times, primarily by Paul. To be ignorant of its meaning is to be ignorant of one of the most precious concepts in the New Testament. Let’s understand the precise meaning of this word “mystery” and what it means in this context—the mystery of His will.

We use the word “mystery” in many ways for a secret or a puzzling thing that we can never understand. Some people eat a lot but never gain weight; it’s a mystery. Some kids don’t study but get 100/100—a mystery. In some houses, we buy a pair of socks, but one always goes away, leaving a cupboard full of single socks. In our house, knives always go missing. It is a mystery. You may have some mysteries in your house. We use the word “mystery” for something we cannot understand. Webster’s says a mystery is something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. We should be careful not to put our general contemporary meaning or dictionary meaning into scripture. We should always trace the biblical meaning in its context.

What does the Bible mean by “mystery”? I’ll state the definition and prove it from scripture: A mystery is a thing hidden in the mind of God, and we can never know it until God reveals it. Let me prove to you that this is the biblical definition. In the same book, Ephesians 3:9, “and to make all see what is the fellowship/dispensation of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ.” See? The mystery is something that has been hidden in God.

1 Corinthians 2:7, “But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden.” So the concept of “hidden” is here. A thing hidden in the mind of God. Verse 8 says, “which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Verse 9 says, “But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.'” That’s the mystery. It’s hidden. No one can penetrate it. But in verse 10, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.” See? It was hidden, and God has revealed it to us. So the concept of “mystery” and “manifestation” is tied together. It is hidden in God, but it is revealed by God. The same thing is found in Colossians 1:26, “Even the mystery which hath been hid,” there’s the concept of “hidden” again, “hid for ages and generations, but now hath it been manifested unto his saints.”

So, the dominant usage of the word “mystery” is the idea of a revealed secret of God. It was not known for ages but revealed to His people by His Spirit. The Apostle says in Ephesians 1, grace overflowed to us in all wisdom and prudence. What was revealed to us in all wisdom and prudence? The making known of the mystery of His will—the revealing of the secret of God that was hidden in God for ages and for generations.

In a way, all saving truths are a mystery. It’s concealed in God until revealed by God. In Ephesians 3, he said that it is a mystery that both Jew and Gentile would be called in the church and stand on absolutely the same footing—fellow heirs with the Jews. And he says this is something that could not be known unless God revealed it. It was hidden in His purposes for generations, but now He has revealed it.

All the truth that surrounds Christ is called a mystery. 1 Timothy 3:16 says, “Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” These are things God purposed in His own mind and heart from all eternity, but they were hidden. Now they’re revealed, so they are called mysteries.

I am bringing all these passages so you know what the word “mystery” means according to the Bible. Since the gospel embodies all these truths, the gospel is equated with the mystery of God. Paul uses the word “mystery” as a synonym for “gospel.” For example, in Ephesians 6:19, he says, “Pray for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.” Since the gospel embodies all saving truth, it is the mystery of God. In 1 Corinthians 4:1, he says to us, “are committed the mysteries of God.”

A final classic passage for my definition is Romans 16:25-26, “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith.” Now do you see how all these thoughts are present here? The mystery was something that was hidden and kept in silence. Now it is manifested. That mystery is the gospel. It is all proclaimed to us by prophetic scriptures. So we may say then a mystery is truth hidden in the mind of God, truth revealed by the Spirit of God, and truth proclaimed by the Word of God.

So when Paul in Ephesians says grace has overflowed with saving wisdom and prudence by making known the mystery of His will, we can understand that this wisdom and prudence came to us through the gospel. This is a mystery because for ages, it was hidden—how a holy God would save a sinner, whom He would save, when, and by what means He would save. Christ coming into the world through a virgin’s womb, living and dying for us, rising and ascending, sending the Holy Spirit, and effectually calling us—these are all mysteries locked up in God’s mind, but now revealed to us in all wisdom and prudence. How does God make people wise with heavenly wisdom? The answer is, by the gospel.

So we see how wisdom and prudence came to us: by God “having made known to us the mystery of His will.” Now, why? Why did it come to us? Why now, and not before? Why did it come to you individually, and not to so many of our relatives and friends? Why to us as the GRBC church, and not to so many other groups? Is it because we are wise and smart? Why was this mystery of ages revealed in all wisdom and prudence to me, to us? Verse 9 answers: “according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.”

The word “good pleasure” we’ve seen before in verse 5. The Apostle Paul, in answer to why God elected and predestined us to sonship through Christ, said, “according to the good pleasure of his will.” It refers to God’s sovereign, delightful choice. If you ask the reason why this wisdom came to us and not to billions in the world, why God hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes, it was His pleasure. It is His wish. It is a sovereign, gracious choice. The verse says, “This will he purposed in himself.” God didn’t look outside of Himself for any other thing. The cause of it lies in Himself.

When Paul said grace overflowed in wisdom and prudence to us, Paul was talking to specific people at a specific place at a specific point in time. If every believer in the Ephesian church were to ask, “Why should I be born in Ephesus at such a time that I’d be old enough to hear and understand? And why should Paul come to Ephesus on such and such a date? And why should I have happened to be where I heard about Him, there at the school of Tyrannus? And why, when I went and heard, did God open my eyes and cause me to see the wisdom of heaven in the message of Christ? Why do so many others not understand?” Paul says, “Look, you can scratch your head all your life, think of 101 secondary causes, assume it was chance or coincidence, but the only true answer is His good pleasure; His eternal sovereign will which predestined every small event in this world, orchestrated all this in this way so that in time His grace should overflow to you in all wisdom and prudence, making known the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.” This comes in a very specific, personal way.

As you sit here this morning, if grace has overflowed in wisdom and prudence in the opening up of the mystery of the gospel, the Holy Spirit wants you to trace back all your journey in life to God’s good pleasure. You will stand back in wonder and awe and praise God like Paul when you realize God predestined to bring this hidden mystery to you historically, geographically, and effectually.

Let me explain. Historically: we stand at a point in time when this mystery, hidden in God for ages and generations, has now been revealed. Think of all the nations that have risen and fallen in the history of the world into which not one ray of the mystery of the gospel ever came. Think of Egypt as a superpower when Israel was just slaves. Canaanites, Amorites, Amalekites, Moab, Ammon, Babylon, Assyria, all worshiping all kinds of animals, living in such dark superstition without light. They never knew God. Even in India, with the oldest Mauryan empire, Gupta empire, Pallavas, Chalukyas, and great Chola dynasty, you can go through millions of lands for thousands of years before Christ and you couldn’t find one person, man, woman, or child, who could say this basic truth: “Christ died for our sins.” Not one! Think of some of those great nations, different civilizations and cultures with all their literature and knowledge. Not one of all those mighty wise men could say, “Christ died for our sins.” The mystery of the gospel, which God purposed from eternity, was hidden in His own mind and heart.

Now Paul says, “historically at this time, God made known unto us the mystery of His will.” And you say, “Why, Lord?” “According to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him.” Why should you and I be born historically at such a point in time when the secrets of God’s heart have been unlocked and unfolded? The only answer is, “Even so, Father, for it seemed good in Your sight.” It was His time schedule, not ours, but His. When you think of millions who’ve gone before us with no slightest knowledge of the gospel, and are paying eternally for the penalty of their sins even now, and you wonder why they didn’t hear the gospel and had no choice of their own, never had the mystery unfolded to them, think of all our forefathers. Just like Jesus, we also had so and so who begot him. Our big family trees. None heard the gospel. Why were you not born then, but why were you and I born now, where you can hear this mystery fully? Then you begin to say with Paul, “Blessed be God, whose grace has overflowed, making known the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him to me historically at this time.”

This is not only true historically with reference to the pagan nations, but even with reference to the people of God in the Old Testament. The Lord said in Matthew 13:16, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not. And to hear the things which ye hear and heard them not.” These are the most godly people in the Old Testament who wanted to hear this mystery fully, but God didn’t reveal it to them. He just gave them types, rituals, and dim shadows. Imagine the frustration. Someone says, “I want to tell you a big secret…” and then they don’t, but they give clues and symbols. They all knew God had a big secret, but they couldn’t understand it. They could just see shadows, like a beautifully draped, minutely sculpted doll statue; you could see the general form, though you could not appreciate all of the beauty of the detail. Oh, how often must some of those holy men of old have said, “Oh, God, what are you talking about?” It says they “desired.” They were not content to simply be the shadows through which God spoke.

Can you imagine what Isaiah must have gone through after he penned the 53rd chapter of Isaiah? “Bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our transgression, chastisement of our peace upon him.” How he must have cried out and said, “Oh, God, what are you saying in this? What is the full unfolding of that which I have written?” God says, “It is a secret; I will not reveal it now.” Prophets and righteous men longed to see them. God said, in essence, the mystery is locked up in my heart. But do you see what grace it is that it overflowed in wisdom and prudence so that we can read every word of Isaiah 53 and understand it fully now? Daniel and all the prophets didn’t understand what they wrote. Not one of them could say, as you can now say in commonplace talk, “Christ died for our sins, rose for justification.” The most fundamental, rudimentary element of the gospel, they could not say it with the clarity with which you can now say it. Oh, beloved, why should we historically stand at this point when our eyes see and our ears hear what men and women who are far holier and far more godly were never allowed to see? One answer: “Even so, Father, for it seemed good in Your sight.”

But not only is that true historically, it applies geographically. For not only was the time of the revealing of this mystery based on God’s gracious sovereignty, but the very places in which that mystery is to be unfolded are also determined by His gracious sovereignty. Matthew 11:20 says, “Then began Jesus to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

But why didn’t the mystery come to Tyre and Sidon? Our Lord says, “Had it come to them, it would have been effectual to their salvation.” But it didn’t come to them. The Lord says, “many prophets and righteous men desired to see,” but God’s sovereignty didn’t allow them to see. But even geographically, Tyre and Sidon would have repented, but it did not go there, but the mystery came here. Why? The answer is, “according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself.” When you read in Acts 16, Paul is going to different cities preaching the gospel; you hear the Holy Spirit stopped him from going to certain places. Why? Sovereignty even in the geographical places where the mystery goes. We see the good pleasure of God’s purpose in Christ unfolding itself, not only historically but geographically.

You look at some of the Islamic countries like Afghanistan under Taliban rule, where there’s severe punishment for Christians, or North Korea, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan—terribly poor countries. Have you asked, “Why was I not born in that place, with a long beard, scarf, saying Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh Subhanallah, Insha’Allah? Why am I not sitting in some desert with a gun training to be a terrorist?” Why should you be in a place, geographically, where the mystery has been unfolded?

Children, why should you have been born in a Christian home? Why, instead of a gun in your hand, did God put you in a home where from the time you can remember anything, you were told Bible stories, brought to church and Sunday schools, and heard that Christ died for sinners, Christ rose, Christ lives, and Christ is mighty to save, instead of being told to bow and roll before dead stones? Why? Think of it. Joseph, the wise dreamer, Daniel, the Prime Minister of Babylon, Solomon, with all his wisdom, Elijah, the holy man of old—they didn’t know what you know by the time you are five years old, some of you, in terms of the revelation of the mystery.

Why should that thing come to you historically? Why should you be born at this time? Why should it come to you geographically? I know no answer but the answer of verse 9: “Having made known unto us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed, in Him.”

Again, see the wonder of grace. This mystery comes historically today for billions of people. We live after Christ, geographically now, because of religious freedom, but it doesn’t come effectually. Instead of this mystery coming to them in all wisdom and prudence, it makes them eternal fools in their minds and animals in their lives without prudence because they reject the gospel and harden their hearts. God has historically and geographically revealed His hidden secret for generations. How many millions reject it today? Because the message must not only come to us historically and geographically, but effectually. And Paul says to the Ephesians, “blessed be God because overflowing grace not only came historically and geographically, but effectually came to you in wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of His will.” It opened your blind eyes and gave you insight into divine realities when millions are blinded. Why? Blessed be God because of His good pleasure.

So to the question: we have seen how grace overflowed in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of His will. And why did grace overflow to me historically, geographically, and effectually? Paul’s answer is, “it was according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him.” It was His sovereign choice.

Applications

1. Stand Back and Be Amazed at the Panorama of Your Salvation and Bless God for This Great Salvation.

I was sitting and looking at the whole panorama—this glorious sovereign God, who in all past eternity lived, and out of billions of souls, He set His love all those years and elected me before the world was created. When He made the awesome plan of predestination, the central goal of that plan was to adopt me as His son. Why such great eternal purposes for a worm of time? To the praise of the glory of His grace! And then He accepted me in the beloved, and purchased redemption by paying the heavy ransom price of His blood and, according to the riches of His grace, forgave all my uncountable ocean of sins, the great sins that I committed. This itself is overwhelming, the fullness of grace.

But grace didn’t stop. It filled His cup and overflowed in all wisdom and prudence, making known to me the mystery of His will, which billions of people have no clue about, and billions who desired to know it could not. This grace came historically in the time of my birth in 1976 and grew to the exact age when I could understand the gospel. In 1993, when I was 17 years old, this grace came geographically to a location in Lingarajapuram and brought me to Campus Crusade. Not only historically and geographically, but that grace came effectually and opened my foolish eyes and gave me a penetrating insight into divine realities, when hundreds who attended didn’t realize anything.

I thought I just went to Campus Crusade, heard Jesus, and became a Christian. Paul tells me, “Oh, Murali, this grace started in eternity, electing, predestining, purchasing salvation, and orchestrated the whole history, timelines, and geography of your birth and life. Then it came looking historically, geographically, and effectually.” “Why did it come to you and not to hundreds of my friends and relatives?” “According to His good pleasure… His divine sovereign choice.” In the next verses, we will see where this grace will take me.

Oh, believer, stand back and be amazed at the panorama of your salvation and bless God for this great salvation. My heart was filled with joy. Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I feel blessed and understand why our Lord said in Matthew 13:16, “Blessed are your eyes for they see. Blessed are your ears for they hear. Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” Oh, now I understand it is this wisdom that gave me prudence to not live like my friends and become drunkards, drug addicts, and AIDS patients now. This gospel mystery made us wise with heavenly wisdom. We know who we are, and we know how our sins are forgiven; we know why we were born on this earth, and we know what happens to us after death; we know how to live now. Live in a way pleasing to God. Live a life conformed to His Word.

What a wonder that this came to you! Oh, bless God, it is sovereign grace. No wonder, in Luke 10:21, the Lord Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.”

2. Magnify His Gospel.

We can do this in four steps: behold the glory of the gospel, have confidence in the gospel, feel indebted to the gospel, and pray to boldly proclaim the gospel.

• Behold the Glory of the Gospel: The gospel is not a system of ideas that came from the puny minds of men, a man-made religion, or a group of churches. The gospel is a divine revelation of God’s eternal intention to save men by way of a mediator. This should excite us like Paul. The gospel is a mystery that was hidden in God for generations, but now revealed by God. Who could have ever conceived that a holy God would do anything but damn depraved sinners? He had said, “in the day you eat, you’ll die.” It takes no mystery to know that if I’ve sinned, I’ll die. But that the same God against whom we sinned planned a way of life that involves the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of Calvary, the mystery of the resurrection, the mystery of the ascension, the mystery of union with Christ, and the mystery of the new birth. This is the glory of the gospel; it is a mystery hidden but now revealed to us by the overflow of grace.
• Have Confidence in the Gospel: All men, whatever show they put outside, have deep questions. It is the gospel alone which God uses to answer the most profound philosophical questions that man has ever raised. It is not the world’s wise books or philosophy that answers man’s deepest questions. We saw how vain all those are. It is the unadorned gospel that answers all of the profound questions of life. Paul had that confidence in the gospel. That is why wherever he goes, whether to the Roman colony of Philippi, or to Ephesus full of idolatry, or Athens with all its education, he proclaims the gospel with confidence. Do you have confidence in the gospel? Don’t you hear all the questions the world is asking? Sometimes they all seem to be asking, but we don’t answer. Paul hears all the questions the world is asking and in a way tells them, “I have all the answers, but not from my mind, but by revelation from God.” That answer is found in who the Lord Jesus is and what He did. Paul had full confidence in the gospel. Only because of that was he able to form so many churches in impossible places, even in Ephesus. He went in spite of all the glory of the temple of Artemis, and he preached the gospel. For all their questions, he said, “Go to Christ, go to Christ.” Many went and found answers. All those churches thank him. “Thank you, Paul. You sent us to Christ. In Him we now find all wisdom and knowledge.”

But not only wisdom. We’re not only thinking right, but we know how to live right. Prudence on how to live now, solve family problems, and personal problems. When we had problems, we would go to ugly temples, use all kinds of witchcraft, get drunk, and go to temple prostitutes. We lived in the gutter. But now we know the meaning of life, we have light, living happily in our homes faithful to our wives. Our lives are full of light. There’s harmony and there’s love. “Thank you, Paul. You gave us the truth that not only imparted wisdom but prudence.” And my friend, it’s the gospel that does it. It’s the gospel that does it. It is the power of God unto salvation. Do we have a confidence in the gospel? Our meager efforts, or no efforts, for the gospel show we lack confidence. May God deliver us from that unbelief. A lot of things are happening today in Christianity. Why is it a mess, a laughingstock? All pop singers are famous preachers. Why are church services entertainment and a joke today? In the name of Christianity, so many strange things are happening. The root cause of all that in our day is simply unbelief in the power of the gospel. People don’t believe that the simple, unadorned gospel is God’s means of imparting the grace of wisdom and prudence. Oh, may God make Christians believe the gospel.

3. Feel Indebtedness to the Gospel: Imagine without the gospel how dark our lives would be. No wisdom of divine realities, who I am, how can I know God, what happens after death, or no prudence to live our lives. How horrible like animals we would live. Running after money, money, and covetousness. Once we achieve it, we’re still empty. We take drugs, do some yoga, and become mentally unstable.

That will be our picture—a man in an empty world, standing on top of the world, having achieved everything. His head is blown. He’s very educated. His body is big, with a royal dress and gold, standing on top of big buildings with a car and money, with an open mouth and a shriek of despair. “Who am I?” That will be our picture without the overflowing grace that caused this wisdom and prudence to be conveyed by this mystery of His will. Oh, how we should feel a sense of indebtedness. The gospel taught us who I am, who He is, and how I may know Him, so that instead of a blown head and the open mouth and the shriek of despair, we can say with Paul, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for grace that is abounded unto us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will.” I know who I am. I know how my sins may be forgiven. I know what lies beyond the grave. I can live with purpose and die with confidence. It is the gospel.

Paul felt that indebtedness. In Romans 1:14-15, he said, “I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.” In 1 Corinthians 9:16, “I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” And in Acts 20:24, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” Wasn’t it the same gospel that saved us? Oh, what ungratefulness if we don’t feel that indebtedness to the gospel. Do you feel your indebtedness to the gospel? Oh, may God help you to feel your indebtedness to God. Not only did this mystery come to you historically and geographically, but it came effectually by the illuminating work of the Spirit.

4. Pray: Beyond just seeing the glory of the gospel, having confidence in it, and feeling indebted to it, we must also pray. Pray for zeal in communicating the gospel, just as Paul did. He even asked others to pray for him, as seen in Ephesians 6:19, “and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.”

We should all pray this prayer. We have in our hands this mystery, hidden for generations and now revealed. All we need to do is open our mouths and tell them. Yet, we lack boldness. We feel self-conscious, tense, and ashamed. We feel like others are too wise and educated and may think we are crazy. Oh, may God open our eyes to see that they have questions; they struggle with sin in their marriages, families, and work. Life seems meaningless. The gospel is the answer for all of that.

Look at them: they’re frustrated, disappointed, and always restless, filled with inner turmoil, drowning themselves in alcohol, TV, and illicit sex. Their lives are a mess. Why? They don’t have this wisdom and prudence. But if you know the gospel, you have more wisdom than all the psychiatrists under heaven put together.

May God enable us to praise Him, to magnify the gospel, and to be like Paul, who, out of a sense of overwhelming gratitude, said, “I want to proclaim this mystery to all.” God never applies it effectually unless we proclaim it verbally. Oh, may we bless God out of gratitude and proclaim this mystery to all. May God grant us that boldness and confidence.

For those of you who claim the mystery is revealed to you, who say, “I know Christ died for my sins,” and have become believers and church members—who say you have wisdom and penetrating insight into divine realities—let me ask you, if you have wisdom, where is the evidence of prudence in your life? Wisdom will never come alone; it always brings prudence. Grace overflows, enriching us with both wisdom and prudence. The evidence of grace overflowing with wisdom is prudence in our lives. Is your life governed by God’s word? Do you commit yourself to the church and the gospel as the most important things in your life? Are you seeking God’s kingdom first? Are you living wisely with prudence in your family, at work, and in society, not running after covetousness? If there is no prudence in your life, it reveals that wisdom has not come to you.

I say this with trembling and sadness in my heart. The mystery of the gospel, which billions yearned for, did not go to so many, but it came to you historically and even geographically, yet it still has not come to you effectually and saved you. Have you asked why? You hear so many sermons, the greatest truths that billions in the world have not heard even one of. You know more than Isaiah, Jeremiah, and even Daniel. Still, it has not effectually given you wisdom and prudence, revealing the mystery of His will.

I shudder to say that if you don’t soon repent and come to Christ, this mystery is revealed to you to make you fill the cup of your sin in your life and give you the worst punishment in hell, so God can glorify His justice to the utmost through you. It is a frightening aspect of my ministry; for some, it is the aroma of life, and for some, it is the aroma of death. I see some of you, and I want to warn you that all my ministry will do for some of you is to make hell a worse place to be in forever. It would have been better for you to have been in Tyre and Sidon and never had the mystery of the gospel opened up to you. It will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you because you know more than they did. Because after hearing the gospel repeatedly, you do not repent, the worst punishment in hell awaits you.

Some new people come with so much joy and say, “Pastor, that message was so clear; it opened my eyes and filled my heart with joy and peace. Thank you.” Some of you sit there and hear so many sermons and say, “I don’t understand what he is saying.” You understand every mystery of lust stories, thrillers, movies, and Instagram reels, but you sit here woolly-headed, fuzzy-headed, seeing left, right, and down. What is the difference? They are not smarter than you. The difference is that the mystery came to them effectually, opening up their minds to see all wisdom and prudence, and it transformed their very soul. But for you, it’s just a bunch of words.

Romans 1:28-29 warns, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality…”

If you don’t understand how much effort good students put in to learn, you will not understand this either. If you don’t understand this, it will not only affect this life but all of eternity. Shouldn’t you cry out to God, “Oh God, open my eyes”? Pastor has been teaching for years, and I am sitting here like a stone. Your word says the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him. Lord, that’s true. It’s all foolishness to me. I don’t understand it. I don’t grasp it.

Let that realization humble you. Bring yourself down to the dust before God and cry out with that poor blind beggar, “Son of David, have mercy upon me.” The Lord Jesus has come, the prophet says, to open the eyes of the blind. That’s why He has come. You call upon Him to open your eyes and give you the grace to see and to understand the mystery of the gospel. Otherwise, again, I shudder to say, what you heard today will increase your punishment in hell even more.

We are still in an emotional praise of Paul. He started with “Blessed be God who blessed us with every spiritual blessing,” and then he enumerates some of the spiritual blessings, starting with election, predestination, and redemption.

We have seen verses 1-7, and so far the Holy Spirit has helped us understand glorious truths, but the challenge starts from verse 8 onwards. Let me read verses 7 to 10: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.”

What does it mean? What commentaries can help us grasp this? The apparent reading seems like a mere jumble of words without a logical order. Many commentaries superficially explain and some even skip these verses. Many preachers conveniently give brief, vague explanations and skip these verses. We could also do that quickly and finish verses 8-10. But we have found that when we prayerfully dig, labor, and meditate and wait for the Holy Spirit’s help, He reveals marvelous truths in such passages. So that is what we will try to do as we look at each word and verse in this passage.

Let us grasp the connection and structure of verses 8-10 first. Paul, after blessing God for election and redemption, and the central blessing of redemption as the forgiveness of sins, and the measure of that forgiveness—according to the riches of his grace—now from verse 8 onwards, takes off in another amplification of this salvation. This grace has not only forgiven our sins but has overflowed to us in all wisdom and prudence.

Wisdom and prudence are key to understanding the remaining verses. The riches of grace not only granted redemption through the blood of Christ, but that same grace has overflowed to impart wisdom and prudence.

You can see a beautiful progression showing the full scope of our salvation. Like a botanist who studies a plant—the root, stem, plant, vine, leaves, flower, and fruit—so Paul takes the full plant of salvation, looks at each part at a time, and praises God, starting with the root. When did our salvation begin? The root of salvation, verses 4 and 5, began in eternity in election by the Father’s predestination. How was the plan accomplished? It was accomplished through redemption purchased by the blood of Christ. How does it come to us? How does it touch us? You see, however glorious the predestination the Father has done in eternity, whatever price Christ paid to purchase it, we will never know or enjoy the fruits of it until it is revealed to us. And so the same grace that predestined it, the same grace that purchased it, is now the grace that reveals it to us. How does it reveal the eternal plan of salvation? Verse 8 says in all wisdom and prudence. And that is the beautiful order of salvation in Paul’s mind.

This is not a jumble of words, but a logical development of thought. Our salvation is not only predestined in eternity and fully purchased in time, but it is also a revealed salvation. Verse 8 opens up the revelation. Let me help you understand verses 8-10 in 5 headings. It should give you a structure in your mind.

1. How is this salvation revealed? Verse 8 says, “in all wisdom and prudence.”
2. In which form did it come to us? Verse 9 says, “having made known to us the mystery of His will,” which indicates the gospel.
3. Why has he revealed it to us and now? Verse 9 says, “according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.”
4. When was it revealed? Verse 10 says, “in the dispensation of the fullness of the times,” meaning the gospel age.
5. What is the ultimate purpose of salvation? To sum up all things in Christ. Verse 10 says, “He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.”

So, verses 8-10 tell us that salvation is revealed—how, in what form, why, when, and what is its final goal. These five questions will unlock one of the most mysterious and difficult passages in the entire New Testament. So, we will carefully look at each of these aspects of our great salvation. We could rush and finish all of it in one sermon, but I want us to see each of them in a way so that the Holy Spirit fills us with wonder, gratitude, and joy, and we join Paul in blessing God for such a great salvation.

First today, we will look at verse 8. How is the eternal plan of salvation revealed to us? “in all wisdom and prudence.” Verse 8 says, “the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.”

There are three things to consider: the meaning of wisdom and prudence, why this excited Paul, and five applications.

The Meaning of Wisdom and Prudence

Now, what is wisdom? The Greek word for wisdom is sophia, which was the passion of all wise men and philosophers. They searched for this wisdom their entire lives. This is the wisdom Solomon spoke so much about in Proverbs; it is the greatest thing in life, and he commands us to seek wisdom like hidden treasures. Paul says grace has overflowed to us in all wisdom.

In the biblical sense, wisdom is knowledge plus perception. One author gives one of the best explanations: wisdom is penetrating insight into divine realities. God is a reality. Christ is a reality. Sin is a reality. Forgiveness is a reality. Salvation is a reality. Heaven is a reality. Hell is a reality. These are heavenly, divine realities. When a person has penetrating insight into those realities, they have wisdom.

No fallen person can naturally have that wisdom. A person, by their natural faculties and through intense searching, even for their whole life, cannot penetrate these realities. They must be divinely revealed. In verse 8, Paul says that if you and I have that wisdom, it is because the riches of God’s grace abounded or overflowed. This wisdom is the result of the overflow of grace.

This wisdom, as we will see in the next verses, reveals to us God’s amazing eternal secret plan for the past, present, and future. This wisdom helps us see God’s eternal plan for the ages. What happened in the past, why, what is happening today, and what will happen in the end? How everything of the past, present, and future will be summed up in Christ. Where is all this going? Paul drops a great thought on us. We will be able to see the purpose and meaning not only of every event in our lives but also, as we read or watch the news, we can see how all these current events fit into the eternal plan of God.

The next word is prudence. Prudence or discernment is the practical ability to apply the piercing insights of the divine realities of wisdom to the daily situations of life. It’s one thing to see divine realities. It’s another thing to see how those divine realities fit my human circumstances in all their reality. Prudence is a practical ability that helps us apply our wisdom to daily life situations and live wisely.

Wisdom refers to understanding the true nature of things, whereas prudence refers to the practical discernment that results in right action in daily life. The idea is that grace has not only given us the wisdom of divine realities to apprehend His eternal plan of salvation but also prudence—the practical outworking of it in our daily lives, the practical application of these realities to the problems of life and how to resolve them. William Barclay put it: “Christ gives to men the ability to see the great ultimate truths of eternity and to solve the problems of each moment of time in their lives in that light.” God gives us the wisdom to understand his whole plan for the universe—how it started, what is going on, and where all this will lead—and then gives us prudence to walk in the world daily in the light of that wisdom. Isn’t that super?

In fact, the whole book of Ephesians can be summarized in these two words: wisdom and prudence. Chapters 1-3 are wisdom—penetrating insight into divine realities, great sweeping doctrinal concepts. Chapters 4-6 are prudence—how to apply those realities in the real nitty-gritty details where we live, how to solve problems in our family, marriage, children, job, inside the church, and in society. So, we have seen the meaning of the words.

Why Paul Was So Excited

Why did this excite Paul so much that he was thrilled and blessed God, saying this wisdom and prudence is a result of the abounding riches of God’s grace? Why should he get excited about it? Some of you don’t look excited. You’re half asleep. If you stand where I am standing and see all your faces, I can read these words, and they don’t get you excited at all. In Kerala, they forced us to buy a lottery ticket. You know, the amount is 12 crores at the end of the month. If you won that lottery today, how excited you would be—you’d get goosebumps all over your body. But Paul’s whole body and even his soul are full of goosebumps and excited as if he got a thousand crores. “Blessed be God the riches of grace abounded in all wisdom and prudence.” You don’t get tingles. You’re not thrilled. If we are to bless God like Paul, we have to understand why he got so excited. Get into his great mind and think like him. How do we do it? Can I suggest two ways? Two reasons why Paul gets excited, and unless you look at things as he did, you won’t get excited as he did. And here are the two things: 1. He knew the empty futility of all the world’s wisdom. 2. He knew the fountainhead of all heavenly wisdom.

1. He knew the futility of the world’s wisdom.

Now, suppose this morning it were possible to gather the most brilliant minds in the world in this hall: the best minds of the past and present—Isaac Newton, Aryabhatta, Einstein, Thomas Alva Edison, Stephen Hawking, all experts in computers, artificial intelligence, the best philosophers, the best doctors, neurosurgeons, psychiatrists, astronomers, all with many PhD or doctorate degrees in their field. Let’s even get film and sports pop stars who have achieved big things, and we gather all the brain power from all over the world. Imagine that august group.

They are discussing great concepts, using big words, jargon, and equations. We are standing in a corner, our heads spinning, and we may faint. Nothing goes inside our heads. We feel dizzy, understanding nothing in the world.

Suddenly, someone like Rouel, little Elkanah, or Rayshaun comes inside the hall with a book and a pencil, and he looks at them all. They all watch him with delight and say, “Hello, little man, how are you? What are you doing?” He says, “I am thinking. I need help. I have some random catechism questions from my Sunday school teacher. She wants me to think and come up with answers. Can you help me?” They smile with arrogance and say, “Okay, what are the questions?”

The first question: “Is there a God?” There is pin-drop silence over this great group of august, brilliant men. The second question: “If there is, what is God like? How can I know him? How can I have a relationship with him? What is wrong? What is right? How can I get rid of my wrongs? What is the purpose of my life on this earth? What will happen to me after death? Why is the newspaper filled with so many crimes in the world, so much suffering, wars, and plagues? What is happening in this world now? Where will all this end?”

All the top brains start sweating, and their faces turn a little red. They either don’t have an answer to these basic questions, or each one has a different answer, and they all know that not all of them can be correct. They cannot answer one of these questions. Not a single one. If the little boy comes in and says, “What is a light-year? How many light-years are there between Earth and Mars?” they can answer it in a simple way. They can answer, “What is AI? Advanced machine learning, neural networks.” But when he says, “Is there a God?”—silence. “How can I know God?”—silence. “What is the purpose of my life on this earth?”—silence. “What will happen to me after death?”—silence. “What is right?”—silence. “What is wrong?”—silence. “Why? Where did all this end?”—silence. None of them know. And you know, they have these questions deep inside them, and they are still searching for answers to them.

Ah, my brothers, this is why Paul got excited. Even the top brains are breaking their heads to understand these realities for ages, but the riches of God’s grace have overflowed in wisdom and in prudence. He knew the empty futility of the world’s wisdom, and he expressed this in 1 Corinthians 1:21: “the world through its wisdom knew not God.” That’s it. Whatever the world knows, it knows this and that, but the world through its wisdom did not know God. It cannot bring us to the knowledge of God.

Do we realize that all the world, with all the great people in the world, does not know the most important thing to know? This most essential and foundational knowledge for everything—the world doesn’t know. The knowledge for which humans were created—humans were made to know God and to function in the light of that knowledge of God. And a person is never truly a human until they know God.

Whatever the world may know, what is the use of all that knowledge if it doesn’t know God? It didn’t know God in history, it doesn’t know him presently, and it won’t know him in all the future. Do we see such hopeless confusion and emptiness in the world? A great French philosopher said, “The universe is indifferent and meaningless. Who created it? Why are we on this puny mud heap spinning in infinite space? I have not the slightest idea, and I’m convinced that nobody else does either.” Well, we may not have an IQ like him, but we can tell him: “I know the truth.” Socrates, a great worldly wise man, said, “I know that I know nothing that I truly should know.” Do you see that all these people are groping in darkness like drunkards without divine wisdom?

Because they do not have this piercing insight into divine realities, they do not have the prudence to live their lives in that light. They don’t know for sure if there is a God, how to know him, why they were born, why they are living, what the purpose of life is, or what happens after death. Without that wisdom, they don’t have prudence, so they live their lives like animals, only for fleeting pleasures and lusts, eating and drinking, thinking “tomorrow we die” because we don’t know what happens after that.

I just came across a short clip of three big superstars sitting together. The anchor asks, “What is love?” Each one is blabbering: “Love is something you should give as soon as you receive it. You should give even if you don’t receive it.” What nonsense. Another one says, “Without any reason, we like someone without any expectations. That is love.” I felt like saying, “Fools! This is why you had two divorces and now live meaningless lives. You have never had the divine wisdom that love is patient, love is kind, not envious, not boasting, not proud, and not easily angered.” They don’t know. Oh, the futility of the world’s wisdom is so useless.

Just see the billions of contents, stories, web series, and movies, all based on empty, useless futility and philosophy. All horror movies are based on the foolishness of not knowing what happens to a soul after death. All love stories are based on not knowing what true love is. All revenge stories are based on the thought that revenge is the final divine satisfaction, not knowing that forgiveness is divine satisfaction. Fiction and fantasy are all futility. Yes, for some time, we may watch, but do we realize that all those are useless, empty, and not worth a single cent?

Oh, Paul knew that all the knowledge of the world is so futile. Paul could see all mankind before him, groping in darkness and blindness like drunkards. And he was also like that, blind, but one day, overflowing grace came to him. How? In all wisdom and knowledge, it gave him penetrating insight. The only reason any person has this wisdom and prudence is because the grace of God chose them in past eternity, predestined them for sonship, and Christ purchased a salvation. The fruit and evidence of that is that grace overflowing personally to that person, opening their mind and heart, enlightening it, and revealing these realities to them in their experience now.

Let me ask an application question to everyone’s conscience here this morning. Has this grace overflowed to you and shown you the absolute futility of the world’s wisdom? Have you? With all its knowledge, activities, parties, and busy life, it cannot give you the most essential thing in life, the purpose for which you were created: the knowledge of God. Have you felt its futility? Have you seen that futility? And having seen that futility, has God’s grace overflowed in giving you penetrating insight into divine realities and the ability to apply those realities to your own life?

Words like sin, forgiveness, and grace—has God given you penetrating insight into them? These are realities. They are not just a preacher’s words. They are divine realities. The blood of Christ applied to your conscience, forgiveness—this is a reality as real as your eyes seeing me and this pulpit, and as real as the nose on your face. Oh, if you know these realities, you will be filled with ecstasy, jumping like Paul. While the whole world is sinking in blindness and futility, I was also sinking in it. Blessed be God for the grace that not only elected and predestined me in eternity and redeemed me and brought the forgiveness of sins, but it overflowed and opened up divine realities to us. Blessed be God for such overflowing grace. And that’s why Paul got excited—because he knew the futility of the world’s wisdom.

2. He knew the fountainhead of all heavenly wisdom.

A lot of people know the futility of the world’s wisdom, but they’re literally blowing their brains out. Buddha, who left all the world’s pursuits, said, “The root of increasing suffering is increasing knowledge of this world.” Ecclesiastes 1:18 says, “For in much wisdom of the world is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” More knowledge of the world and its lusts not only makes us more empty and fed up but also causes vexation and intensifies our sorrow. Some of the most thoughtful, perceptive people realize it is all useless and empty, and they are destroying themselves. Why? They’ve seen the futility of the world’s wisdom.

And in the age that has had the most advances in human knowledge known to any age—we live in the information age, the digital age. Take a mobile phone; we have answers for everything. Small children learn everything in five to eight years that took us 20 to 30 years. In this sea of knowledge, my most basic, fundamental questions—”Who am I? Where did I come from? Is there a God? How can I know him? What is my purpose on Earth? How can I have true peace? What happens after death?”—all the astronomers, sociologists, and scientists, not a single one can answer. If you feel the futility of the world’s wisdom and emptiness in the world and do not know the fountainhead of heavenly wisdom, it will fill you with despair and that will destroy you. Or in that despair, you’ll destroy yourself.

Do you know why some of the richest, most educated, smart, and successful people all take drugs? There is a deep philosophical reason. They have seen success, seen all the knowledge and education the world can give. The world in its wisdom has not answered their basic questions. Maybe, just maybe, if they can penetrate deeper into themselves by dropping acid, forgetting all knowledge, they’ll get some insight and get some answers—some peace, some joy. And there are serious drug users who are being driven by this hope that maybe some answers will come there.

Why are great computer experts, scientists, and rich people in Western countries turning to old, Eastern, oriental Hindu mind cults of meditation, yoga, and practices? It is again a person’s effort to find answers that they haven’t found in education, money, materialism, tech, or success—in all the wisdom of the world. So much worldly wisdom is filling them with anxiety, restlessness, and tension—all meaningless. So they want to empty their minds of all the garbage with yoga so they can find answers to their deep questions. They are trying to find it in a way without repenting of their sins, so they turn to these methods.

All these and many others are evidence that mankind is groping in darkness, admitting that the answers are not here in the material, educational, money, tech, or scientific realm of success. It is a sad sight to see all of mankind groping like drunkards.

But Paul rejoices instead of despairing. Why? Because he not only knew the futility of the world’s wisdom, but he also knew the fountainhead of heavenly wisdom. And who is that fountainhead? The one through whom all these blessings come to us. Verse 3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ.”

This wisdom and prudence is a spiritual blessing, and like all blessings, it comes to us in Christ. He is the fountainhead of this heavenly wisdom. 1 Corinthians 1:30: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us…” And what’s the first thing he mentions? “…wisdom from God.” Jesus Christ, that unique God-man, and in his work, is made to us wisdom from God.

Colossians 2:3: “For in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Not that they are hidden so no one can see them. No, no. They are stored up in him so that all who are in him have the full display of them. It is all exclusively in him. Outside of him, everywhere in the world is futility and emptiness.

The child’s questions that the world’s greatest wise men were not able to answer are all fully and satisfactorily answered in Jesus. The little child comes into the presence of the Lord Jesus as he’s found in the Scriptures, and he says, “Sir, can you tell me, is there a God?” Jesus says, “Yes, there is a God, and he has sent me. I am the greatest evidence that there is a God.” And the little child says, “Well, how can I know what he’s like?” And Jesus says, “He that has seen me has seen the Father.” And then he says, “But how can I come to know that God?” And Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” “Study me and believe me, and you will know without a doubt that there is a God; you will grow in his relationship.” “Why do I do what I do, sir?” And Jesus says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, proceed all sins… Child, you do what you do because you’re part of Adam’s fallen race, born in sin.” “Sir, how can all this be changed?” And Jesus says, “Believe in me and my work, and repent. He who believes in him will be saved. You will become a new creature. Old things will pass away, and all things will become new. You will have eternal life.” “Why am I on this earth?” “To know and glorify God. That is eternal life.” “What happens after death?” “You will be with me in heaven if you believe in me or in eternal hell suffering for your sins.” “How can I get peace and rest?” “Come to me, I will give you rest.” “Why is the newspaper filled with so much crime in the world, suffering, wars, and plagues?” “All this I prophesied and it is part of my plan to redeem them when I come again and judge it. Behold, I will make a new earth and a new heaven without any of this suffering, sin, and pain.”

Questions that baffled philosophers, psychiatrists, and sociologists, and all the world’s great men, are answered in the Lord Jesus. The Apostle Paul rejoices that grace has overflowed to impart wisdom and prudence, not only because he knew the futility of the world’s wisdom, but he also knew the fountainhead of heavenly wisdom, Jesus Christ. In him, all the deepest questions of mankind are answered.

Paul blesses God because while the whole world doesn’t even have a drop of this wisdom, not even the ABCs, it is not given to everyone in the world, not to the wise and great, but to us—babes. What do we know? But exclusively to us. It was revealed to us because he chose us in eternity to the praise of the glory of His grace.

God’s grace made this wisdom to abound to us. How much wisdom and prudence has God given? Not tiny, small tidbits, but it says abounding, overflowing. Whatever God does in grace is always abounding; the word is super-abound, super-abundantly. And so the apostle says the grace of God, which is the richness of grace, that great storehouse of grace has spilled over, and when it spilled over, it imparted wisdom and prudence—penetrating insight into divine realities and then prudence, the ability to see the relationship of those realities to my own circumstances. Next week, we will see the revelation of his glorious wisdom, what form it came to us in, why it came to us, when, and what its final goal is.

Applications

1. Let me ask you two questions: Have you personally been brought to see and to feel the absolute futility of the world’s wisdom? When you hear the world talk, go to relatives’ houses, and listen to them talking and struggling, do you see how futile all this is? How much they are struggling? Secondly, has God’s grace overflowed in Jesus Christ to give you all wisdom, piercing insights into divine realities? Are words like sin, forgiveness, and grace more than just words for you? Are they realities you have felt and tasted in your experience?If not, you are one among the blind who are wallowing in the world with not only futile but anxiety-causing knowledge. The more you know the world, the more suffering and anxiety, as Solomon said. Without this wisdom, you can never live a prudent life in your family, at work, or in society. You will not have the wisdom to resolve your family’s marriage problems, your children’s problems, your financial problems, or your psychological problems. In the future, without the light of these piercing realities, all your decisions, desires, time, and efforts will be wasted on useless things, and your lifespan will be spent uselessly. You will wonder why your life is so filled with worries and sorrows.Oh, even as you hear God’s word preached to you, may God open your eyes to see and feel the futility of the world’s wisdom and make overflowing grace abound to you in all wisdom and prudence. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ; he is the wisdom of God, and all treasures of wisdom are hidden in him. If all the treasures are stored up in Christ, unless you get into Him, you can never know the ABCs of true wisdom. You will only know the foolishness of the world’s wisdom. In a very real sense, a person does not know anything in its truest sense unless this grace of God reveals it to them. Until then, they walk in their own foolish, blind, dark world, thinking they are wise, but they are mad.
2. As people of God, may we add this grace to our praise list. Oh, how grateful we should be when the whole world doesn’t have a single clue, but God has overflowed with not just some, but all wisdom, so we can answer all the greatest questions. This grace has chosen to hide this wisdom from the wise and the prudent of the world, and He has chosen to reveal it to babes like us. Remember, Jesus himself praised God for this. Imagine, God has taken us into His confidence. He has revealed his entire plan of salvation from end to beginning. We will see in the next verses that we know the whole plan for the ages. We have the mind of an infinite God. We are the wisest people on the earth by grace. Our neighbors don’t know, our relatives don’t know, politicians and scientists don’t know, but we know. We are wise. Shouldn’t we bless God for this amazing grace?
3. Not only should we bless God for this wisdom, but we should also display this wisdom through prudence in our lives, families, and at work. This wisdom in the form of prudence should overflow to the world through our mouths, hands, and feet, and in the principles of spiritual living—how we live our lives. Ephesians 4:17 says, “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind.” Ephesians 5:15 says, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” We have to learn to walk wisely as a witness to the wisdom God has revealed to us.
4. This foolish, blind world always bullies the people of God as fools. They think we are fools to believe the Bible, fools to believe Jesus Christ, fools to avoid sin and miss all the fun, fools to believe in the resurrection, judgment, heaven, and hell. They give us many names—”Saddus,” “fathers,” “saints,” “hallelujah groups”—and bully us. Sometimes we feel ashamed and cringe before this perverted generation, having no boldness to stand before them. May this truth give us all the boldness to stand and tell them that they are the foolish ones, the blind ones, who do not understand wisdom. But God’s grace has abounded in all wisdom. We have insight into divine realities. We can teach them the truths. Never allow the foolish world to bully you or threaten you. We are the wisest on Earth by God’s grace. Meditate deeply on this until God’s grace grips you and thrills you, that overflowing grace has given all wisdom and prudence to us. I believe that conviction will give you all boldness in the world. No training or arts of elocution can do that. It is a conviction produced by the Holy Spirit through verses like this—that we have all wisdom and prudence. That conviction made the apostles stand before the old world of Rome, Greece, and other parts and announce that they are fools and that we announce divine wisdom. If the same grace grips you, you can come before a confused and blind world that reels and flies like a drunken man, and you can say, “I know, and I know… I know the answers to the deepest questions.”I was telling about God, and a man was trying to bully me. “You are a pastor, which college did you get a doctorate degree from?” I said, “I got my degree in the college of grace. That college taught me to see my own total depravity, my blindness, to see the glory of God in the face of Christ. That college made me hate my sin and the lusts of the world, and made the words of the Bible the sweetest thing in my life. I spend most of my time reading and understanding that and teaching the Bible. That college transformed and changed me into a new person.” Can any theological college in the world do that?” He was staring at me for some time and then went away. “This guy’s mad,” they might think. Their conscience will speak to them later, though. Don’t let them intimidate you with their foolishness. Worldly wise people, thinking they are wise, have become fools. We are the wisest on Earth by God’s grace.

A Final Exhortation

Young people, small children, listen to me carefully. We teach you that God’s Word is the only answer. Last week, many of you shared the absolute authority and sufficiency of Holy Scripture in our youth meeting. But the devil, through the world and your friends, your stars whom you admire, will bring up questions about the Bible. It will start in a small way: “Maybe there’s a point in the Bible we can’t believe… oh, this doubt… oh, that doubt… We can’t believe everything in the Bible.” See, you either believe the whole Bible or you don’t believe the Bible at all, because the Scriptures cannot be broken. If you start not believing one point, those points will keep increasing.

If you ever choose to reject the wisdom of the Bible, let me show you what road you are choosing. It is the road of the wisdom of the world. The end of that road is futility, vanity, and it will always lead to despair. Mark my words. Whatever you achieve in the world, that road will one day take you to a state of complete despair and emptiness. So before you deviate from the wisdom of the Bible, see the end of the road. All kinds of lusts, envy, cutthroat competition, fighting… you climb up and achieve something. What do you get at the top? Nothing… despair, discouragement, frustrations, psychological problems. The end of that road of the world’s wisdom is futility and vanity.

I am not talking in theory, but from experience. I have seen some of my friends go down that road. Some stand today as drug addicts, with broken homes, divorced wives, suffering children. Some have AIDS and have spread it to their families. Some are very successful, with fame, a name, a good job in the US, and enough money, but they are porn addicts, impotent, and not fit for family life. They can’t even enjoy the beautiful sex God created. Some have sold their souls to the devil and have been given fame, a name, and enough money, but their life is so empty and meaningless now, filled with day and night drinking and drugs. This is where the world’s wisdom will lead. They say the only thing they know is that they know nothing. Where did it start? With a few little question marks about the Bible, a little deviation from God’s wisdom, and running after the world’s wisdom.

You must choose today. Are you going to follow God’s wisdom or the wisdom of the world? God’s wisdom will be fruitful, giving you a meaningful life. His grace will slowly transform you, sanctifying you and making you a citizen of heaven, filling your life with increasing peace and joy. Your life will be so full of meaning and purpose.

Oh, dear young children, it is God’s wisdom alone that makes your life beautiful and meaningful. The wisdom of the world will destroy you. Beware. Seek heavenly wisdom. Get a piercing insight into who God is, know that your sins are forgiven and you are saved, and grow in the knowledge of God.

Psalm 37:4 is God’s promise: “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” I have always found that to be true. I seek God and delight myself in him, and even though, just like all of you, I had desires in my youth to do and achieve things, I see that he has always fulfilled them.

When a great king marries a begging woman, the world marvels. We can understand when the great infinite God shows pity and mercy to us, but for such an everlasting God, who fills all in all, to concentrate all the fullness of his love that is inside His big heart to love a mortal creature like man! For the infinite soul of the Most High to pour itself out on such a mean, worthless, sinful creature as man! This is a wonder we struggle to grasp here on earth. This is a wonder that, even after we have been in heaven for ten thousand years, will still make us amazed! It is an extravaganza of divine grace.

Paul takes our soul to the heavens, telling us we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. He takes us to the past and shows us the blessing of election and the blessing of predestination. When we are catching our breath, in our unbelief, selfish view, struggling to digest this, and wondering if these are really true, the Holy Spirit helps us grasp this by providing two reasons for why we are blessed so infinitely. The Holy Spirit wants us to relish, rejoice, and stand amazed at these blessings, because grasping these blessings again helps us live a gospel-worthy life—always rejoicing, gentle with all men, not anxious about anything.

We have seen the first reason in verse 6: the goal of these blessings is the praise of the glory of grace. The Holy Spirit teaches us that the way to enjoy these blessings is to turn our eyes from ourselves and look at the glory of God. Yes, we may not deserve or even fully grasp what God has done for us, but all this is done so we can praise the glory of his grace. We saw that the highest way even an infinite God can love is to love us for his glory—to stake his eternal glory on showering his grace upon us, as vessels of his grace. So the goal of these blessings is not merely our selfish happiness, but the universal manifestation of the utmost glory of the grace of God, where all the universe praises him. We are vessels chosen for that. See where we are caught. What words! “Praise of the glory of his grace.” We feel like rising above ourselves and blessing God like Paul. Our joy is supreme joy; this is a great blessing. Why? A Chennai church changed that phrase: not “in my small age,” but “before the foundation of the world he chose me; even when I went far, he found me.”

But we are still struggling to grasp and believe this, like Jacob who couldn’t believe that his son Joseph was still alive and now his sons were saying he was the prime minister of all Egypt. It says when he heard that, Jacob’s heart stood still, because he did not believe them. But when they told him all the words which Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. Then Israel said, “It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.”

These blessings give us such satisfaction. Like one lady, whom I had not even seen, said, “Pastor, I feel it is enough; I want to just die hearing these blessings.” Enough! What else do I need? I am blessed. To convince our unbelieving hearts to realize the reality of these blessings, the Holy Spirit gives another marvelous reason for how we are so infinitely blessed. Notice verse 5 and 6.

First, not only is there the future goal of these blessings (“to the praise of the glory of His grace”), but also the past meritorious cause of these blessings: “by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” So, to grasp these blessings, we not only have to understand the glory of God’s grace, but secondly, we have to grasp the infinite love God had for his son.

There are four wonderful words: “accepted in the beloved.” Oh, if the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see this blessing, the way we see ourselves and our whole Christian outlook will change. A glorious divine operation has happened to us in eternity. The name of that operation is called “acceptance.” This is the cause for all these blessings. Let us see five things:

1. The objects of acceptance.
2. The author of acceptance.
3. The cause of our acceptance.
4. The basis of our acceptance.
5. The glory of acceptance.

The Objects of Acceptance

The objects of acceptance: It says “made us.” Created by God in his image, I don’t have to preach long on this point, and each of you can ask in your own conscience: there is a deep human desire for acceptance in each of us. Everything we do in life is for this. We want to be accepted in our family, at our job, in our office, by our people, by society. We run and earn money, facilities, and education, and buy nice clothes, and achieve things, all for what? Acceptance. Think of all the online social media activity. 70% of the world is busy on social media—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube. People post thousands of videos, photos, reels, and statuses and are so anxious to see how many likes and comments they get. Early in the morning, that is their work. It is all for acceptance, but no matter what we do, a void and emptiness remain. Nothing can satisfy that need. We were created in God’s image to be accepted by God, but we, as fallen sinners, are rejected by God, and we feel that in our deep conscience. All our miseries can be traced to a deep desire to be accepted. We live and die with that desire. On one side, there is the sad reality of us: as defiled sinners, we cannot be accepted by a holy God. Everything in us calls out His rejection, hatred, wrath, and judgment. We can never have a one-in-a-billion chance to be accepted. On one side, that is the sad news of the objects: we cannot live without God’s acceptance, but we are in a state of sin and cannot be accepted.

On the other side: Think of the author of our acceptance. He is the jealous God. “Holy, holy, holy,” cry the seraphim unceasingly, and nothing that is defiled can ever enter His palace gates, nor can His heart endure the thought of iniquity. If angels sinned, he didn’t forgive them. The question of the ages is, “How can a holy God accept sinners?” What about his justice and righteousness? The wonder of this verse is that the author of our acceptance is that Holy God. He has “made us accepted in the Beloved.” It is a wonder of the universe. How? Why? When? On what basis? Impossible. We never made ourselves acceptable, nor could we have done so. How then? Do you see two words in English, “by which”? It was talking about the praise of the glory of grace. By which grace he did this. This was an act of pure grace. To the great First Cause we must always trace the motive for our acceptance. Grace reigns supreme. We blind sinners may not realize what a glorious thing this is. But this was the height of grace. Grace is stamped upon the whole thing. Acceptance comes to us entirely as a work of God. He is the author. From beginning to end, the work of our acceptance is God’s operation. He did a mysterious divine operation in eternity by which we are accepted. He alone is the author because no one else existed when it was done. Notice it is mentioned in the past tense. It is a work finished from eternity! Yes, grace is the primary cause of acceptance. But there is a meritorious cause of acceptance.

The Cause of Our Acceptance

Next, the cause of our acceptance: The Beloved Person. Who is this beloved? If you ask all the angels, cherubim, and seraphim, they will tell you for all eternity he was their beloved! Christ, by the highest heaven, is adored. If you ask all the Old Testament saints from Adam and Abraham, from Moses to David, all people under the law, all the kings, and all the prophets, they were waiting for one beloved. If you ask the New Testament saints, they challenged the whole universe to separate from the love of the beloved with a bold challenge: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Who is the beloved for us? The Lord Jesus Christ.

Why is that peculiar title used here? Paul could have said we are “accepted in Christ,” or “accepted in the Mediator.” Why does the Holy Spirit use this word “beloved”? I cannot imagine a title or name more appropriate for our Redeemer. This sweet, golden name is the one name that fully suits our Savior in all his relationships with the triune God, the angels of heaven, and his people in heaven and upon the earth. But our verse talks about him being the beloved of God. “Beloved” is used for people of God in many places, but Christ alone is called “The Beloved One” with a capital B. God has many beloved ones, but He has only one Beloved. Again, never was the term “beloved” so full of meaning, so well deserved, and yet so incapable of expressing all that is meant by it.

None of us can imagine how dear and beloved the Son of God is to the Father. Who can enter into that eternal relationship of the Trinity and grasp the fullness of that word? We cannot imagine the kind of love the Father has for his Son. It is incomprehensible love. If the Holy Spirit helps us grasp a little bit of that love, we will understand why we are so blessed.

Another glorious attribute God had in his heart was love. Great people have great love. Imagine God with his infinite, inexhaustible ocean of all his being, how much love is inside him! The world was created 6000 years ago, and no mind can estimate how many past eternity years there were; all the crores of billion billions of eons upon eons of when God was there. This infinite God was letting out all the fullness of his love directly and eternally upon his only begotten darling of his soul. There was no one other object. God loved Christ unspeakably, infinitely, for all past eternity. God was fully satisfied in that love. Christ was God’s greatest delight, supreme affection, adoring love, and the only entertainment of the great infinite heart and mind of God. He was so satisfied and enjoyed loving his son, without for a single second even blinking an eye; his love was set on his son. John says, “I was in the bosom of the Father,” very intimately loved. Proverbs says, “I was the fullness of delight; I was all his delights; I was his only delight; I was his delight itself.”

These two great and glorious persons of the Trinity, with an infinite essence, were delighting in one another, letting forth their fullest pleasure and delight, each into the heart of the other; their delight knew not a moment’s interruption or diminution. They were enjoying pleasures of fellowship unspeakable and inconceivable. Christ was the greatest darling and delight of God’s heart. He is called “beloved.”

The infinite God needed nothing but his Son for all eternity. His infinite measure, infinite capacity, and infinite abilities were fully satisfied and found a suitable object in the perfection of the divine Being, his begotten son. Christ was making him eternally happy. He was so beloved: “Without him was not anything made that was made.” In fact, everything was made for him; he is the heir of all things.

Do you understand anything I am blabbering about? I think I should stop. It would be foolish for me to try to dive into the awful depths of the love between the divine Trinity; it is an ocean so deep without a bottom, so vast without a shore. Even if I preach here until I die, we cannot grasp a drop of that love. We cannot imagine a love more intense, deep, or infinite than that between the Father and the Son. We have to make a confession of our ignorance and move to the next point. It is beyond our comprehension, and I hope you can see it is a great love. Do you see the term “beloved” is so divinely rich and full of meaning that the Holy Spirit uses that for the Father’s relationship with Christ? He is the meritorious cause of our acceptance.

The Basis of Our Acceptance

The basis of our acceptance is the word “in.” It talks about an eternal divine operation God did. God the Father put us in the Beloved, united us to him inseparably with an eternal bond by his sovereign decree. The small word “in” talks about the glorious doctrine of our union with Christ. Verse 6 says, “He made us accepted in the beloved.” It happened by God’s glorious operation. The basis of our acceptance is God uniting us to Christ.

When was this union done? It was not in time; it was a time before all times, when all things slept in the mind of God as a thought. Imagine the grandness of the concept of time. People study rocks and fossils, which tell us about ancient cultures thousands of years ago. This is a time so old, a time so far back that the wings of our imagination cannot fly. It was so long ago without a beginning. All these ages from creation to the end of the world will just be an invisible drop in an ocean compared with the deep and shoreless sea of the past eternity. Yet, when we fly back into that dreaded eternity, at that time, we discover God foresaw the creation of the world and the fall of man; he saw all the depraved sons of Adam; he saw you and me. And God not only elected us and set his eternal love on us, but do you want to know the measure and intensity of that love? He united us as one to his beloved for all past eternity, put us into the heart of his darling, and saw us in the heart of Christ, loving us like he loved his Son with infinite, intense love. Oh, can you think of this? My mind faints. God, who loved his son for all past eternity with such unspeakable intensity, loved me in the same way by uniting me with his son! What is this! Behold the wonder of God’s love: he united us to his most beloved darling and loved us. That is how he had such great love for us, even before we had a being or were formed. It is a work finished from eternity! We are accepted by uniting us to Christ, in Whom we are unconditionally ACCEPTED by the Father.

He made us one with his son. Oh, what can we say about this union? Someone said 1000 sermons are not enough to fully preach about the glory of our union with Christ. Can you imagine the blessed state of being eternally one with the most beloved of God! One with Him in every way. This union is more than a man and woman when married become one flesh; more than a vine and a branch having a vital organic life flowing union. It goes even beyond that. We are united to Christ as his body. We are seen as body members of Christ, so we are loved with the same intensity as Christ is loved—one with him in union. If I am one with Christ, though I am but as it were only the sole of His foot and exposed often to the dust of the street, because the glorious Head is accepted, the meanest member joined in living union to that Head is accepted, too. Is not this glorious? What shall we say about this union? Now, going beyond scripture, it even says in a mysterious way in John 17: “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us…” Wow! This is the basis of our acceptance—not only our acceptance but all the blessings we receive in the beloved. The grace of election. What was it? Remember? “He chose us in Him.” The grace of predestination to Sonship. What was it? “He foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.”

The Glory of Acceptance

Next, can I blabber about the Glory of Acceptance? Webster says that to ACCEPT means to receive willingly, to regard with approval, to value, to esteem, to take pleasure in, or to receive with favor. The term “acceptance,” in the Greek, means more than that. There’s a play on words in the original. It can be translated as, “He graced us in the Beloved.” This word means we are “highly favored, laudable, praiseworthy.” When the angel Gabriel said to Mary, “You are highly favored,” it’s the same word. Now, we are not and never could be “accepted” before and by the holy Lord God, except in Christ the Beloved. But in him, in the Beloved, every believer, every sinner chosen, redeemed, and called by grace, is so completely and totally accepted of God that, even in the eyes of the holy, omniscient Lord God, we are highly favored, laudable, and praiseworthy! Oh, you creatures who yearn for acceptance, see the glory of our acceptance in the beloved. This is the highest acceptance God can ever give.

Let me say a few things about our acceptance. Our acceptance with God is only “in the Beloved.” God the Father is well pleased with his Son. And he is well pleased with us in his Son. He sees us in his son, as one with his son, and so he loves us with the same intensity as his son. All the infinite river of God’s love flows to Jesus and also flows to us who are united eternally to his son. God’s love to us is His love to His Son flowing in a hundred channels. Not for our sakes is this done, but for Jesus’ sake, so that it might be all of grace. This is the height of God’s grace. His perpetual acceptance with God is our acceptance, so that nothing legal, nothing of which we might boast, might be mingled with the work of sovereign grace.

In the Beloved, you are so near and dear to His heart that He also calls you His “beloved.” Do you believe that the Father loves you with the same love with which He loves His Beloved? Selah! (Pause and ponder your privileged position).

Our acceptance in the beloved doesn’t depend on us and our works. It depends only on his love for his beloved. Would you have liked any other way of acceptance? If I were this day accepted in myself, I should always live with the fear that I might lose my acceptance, for I am a weak, changeable, fallen being. Even unfallen Adam, while he was obedient, was accepted in his own works. But how soon he fell! And then his acceptance fell too. But if I am “accepted in the Beloved,” then the Beloved will never change, so God’s love for the beloved never changes, so my acceptance can never change. Again, the greatest and best way for God to accept me is through the beloved. If I am accepted in him, I always must and shall be accepted, come what may.

Our acceptance in the beloved does not depend on our experience. Aren’t you happy God doesn’t accept you because of our experience? One day we feel so high, so heavenly-minded, so drawn above the earth! But the next day, our souls cleave to the earth. Oh, if it depended on our experience, how sad it would be: today accepted, tomorrow rejected. No! Oh, praise God, I am not accepted because of my experience, but in the beloved. I can never be rejected until God decides to reject Christ, which will never happen. Oh, if we can see our acceptance, all our ups don’t make us higher before God, and our “downs” don’t take us down in the Father’s sight.

But we stand accepted in One who never alters, in One who is always the beloved of God, always perfect, always complete, always without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Oh, we need to have a blessed faith that walks above experience! A joyous trust, even in the darkest nights and clouds, to be assured of God’s love for us; in the midst of a consciously felt vileness, still boasting of a pardon bought with blood, of a righteousness complete and without flaw!

Our acceptance with God is thorough, complete, total, and absolute. It is complete acceptance. Can you see the amazing thing? It is given in the past tense: “I was accepted” even before I was born, in eternity. The measure by which God accepts Christ is the measure of my acceptance. Oh, how we should celebrate this. Now, see if you can measure it. How acceptable is Christ to God? Must it not be an infinite acceptance? For it is an infinite Being infinitely accepting an infinitely holy and well-pleasing One, and then accepting us who are in Him with the same acceptance. Oh, how acceptable is every believer to the eternal Father in Christ Jesus!

Do you see why? All our sins are forgiven and forgotten. Our unrighteousness is covered, and therefore we are free from condemnation. We are justified, adopted, and our persons are accepted. It does not require any oratory to set it forth. It needs only that your faith should fully apprehend it. Realize that you are forgiven, cleansed, justified, and adopted, and so you can be accepted in the beloved, as he is accepted. However you see yourself, God the Father sees you in the beloved without spot or wrinkle, washed whiter than driven snow, clean every bit.” He is so infinitely pleased in you that he has blessed you with every spiritual blessing. Rejoice in this. Anyone to be accepted should be perfectly righteous. You could not be accepted if He had not forgiven, cleansed, justified, and adopted you. God never accepts unclean sinners.

Our acceptance in the beloved with God is eternally immutable and unchangeable. Bless God, our acceptance not only does not depend on us. It did not begin with us. It is not maintained by us. And it cannot be altered by us. We were accepted before we had form, in eternity. Though we fell in our father Adam, yet we were “accepted in the beloved.” Though we came forth from our mother’s wombs speaking lies, we were still “accepted in the beloved.” Though we spent our days from our youth up in wanton rebellion against God and in league with hell, we were still “accepted in the beloved.” And though after the Lord God has saved us by his wondrous grace, we sin and fall many times a day, yet it stands in the Scripture that we are “accepted in the beloved.” What a glorious position this is! A song says, “Unchangeable His will, Though dark, cold, and dull may be my heart; His loving heart is still eternally the same: My soul through many changes goes, His love no variation knows.”

Someone said, “Is not this a word to die with?” We will meet death and face his open jaws with this word, “Accepted in the Beloved.” Will not this be a word to rise with amidst the blaze of the great judgment day? When you wake up from your tomb, lift up your eyes, and before you gaze upon the terrors of that tremendous hour, you say, “I am accepted in the Beloved.” What can fill you with alarm? Forever and ever, as the cycles of eternity revolve, will not this be the core and center of heaven’s most supreme bliss, that we are still “accepted in the Beloved”?

Our acceptance brings inestimable blessings. He who accepted us gives us access to all blessings. That is why in verse 3, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. No blessing of the covenant is withheld from us. Grasp this; this can change your Christian life.

1. Right of access to the throne of God: Being ourselves accepted, the right of access to the throne of God is given to us. When a person is accepted with God, he may come to God whenever he chooses. We are like royal king’s children and can come to the royal palace anytime and are accepted. No chamber of our great Father’s house is closed against us. All is well between us and Him. We have access with boldness into this grace in which we stand.

2. Our prayers are accepted. Our prayers are seen in the beloved. God loves to hear and answer our prayers. Oh, if we sincerely believe this! Do you not sometimes pray as if you were beggars in the street, pleading with unwilling persons to give you a mere 5 rupees? That is why our prayer life is so poor. But when we know we are “accepted in the Beloved,” we speak to God with a sweet confidence, expecting Him to answer us. When we realize this acceptance, it should not be any surprise that our heavenly Father hears and answers our prayer. Has he not been doing so often and so generously? Every week we praise him for answered prayers. When unaccepted men pray, they pray unaccepted prayers. God never hears. They have to keep crying like the Baal worshipers. We, as accepted in the beloved, offer acceptable prayer; he always hears us. God loves to answer our prayers because they are accepted in the beloved. When people delight in someone, they love to give to them. Remember King Ahasuerus delighted in Esther and said, “Ask even half of the kingdom, I will give it.” When God delights in men, He gives them the desires of their hearts. Oh, the splendor of that man’s position who is “accepted in the Beloved!” To him, the Lord seems to say, “Ask what you will and it shall be given you, not only to the half of My kingdom, but My kingdom itself shall be yours; you shall sit with Me upon My throne.” Oh, the blessedness of being “accepted in the Beloved,” because the acceptance makes our prayers to be as sweet incense before the Lord.

3. Our worship is accepted as the most pleasing sacrifice. Even all the angels’ worship is not that pleasing, because of our beloved, our worship gives such pleasure to God. When unacceptable men worship, it is strange fire and brings spiritual curses from heaven, but accepted people offer acceptable worship. It is a sweet-smelling aroma to the living God; he is pleased, and the whole heaven is pleased. This brings inestimable blessings to us.

4. Our smallest good work is accepted as a good work in the sight of God. The Westminster Confession on Good Works says, “Amazing greatest biggest charity works, like Bill Gates, Azim Premji, or Tata, are not seen as good works in God’s sight because they come from unregenerate men without a heart of faith, but our small good works are accepted by the Father and are eternally rewarded.” Paragraphs 5 and 6 say that our good works, though defiled and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, cannot stand in the perfect standard of God. Yet, notwithstanding the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works are also accepted in him; not as though they were in this life wholly unblamable and unreprovable in God’s sight, but that he, looking upon them in his Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections. It is like my daughter’s coloring is the best, even better than Michelangelo, not because it is the best, but because she is my beloved. But you do not see it that way because you are so blind. I see it since love has opened my eyes. When we are cleaning our phones, you would delete even good pictures of others, but if it is our beloved daughter or son, we want to save every picture, even duplicates. That is my weak attempt to explain the glory of acceptance. So we see:

1. The objects of acceptance.
2. The author of acceptance.
3. The cause of our acceptance.
4. The basis of our acceptance.
5. The glory of acceptance.

Application

See, if you believe in Christ today, realize that:

1. Your faith in Christ is the gift of his grace, the fruit of being “accepted in the beloved.”
2. Your faith in him is the evidence of your being “accepted in the beloved.”
3. Your faith in Christ is the assurance of your being “accepted in the beloved.”

Rejoice, bless God, love the beloved, and feed on this truth. Let us rejoice and bless God; you are accepted in the beloved. Think of the contrast: if not accepted, but rejected. You would be the most loathsome creature of God in all the universe, seeing you, all your sins and depravity permeating your entire being, saturating your thoughts, making you corrupt and offensive in the sight of the Most High. He will deeply regret why you were created.

He will allow you to live a few years on earth to glorify his patience, justice, and wrath. He will leave you to the desires of your heart, blinded in vanity and worldly things. We would have either gone into the sinful world, going from sin to sin, reveling and rioting in it, or without knowing the true gospel of Christ, we would have gone into big false churches like so many running after Pentecostal prosperity preachers, blessing of money and health, offering strange fire, and their fourth and fifth generations punished. We might at this moment have been sinning with a high hand, finding even in the Sabbath Day a special opportunity for double transgression. Once the measure of our iniquity is full, then he will soon sweep you with the broom of judgment and cast you into the lowest hell, cast away forever into dreadful condemnation. You will lift up your eyes out of the thick darkness, a pit that is bottomless, “where their worm dies not, and their fire is not quenched.” For all eternity, by pain, screams, shouts, weeping, and gnashing, you would be glorifying God’s justice and wrath. All who see your pain will glorify, “Oh, how wrathful God is!” You would be vessels of wrath. Oh, God has saved you from all that, and by accepting you, the only meritorious reason for your acceptance is in the beloved. Oh, will you not rejoice in this! Is it not a joy that can make your spirits dance, like David before the ark?

Octavius Winslow encourages us: “Behold your present standing, believer in Christ! Turn your eye away from all your failures, the flaws that mark your sincere endeavors to serve Christ and to glorify God, and see where your true acceptance is found. ‘Accepted in the Beloved’ is the record that will raise you above all the fears and despondencies arising from your shortcomings and failures and fill you with peace, and joy, and assurance.”

Bless God. Let us give all praise, honor, and glory to our great God alone. I want you this morning to rejoice and bless God in this: you are accepted “in the beloved.” You look within, and you say, “There is nothing acceptable here!” Man, look at Christ, and see if there is not everything acceptable there. Your being, life, and acts depress you, but look you to Jesus and hear Him cry, “It is finished!” Will not that death-note reassure you? After becoming a believer, after being sanctified, even after being glorified, you are still accepted in the Beloved. Never accepted in yourself. That is the basis of your standing. Stand in that and bless God.

Bless God. Our laments might have been going up today amidst the wailings of the people in hell. Instead of wailing, he has chosen you to praise him. We lift the joyful song of praise unto our God, and bless and magnify His name in whom this day we are accepted. Oh, my soul, sing your own song to your Beloved.

Let us love our beloved! Do you not love that sweet title? We are seen in him and loved eternally as he is loved. God is so boundlessly pleased with Jesus that in Him He is altogether well pleased with us. Oh, the joy of this blending of our interests with those of the Well-beloved! Christ loved us eternally: “As the Father has loved me, even so have I loved you.” That is, without beginning, ever since there was a Father and a Christ. How much we should love Christ.

Chew and feed on this truth more. Can you get a firm hold of it? Unless you intelligently grasp its full significance, you will not heartily enjoy this unspeakable privilege. I struggled a lot to prepare this; there is so much in this, and I cannot cover all. But take this sweet truth like a chewing gum and keep chewing it all week. Chew it as long as you want; it always brings a sweet taste. Experientially enjoy the precious drop of honey: “accepted in the beloved.”

Chew on this. It has all the strength to overcome worldly worries and cares and to sweeten mortal life. Every believer can say within himself, “I have my sorrows, I have my pains, and weaknesses, but I must not be discouraged, for God accepts me.” Oh my! How we can laugh at all our troubles when this sweet word comes in, “accepted in the Beloved.” I may be poor, I may be despised, I may have much to put up with in many ways. You may have to go home to a miserable life or meal today, but then how rich you are, you are accepted in the Beloved. If you understand the glory of acceptance, really, these troubles of the flesh count for little or nothing to me, since I am “accepted in the Beloved.”

Yes, I have 101 weaknesses and imperfections, and there is never a day where I do not have to repent and ask God to forgive me. Yes, but I am “accepted in the Beloved.” Oh, I have been struggling with this evil and that. The devil is tempting you, never mind, he cannot destroy you, for you are accepted in the Beloved. I have just now been blaming myself for my shortcomings and mourning over my many slips and failures. Yes, but I am “accepted in the Beloved.” I want you to let this blessed fact go down sweetly with you, that whatever may be the trials of life, whatever the burdens that oppress you, whatever the difficulties of the way, whatever the infirmities of the body, whatever the frailties of the mind, yet still, as being “in the Beloved,” you are accepted.

Think of this: when you stand before God, made perfect with a deathless body and a sinless soul, before the throne, spotless, you will be accepted. Yes, but you will not be a bit more accepted then than you are now. Even the glorified souls are not more accepted than we are. In all this noise, strife, and turmoil of everyday life, you are “accepted in the Beloved” now. He loves you as intensely now as he would love you for all eternity. Is not this present grace in the highest perfection? What more can you have until you behold the unveiled face of infinite Love?

It is the eternal God accepting you. The world may not accept you. Family and friends may mock and reject you. Even our own heart may accuse you. The devil may roar against you. What does it matter? For He has accepted you. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemns?” He has made us “accepted in the Beloved,” and if that is so, we need not fear what men can do to us.

It assures the security of believers in this life. If we are accepted in the beloved, Christ came, lived, died, suffered, rose, ascended, and sits at the Father’s right hand, doing his heavenly ministry, showering all grace and blessings to persevere. Who shall defeat Omnipotence or pluck the sinner from the Almighty grasp?

This Word is full of soul marrow and fatness for the soul. It is food at once nourishing, delicious, satisfying, and strengthening. Those who feed upon it will be found, like Daniel and his companions, to be fairer in countenance and fatter in flesh than any others.

Rejoice, bless God, love the beloved, and feed on this truth.

Finally, if we are accepted by God, if our prayers, worship, and our good works are accepted, oh, how zealous we must be in prayer, worship, and good works. Oh, if He so treats our poor service, what shouldn’t we do for Him? What zeal, what cheerfulness should stimulate us! If we are accepted, our sacrifices shall be acceptable. If it is so that we are “accepted in the Beloved,” then let us go forth and tell poor sinners how they can be accepted too.

Unbelievers: Are you unconverted today? If you want to be accepted, you must accept. “And what,” do you ask, “must I accept?” You must accept Christ as the free gift of God. You must accept Christ as God’s way of accepting you, for if you get into Christ, you are accepted. The guiltiest of the guilty may be accepted in Christ. No matter how great and grievous their transgressions may have been, the atoning sacrifice can take all their guilt away, and the perfect righteousness can justify the most heinous sinner before God. You may be accepted.

Many people have been deceived into thinking they must somehow earn acceptance in the eyes of God. The message is simple: God accepts all who accept His Son by grace through faith!

Listen. If you come to Christ now and trust Him, you will be accepted. Never did one come to Christ to be rejected. You shall not be the first. Try it, and though you came into this house condemned, you shall go out accepted. Come; do not despise the exhortation, for you will be accepted. This is the verdict today, tomorrow, all days, in the day of death, judgment, and for all eternity: “accepted in the Beloved.”

It is the eternal God accepting you. The world may not accept you; family and friends may mock and reject you; even our own heart may accuse you; the devil may roar against you. What does it matter, for He has accepted you? “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemns?” He has made us “accepted in the Beloved,” and if that is so, we need not fear what men can do to us.

It assures the security of believers in this life. If we are accepted in the beloved, Christ came, lived, died, suffered, rose, ascended, and sits at the Father’s right hand, doing his heavenly ministry, showering all grace and blessings to persevere. Who shall defeat Omnipotence or pluck the sinner from the Almighty grasp?

This Word is full of soul marrow and fatness for the soul. It is food at once nourishing, delicious, satisfying, and strengthening. Those who feed upon it will be found, like Daniel and his companions, to be fairer in countenance and fatter in flesh than any others.

Rejoice, bless God, love the beloved, and feed on this truth.

Finally, if we are accepted by God, if our prayers, worship, and our good works are accepted, oh, how zealous we must be in prayer, worship, and good works. Oh, if He so treats our poor service, what shouldn’t we do for Him? What zeal, what cheerfulness should stimulate us! If we are accepted, our sacrifices shall be acceptable. If it is so that we are “accepted in the Beloved,” then let us go forth and tell poor sinners how they can be accepted too.

Unbelievers: Are you unconverted today? If you want to be accepted, you must accept. “And what,” do you ask, “must I accept?” You must accept Christ as the free gift of God. You must accept Christ as God’s way of accepting you, for if you get into Christ, you are accepted. The guiltiest of the guilty may be accepted in Christ. No matter how great and grievous their transgressions may have been, the atoning sacrifice can take all their guilt away, and the perfect righteousness can justify the most heinous sinner before God. You may be accepted.

Many people have been deceived into thinking they must somehow earn acceptance in the eyes of God. The message is simple: God accepts all who accept His Son by grace through faith!

Listen. If you come to Christ now and trust Him, you will be accepted. Never did one come to Christ to be rejected. You shall not be the first. Try it, and though you came into this house condemned, you shall go out accepted. Come; do not despise the exhortation, for you will be accepted. This is the verdict today, tomorrow, all days, in the day of death, judgment, and for all eternity: “accepted in the Beloved.”

Sometimes, when thinking of these infinite blessings, my heart overflows with joy, but honestly, most times I think, “Is this all true?” Am I truly blessed with all (nothing left, all included, infinite) the highest spiritual blessings in the heavenly places? All blessings that even an infinite God can give have already been given to me. The first blessing raises us to such heights of heaven that we feel giddy. How can an eternal God value worms of a 70-80 year lifespan to love us from all eternity? He chose us even before creation. Why did he love me even before I had a being? Why such honor for me? Then he elected me, totally depraved, for the great goal of making us holy, as he is holy and blameless before him, so for all future eternity I can enjoy his beauty and glory unhindered forever. Before we can even digest this, he takes us higher, to that eternity past, when he planned his great predestination, and the central goal of his plan was to bestow his highest honor and adopt me as his child, an heir of God, and that too at such a cost—the slaying of his darling son, Jesus Christ. And he did all this how? Not grudgingly, not with hesitation, but with the good pleasure of his will, with infinite delight and joy, rejoicing so much that he sang. Is this all true? Are we dreaming this? Is it simply piling up imaginative blessings to feel good?

If we can just deeply digest, grasp, and believe the reality of all this, I will tell you this is enough to transform our lives. Our hearts can be filled with so much joy, peace, and satisfaction that nothing in the world can take it away. Moreover, all these blessings are not somewhere in the sky; God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. We can feel this glorious, eternal, infinite love God had for us now; it can overwhelm us. Romans 5:4 says, “God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” But the question is, why do I not enjoy that love when I wake up every morning? Can I say that the great hindrance in our hearts to enjoying these blessings is our self-obsession, which comes from unbelief?

Unbelief keeps our focus on ourselves, always looking at ourselves, at our unworthiness. “How can God love me like this? I don’t deserve this.” Faith is looking away from ourselves to God. We think that if these false teachers taught us anything, we might deserve a good life on this earth—the best life now, a house, and good health. But all the eternal blessings seem superfluous, not needed for us. We didn’t ask for this; we don’t desire this. It’s good to know, but we cannot really digest, take in, and rejoice, relish it so much that it transforms our life and fills our heart with so much joy that we rise above our situation and worship God like Paul. It is all because of our stubborn, cursed self-orientation and self-obsession that hinders the enjoyment of these blessings.

Remember how Paul started? The term “blessed” teaches us to focus on God, not on us or his gifts; his focus is on God, not on himself. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ statement is that the most sad and miserable Christians are those who are always thinking of themselves, their situation, and their feelings. This is a subjective self-obsession. The secret of enjoying these infinite blessings is to forget yourself and look to God’s glory. By design, our catechism says God created us to glorify and enjoy him. Our true highest joy is in the glory of God. You will never be happy until you are happy in his glory. Oh, the importance of the glory of God.

The great re-discovery of the Reformation is that the central theme of Scripture is the grand truth of Soli Deo gloria—to God alone be the glory. The goal of all four other solas is this. Why Sola Scriptura—that Scripture alone is the final, infallible authority? If any other is the final authority, it is an attack on God’s glory. Salvation must be sola fide, sola gratia, and solus Christus—through faith alone, by grace alone, and on account of Christ alone. If we give 1% of the credit for our salvation to any other being, it is to rob God of His full glory. The Reformation is not just a doctrinal dispute and difference against the Roman Catholic Church and others; it is a great fight over whether man will get all the glory or God will get all the glory. To go wrong here is to go wrong everywhere. Romans 1 lists the horrible consequences of a religion that refuses to glorify God; it brings the wrath of God from heaven upon our heads. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The essence of sin is to fail to glorify God. We have fallen from that.

The great distinctive beauty of the reformed faith is that it delivers us from self-obsession and brings our focus to God’s glory. It teaches us that God’s great reason and motivation in all he does is his own glory. God’s glory is our highest good; we will be most happy when we glorify God. There is nothing more important in our life than to grasp and live for the glory of God. For selfish beings living low, selfish, narrow lives, our greatest need is to grasp a glimpse of God’s glory. So we have to daily pray like Moses, “Show me your glory.”

Only when you have a high view of God, a towering view of God, when you stand before the infinite, monumental Grand Canyon mountain of the glory of God, do we realize how small we are, how small our worries are, and how small our lives are. Even our world, our generations, all generations, all nations, and all people are nothing compared to the great cause of the glory of God. Let all humanity and all angels perish and become nothing; let not a small stain be put on the eternal glory of God.

When you are lost in the shoreless ocean of glory and you have a heart burning for the glory of this God, it will not only lift us from our native self-obsession, but we will have all the stamina and energy to live an extraordinary life in the midst of a sinful and adulterous generation. The only anchor that will make you stand and not be swept by the temporary river of this fleeting pleasure, this passing world and its lusts, is your comprehension of the glory of God. The highest seraphim angel can have no higher or nobler end than this—the glory of God.

Men who have lived grand, joyful lives, achieving great things and leaving a mark on history, are men who lived for God’s glory. If our focus is the glory of God, we will live life to the fullest. We will be very holy, most happy, most wise, and most useful. Our lives will be valuable and count for time and eternity. See, what we are talking about is primary. Everything is small before this. Our whole generation, why, all generations, are nothing. This is the center of your life. This is why we are here on earth. The purpose of your creation, providence, and redemption, our chief end, our highest purpose is the glory of God. We live for the glory of God, or we do not live at all. Though we live, we are dead, living an empty, useless life, soon to be forgotten. When you come to the end of your life, all that matters is, “Did you live for the glory of God?” If you failed here, our life is a failure. We have wasted our entire life and wrongly invested our life. So, Soli Deo gloria is a monumental pinnacle purpose.

So Paul in Ephesians, after talking about glorious past eternal blessings, knowing we will stumble to grasp this with our self-obsession, brings our focus to this most important thing in the next verse, verse 6: “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” This has three headings: Grace, the Glory of Grace, and the Praise of the Glory of Grace. Paul reorients our focus from ourselves to God. In a way, he is saying, “You will not be able to believe or touch, or taste and enjoy these higher blessings, and rise like an archangel to bless God with sheer ecstasy like me, if you keep looking at yourself, your worth, or your state. You need to take your eyes off yourself, your needs, and your feelings and turn to the great doctrine of the glory of God.” You are so immensely blessed, not because you are worthy, or even because you need this, or you sought this, but all this is done for the glory of God’s grace.

Oh, may the Holy Spirit help us understand. Why should he elect us, predestine us, bless us with every spiritual blessing, and raise us to such heights of blessings? We were not only unneeded by the self-existent God, we were completely useless and irrelevant to him as fallen creatures. It has nothing to do with who we are. Don’t keep seeing yourself, your needs, or your feelings. Lift your eyes above to see the answer in verse 6: “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” This is the ultimate goal of election and predestination. The word “to” in Greek has the idea of purpose. Everything the Father did in verses 3-5 was for the sole purpose that he might be able to display and manifest his grace, and that, having displayed it, all beings might see it and render praise for the glory of his grace.

The Attribute of Grace

The glory of God is the revelation and manifestation of God’s attributes. We have studied the attributes of God. Grace is an attribute of God. Grace lay in the heart of God from all eternity since he is called in Scripture “the God of all grace.” Grace didn’t start in his heart after man fell. Grace was in the heart of God, an essential part of His being from all eternity. Now, what is Grace? Grace is a word you cannot fully define. It’s something you have to experience; it is the most amazing, sweetest experience in the universe. We keep defining it as God’s spontaneous, free, unmerited favor in action toward guilty, undeserving sinners. Grace is different from all his other attributes; it is different from mercy. Mercy is shown as a response to a need or suffering. But grace is shown not because of any need or suffering to whom it is given, or because someone is deserving or undeserving, but it freely comes from the giver according to the generosity of his great heart, and it is always shown to the worst, utterly guilty, and undeserving. Like I said in the amazing judge story last week, he not only forgave the criminal, justified him, and adopted the one who killed his own son. We cannot understand it; it is amazing. That is why it is called amazing grace.

The best picture of grace in the Old Testament is like the great King David. He brings the beggar, the handicapped Mephibosheth, who is a fugitive and the grandson of the previous king, who needs to be hanged according to the kingdom’s rules. He comes and stands like a pathetic, dirty, infected dog with one leg, before a king like a lion. The king sees this pathetic fellow and says, “I want to show kindness.” So first, he removes the capital punishment. “You shall live.” Oh, Mephibosheth is excited, thinking, “Enough, King; thank you.” Next, he says, “I give you back all your grandfather Saul’s palace, land, and wealth.” “Why? What will I do with all that? I have never seen a full 100 rupees.” Before he comes out of that shock, he says, “Then, I give you 70 servants for you.” “Ah, why? One is enough.” It doesn’t stop. He says, “You will eat at my table every meal.” “Ah, why? You will be respected as the king’s son.” “I am adopting you.” The guy faints from this; it doesn’t stop; it keeps coming. He’s wondering, “Why, why?” This is grace. David says, “I am doing this not because he is deserving, or out of pity to meet his need. No, he is the worst. It is not about him at all. But I want to show how much grace is in my heart. I want people to see, admire, and praise the grace of my heart. That is why I am doing this.” Spontaneous, unmerited favor in action toward undeserving, guilty sinners.

The word “grace” gathers at one burning point all the rays of God’s infinite, loving heart with which he stoops down to the lowest sinful creatures, lifts them from all their misery, heals them, delivers them, forgives all their sins, justifies them, and lifts them to the highest honor as his sons, making them rich, inheritors of his own boundless wealth. The motive spring of his heart for these acts is grace.

Now, how will he manifest this attribute that is in his heart for all eternity? His other attributes, his power and his wisdom, were manifested to an extent in creation. He created the vast universe out of nothing, just in 6 days, without any materials or tools, by the power of his word. “Let it be.” Wow! Astronauts like Sunita Williams have seen the vastness of space. They talk about billions of light-years, innumerable galaxies, and we’re just beginning to discover how many there may be. All this out of nothing, just in 6 days. When God said, “Let it be,” what a display of power! Everything works perfectly in its place, with accurate balance, like the intricate machinery of the universe. Whether you take a macroscopic look with a telescope into big things or a microscopic look at the tiniest things, what a display of wisdom! The Psalms sing of his power and wisdom in creation. His other attributes are more displayed in providence—his patience with sinners, his justice and holiness sometimes in history, like at Noah’s time, the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, his mercy when the Israelites were suffering, his power in the way he delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery.

God wanted to make a full display of his grace. Grace found no objects in a pure creation upon which to display its full glory. Grace in its true and deepest display needs undeserving, fully depraved, sinful creatures, and there were none such in the creation as it came from the divine perfect hand. God could not display grace in providence. So God decided to fully display his attribute of grace in redemption. Hence, we see his wisdom to allow the devil and sin to run their course in his world. Paul says, “Blessed be God, that He’s displayed His grace in redemption in a way that He’s not displayed it anywhere else.” This is a great revelation that the purpose and goal of redemption is the manifestation of His grace.

The Glory of Grace

Secondly, it is not just grace, but the Glory of Grace. Glory basically means the manifested excellence of an attribute. How excellent, how wonderful, how magnificent or splendid, how intrinsically beautiful is an attribute of God can only be seen when it is glorified, meaning manifested and revealed. You do not see or perceive the glory of the sun on a cloudy day. Now, there is glory in the sun, an intrinsic excellence and beauty. We see it when the clouds go away, and its excellence is manifested. Now, that’s what the word “glory” means here.

So, put the two thoughts together: the Glory of Grace. Grace itself is an undefinable, sweet divine trait. Amazing grace. God’s grace will be like him, infinite. Look, it says, “the glory of his grace.” He wanted to show his utmost grace, so creatures can see how beautiful, magnificent, wonderful, and splendid his grace is.

What does the “utmost glory of grace” even mean? God’s power at its utmost, who can grasp? All the power in creation and providence. Job says the drops that fell from his hand in a way hide how powerful he is. His word itself can create the universe. What can his hand do? When he comes and sits in judgment in Revelation 20, before his presence, all worlds do not turn to dust but dissolve, and the universe is annihilated. We don’t know where it went; it just disappears. In the same way, what must grace at its utmost be? The next verse talks about the riches of his grace, the height of his grace. What does it mean? Who by searching can find out God? It is not possible for the human mind to conceive grace at its utmost! What human intellect is gigantic enough to grasp the utmost glory of grace—the glory of his grace! If an infinite God shows grace, that itself is unbearable for us. Now he wants to show the utmost glory of his grace. So Paul says he chose and predestined us to show the utmost glory of his grace as vessels of his grace. Fainting! Wow!

Can I blubberingly say a few things about the glory of this grace?

Firstly, the glory of grace is sovereign grace. It is granted sovereignly by the absolute will of the Almighty God. No one can earn it; no one can claim it as a right. There is no reason in the creature, no reason known to us, but the good pleasure of His will. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” Absolute sovereignty is one of the glories of divine grace. We didn’t earn it; we didn’t desire it; we didn’t pray for it or ask for it; we don’t deserve it. It is sovereignly given to us, so come out of your cursed self-obsession and accept it as a sovereign gift. Only then will you rejoice.

Secondly, it is free grace. Man is not expected to do anything to earn or obtain the grace of God. If you do anything to get it, it is not free grace. God didn’t choose because of any good character—whether someone was rich, educated, or famous. He looks down on vast humanity and passes by kings and princes and riches to let His love settle on the poor. He looks on men and passes over so many who are good in common grace; his grace often selects the grossest transgressor and the chief of sinners, like you and me, so these should become eternal monuments of His grace. Think, if the utmost height of his grace should be glorified, he has to choose the lowest, most depraved creatures. That is how you and I were qualified to be elected and predestined!

Thirdly, it is the fullness of grace. Where God bestows His grace, it is no little grace. It is grace to cover all of a man’s sins, whatever they may be, however many they may be. He doesn’t just pardon and forget all our sins; he justifies, and not just justifies, but adopts, sanctifies, perseveres, and glorifies.

Fourthly, it is unfailing, continual grace. Where once the grace of God has fallen, it is never taken away. It is an eternal gift. He never revokes a pardon, justification, or adoption. “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Grace is an inexhaustible river; it continues flowing for all eternity. It not only saves us but it is this grace that keeps us saved. Today you continue to be a believer because of this fullness of grace.

Fifthly, it is sufficient grace. It is sufficient for all situations in this life and eternity. We see problems and scream like Paul, “Lord, help,” and he says, “My grace is sufficient.” It is sufficient grace for all life situations.

Sixthly, it is God-satisfying grace. What I mean is that this grace is shown in such a way that it never interferes with any other attribute of God. God shows grace in a way consistent with all his other attributes. This is what shows how glorious this grace is. How can God’s justice be satisfied when he passes by and forgives so many sins of these people? He does that not by hiding their sins below some mountain where no one can see them. No, he does that by laying all their sins on the sacrifice, upon their Surety, and he exacted from Christ the justice due for their transgressions. In their Substitute, His justice has received the full payment of His demands. In the same way, it satisfies his holiness, his law, the demands of the law, and his wrath. There is no attribute of God that grace ever slights. This is the glory of grace: though grace works and reveals itself as if justice, wrath, and holiness are dead, yet it never violates any one of those bright attributes of God. God is holy, just, and also gracious now in salvation.

Finally, verse 7 uses an amazing word: “according to the riches of His grace.” Why am I blessed so much? My election and predestination are beyond my mind, beyond my temporary needs, and even beyond my mental grasp. See, it is not according to your need, understanding, or grasp, or even your capacity to enjoy. An amazing word: “It is according to the riches of his grace.” Whether you need it or not, the whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul. God gives “according to the riches of His grace.” You do not expect a millionaire to give you 5 rupees as a gift, right? He gives according to his riches. In the same way, God gives royally, divinely. The measure of his grace is according to his abundance of His treasures, and he hands over infinite blessings with an open hand.

The measure of His grace is according to his riches. Now the question is that the measure of my reception is my faith. “According to thy faith be it unto thee.” There are all every spiritual blessings given; there is infinite, unrealized wealth. We are all living like beggars, while the potentiality of wealth is beyond our wildest, most greedy imagination. Alas, that when we might have so much, we do have so little. So, I hope you grasp the weight of the word “glory of his grace.”

Praise of the Glory of Grace

Not just the glory of grace, but verse 6 says, “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” The word “praise” is not just praise, but commendation with delight. Let me illustrate. An India-Pakistan match. We all watch. Just one ball, 5 runs needed. A tough bowler, 5 balls, no runs. On the last ball, the ball comes, our batsman hits a shot, it goes for a boundary, and India wins a nail-biting match. Oh, how the Indians praise the batsman! All on the ground are giving a favorable commendation with delight.

On the other side, the Pakistan captain comes to the team, wants to console them. “You guys played really well; we should have won the match, but that guy did some magic at the last minute.” He’s making an acknowledgment of that good hit, but he’s not praising him with delight. It’s a grudging acknowledgment of the accomplishment, but it’s not praise. Now you see the difference.

For example, God displayed his power so much with the 10 plagues of Egypt and the parting of the sea. What happened? All of Israel sang a song with women dancing: “Who among the gods is like you, Lord? Who is like you—majestic in power and holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” They are joyfully praising God’s display of power.

So the word “praise” here, of the glory of grace, means that every creature that sees the glory of grace shown to us. God is not satisfied that they just acknowledge God has shown grace to us. The display of that grace should be so grand, so marvelous, the riches and height of his grace that it will fill every creature with so much wonder and delight that they will eternally praise God for His grace because of us.

Ephesians 2:7 says that by what God has done for us, “that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” In the coming ages, all intelligent creatures, all angels, and people who always praised God for his holiness, power, justice, and wisdom, and who never saw the glory of his grace, when they see what God has done to us by electing and predestining us, they will see the glory of the grace of God—the manifested excellence of grace. All for all eternity will praise the riches of God’s extravagant grace to us.

Here Paul says the purpose for which God chose you before the world began and predestined you to sonship, the ultimate goal of that is “to the praise of the glory of His grace”—the full manifestation of His grace, to display how much grace is in the heart of God!

So, if you and I have to digest these blessings and experience them, it will not be when we are self-focused, but when we are caught up like Paul in God’s glory. Then your eyes are opened to see this glory. Do you seem to digest it a little? The reason an eternal God can set his love on worms of creatures, the reason a holy God can elect unholy sinners to make them holy and blameless to make them stand before him, the reason the highest Most High God can predestine depraved sons to be adopted into his family… is all to display the grace of his heart. Not just the glory of his grace, not just to acknowledge his grace, but in a way that the whole universe is so thrilled and amazed that it praises his glory, excellence, and the height of his grace.

Oh, only eternity will show the full praise of the glory of God’s grace. We really don’t know what it will look like. When all the chosen ones shall be gathered together in heaven, made holy and perfect, God lifts them to the highest glory with his Son. When the universe sees that, then the whole universe will cry, “To the praise of the glory of his grace.”

Application

What shall we say to these things? It overwhelms our soul.

First: We have a call to bless God. Oh, brothers and sisters, we cannot grasp and digest this in one hour of service. Go home, sit all this week, sit down and contemplate this. Let your mind survey the whole plan of your salvation until your hearts burn with fire when you perceive the magnitude of the glory of grace, to be lost in praise.

God chose us, predestined us as sons by free grace, given into the hands of Christ to be His treasure—redeemed with the heart’s blood of the Son of God. Christ came and accomplished salvation. When you were running into sin, slaves of Satan, mad on your idols, He called you with that voice that wakes the dead, and endowed you with spiritual life, justified you, adopted you into the divine family, and made you a partaker of the divine nature, all by grace. These are wonders of grace. But remember… this is all just a foretaste. No human mind can grasp the full revelation of his grace at the second coming. 1 Peter 1:13 says, “Set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.”

He is not just going to reveal the glory of his grace. God is not content simply to show it and say, “See, this is my grace; acknowledge it.” No, he will reveal it in such a way that the universe will overflow in praise. God has selected you to be a vessel of his grace, so all the universe and all of eternity will praise his grace to you. Can you not praise God and be mute? What? Be amazed, heavens and sun and stars!

Moses says to the old Israelites in Deuteronomy 4:32, “For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard. Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?”

How much more for us! Can I say for us, search all of history, search all religions, all cultures from Babylon, Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Indian, Islamic world, from east to west, north to south, all philosophies, search all of Google, all big data: was there any God who loved his people from all eternity, set his love, predestined them as sons, and made the greatest sacrifice to make them his own, to show his grace?

Let the truth of it be so understood and so absorbed into your spirit and mind and heart until you’re caught up in praise, and you with Paul say, “Blessed be God for such grace.” Oh, be lost in praise.

Is your self-obsessed mind not excited? Let me answer a selfish question and see if that excites you: Someone asked, “Why does God over and over again say he loves for his glory? He says stunning things about me, elected me, predestined me, made me his heir, loves me, cares for me, but all this is for his glory. Does he love me or does he love his glory more? Is he loving me so he can just get more glory? Then he’s not loving me, right?” What do we answer?

Oh, you stupid, selfish mind. How do I answer? If God has to love you with the greatest love, he has to love you for his glory. Because if he loves you for your own self, he can just give you an 80-year lifespan, good food, a house, and health, and finish your story. That is enough for you. That is all loving you means. It is only because God loves you for his glory that he has attached you to his highest eternal glory of his grace. He loved you so much he staked his eternal glory on you! He made the realization of his glory through you. By loving us this way, he makes useless, mortal worms so valuable, makes much of us as his greatest treasure for himself. He elects and sets his love on you and predestined you. It is this kind of love that bestows eternity’s worth, infinite value on you, because the goal of your salvation is his glory.

God loving us for himself is infinitely greater love than him loving us for ourselves. That is why he designed us to be happy by glorifying him. “You are so precious to God that he will not let your preciousness become your God.” He will not let your glory, which he himself creates and loves, replace his glory as your supreme treasure. Glory in this truth. Glory in, revel in, and bask in the fact that God loves you enough to say that he loves you for his glory. That way of loving you is the greatest way of loving you!

Oh, come out of your self-obsession; focus on God’s glory. That is how you enjoy these blessings! Will you worship God at the throne of grace for this message? This verse calls you to praise the glory of God’s grace you have so largely been made a recipient of.

Second, not only praise God for the glory of his grace, but will you let the people around you see the result of grace in you? Strive by God’s help to live a life others see what grace has done, so they praise the glory of God’s grace. That is the goal of saving. Our enemies slander us, saying the doctrines of grace make people careless and sinful, that you cannot see any good works in them. That is wrong. Our forefathers have shown how wrong it is. The most holy people have been those who believed in grace.

Now it is our turn, as receivers of such grace. We should strive to live by God’s help so we don’t bring dishonor but praise to the glory of God’s grace. We should do this by regular watchfulness, never neglecting the means of grace—prayer, the word of God, and church attendance. You are degrading the grace of God when you are not walking worthy of your calling. Holy living is “to the praise of the glory of his grace.”

And then, with such a credible life, become missionaries of the gospel of grace. See, the harvest is plenty; we have a great burden. Our land is filled with a cursed Arminian, man-centered theology. All preaching is about man’s part in salvation, man’s free will, man’s work, and man’s contribution, grandiose claims and schemes of men. No grace at all. Oh, how many souls are in bondage, groaning in a burden. Oh, how they need to hear this good news of God’s free grace! Salvation is all of grace, by faith in Christ alone. Only then does all glory go to God. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” If we mix any of our merit, worth, or works with His grace, we pollute the gospel and rob God’s glory. It is a cursed devil’s gospel. This is the gospel people need to hear. You and I are called to be missionaries for that!

For those of you who are not believers here: This should give you great hope. Salvation is all of the free grace of God to all men. It is hope for all good and bad men. Suppose you are here as a bad man; however bad you are, however many sins you have committed, you can come to God. Your sins don’t stop him from showing grace. Grace is more glorified in sinners. “Him that comes to Christ he will in no wise cast out.”

If you are a good person outside, who has lived a decent life and didn’t commit any big crimes, good at a human level, but you also have to come because the only way to be saved from hell and go to heaven is by grace. Salvation never comes by works, good works. Salvation is not based on how good or bad we are. Therefore, you too should believe in Christ. If all is by grace, then everyone, both great and small sinners, needs to come. “Come unto me, all ye that labor.” “Whosoever believeth in him is not condemned.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” As an unbeliever, all you are doing is fighting with your creator. Enough of fighting with your creator. Put down your weapons, surrender, come to your Father’s house, and enjoy his grace.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

God heard our prayers and blessed our family conference; it was convicting for all of us. We should be careful not to hear it and say, “Oh, it is tough, a very high standard; we can never change like this,” or, “It’s very humbling,” and then conveniently forget it as the days go by. If you try to forget like that, all the truths we learn in Ephesians will also bring us those practical applications in chapter 5 onward: wives subject to husbands, husbands love wives, children obey parents. Why should we strive for such a responsible family life? Because we want to glorify God, who has blessed us with such glorious blessings. We want to bless him through our lives. What will motivate us to overcome our native laziness, remaining sin, and selfishness and live such a high standard of family life, unlike worldly people? It is by deeply grasping how much God has blessed us and who we are in Christ. It’s these truths, by which we climb to the heavens and learn to bless God like Paul, that transform us by the renewing of our minds. These truths will reorient and change our focus. Instead of always looking at ourselves, our ego, and our selfishness, we start seeing life from God’s perspective: what God has done for us, what he is doing for us, and what he will do for us. It will make us worship him like Paul. It is the depth of personal and family worship that leads to such a lifestyle. These truths, with the help of the Holy Spirit, will give us the motivation and grace to strive toward such God-glorifying personal and family lives.

We saw the glorious truth of the seven wonders of God’s election, a thrilling truth that makes us realize God’s love for us didn’t begin when we believed him, not even at the cross of Jesus Christ, but that God the Father set His heart upon us from before the foundation of the world. This means that there has never been a time in eternity when he didn’t love us. The eternal God did not exist at any time when His love was not set upon you and me. It’s thrilling to realize how much God valued us. It’s something to fall down on your face and praise God for! As we forget ourselves, we feel like standing on the highest peak of eternity, blessing God that out of millions of people, he has elected us in eternity. We think there cannot be anything beyond this; this is the peak. Paul stuns us in verse 5 with another marvelous, in fact, a higher blessing than election, to intensify our worship and bless God: predestination to adoption.

Oh, how blessed our lives would be if we just realized this blessing. There was an orphanage with 12 boys. All were always discouraged, fearful, and worst in studies. They were depressed. There was no love, no care, only cruelty and fear. They were regularly beaten with rods and had tissue paper put in their mouths and tied for days without food. They always lived in fear, in a spirit of bondage and guilt. A father adopted the 12 children and showed such love and care. The love of the adopted parents conquered all their fears. They grew in the assurance of that love. They began to do well in school, went to top universities in the U.S., and became great men in society. You have to multiply that by infinity to realize our spiritual state. We were in the orphanage of the devil, who only kept beating us with rods, filling our consciences with guilt, our hearts with fear, making us slaves to sin, filling us with worries in this world, and never allowing us to do anything for God’s kingdom. In salvation, God adopts us and gives us the supreme status of his children. He gives such an assurance of love and care that we rise up to face anything in this life, overcome any sin or weakness, and become more than conquerors through him who loved us. Predestination to adoption is an all-conquering truth.

In verse 5, we see six wonders of predestination. I couldn’t get seven this time.

• The Act of predestination
• The Goal of predestination
• The Object of predestination
• The Cost of predestination
• The Manner of predestination
• The End of predestination

1. The Act of Predestination

Verse 5 uses the word predestination, a big word. If you want to stop a heated discussion or argument, just throw out this word. “What do you think about predestination?” Everyone stares at you in hush silence. It is a high concept. In simple words, the two English words combined to make up the one Greek word mean “pre,” something before, and “to destine,” to mark or to appoint. Predestinated means to appoint beforehand.

This is a doctrine of enormous comfort for the Christian. The Confession of Faith, in its second chapter, talks about the decree of God. God has decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass. From the smallest things to the biggest, everything is predestined. In that decree, paragraph 3 says, “He has predestined some to salvation to glorify his grace and some to damnation to glorify his justice.” He predestined the end of all his creatures. Paragraph 6 says not only the end but also all the means as to how that end will be achieved. Predestination is God’s plan for the ages.

Predestination includes all sinful acts. Amazingly, Acts 4:27-28 says, “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.” The NASB says, “purpose predestined to occur.” All the cruel, sinful acts that happened around the cross were all predestined by God. Predestination is an eternal act of God where he appoints everything that will happen. Everything in this life, good or bad, is all predestined by God. It emphasizes three things: the sovereignty of the activity of God (he predestined by his sovereign will), the certainty of that activity (being almighty, he will accomplish all he predestined), and the eternity of that activity. Oh, if you grasp the weight of the word “predestination,” if God predestines something, it is a done deal. Nothing in the whole universe can ever hinder that; it is his decree. The word “predestination” brings together God’s sovereignty, certainty, and eternity. It is an awesome, mysterious truth, just as on the cross, when the whole world seemed to be doing something against God and his will, God was able to use all that to accomplish his purpose. How? The Confession says, “in which appears his unsearchable wisdom of God in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.”

2. The Central Goal of Predestination

Predestination is an awesome, scary act of God in one way. How does that act make Paul cry out, “Blessed be God”? Because of the central goal of predestination. Notice it in verse 5: “having predestined us to adoption as sons.”

Amazing! Paul tells us God not only elected us. A king may elect servants; it is a big honor. But the Lord in heaven has not only chosen us, going beyond that, he has determined to bestow the highest eternal honor of the universe on us. Notice he predestined us to adoption as sons. Sisters, I am learning to reduce my male-centered chauvinism; we can add daughters. God predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters. This means that in this great act of his predestination, where he determined all acts that would come to pass, he not only wished, not only voted or elected, but he willed, and as the central act of predestination, he predestined us to adoption as sons. It is one thing for God to wish, will, or desire, but predestination means it is a done deal. No creature can ever stand against God’s predestination. The amazement is that this great God, in this great act of predestination, has lifted me to the highest honor of adoption. Oh, if you just understand the word, we will really faint. This idea overwhelms the Apostle John, who is amazed and cries out: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” May the Holy Spirit help us. When I say the word “adoption,” certain things register there in the computer called your brain. I want to reach into that computer and press “alt delete” to throw away all your preconceived ideas about adoption and infuse a fresh biblical idea of adoption. This biblical idea alone will make you stand back and be amazed in wonder and bless God.

The concept of God adopting us has no parallel in human experience. Nothing in human experience even comes close to this. One preacher says it is useless to look for human comparisons, for the adoption of which Paul speaks surpasses anything that takes place on earth. Humans adopt children to fulfill a need, but God had the most blessed, satisfying, eternally perfect, and fulfilling Son. There was no need for him to adopt. Yet he predestined us to be adopted. Let us try to grasp what made Paul rise to this height of blessing God. This is the crowning blessing of redemption, the highest privilege of God’s redemptive grace—to be called sons and daughters of God. Our catechism defines adoption as “an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.”

Adoption happens by two acts of God. There is an external legal act and an inward supernatural act. Adoption is a legal, external act. Just like justification, adoption is a legal or judicial act in the court of heaven. It is not a process; it is a one-time act. We are not progressively adopted. Once made a full child of God, I remain a full child of God forever, with irreversible legal status as a child of the living God for all eternity. After God elected me in eternity, God went a step ahead and signed my adoption papers, predestining me to adoption. In the order of my salvation, after God effectually calls, regenerates, and justifies, the highest blessing is adoption.

I become a legal heir of God, a joint heir with Christ. I am legally included as a family member of the Trinitarian God. It is one of the great climaxes of our redemption. It is a legal act. I may not feel it sometimes, I may doubt because of my circumstances, but whatever my feelings or circumstances, as a believer in Jesus Christ, I am a child of God. That is my status. It is not something I have earned; it is an act of God’s free grace. Just like justification, it is something God did to me and for me in the court of heaven. I am given all the privileges of the family of God.

Secondly, going beyond the legal external act, God also did an inward supernatural act. If I adopt a child, the child may legally be my child, but genetically may not be. God goes beyond that. He, through regeneration, implants his seed in us through the Holy Spirit, through which I not only have the same nature of God, but I experientially and subjectively realize I am a child of God. God has done what no human father and mother can do when they adopt a child: change the personality and nature of the child they’ve adopted so that it is like theirs. Galatians 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, He has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!'”

Look at this. God is not only interested in calling us his children objectively and legally and then telling us to believe that. But God wants us to fully and truly experience that reality. So he sends the Spirit of his Son into our hearts so we have the God-granted ability to experience what we really are—his children. We experience that not on a superficial level. The verse says we “cry out” Abba, Father. “Abba” is Aramaic for “Father.” It is not a formal title. It is a word of very close endearment, affection, and filled with love. With tears and emotions, you cry out in whatever language: “Appa,” “naina,” “daddy,” “Pithajee.” It is a word bursting out when the heart is filled with great love and affection.

My prayer life is sometimes so impersonally dead and dry. I groan, “Why can’t I go closer to God?” We have that natural hindrance, that strangeness created by sin and depravity. “How can I, a sinner, go to God?” The same God who sent his Son to redeem us from sins and make us his children, who clears not only all legal hindrances by atonement and justification but also provides an intimate access to himself and clears all positional hindrances—that same God sends the Spirit of his Son into my heart so all ethical, experiential, psychological, and emotional hindrances are removed. That Spirit comes into my heart, a heart with a million diseases of depravity and carnal enmity against God, that is always far from God, doubts God’s love, doubts his grace, and always has hard feelings and wrong thoughts and feelings about God. The Holy Spirit removes all that and makes me realize how much God loves me, how much affection is there in the heart of God for me, and gives me a sense of intimacy in my union with Christ, enabling me internally to feel the reality of an irreversible, eternal, unbreakable relationship of sonship established, not only objectively but also through subjective experience. I feel it so intensely, unable to bear it, that I loudly cry out and burst out, “Abba, Father!” That is the first purpose of the Holy Spirit’s sending into our hearts: to enjoy and experience and address the one true living God as Abba Father so we might have an internal, naturally reflexive conscious, filial disposition with God. The Spirit imparts a conscious, experiential, fatherly-related disposition. What a blessing! By a legal act, he assures us in faith that we have the rights and privileges as sons in the family, but by an inward supernatural act, he assures us experientially that we are his true sons and bear the nature and likeness of the household.

This is a high blessing in the order of salvation. Justification is a glorious blessing, but this is beyond justification. Adoption is different from regeneration; some confuse it with new birth. No, this is different and higher than regeneration. Both deal with different problems. Regeneration deals with our natures; we were dead in sins, those sinful hearts of ours that drink iniquity like water. God changes those sin-loving personalities of ours by the new birth. Adoption deals with our status. We are by nature children of wrath and children of the devil. Our status is one of alienation and condemnation; we feel a strangeness in coming to God. But because of the sin-removing work of Christ, our whole status has changed, and we can now be called children of God. In fact, the goal of God’s regeneration and justification is preparation for this crowning blessing of adoption.

That is adoption. What can I say about the blessings that flow from adoption? Not just me, but I have preached 10 sermons on this. Do you remember I preached 10 sermons on the blessings of adoption during COVID times? What comfort it gave us during that time. I can go on and preach all that and the sheer pure thrill, but we will not finish Ephesians. I will just mention seven blessings:

1. Eternal Status: It gives me an forever irreversible legal status as a child of the living God.
2. I have the profound and precious status of a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. The Promise of Fatherly Provision: God as our Father promises to provide for all our needs in this life. Knowing our unbelieving hearts, always worried and doubting his love, he gives an infallible guarantee of Father’s provision. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Arguing from the greater to the less, if you have any smallest understanding of what God has done through Christ, how shameful it is to question God whether he will meet my temporary needs. “How shall he not freely give us all things?”—a question, a reasoning. “All things!” How comprehensive the grant! All things needed to make us holy and blameless and bring us to glory. Every need—physical, social, psychological—God guarantees will be met. Just as all good fathers, my Father will supply all your needs. He wants you and me, in the struggles and doubts and trials of necessity in life, to use this argument: if he gave us his Son, how will he not give us all things? And to rebuke our own complaining hearts from worrying about worldly things.
4. The Promise of Fatherly Chastisement: We worry about two things: trials and pain, right? He promises all sufferings, trials, and pain that come in our life come from our loving Father’s hand, not as punishment, but as loving chastening to aid in mortifying our sins and sanctifying us, to make you holy and blameless.
5. The Gift of the Holy Spirit is an all-inclusive package of comfort, joy, and peace. Catechism question 36 says, “What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification?” The answer is, “assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end.” We will persevere until the end. What else do we need? Adoption blessings don’t stop there. There are adoption blessings at death, at the second coming, at the final judgment, and for all eternity in heaven. If I were to explain all that, I would need 10 sermons. If you want to hear them, go to the GRBC website, topical sermons, miscellaneous, COVID sermons. We have both English and Tamil sermons.

What a comfort here. Paul uses the scary word “predestination” to show the sovereignty, certainty, and eternity of our adoption. Wow! That means in eternity God predestined our adoption, and nothing in the universe can stop it. Wherever his children are, God’s providence will work to make them God’s children, and then once made children, everything in life will work toward making the adoption blessings effectual in their lives. That is the central goal of predestination. God has unshakably, immutably, and infallibly predestined us to adoption, the effect of all its blessings. You are settled! Blessed be God the Father for predestination.

3. The Object of Adoption

The object of adoption is “us.” This is the wonder of Paul; it makes him fall prostrate. God could have adopted holy, unfallen angels, but Mordecai adopted Esther because she was beautiful. What was in us? We were depraved, children of the devil. When someone adopts a child, they adopt the best child, right? One boy was feeling sad that he was an adopted child, not like his other friends. His parents said, “My son, your friends were born into their families. Their mummies and daddies had no choice at all, but we loved you so much we chose you to be our child. You are so special.” What is special about us? Sometimes, we jokingly say, “We brought you from the garbage.” It is very true of us.

See the graphic description in Ezekiel 16:4-5: “As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing; you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born.”

You and I were born in sin, from head to toe. Not just handicapped or impotent, but dead bodies, with our whole bodies full of the leprosy of sin, with defiled sores. In God’s sight, we were most abhorrent and abominable to him. What did he see in us? Verse 6 says, “When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!'” His eye of pity. The wonder of predestination is its objects.

What story can make this wonder dawn on us? Imagine a terrible criminal with many murders, who made families fatherless, a child rapist, who cruelly killed many small children. Many families are very angry with him. The whole nation is full of anger and wants to see justice, the worst punishment for him. He comes before a judge as a child of wrath, having broken all the laws of the nation and the judge’s court, a full criminal in person and act, with not a drop of regret for what he has done, deserving eternal punishment. Let us say in some mysterious way, the judge says, “I pity you and forgive all that you have done. Now you are innocent.” What a shock!

The judge goes beyond that and says, “Okay, you are not only forgiven but justified, as if you perfectly kept the law, all the laws of the nation all your life. You should be rewarded for that. Congratulations, righteous man. You will be treated as a noble person and awarded by the president for life and services. This court declares and signs that you are righteous forever.” Amazing grace. Let us say the judge goes beyond that and says, “You know what? In this same court, I will adopt you as my child and heir of all my wealth. So I am signing adoption papers also. All my 500-crore wealth is yours.”

See, this is beyond a human example. What grace! “That’s too good to be true.” Yet God, in his marvelous, bubbling, amazing grace, to show the height of the riches of grace, has done exactly that for us in adoption, infinitely. While the whole holy universe was angry with us, there is no heaven’s law we have not broken. The first great tablet, which angers God the most: we have not worshiped God, made idols, taken his name in vain, broken his Sabbath, or dishonored our parents. We have murdered in our hearts, with innumerable adulteries, lies, robbery, and covetousness in our blood. Such criminals before heaven! God elects, not only calls, regenerates dead, depraved sinners, forgives all their sins, justifies, and then adopts them to the highest status of heaven. Blessed be God for predestination unto adoption. For the objects of adoption, if you have any sense of your heart, this should make you fall prostrate. If this doesn’t make you fall prostrate, see the next point.

4. The Cost of Adoption

Verse 5 says, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ.” Imagine the cost he had to pay for adoption. Some may adopt by paying some money and signing legal documents for adoption. But God, to adopt sinners, oh, what a price he had! He signed a bond in eternity with the blood of his beloved Son. He adopted worms of dust at the most expensive price. What can we say? Imagine the same judge sees a criminal who has killed thousands of children, but he also killed his only beloved son and raped his daughter very cruelly, torturing her for hours. How much anger is in the father’s heart! Then the judge says, “You criminal, oh sinner, still I forgive all your sins, justify you, and will adopt you as my son.” That blows our minds! That is the cost God had to pay.

How could God accept into His family the likes of you and me? Being God and being holy, we lie below His wrath. How can God say, with open arms as the Father did to the Prodigal, “I welcome you into my family, I confer upon you all the privileges of the family,” when His righteousness and His justice called out for our judgment and for our damnation? Will his divine love negate the demands of divine justice?

NO. The only way he can do that is by paying a heavy, heavy cost, even to the infinite God. Just like with election, how can God predestine such unimaginable blessings for depraved, sinful creatures? A holy God can do this only—notice verse 5—by predestining us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ. The privileges of the adopted state, both legal and inward, are so bound up in the work of Christ as Mediator. It is on the basis of the person and work of Christ. It is adoption unto sons through Jesus Christ.

Galatians 4:4-7 says, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters. Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.”

If Christ did not redeem, there could be no adoption. Why? The simple reason is that God’s love cannot negate God’s holiness and the demands of His justice. And His law has been broken by us. God has purposed that in Christ all the demands of that broken law shall be fully met so that when the Father adopts them, He doesn’t, as it were, close one eye to His law.

Imagine what a horror it would be in such an adoption where God closes his eye, forgets our sins, puts our guilt under some deep rocks or ocean, and adopts us. But what if sometime in the future eternity, some angel or devil opens it and shows all our guilt to God? “Behold what sinners these are! If you are a God of justice, by no means will you clear the guilty. What will you do with that man’s sin?” What a terrible, terrible state heaven would be if we always went about with the fear that some angel might open our past sins and show them to God.

Do you know what God did in His Son? God openly displayed the full weight of His wrath upon Him, bruised Him, cursed Him for our sins. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,” so that there are no hidden unpunished sins in our account. And I can think of the future and all the privileges of sonship, never wondering if something will be discovered that will negate that privilege and force God to disinherit me. No, no. I can have the confidence that everything that stood as a hindrance to God adopting me from the legal standpoint has been fully removed. In Christ, when He hung upon a cross, He cried out, “It is finished.” And so He satisfied the demands of the law against His people that they might receive the adoption of sons. We can look into this God’s wonderful, smiling face and we can cry “Abba, Father.” He died, rose again, and said, “I go to my father and your Father,” and went and sat at his right hand and sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts, so you and I can experience the reality of our sonship and cry “Abba, Father.” So Christ not only procured atonement and justification by his life and death, but because of his continuing heavenly ministry as the ascended, exalted Lord, all the gifts and graces of the Spirit have been bestowed upon us.

Oh, blessed be our Savior Jesus Christ! Without him, God could not have only elected but also predestined us to be his sons. That is why someone said, “To the measure you feed upon Christ in the glory of His mediatorial office—Christ crucified, Christ exalted, Christ enthroned, Christ our priest—will be in direct proportion to the liberty of filial access that you enjoy as a son and daughter of God.” Otherwise, you will always come like a guilty slave. When we know such a high privilege we have, we will draw near, and then we shall know the liberty of the sons of God. Blessed be God, the Father of Jesus Christ.

5. The Manner of Adoption

The manner of adoption is “according to the good pleasure of His will.” This is a mystery we cannot fully grasp. What is the ultimate reason as to why such blessings should be conferred upon us with such a cost? Is the answer to be found in us as believers? Is the answer to be found in the world? Is it to be found in angels? Is it to be found in the devil or demons? No, no. He says the ultimate reason for which these blessings have come to us as believers is hidden and locked up in the activity not of our wills or the wills of angels or other men, but it is locked up in the will of God.

Verse 5 says, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” The ultimate source from which these blessings flow, he says, is locked up in the activity of the divine will. See, this is the great issue that divides all of Christianity into two: whether it is human will or divine will. The first word is God’s will. One’s will is one’s determination, purpose. Verse 11 says God works “all things after the counsel of his will.” The two words, “all things,” include everything that is done according to God’s will.

The reason I titled this “the manner of predestination” is to notice something peculiar said about the exercise of that will of God with reference to the acts of election and predestination that is not said in verse 11 when God runs the universe. The second phrase is “according to the good pleasure of his will.” Wow! It is a strong word, the same word as “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God has determined in his will to elect and predestine us as sons, not just a mere determination and mere sovereign purpose, or because of no choice, some compulsion within himself, but he has done it with infinite sheer delight.

There is a great difference, you know. Suppose you have a stomach pain. You go to a doctor. The doctor says you have to get an injection and medicines, and you should eat only curd rice, no spice. You don’t like it, but realizing it is for your good, you make a will to do it. Or sometimes someone comes to help; you pity them, so out of compulsion you do it. According to what kind of will? A will of compulsion? “No other option”? A will of hesitation? Suppose you love traveling; you always wanted to go to Kashmir, a dream destination. Your boss says you have to travel to Kashmir for 3 months; only 3 days of work, 4 days of vacation. How will you do it? “According to the good pleasure of his will.” It is a delight and a joy to do this. Well, you see, you are exercising your will, but this exercise of your will brings pleasure and delight. In one, there is sheer determination; in the other, there is the good pleasure of your will.

Paul says, “How did God bless us with such a great blessing?” Verse 5 says, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” He didn’t do it grudgingly, “no other way,” but out of the good pleasure of his will. He did it with infinite sheer delight. So there is not only the note of inflexible, unchallenged sovereignty in this will, but there is the concept of ineffable delight. So when we think of God’s blessings, with these infinite blessings, the very appointment of those blessings was something God Himself found great delight in.

Finally, what is the end of this adoption? You notice a little phrase: “to Himself.” You are all thinking you are the focus of all this. Oh no. Romans 11:36 says, “For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” God’s purpose for the creation of man is for himself: to glorify his image in man, a similarity of character, that he might have intimacy of communion.

Man was created for God’s delight, for himself, to give delight through fellowship with him. But men fell into sin. Scripture says all mankind became unprofitable; they are no longer profitable for the very thing for which they were made—to bring delight to the heart of God in intimate communion based upon a similarity of character. In the blessings of redemption, by regenerating, justifying, sanctifying, and adopting, God regains that purpose of man’s creation. This is all for his delight. We are caught in his delight.

Scripture talks of his delight in us in amazing, unbelievable words. Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save.” And what will be the result of His saving? Notice the God-centered perspective. “He will rejoice over thee with joy. He will rest in His love. He will joy over thee with singing.” Wow! How can we fathom this? Almighty God, so happy with what He gets in redemption, that He breaks into song.

So, brothers, here is the act of predestination, the goal of predestination, the object of predestination, the cost of predestination, the manner of predestination, and the end of predestination.

Application

To praise God properly for the glory of His grace in Christ, we must recognize the extravagance of His grace.

First: Realize the high status of being a child of God.

Again, this is another blessing to bless God. Do you realize how we should bless God again for this adoption? If election is glorious, this predestination to adoption is higher than that. Selection does not mean adoption, but the Lord in heaven has not only chosen us, he who has predestined what will happen in the universe has also predestined us to the highest status and privilege: son of God—something the angels themselves have never known, nor ever will. An heir of God, a joint heir with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. All the wealth of God is ours, an inexhaustible supply of God’s benefits. The Apostle Paul is saying that whatever your status may be in the world—you may be rejected, poor, sick, or hated by God—rejoice! You are an heir of an infinite God who rules over all things. You belong to his family. Your last name is God’s last name.

Surely this is the pinnacle point of grace and privilege. We would not dare conceive of such grace, much less claim it, apart from God’s own revelation and assurance. It staggers the imagination because of its amazing condescension and love. It is only as there is the conjunction of the witness of the revelation of God and the inward witness of the Spirit in our hearts that we are able to scale to this pinnacle of faith and say with childlike confidence and love, “Abba, Father.”

The marvelous blessings of adoption: the guarantee of God’s provision for all your needs. All suffering and pain are for your holiness and blamelessness. Blessings of death, the second coming, judgment, and all eternity. How blessed we should feel within ourselves! Do we cherish that? Do we realize that we are the most immensely privileged people in the world? I will tell you, it is such a realization that not only removes all complaining but makes us strive for a high standard of family life.

It has enormous consequences that the sons of God know they are God’s children. The way we see life—whether we will always be complaining and grumbling for small needs or thanking God for what we have and trusting him for our needs—depends on this. The Spirit makes us realize that the Father is very loving and kind, that he provides and cares. He protects them, and he is always on their side. We see all trials and sufferings coming from the Father’s hand and bear them patiently.

Secondly: Realize the great gift of the spirit of adoption.

The Spirit of adoption gives us an intimacy with God (Romans 8:15). Our prayer can become real by him. He gives the assurance and confidence that God is our Father, crying aloud, “Abba!” That cry is the mark of the strength of our new relationship with God.

The Spirit of adoption guides us in life, modifying and influencing the deepest recesses of our personality. He guides our thought processes habitually. He modifies our instinctive reaction to all kinds of circumstances so that our constant and habitual state of mind is like that of children of God.

The Spirit of adoption kills sin in our life. “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God” (Romans 8:13-14). He gives us a hatred for sin and the spiritual energy and stamina to kill sin in our lives.

Unbelievers

If you are outside of Christ, do you realize what you are blessing? Your sins are not forgiven; there is no justification; no adoption. You don’t realize what you are missing in this life without becoming God’s child. Then, when you leave this world, yesterday we went to the hospital late at night; one man with low blood pressure suddenly died. Believers have adoption blessings; their souls go to heaven; their bodies rest for a future resurrection. But as an unbeliever, their souls are immediately cast into hell to experience unbearable torment, and their bodies wait in the grave for the coming resurrection and judgment. Let me give you some picture of your last day. You will have all your relatives standing outside. Death shall put an end to all the benefits and comforts that you now enjoy. Now you must say, “Honors, friends, pleasures, riches, credit, etc., farewell forever! I shall never have one more happy moment! Death will be an inlet to judgment, yes, to an eternity of misery!” No one will be with you alone in the ICU. The monitors will show weak signals. You will die sweating, filled with fear. It is like being dragged to the slaughter. Your soul is filled with terror. Black horrors and thick darkness gather round you.

How do you become a child of God? John says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the sons of God.” Oh, receive Him as He’s offered in the Gospel, freely, as an adequate, an able, and a willing Savior. It all comes by Jesus Christ. Just like Joseph was raised from a dungeon to the top position in the kingdom overnight, if you will believe these truths, you will be raised to the most royal status in the universe overnight in your spiritual experience from the dungeon life you are living. If you get to him, get into him, they are yours: full pardon, acceptance with a holy God. He will make you his child and send his Spirit so you can cry, “Abba, Father.”