Gifts of Grace: In Christ

This is the 2nd part of a sermon series on the book of Ephesians. My prayer is the same as Paul’s, that your life might be for the praise of God’s glory (Eph. 1:12)

In my first sermon of 2008 ("Quit Trying, and Start Living!") I said that we get frustrated by trying to muster up a Spirit-filled life when really it’s up to the Spirit to produce that in us. If we muster it up, it’s work; if the Spirit brings it to us, it’s a gift. More than that, I quoted a much-beloved professor of mine in seminary who said that it’s not a matter of how much of the Spirit we have in us, but rather how much of us the Spirit has in him. In him. In Jesus. In the mind of God.

Therein lies the central message for today.

Ephesians 1

Commentary

These verses are a kind of Jewish praise called a berakhah, which is praise to God in the form "Praise be to God, who has done …" (e.g. Psalms 66:20, 68:19, 72:18, 124:6, and 144:1.) This is a berakhah to the Trinity; the end of each section is marked by the phrase "the praise of his glorious grace."

v3-6 Praise to the Father. These verses describe a heavenly reality outside of the world in which we live. God’s choice of us (v5) and plans for us (v6) in the heavenly realm are not constrained by worldly time. Because of God’s plans, he will bless us with holiness (v4), blamelessness (v4), and full rights as a his child (v5).

Calvin says the phrase "in Christ" (v3) is a 2nd confirmation of the freedom of election (the 1st being that it took place before creation). How is this freedom?

v7-12 Praise to the Son. The spiritual blessings continue: redemption (v7), forgiveness (v7), revelation (v9), election (v11), and objects of God’s glory (v12). If the Father has predestined us, then what sustains us is the Son, through his blood (v7) and his headship (v10).

Of all the big, fancy theological words in this passage, a simple word like mystery is the key. In the NT, the word doesn’t mean something mysterious or spooky, but rather something known to God but hidden from us until it is revealed at the proper time. How does that sense of the word fit in here? What is revealed?

v13-14 Praise to the Spirit. The spiritual blessings continue with the continual presence of the Spirit as a promise of life to come (v14). If the Father has predestined us, then the guarantee, the assurance, is the reality of the Spirit at work in us.

"In Christ"

"For if we are chosen in Christ, it is outside ourselves. It is not from the sight of our deserving, but because our heavenly Father has engrafted us, through the blessing of adoption, into the Body of Christ. In short, the name of Christ excludes all merit, and everything which men have of themselves; for when he says that we are chosen in Christ, it follows that in ourselves we are unworthy." — John Calvin

Application

Have you ever bought a gift—say a birthday or Christmas gift—for you beloved far ahead of when you planned to give the gift? Did your beloved ever do anything to sour the relationship before the gift was given? What did you do? Did you return the gift and get your money back, or did you give the gift anyway, expecting that the relationship would eventually right itself?

We can never know how a soured relationship is going to turn out; but if we could, if we could see the end from the beginning, we’d know our beloved better than they know themselves. For some, we would know everything would turn out OK in the end, and it would be easy to deal with the trials along the way. For others, we would know that the relationship would never recover, but we would be free to love the person just the same. [1]

I wonder if God’s foreknowledge and election isn’t something like this.

Election (which simply implies a free choice—just like a presidential election) and foreknowledge (i.e., preordination—determining something beforehand) are $2 theological words, and while reasonable Christians can disagree about what these words (human words that at best speak metaphorically about God) suggest, there are a few things we should be able to agree on:

God does not elect those he foreknows to be saints. That would be like betting on a fixed horserace, knowing in advance who is going to win. Rather, God elects, and (because he has elected) he preordains (foreknows) them to be saints. Truly, if God is for you, who can be against you?

God’s election of some does not prevent God from loving all. That would not be very Biblical (1 John 4:7-21) and it’s not a God any loving person would want to serve.

Most of the rest of our notions of how election & foreknowledge work are metaphors. We would do well not to push the limits of our metaphors and conclude that only our interpretation is correct. The Wikipedia article on predestination is a good overview.

The sculptor, Michelangelo, was once asked how it was that he could create such beautiful works. "It's very simple," he answered. "When I look at a block of marble, I see the sculpture inside it. All I have to do is remove what doesn't belong." Likewise, you have existed in the mind of God before the creation of the world. All of God’s spiritual blessings—and how you receive them—gradually unveil God’s mystery of who you are and who you have been called to be. [2] You are in Christ, in the mind of God. Now relax ...

Points to Ponder

Think of all the spiritual blessings in this passage—holiness, blamelessness, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, revelation, election, God’s glory, guarantee (what else am I missing?): how many of these can you manufacture on your own?

Where have you been ignoring God’s gifts while trying to manufacture your own? (Isn’t that just a little vain?)

End Notes

1 - Therein lies forgiveness. Maybe it’s an ex, or a former boyfriend/girlfriend, or a parent in poor mental health. Where have you been able to forgive the other person in a broken relationship and, consequently, been free to love them unreservedly? Where do you need to do this?

2 - Of course, this is where God’s election runs up against your free will. Strong Calvinists will infer from passages like Romans 9:10-21 that free will counts for nothing. According to Calvin, God’s chosen (the elect) he loves with perfect love, and the rest (the non-elect, or reprobates) he hates with perfect hate. Again, I think that is to take a metaphor and stretch if beyond what it was intended to do. The aforementioned verses, for example, and the Isaiah and Exodus passages they reference, have more to do with God’s timing and the types of gifts he confers (sometimes chastisement may be his choice of gifts) than unconditional election and damnation of individuals.

Our Puritan forebears were strong Calvinists; they claimed that one could live a long life without being certain of being one of the elect. Merit counted for nothing. They hoped for a moment of revelation: the assurance of saving grace. While modern evangelicalism has emphasized free will and human decision, I reiterate that both theologies—hyper-Calvinism on one hand and total free will on the other (Arminianism)—are only metaphors of what God (and we!) are doing on a spiritual, heavenly plane of existence. One last note: while you may disagree with your Puritan forebears about predestination, they claimed that it gave them great peace to know that God was in control in a turbulent, and changing, world. Maybe there is a lesson there for us.