Heavenly Blessing : Adoption & Grace

Transcription

1 Heavenly Blessing : Adoption & Grace Ephesians 1:1-8 Ephesians 1:1 2 Opening Remarks Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. They may just be opening comments but they are infused with theology in the very first remarks in the letter. Paul establishes himself as an apostle (gifted messenger) appointed by God. It has very similar overtones to the nature of Jesus as the sent one from God, Paul establishes his credentials to the church in Ephesus. They are of course known to him, he would be seen as a father in the faith to this church, even although this letter was probably a round robin. Apostles are not self appointed, there is a sense that God has called them and released them into their role. God s holy people or saints are holy because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus (cf. Rom. 4; II Cor. 5:21). It is God s will that they live holy lives (cf. 1:4; 4:1; 5:27; Col. 1:22; 3:12). Believers are both declared holy (positional sanctification) and called to lifestyle holiness (progressive sanctification). Justification and sanctification must be affirmed together!" (Utley) The saints are "faithful" - "Biblical faith is a series of human choices repentance, faith, obedience, and perseverance." Utley There is a flow of grace and peace from the Father and the Son that he sent. Christ was sent to earth as a demonstration of grace to bring the peace of heaven, so Paul prays over the church the very qualities of heaven, the operation of grace and peace. Charismatics are supposed to define themselves by grace (charis), the grace people who are bringers of peace. "Theologically, God s grace precedes human peace!" Utley Heavenly Blessings v3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The letter opens with a prayer, which lays out vital themes. In a sense the prayer is like a creedal statement, it makes assertions and declarations about our nature, purpose and destiny. The focus of our blessing is the Father the context of our blessing is in christ or as the NLT says unity with Christ. We focus our praise and our attention on the Father of Jesus. We bless the ultimate blesser! This is a lavish God, generous, abundant. We are totally blessed in with all the resources of heaven. Not only is the apostle releasing grace and peace, he is now releasing the blessing of heaven. Apostles are supposed to connect us

2 to heavenly reality, here in v3 he is releasing a reality of understanding about the abundance of the heavenly realm. The NT doesn t really focus on the idea of you getting into heaven, it is more about getting heaven into you! in heavenly places a phrase five times found in this letter (Eph 1:20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12). Jesus enables us to have our citizenship is in heaven (Php 3:20), where our High Priest is ever blessing us. Our treasures are in heaven (Mt 6:20, 21); our aims and affections (Col 3:1, 2); our hope (Col 1:5; Tit 2:13); our inheritance all heavenward (1Pe 1:4). We need to get the idea that Paul wanted to convey to us that the heavenly places is our principle address, the source of our life, the place where the blessings flow from. 'Heavenly realms refers to all that God's Spirit brings to enable life the focus of this text is the present enjoyment of God's gifts" (Snodgrass). 'every spiritual blessing' - The word for blessing is where we get our word 'eulogy', literally blessing is speaking well of someone. So the sense of this verse is that we speak well of God who speaks well of us. But it is more than just good speech. The blessing of God is tangible, we have a huge resevoir of blessing in the spiritual heavenly realms. This is real blessing, something that is good for us and overflowing. the nature of the spiritual blessings here referred to are not in doubt : they include election to holiness, instatement as God's sons and daughters, redemption and forgiveness, the gift of the Spirit and the hope of glory enjoyed in the heavenly realms" (FF Bruce) We get to benefit from these heavenly blessings by the Spirit (1:13-14), expressed in a unity in Christ with the body of the church. Bruce : 'God grants his people every spiritual blessing - from eternal election to eternal glory' Adoption v4-5 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will These verses convey an incredible truth about our adoption into the family of God. 'chose us in him' - God chose humanity, in particular Abraham to be the seed of his people, salvation is God taking the initiative. It is worth just thinking a little about this incredible election of saints. Election is God s sovereign work of choice (cf. Rom. 8:30; Eph. 1:11; 1 Thes. 1:4; 2 Thes. 2:13; Titus 1:1). Salvation is God s doing, not man s (Eph. 2:8-9). Though it is an act of grace (Rom. 11:5-6; 2 Tim. 1:9), based on His will (Eph. 1:5, 9, 11), a person is still responsible to believe (v. 13). God chose you to be saved through belief in the truth (2 Thes. 2:13).

3 Where we get ourselves stuck on "election" is when we think about it in the individual context, we reduce a sovereign choice to save humanity into the world of individualism. Actually election is about a corporate identity, nothing in Eph 1 focusses on the individual it is all corporate. "Individuals are not elected and then put in Christ. They are in Christ and therefore elect" (Snodgrass) 'before the foundation of the world' - it is an eternal plan to have a people chosen by God. This election was before all creation! We could think from this that it was all a stitch up before creation and that we are doomed to sin! This would be to box God into our human understanding. This is not really about a thought of God before he created earth, no, it is that "God's purposes are rooted in the depths of his nature" (Snodgrass), it was always God's aim and plan to have a people, be in community. What we experience now as the community of God is the eternal plan of God for us. 'holy without blame' - the whole point of a community of God is that we take on the very character of the father of the family, no sin to get in the way, our status is made holy, looking like Christ. This is the very purpose of the election of God, to be like him. Holiness is about looking like the Father (1 Peter 1:15-16). 'in love' - this is the way that God does everything, there is no other motivation of the divine. There is some debate about where the 'in love' should go, before the predestination of v5 'in love he predestined us' (ESV, NIV) or welcomed before him 'in love', or as the NLT says 'God loved us' or message 'made holy by his love'. In a way it doesn t really matter, God does everything out of his motivation of love! predestined us - there was a divine choosing of us (cf Rom 9). We are probably not talking about some ultra determined future, but rather the idea that God's covenant to his people still stands. The election of believers as children is the plan, rather than some exclusive list of people, although I am well able to believe that God has destined every believer by name. It seems a bit inconceivable that the God that wants all to be saved has some secret list of who are in and those who are out, doesn t sound like his nature from a human perspective! Individual or Corporate? Predestination probably prefigures election, but again is it important? The Jewish people were predestined to be the children of God, does that mean every one of them or a race of people? The Church is now predestined to be the children of God, every individual or as a collective. In the emphasis of personal faith we have lost the idea of the collective, our predestination and election is together as believers, the plural 'us' is used all the time in this passage. In our highly individualised worlds we struggle with the concept that we may be part of the collective love of God to the whole of us. Ultely says 'individualism has turned this inclusive, corporate emphasis into an exclusive, personalized, individual focus', it is vital to watch out that we don t take a biblical truth out of context from other biblical truth, we tend to polarise things and then emphasise only one side eg predestination vs. human free will. We tend not to be very good at holding tension.

4 'adopted to sonship' - this is the aim of our destiny, to be fully his sons, inheritors of all the blessings of God (Rom. 8:15, 23; 9:4; Gal. 4:5). A Roman father had the legal right to disinherit natural children, but not adopted children, this reflects the believer s security in Christ (cf. 2:5, 9; John 6:37, 39; 10:28) Being part of the family was the plan all along (Rom 8:29), born by the Spirit (Rom 8:23), the whole world is waiting for the sons of God to realise the reality of their calling (Rom 8:19) we are getting an increasing realisation of our sonship now (Rom 8:15-16) so we can cry daddy! When believers are adopted they become "co heirs" with Jesus (Rom 8:17) 'according to his will' - there is no sense of a stingy God here, this is about the generosity of the love of God the Father, it was his huge pleasure to bring us into his family. Grace v6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, glorious grace - Bruce says 'he has "be-graced" them, Peterson says he wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son', grace is a lavish gift giving, it is permanent Christmas. The calling out of destiny, the choosing out of love, the adoption of sons all speaks of a loving lavish Father, it causes us to celebrate the extravagant nature of God (his glory), a resevoir of mercy and love (grace).. When we talk about grace we are talking about a river of love cascading from the heavenly paces. The Grace of God is described as part of the lavish riches of heaven (Paul refers to riches 6 times in Eph 1:7, 18; 2:4, 7; 3:8, 16). These spiritual blessings have life changing dimensions. Bruce translates this as 'wealth of grace". It is this grace that 'makes us acceptable', it is this act of love that embraces us in the arms of his grace (Ro 3:24; 5:15) 'redemption through his blood' - redemption was to buy it back, a deliverance from something, in our case a deliverance from a state of slavery. If a man became a slave the OT allowed for him to be bought out of slavery by a brother (Le 25:48), so Jesus becomes our brother to redeem us (Mt 20:28). The blood payment was built into the Hebraic sacrificial system to pay for our deliverance, Jesus paid the price that divine justice demanded (Ac 20:28; Ro 3:25; 1Co 6:20; Col 1:20; 1Pe 1:18, 19), He died in our place for our sin (cf. Gen. 3:15; Isa. 53; Rom. 3:25; 5:9; Eph. 2:13; Col. 1:20; Heb. 9:22). 'forgiveness of sin' - forgiveness means literally a 'sending away'. On the Day of Atonement there were two scapegoats involved in the yearly ritual of Lev. 16, one was sent away, symbolically carrying away Israel s sins (cf. Ps. 103:12; Isa. 1:18; 38:17; 44:22; Jer. 31:44; and Micah 7:14); the other was sacrificed, symbolizing the fact that sin costs a life. Jesus took fallen mankind s sin away by dying in their place (cf. Col. 1:14) thus combining the two meanings [Utley]. 'lavished on us' means over and over again or some translations say abound. This was no once off event, no the effects of this love-overflow was continual. In the same way that

5 we are to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit, so we are to experience the overflow of the lavish grace of God. This overflow is not just about experience, it is to give us 'wisdom and prudence' or insight/ understanding. Getting to grips with the nature of spiritual things requires us to have some degree of spiritual understanding. The wisdom that is talked about is introducing us to the idea of the insight into the divine plan of God (sophia cf. v. 17; 3:10; Col. 1:9, 28; 2:3, 23; 3:16; 4:5), the understanding (phronēsei) is about how God makes that plan happen or as Peterson says 'letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making' Skevington Wood - "insight is the understanding that leads to right action" Bruce - 'Grace is a quality which requires personal relationships for its exercise"