The Christian Identity

Ephesians as the Answer to the Big Questions of Life

Please take your Bibles with me and turn to Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1. We'll be looking at the first 14 verses. Paul's letter to the Ephesians. These are the words of God.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 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, 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.

Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in the Beloved. 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 times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him.

In him we also have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. That we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.

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.

Well, let us pray. Almighty, gracious Father, since our whole salvation depends on our true understanding of your holy word, grant that our hearts, freed from worldly affairs, may hear and understand your holy word with all diligence and faith, so that we may rightly discern your gracious will, cherish it, and live by it with all earnestness, to your praise and honor through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Please be seated. Well, as I was preparing for this sermon here today, I felt a little bit like Jude, the writer of the letter of Jude. You may remember in his letter that he starts out that he was diligent to write concerning our common salvation, but he found it necessary to write to you exhorting to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

Well, I had intended to come and preach on something entirely different today. Specifically, I was going to preach on financial stewardship or stewardship more broadly. But today, being traditionally known as Reformation Sunday, I didn't think that that was necessarily a fitting topic to bring up on this day.

I found it necessary, that is, to preach on another topic, a topic that I think was at the heart of the Reformation and also foundational to all stewardship. And I hope that we will be able to see the connections to the truths of our Reformation, sorry, to the truths of the Reformation and our common salvation.

Christianity is about facts. This is sometimes lost or forgotten or misunderstood, but Christianity gives an accounting of the way things really are. It answers the big questions that have always been asked from generation to generation.

They include, they may not be limited to this, but they include what is wrong with the world? How did it come to be this way? What can be done to make it right? And what is my part in it? These big questions we've seen answered historically through all sorts of movements in communism and socialism, fascism and all sorts of tyranny.

But we can even observe in our own day that they're being answered by the current culture in what we might call neocommunism, the climate change cult, feminism, or just about every other ism there may be out there.

They all claim to have identified the answer to these questions. They are, in short,.

False.

Gospels. They are attempting to answer the things that only the true gospel can address. Naturally, Christianity also claims to have answers to these questions, but as previously referenced, unlike the claims of communism, climate change, feminism, and others, Christianity has the true facts.

And we should not wonder this, for after all, we worship one who is the truth. We have his word, which is the truth. And just a cursory view of some verses from John's gospel will reinforce this for us.

Starting in John 1, 14, we have this, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and.

Truth.

John 8, 32 says this, as our Lord speaking, and you shall know the truth, he said, and the truth will set you free. John 17, 17, Jesus again said, sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. And then, of course, there's John 14, 6, and Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

The answers to these questions are answered in the gospel. What is wrong with the world? It is impacted by sin. That man is sinful, and the created order is impacted by sin. How did it come to be this way?

Our first federal head. And when we hear the word federal, we shouldn't think bloated, overreaching, or tyrannical. We only think that because our federal government are all those things. But federal.

Means.

Covenantal. Our first covenantal head, or our first covenantal representative, Adam, sinned when he disobeyed God in the garden. When he did so, he plunged the world in the created order into sin, misery, and death.

What can be done to make it right? Well, by us, nothing. But what has been done to make it right is that God sent the second Adam, our second federal head, the Lord Jesus Christ, to succeed where Adam failed.

And not only that, to be the propitiation for our sins, to bear our sins and the penalty of them in his death on the cross. This was gloriously ratified by his resurrection, and he has made a new creation, and he makes his blessings flow, far as the curse is found.

And what is our part in it? You can be a partaker in his new creation by faith in Christ and the work that he has done, or as we say in shorthand, by repenting and.

Believing.

But there's another question that has plagued mankind for generations as well, and it is often tied to those questions already noted, and that is the question of identity. Who am I? What is my identity?

Who am I,.

Really?

We see this in our own day and age, perhaps in a way not seen before, where everywhere we turn, identity comes up, either in identity politics or identity economics or masses of people looking to where they belong.

Where do I belong? What is my identity? We see some answers to these questions offered today. Your identity is tied to your skin color, or your sex or gender, your national origin, perhaps who you may be attracted to sexually.

And men and women go to great lengths for identity, medicating themselves, having radical altering surgeries, forcing the government to use the power of law enforcement to make people recognize them for who they are not.

Identity and the quest for it is front and center in our day. Well, this should prompt three questions. First, is identity important? Second, does Christianity answer this question? And third, what is the answer?

Well, as we will see, identity is not only important, it is extremely important. That all of this quest for identity today is not barking up the wrong tree, but it is absolutely essential. The second question, does Christianity have an answer?

Simply put, yes. And the answer to that we can sum up as this. In Him, in Christ, in the Beloved, that is our identity. The New Testament references our identity in Christ over 118 times. And our text today, which we read, references it some seven times.

Paul's letter to the Ephesians is a wonderful book. It gives, as one man once said, the most concise breakdown of the gospel. Romans would be the most complete. The first three chapters contain the indicatives of the faith, those facts that we touched on, the things that are to be believed, the things that are.

The second three chapters, the second half of the book, contain a pair of imperatives. In the light of the facts, what must we do? Or because these things are true, how then shall we live? I know we hear indicatives and imperatives quite often, so I'll make it simple for those who may be struggling with the idea.

An indicative is a statement of fact. For example, this is a pulpit. An imperative would be stand at the pulpit. So an indicative is a fact. Imperative is command. Paul wrote this letter to the church at Ephesus.

We do not know what prompted him to write this, as we do with the Corinthian letters or with Romans. But we do know that Paul, under the power of the Holy Spirit, opened his letter with perhaps the most astonishing and breathtaking statements ever stated.

It gives us the reality of the Christian. When we come to these verses so often, we often read them and it goes, the astonishment of it, the breathtaking nature of it goes right over our heads. One man once said, and he was referring to the book of Ephesians, said that we ought to come to the Bible as if this is the first time that we are hearing this.

And the challenge he gave for this book is imagine yourself as a new convert in Ephesus, and you received word that a letter from the great apostle Paul has been received, received. The founding pastor of the church, and it was going to be read that evening in the service.

And that you come to the service, and as you sit down, you are hearing these words for the first time, as they stand in front and read, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, we know that this is a, or told, that this is a common way of letters in the first century to be written, where the author is not identified at the end, but rather in the beginning.

And as you're sitting there in that first century church of Ephesus, Paul, and you can almost feel the excitement,.

Brewing,.

An apostle of Jesus Christ to the saints who are in Ephesus. That's, that would be us, or then, back then it would be them. And he gives that very familiar grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

The grace that saved us, the peace that we have now with God. But he continues, 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.

It is fitting for Paul to open this letter with blessed. It is nothing short of worship, praise, and thanksgiving for the God who has blessed us. And we should bless God. And we should be thankful and we should worship and bow down and kneel before the Lord, our maker.

For he is the author of our salvation. But then Paul says this, blessed be us. I'm sorry. He says this, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. This is nothing short than a benediction being placed upon us.

Where God, the one who is to be blessed, turns to his people and blesses them. And not just a little but with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And when we hear spiritual, we shouldn't think airy fairy blessings that have no impact on us in our daily lives.

We shouldn't be practical dualists that think that our spiritual life is completely separate from our life here and now. And we hear the word blessing, there are several things that may come to our mind.

Perhaps first that comes to our mind would be what we call the Aaronic Blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

This is a benediction of God's favor to be placed upon us. And this is part of every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We also may be thinking of the blessings of what I call the blessings of not that we have in Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. Not only does God bestow favor upon us, but he restrains us as part of his blessing.

We also may bring to mind that long list of blessings in Deuteronomy 28, where the overflow of the blessings come in to our material world in our lives. When we think of God's blessings, we should think as David drew for us in Psalm 23, our cup overflows.

The God's blessing isn't just enough where it goes up to the top of the glass. It is overflowing and flows throughout. And every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is in Christ. That's our identity.

These blessings do not come to anybody who is not in Christ. And they overflow upon us. And one of the things, and as Paul goes through the rest of this section of our text, we're going to see blessing upon blessing upon blessing.

And the first blessing that we see just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. That's a spiritual blessing that he has chosen us before the foundation of the world. God was not surprised by the fall.

He didn't come up with a plan B, but before the foundation of the world he chose us in Christ as a spiritual blessing. But note the object of our choosing. The object of our choosing is that we would be holy and without blame before him in love.

That's what we were chosen for. That is also a spiritual blessing that God gives us. But Paul continues, "...having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in the beloved.".

That word predestined is one that we're all very familiar with. If you identify yourself as a Reformed Christian, or a Christian who adheres to Reformed theology, or as we might say, you're a biblical Christian, the word predestined will come up.

And as great a topic as that is to dive into, we're just going to state it simply that that means that our destiny was determined.

In advance.

That our destiny that God has given us has been determined in advance, and there are only two destinations. Either heaven, the new heavens, and the earth, and the presence of God, or hell, and eternal.

Damnation.

There are no other destinations. And when we hear that word predestined, one of the first things that come to our mind is our salvation. And I think that's good and right for us to think that. And oftentimes when we think of our salvation, we think of it in legal terms.

As if we're in a courtroom, and God the judge, and we're in the dock. And not only are we guilty, but we admit that we are guilty. And one thing that we keep in mind, and I know we know this, but I'll just touch on it.

God doesn't say, don't worry about it. Forget it. I'll forgive your sins. He can't do that. Someone must pay for that sin. Because if he did that, we would still be guilty. And God would not be just. His law, his character, requires justice.

Well, we know that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord,.

Has.

Paid for our sins. That our sins were given to him in what has been called the great transaction. And we have been given his righteousness so that we may stand before God.

Righteous,.

Clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And when we think of predestination, we think that that is what we have. And that is absolutely true. But that is not what Paul says here.

Paul says,.

Having predestined us to adoption as sons. All that I mentioned concerning the law, court, and the forgiveness of sins does not necessitate.

Adoption.

We who were God's enemies, we who, like Adam, transgressed the covenant and dealt treacherously with God, have been adopted into his family. When we are adopted, he changes our name from Carly or Jones or something.

From Smith.

To Yahweh's son.

We bear his name.

We now have an elder brother in Christ. And he did so to this according to the good pleasure of his will. He freely chose to adopt us. And Paul says that this was to the praise of his glory. This is absolutely astonishing.

That we, filthy sinners as we are, not only would we have our sins forgiven, but would be called children of God. And we sometimes read this and it bounces off because we've heard that lie that every man woman alive today is a child of God.

That is simply not true. Only those who are adopted as sons and daughters by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will are. And Paul said this is to the praise to the glory of his grace.

Now we would all agree that God's glory and grace are worthy of praise. But this is like a superlative level of grace. It is glory upon glory that this particular act of God to adopt us as his children is a glory upon glory to the praise of the glory of his grace.

But Paul continues,.

In him.

We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. While we knew this was coming, it had to be. In order to be chosen, in order to be a predestined to stand before him holy and without blame and love, we had to have our sins forgiven.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. And this was all according to grace. And as we think about this, as we go back to our thought experiment where we're hearing this for the first time and we hear about these spiritual blessings, his choosing us, his to be holy and blameless,.

His.

Predestined us to adoption as children and then the redemption of our sins. This is astonishing. But yet Paul continues and he says this in verses eight through ten, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom, that's the riches of his grace, having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself.

That riches of grace that abounds to us gives us wisdom and knowledge and that he has made known a mystery of his will. Now when we run into the word mystery in the Bible, it's not a whodunit. It's not some secret knowledge that we, if we're initiated correctly, we're part of the Gnostic Illuminati might know.

No, it was something that in the past had been hidden or concealed, but now has been made known. He said according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound to us in wisdom and prudence,.

Having.

Made known.

To us the mystery of his will according to the good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.

In.

Him.

In the fall, heaven and earth were separated. You remember back in Genesis before the fall, God would walk with Adam in the cool of the night or the evening that he had in a way face-to-face fellowship with God.

There was no intermediary connection. God was there, his presence, but in the fall that was separated. And yes, we have the outworking in the Old Testament pointing to a time when God and man could live together.

And remember all of the things that God said had to be done in order for us to be in his presence. We couldn't have any defilement upon us. And the blood of bulls and goats could never take away our sins.

They had to be repeated again and again and again. But in Christ, having the redemption through his blood, we now have the return of bringing heaven and earth together in Christ. That's the promise that we have before us, that we will see him as he is.

Well, that is before us, but that is the promise. This is the new creation which is started now, but will be consummated in the future. That is astonishing. And we often forget this about heaven and earth being brought together.

We are tempted to look around and see things are going from bad to worse. I don't know what the worst day was in history.

I have said.

And many times that it was at the fall. But imagine what it was for the disciples after Jesus died on the cross. Remember the fellows on the road to Emmaus? They said we thought that he was going to restore the kingdom to Israel, but then gloriously the resurrection and then in the upper room and then Pentecost.

The world is radically different than it was. On the day of Pentecost, how many gentile believers were there? Very few. How about now? Billions of gentile believers. The strong man has been bound and his kingdom will continue to grow without end.

But Paul continues. He writes here in verses 11 and 12.

In him.

We also have obtained an inheritance. This is glorious. Who gets an inheritance? Children get an inheritance. So we've been predestined to adoption and we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Notice the similarities between verse 5 and verse 11. Predestined, predestined to the purpose of works all things according to his will, according to his good, the good pleasure of his will. These are.

Connected.

As I mentioned, only children get the inheritance. But notice verse 12, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory. Again, that is very similar to verse 6, to the praise of his glory, glory upon glory.

That those who first trusted in Christ. We often say that we're co-inheritors with Christ, but we tend to forget what that means. We inherit what Christ inherits. A few months back, I had the pleasure of preaching on the ascension.

And I just want to cover a couple of those verses that I believe point to the inheritance which is before us. First in psalm 24, the first verse says this, the earth is the Lord's in all its fullness, the world and all who dwell therein.

We then have in psalm 2, the question asked. Ask of me in psalm 2 verse 8, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. But then we have in Daniel 7, that great vision of Daniel, of the ascension, when the triumphant Lord Jesus ascends into the throne room of grace, into the throne room of his father.

After his great victory over Satan, sin and death on the cross. And Daniel writes, as I was watching in the night visions and behold the one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him.

And then he to him was given dominion and glory in a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away in his kingdom,.

The one.

That shall not be destroyed.

That.

Is Christ's inheritance. It is not the inheritance of rest. That's still to come. Our inheritance is not received completely now. But yet we have this outworking of the world conquest that is given to us by our king, the Lord Jesus Christ and the great commission.

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded. That you shall be my witnesses, ambassadors from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the world.

And remember, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, no world conquest by force of arms for us. But our weapons are powerful. For the word says that our weapons are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

That's our inheritance. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. And notice what Paul says here at the end of this chapter, just drop down quickly to look at verses 22 and 23. And he says, 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.

We are co-inheritors with Christ and as our brother prayed, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

Again,.

Spiritual blessing, every spiritual blessing, it's just cascading down upon us. He chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blame. He predestined us to adoption as sons that we would receive this inheritance, that we would have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, that he would make known that what his plan was from the beginning of time would bring heaven and earth back together.

But he continues in verses 13 and 14. In him you also trusted. Now he's writing back to our thought experiment. If we were in that audience while this letter was being read, we said, that's us. That's us.

But we can say that even more now today. That is us. 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.

The gospel, the truth. Remember, I said all those other things going on out there in the world are false gospels, but we have the truth, the true gospel. He says here, and you have also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel, and when you heard the word of truth, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

Do you remember the last words of the Great Commission? And lo, I am with you always, even into the end of the age. We have the Holy Spirit. He dwells within us, and he is the guarantee of our inheritance.

Yes, this is assurance, assurance of our salvation, assurance that the work that God had begun in us, he will see it through to the end, or as the verse says, to the day of Christ Jesus. But he is the guarantee of our inheritance.

Until.

The redemption of the purchased possession, when the Lord Jesus Christ returns with great triumph and great glory to fully consummate his kingdom, which is, as Paul says here, to the praise of his glory.

This is absolutely breathtaking. That's who we are. We have all of these blessings cascading upon us, as I've said, all of these spiritual blessings flowing down upon us. But it is even more astonishing when we consider who we were.

In Adam.

For our identities, there are two. They are in Christ or in Adam.

And Paul.

Gives the hearers of the Ephesian church a breakdown of what that is in chapter two, verses one through three. And we'll just closely, quickly rather, take a look at these. And you he made alive who are dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

And we're by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

In Adam,.

We are dead in our trespasses and sin.

In Adam,.

We are under the power of the devil, enslaved by lusts of the flesh and the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we are children, not of God, but of wrath in sons of disobedience. That was our lineage.

On our birth certificate, in Adam brought all of that with us. And that makes our adoption even more astonishing. So that when in Adam is removed, and in Christ is put in, that that lineage is gone. And we have Christ's lineage.

That is our identity. That is our reality. We are in him. In this age, they may talk of identity. And we might be tempted to say that identity doesn't matter. Oh, it matters. In the final analysis, it may be all that matters, but it is not the identity which the world would have you believe.

Those are all in Adam. What will matter is that you are in Christ. That's what will matter. And as we labor in our families, building his church, bringing his kingdom to the remotest parts of the world, as we engage with this culture, and it's false gospels, the false gospels of those in Adam looking for redemption, looking for a new birth.

Do you ever think about why somebody would say that they were a woman when they were a man? Or vice versa? They're looking for a new birth. They're looking for redemption. They're looking for identity.

They're looking for blessings. But like the old country song, they're looking for love in all the wrong places. As we engage with the culture and the false gospels, as we meet various kinds of trials, we should be of good courage.

We are in Christ. So how does that relate back to the Reformation? Well, one of the key things about the Reformation was justification. You may be familiar with the five solas, right? In grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

What do we call those who are justified in Christ? Adopted sons and daughters and co-inheritors with Christ. And as far as our stewardship is concerned, it raises the bar considerably. It is part of his inheritance.

It is part of our inheritance. So again, as we labor in our families, building his church, engaging with the culture, meeting various kinds of trials, be of good courage. He will make his blessings flow, for as the curse is found.

Let us pray. Our gracious God and Father, we thank you, O Lord, that you have indeed blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, that you have chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that you have predestined us to be adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, by the good pleasure of your will.

We thank you, Lord, that you have given us redemption through his blood, and that you have given us the knowledge and wisdom of your plan to bring heaven and earth, that we may see you, Lord, when that day comes, when your kingdom is fully consummated, when the redemption of the purchased possession is fully realized.

But Father, as we leave from here today, I pray, Lord, that you would never allow us to forget what our identity is, who we really are, and who Christ really is, our elder brother. And we know that all these things are to the praise of his glory, of your glory.

And we pray these things in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Amen.