To the Praise of His Glorious Grace

Our loving heavenly Father, what a great confession to begin this first Sunday of 2025, to be able to say it is not me, it’s not I, but Christ in me that is the hope of the race being complete, that is the hope of forgiveness, that is the hope of being able to say we have been set free, we are free in Christ from all of our sins, from slavery to sin, from bondage to sin.  We have been set free.  God, that is the glorious message of this text that we’re going to study this morning.  We pray that by Your Holy Spirit You would help us, Father, to see all of the spiritual blessings that we have in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  Father, strengthen us, encourage us, renew our hope.  Father, may we bless You for it all.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.   

Let’s turn in our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1, as we look together at verses 3 to 14, Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 14.

One of the elders said to me before worship this morning, he said, “I don’t know how you’re going to preach on all of this.  We could be preaching until 6 o’clock tonight.”  Well, I won’t do that.  You could preach many, many sermons on this passage, but we’re going to look at these verses together today.  Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 14.

Here now God’s Word.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.  In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

“In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.  In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.”

People of God, one of the sweetest, most precious words in the Christian life has to be the word “grace.”  We sing about it often, don’t we?  So we sing songs like “Amazing Grace” or “Marvelous Grace of our Loving Lord” or “Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace.”  We cherish God’s grace.  We embrace God’s grace.  We love His grace.  As our own pastor has said in a podcast, he said: Every Christian of every stripe is for grace.  Almost everyone on the planet is going to be pro grace.”  That’s just a word that we like.  The Gospel is about grace.

It’s true, isn’t it?  I don’t know of anyone, I doubt that you know of anyone, who would say, “I’m anti-grace.”  You know anybody like that?  I don’t know anyone like that.  We are all for grace. 

At the heart of our theology is grace.  So we might talk about the doctrines of grace.  The Bible, of course, tells us about grace over and over and over again.  In the ESV, the word “grace” is used 131 times, mostly by Paul, the apostle of grace.  God’s grace is His underserved favor to us.  It teaches us that we deserve one thing from God, His wrath, His judgment, due to our sin, but we receive because of Christ something else – we receive His favor, we receive His grace.

When we talk about grace, the book of Ephesians is one of those books that teaches us many times about God’s grace.  It centers upon God’s grace.  We have that famous passage, for example, in Ephesians 2:8-10, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, for we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”  Wonderful text about grace.

The passage that we’re looking at this morning, too, is all about God’s grace.  It is a mural, as it were, of grace.  You’re kind of looking at this mural, this painting, and you see all these dimensions of grace in the painting.  Or maybe we could describe it like a diamond.  You hold up a diamond and you turn it and you see these various facets of the diamond.  In this passage, we see various facets of the grace of God, or as one author put it, this passage is about the grammar of grace.

If you wanted to describe grace, here’s how you would describe it.  The Apostle Paul in talking about God’s grace here gives us a long list of spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ. I don’t know if you heard it, but as we read the text this morning, over and over and over again, in Him, in Christ, in Him, over and over and over again, all of these spiritual blessings that Paul describes for us are true because of Jesus.

As Paul thinks about all of these blessings of grace, he just overflows with praise to God.  He can’t stop talking about these spiritual blessings.  You’ve not doubt heard this before, but in these verses, verses 3 to 14, there are no pauses, no periods.  If you went to the original language, no stops.  Paul gets on a roll.  Paul is hyperventilating as it were to describe the glories that we have been given in Christ Jesus.  All of this with an aim or a purpose, all of it so that we would overflow in praise to God for His glorious grace.

It’s really that line that provides the structure of this text.  In verse 6, Paul talks about to the praise of God’s glorious grace and connects this with spiritual blessings that are attributed primarily to our Father.  In verse 12 he talks about this line to the praise of His glory.  As he talks about spiritual blessings that are attributed primarily to the Son, and then in verse 14 he comes back to it one more time, to the praise of His glory, as he talks about spiritual blessings that are primarily attributed to the spirit.

What a way to begin 2025.  To just think, ponder, reflect, upon all these spiritual blessings that we have in Christ.  So, first of all this morning, spiritual blessings from the Father.  Verses 4 to 6.

The place where Paul begins is with the blessing of election.  So you see verses 3 and 4 – blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

The doctrine of election is found in that word “chose.”  He chose us in Him, election is God’s sovereign choice that out of all the fallen humanity, He would save some in His electing love.

Paul says this electing work of God, it all comes again, or is rooted in Christ.  He chose us in Him, in Christ.

John Stott puts it this way.  He says, “God puts us and Christ together in His mind.”  He chose us in Him.  God puts Christ and us together in His mind.  In other words, the ground of our election is not us, it’s Christ.  It’s not because God sees us and we’re good or something like that, it’s all rooted in Christ.  Christ alone.  This choice of God, it happened before the foundation of the world, Paul says.  God chose us before we ever lived, before we ever did anything, before we believed.  All of it happening way back in eternity, even before creation.

Doesn’t that highlight the fact that even in election, it is all of God’s grace?  It’s not about us.  It is about God.  It’s His grace that is at work in our salvation.  Paul says He chose us in Christ that we should be holy and blameless before Him.  This is the intent of election.  Election occurs not because we were holy and blameless but so that we might be holy and blameless, so that the lives that we live in light of God’s electing and saving love to us would lead us to a transformed life.  We would not be the same.  But by the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, we would be holy and blameless people.

All of this is incredibly humbling, isn’t it?  This is all of God.  His love for us before the foundations of the earth.  All of it leading to the praise you see of His glorious grace.

Well, not only is there election, but Paul goes on to speak about adoption as another blessing.  Adoption, it builds on election.  You see this spoken about by Paul in verse 5.  If election means to be chosen by God, then adoption means to be chosen to become a member of the family of God.  Adoption adds intimacy to the doctrine of election.  In adoption we are given the Father’s name.  We become possessors of the Father’s inheritance.  All of it is ours. 

It’s just like what happened to some of you when you may have adopted a child into your family and that child didn’t belong to your family but you take them in and they belong.  They’re not second class family members.  They belong in every way to the family that you’ve brought them into.

That’s what God does for us.  You can see that adoption, too, flows from God’s love, because it says there in verses 4 and 5, in love He predestined us for adoption.  He did this in love.  It’s the love of the Father in adoption that allows us to have a familial relationship with God.  He’s our Father.  We are His sons, we are His daughters, we are His children.

I love how the Apostle John puts this in 1 John 3:1, when he says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God.”  Then he tacks this on, and this is the part that always just strikes me when I read this in the Scriptures, “and so we are.”  It’s like the Apostle Paul wants to say to us, “I want to remind you that God’s love is so great that you are children, but hey, just in case you forget it, let me just say it one more time, and so we are.”  If you doubt it, just come back to that line, “and so we are.”  We, indeed, are the children of God.  We have been adopted by God.  There’s one of the great spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms, in the heavenly places, that we have been given.

All of this again due to our union with Christ.  For as verse 6 says, “we are blessed in the beloved.”  That’s Jesus.  We’re blessed in the beloved.  In Christ.

So we have these wonderful blessings from our Father.  There are also blessings that come through the Son.  This is verses 7 to 10.  The first one that Paul lists here is redemption, verse 7:  In Him we have redemption through His blood.

The word “redemption” is simply a word that comes out of the ancient world that is connected with a concept of what happened to slaves.  When a slave was bought out of slavery, was bought into freedom, they were redeemed.  A ransom was paid.  They experienced what redemption is all about, from slavery to freedom, redemption.

Paul says we have redemption in Christ.  Our redemption, it comes through Christ’s blood.  His blood is our ransom.  It is the price, it is the sum that was paid for us to be released from our slavery to sin and death, and given freedom to serve God.  From slaves to free people, from bondage to freedom.

People of God, that’s an important concept when we just think about how we see ourselves.  How do you think about yourself?  How do you look at yourself?  How do you consider yourself?  How do you go about living?

Some of us might live as slaves because when it comes to our sin, this is the way we think about our sin.  We say to ourselves, “I really can’t help it, I can’t do anything about it.  It’s my master.  It has dominion over me.  It’s powerful.  I can’t resist it.”  If we live that way, we’re living like slaves.  We’re saying we’re in bondage and that’s just the way that it is.

But that’s not how we’re called to live.  We’re called to live as those who have been redeemed.  To live saying “I can serve God, I have been set free, I need to resist going back to slave life.  Who is my master?  It is Jesus.  He is my Lord.  He is the one that I have been set free to serve.  I am not in bondage.”  Yes, sin is still there, it nips at our heels all the time, but Paul says we have been redeemed.  In Him, we have redemption through His blood.

Our assurance of pardon the text will use this morning is a great reminder to us of this.  Peter writes to Christians and says you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

You were ransomed.  Not saying you hope to be ransomed, he says you were ransomed.  It’s true if you are in Christ this morning.  That’s something you have to hope for, something that is a reality.  Every one of us this morning who is in Christ, we come here this morning as sinners, we come here as sufferers, but don’t forget we are also saints.  That is our deepest identity.  We are saints.  We have been set free.  We have redemption.  Our redemption and forgiveness, all of it comes through the riches of God’s grace.

That’s where Paul leads us, from redemption to the forgiveness of sins.  Redemption frees us from sin’s power, no longer rules over us.  Forgiveness frees us from sin’s stain.  In redemption the power of sin is broken, in forgiveness the stain of sin is erased.  That’s what Psalm 32, also used that in our service this morning, reminds us of.  Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered.  Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord has not counted against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.

The great thing about Psalm 32 is Psalm 32 is not describing so much an objective state, objectively it  is blessed to have your sins forgiven.  We could say, “Yep, that’s a true fact.”  But what Psalm 32 is doing more is describing the experience of forgiveness.  When it says “blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is covered,” it’s not just saying, “Oh, yeah, I can agree with that.  That is true.”  It’s really saying when your sins are forgiven, when your transgressions are covered, ahhh, you know how good that feels?  There is such blessing that comes to you.

Just a few weeks ago I was touching up a few spots on the walls of our house with paint, a few smudges, a few scratches, a few stains.  There’s really something satisfying about covering up all those marks and you look at the wall and it looks completely clean.  Things are fresh again.  People of God, that’s what forgiveness is like in a sense, but really it’s more than that.  Because it’s not just about the fact that the stain of sin is covered, but the stain of sin is removed.  I was just covering over stuff.  Forgiveness doesn’t just cover over our sins.  Forgiveness removes them.

The prophet Micah said it like this in Micah 7.  He said, “Our sins are thrown into the depths of the sea.”  So go out to the middle of Lake Norman, toss something overboard, and it goes down into the depths, into the blackness of the water.  You can’t see it.  It’s sunk to the bottom.  The prophet Micah says that is what forgiveness is like, that God takes our sins and He tosses them overboard into the depths of the sea and they go down and they go down and they go down.  You peer into that dark water and you say, “Where are they?  Where have they gone?”  Gone forever.

Again, all of this redemption, forgiveness, all of it comes in accordance with the riches of His grace, Paul says.  It’s all due to this grace which He has lavished on us.  He’s poured it out in abundance.  It’s like a dump truck full.  God pours out His mercy.  In chapter 2, Paul will say God is rich in mercy.

Sinclair Ferguson said sometimes we are suspicious of God.  We don’t trust.  We doubt His goodness.  We taste a little of the sweetness of His grace and then we come to this line, “the riches of His grace.”  The riches of them.  Overflowing, abundant.  Ferguson says when we come to that line, it should dissolve our paralyzing fears, our cringing doubt, and our suspicious unbelief.  Hopefully, those things vanish away in the light of the fact that God has lavished His grace upon us in redemption and forgiveness.

There’s one other benefit here, one other blessing that we have through Jesus, and that is the revelation of God’s will in Christ.  So Paul puts it like this in verses 7 and 8: He has lavished on us all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ.

What Paul is saying there is like a close friend or a confidant, God reveals to us what He is doing in history and time in Christ.  You might say, well, what is all that about?  Well, this line “the mystery of His will,” it’s a line that Paul uses, especially that line “mystery,” it’s a word that Paul uses more often in the book of Ephesians.  Mystery in Ephesians is about this, it is about something that at one time was hidden but now has been revealed.  So when Paul is talking about mystery, he’s not talking about some sort of secret that only a few people know.  He’s talking about some concept, some truth, that at one time was hidden but now has been revealed, or made known.  He talks in chapter 5 about the mystery of marriage.  When he’s talking about the mystery of marriage, as husbands and wives we might say yeah, there’s a lot of mystery in marriage.  There’s a lot of mystery in my wife or a lot of mystery in my husband.  Of course, that’s not what Paul is saying.

When Paul talks about mystery in marriage, what he’s talking about is that we didn’t always see but now we do that marriage really is a picture of the relationship of Christ and the Church.  That’s the mystery of marriage.  One time we didn’t really see that so much, but it’s been revealed to us that Christian marriage is a picture of the Gospel, the relationship that Christ has with His bride.

Here in Ephesians 1, the mystery is this.  Verse 10.  God is going about to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven, and things on earth.  Paul is saying that one blessing we’ve been given in Jesus is to see, to understand, that God is uniting all things under the reign of Christ.  That’s what God is up to in our world and in our time and always has been and will be. 

In Ephesians, what’s going to become clear, if you were to go later on in this book, is that the way that God is doing that is that He will bring together Jew and Gentile.  He’ll unite them together in Christ.  We say, well, what’s the big deal about that?  We have all kinds of different people here this morning.  Well, it was a huge problem and barrier in the early Church.  It was hidden.  You really couldn’t see that that was God’s purpose.

If you go back to the Old Testament, for example, you see just a smattering here or there of Gentiles coming into the community of faith.  But Paul says now that has been revealed to us.  Jew and Gentile part of God’s family.

But it’s not just Jew and Gentile, it’s all things.  Everything on earth and heaven.  Every person, every nation, every power, every principality, even the devil himself brought under the lordship of Christ.  He will bow to Christ along with everyone and everything.

This was what God is doing in time and this is what God intends to do through us, the Church.  As we call people to come under the lordship and headship of Christ, we call people to bow to Jesus, we call ourselves, we speak to one another and teach one another and encourage one another to more and more surrender our own lives to the rule of Christ.  We work in the world in our jobs to give evidence that this world belongs to Jesus.  All of this part of His redemptive work.  Not just for individuals and their salvation, but part of a sweeping cosmic submission to the rule of King Jesus.

We get to see that.  We get to know that.  That’s one of the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places that God has revealed this to us, that this is what He is doing.  This is what we are to be a part of as God’s family. 

Finally, there are blessings that come by the Spirit.  This was what Paul covers in verses 11 to 14.  We have the blessing of the sealing of the Spirit, verse 13, Paul says.  Paul says when you believed in Him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.  The seal there simply means a mark of authenticity or a mark of ownership. 

Sometimes we get a letter in the mail and it has a seal on it.  That seal says this letter is authentic.  Maybe, I hope you don’t get this, but maybe you get a letter from the CMP police department, you have a traffic violation.  You see the seal on there and that seal tells you that your best friend didn’t fake this letter out to you and play a dirty trick on you, you got a traffic violation.  No, it came from the police department.  

Or you’re in the store and you buy a bottle of hot sauce and it has a seal.  If you get home and the seal is broken, you bring it back.  You say, “I’m not going to eat that stuff.”  That seal also tells you that somebody didn’t just make that in their basement, put it on the store shelf and try to sell it.  No, it’s authentic.  It’s real.  It came from the factory.  It’s good.  You can eat it.  You’ll be fine.  It’s true, it’s real.

Paul is telling us here that the gift of the person of the Holy Spirit is the authentication that we are the Lord’s, to be sealed with the promised Holy Spirit tells us that we belong to God.  We need to be reminded of that.  We ought to be looking for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Sometimes we wonder, sometimes we doubt, do I really belong to the Lord?  We look at our lives.  We say there’s not a lot of evidence some days.  We just ask ourselves the question – do you have the Spirit?  Can I see the Spirit at work in my life?  Do I love what God loves?  Not in perfection, of course.  Do I hate what God hates?  Do I desire what God wants in my life?  And if so, you can see the evident is the Holy Spirit in your life and know that you belong to God.

He’s also called here in verse 14 the guarantee of our inheritance.  Or some translations put it a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.  If you buy a house or you buy a car, you might put down a down payment.  That down payment is a guarantee.  It is a promise.  What you’re saying in putting the down payment down upon that house or upon that car is hey, by the way, next month there’ll be another payment and after that another one.  I actually will keep paying until the full payment is paid, until all the payments come in. 

Paul when he’s telling us that the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, he’s simply saying that the Spirit is the promise, that the full payments will be made to us as it were by God.  Having the Spirit is a pledge that the fullness of God’s promises will come, they will be ours.  We might ask ourselves this morning the full payments of what.  What is the Spirit a guarantee of?  Well, Paul gives us the answer there in verse 14.  He says He’s the guarantee of our inheritance.

This final blessing that we’ll look at this morning that is ours, the spiritual blessing that is ours in Christ.  Not just “an” inheritance Paul says here, but he says “our” inheritance.  In other words, he wants us to know it’s ours, that our name is on it, that this is something that is real, that is true, that we can count on. 

The Holy Spirit present guarantee that we will receive our full inheritance one day, our inheritance being our heavenly home, our inheritance being as Lloyd-Jones called it the glory.  It’s ours.  We don’t have it yet.  It’s coming.  We haven’t acquired possession of it, Paul says, but it is ours.  We can count on it.  It is the culmination of all that Paul has been describing and talking about here in Ephesians 1.

Back into eternity is our election, but on into eternity the fullness of God’s love.  We are adopted now, but what a day is coming when we will be reunited with the Father to live with Him in His presence forever.  In Him we have redemption and forgiveness.  But there’s a day coming when there won’t be any sin to deal with at all.  Sin will be past.  No temptations to wrestle with as the enemy of our souls is destroyed once and for all.

He has made known to us His will, but then to see it fully revealed and to know as we have been known, and then finally to enter the Promised Land, the fair and blessed country, the home of God’s elect, the celestial city, the New Jerusalem, and there to see the Lamb face-to-face in all of His glory.

We’re not there yet, but we don’t have to wonder whether we’re included in the will, for the spiritual blessing of the Holy Spirit is that He is the deposit guaranteeing that we are, indeed, heirs.  We are heirs, friends.  It is ours.  Just have to wait to possess it.

So as we conclude this morning, do you see what Paul is doing here in this text?  Paul is just laying out one layer upon another of the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ.  In this new year, today, all of this is ours in Christ Jesus, and all of it to lead us to bless God. 

Again, how does Paul say it?  He says all of this to the praise of His glorious grace, all of this to the prase of His glory, all of this to the praise of His glory.

So what would be a fitting way to end this sermon?  Wouldn’t it be to praise God together?  Let’s do that.  Let’s stand.  We opened the service this morning holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.  We’ll just take that first verse.  Let’s sing the praises to Him one more time.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed trinity.

We do praise your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for all the spiritual blessings that we have received.  Blessings that are in the heavenly places, these blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.  Father, what an additional blessing You give us this morning now to come, to taste, to see, to touch, to smell the bread and the juice a reminder of the shed blood and broken body of our Lord Jesus Christ.  So as we come to this table, feed us.  We pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.