Developing Your Full Potential in Christ - the Great Scope of Grace — Paris Reidhead

Ephesians as a Handbook for Christian Growth

Ephesians as a manual on developing your full potential in Christ. We believe that it is His intention, not that we should merely be saved somehow, but triumphantly. Not that we should just make it through, but that we should have that which we can lay at the feet of the Lord Jesus, to have a crown of rejoicing that we can cast at His feet.

And therefore, the epistle to the Ephesians, in my judgment at least, is that handbook. How to develop your full potential in Christ. We saw yesterday, as we considered the first segment, verses 1 through 17, that the Ephesian believers were partakers of His grace.

How marvelous is that grace. How wonderful it is to realize that as Father, God purposed our salvation before the foundation of the world. You see that in verses 4 and 5. He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.

So God has purposed, even before He made the world, our salvation. And in that purpose, He has anticipated everything we're going to need. Everything that's necessary for us to be everything that He's planned.

Holy and without blame before Him in love implies that there's going to be victory. And there's going to be strength and wisdom and guidance and absolutely everything that He anticipated we would need is in His purpose.

The Father's Purpose and the Son's Redemptive Provision

Then the next section, verses 7 and 8, have to do with that which the Son, God the Son, provided. Now He only provided that which the Father purposed, but everything that the Father purposed. In whom we have redemption through His blood, that is the Lord Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.

Here again, the Lord Jesus Christ provided that redemption. And everything that we need to be everything He's planned is included in that redemptive provision. But we are now dealing with two factors, you see.

First, that which before the foundation of the world the Father purposed. And then that which in the fullness of time the Son provided. But we're not left to our own devices. Notice that in the dispensation of the fullness of time He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory who first trusted in Christ, in whom He also trusted.

After that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory.

Now, the Father purposed our salvation, the Son provided it, and the Holy Spirit, God in His omnipresence, wants to make real to us and in us, experientially real, all that the Father purposed and all what the Son provided.

Treasuring the Fullness of Salvation

Now, one of the most serious indictments that you find in the epistle to the Hebrews is the fact that they would tread under their feet that which the Father had purposed. They counted as having no worth and no value and not important to them.

What a tragedy it is that people do get the idea somehow that the whole of God's intention was to save us from hell. Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from hell and take them to heaven when they die.

Is that what it says? Well, I must be reading from the reversed vision. That often gets in the way, I find, not only with me but with others. No, that isn't what He said. He said, Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.

God's purpose is to make us like His Son. The Lord Jesus, therefore, was willing to become what we were so that we could be made what He is. And if we understand that, then we understand how serious is the indictment to the Hebrews that they would tread under their feet as having no worth or meaning or value that which the Lord Jesus Christ had purchased with His blood.

They counted it as having no significance. And we would not be among that number. Certainly, if we're wise, we don't want to be so included. Rather, that we should treasure for ourselves everything that the Father purposed and the Son provided.

Prayer for Spiritual Understanding

Then we saw in the 15th verse and thereafter that the Apostle, having established for the believer brethren at Ephesus something of the nature of His grace, then proceeds to tell them how they are to avail themselves of this ministry of the Spirit.

He declared that he prayed for them. Isn't it interesting that the believers at Ephesus got onto Paul's prayer list just about the time people would get off of ours? We say, isn't it great? God saved Mary.

Now let's pray for Bill. Well, that's not the way the Apostle did. He said, we're so pleased to hear that God has saved you. Now we put you on our prayer list. Well, that isn't just the way we thought about it, was it?

But it's the way the Lord Jesus does it. He says, I'm not praying for the world. I'm praying for them. Thou has given me out of the world. And the Apostle said, I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, so now I put you on my prayer list and I'm praying for you.

What is he praying for? That the God of our Lord Jesus, the Father of glory, will give unto them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, that their eyes of their understanding may be opened, that they may know.

Now, in a sense, we begin with our continued study at this point in the 18th verse, that we may know. There are three things that he cites here that he wants us to know. They must be very inclusive. They must have dimensions far beyond the mere sequence of words.

There must be something he implies and we can infer that it corresponds to what the Father purposed, what the Son provided. And now that the Spirit of God is going to illumine to our hearts as well, we trust, as he did to the hearts of the church at Ephesus.

So notice then, in Ephesians 1, beginning with verse 18, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us were to believe.

The Hope of Christ's Calling

Three things. And these three things will, I believe, give to us some idea of the scope of God's grace. That we might know what is the hope. The word hope really is expectation. Hope has been defined by one of the dictionaries as being an expectation, a valid expectation, based upon and legitimate grounds.

Is it going to be sunshiny today? Well, I hope so. Well, I don't really know anything about it, but I hope so. Are you going to get a promotion this year? Well, I hope so. We don't know anything about it, but we hope so.

Now, that's not the manner in which the word is used in the New Testament. Not here. Not something that has the prospect of not happening because it's just wishful thinking. This is a valid expectation based upon reasonable grounds.

God had had considerable foundation for his hope. That hope that we had. Now, notice again, it's not only a reasonable, valid expectation based upon reasonable grounds, but it is the hope of his calling.

In most of the commentaries I have on this portion of Ephesians, I find that following a tendency that's very common to my heart, and I'm sure to that of the commentators, that it sounds something like this.

That we might know what is the hope that we have been called to. Well, obviously the scripture has a great deal to say about that, and we're very interested in that. But just because that's the natural tendency, it doesn't seem quite right that we should twist the text, the original text, to make it fit our convenience.

I think the text really says precisely what the King James, from which I'm reading, says. What is it? The hope of his calling. Now, did the Lord Jesus Christ have a call? Of course he did. Where did it begin?

Well, it began before the foundation of the world, didn't it? It began back there when God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this God who is love, yearned for, with an eternal yearning, yearned for someone upon whom he, God in his trinity, could pour his love.

You see, in a object, without someone that needs it, that understands it, that can enjoy it, and can return it in such a way as to satisfy the heart of the one that's originally given the love. Now, the only being that the Bible says that God loves is man.

He made other beings. We don't know a great deal about them. He made Lucifer. The Scripture doesn't say God ever loved Lucifer. He made cherubim and seraphim, and I've accumulated a world of ignorance about both.

I really don't know much about cherubim or seraphim, but I know one thing. The Bible doesn't say that God loved them, and it does not say either in what sense cherubim and seraphim differ from man. But the only being that God has said that he made in his image and in his likeness is man.

And the only being that God has said he loves is man. And in a sense, perhaps the reason is that because we can only love that which is like us. You know, we're accustomed to using the word love rather loosely, aren't we?

You've heard people say, we love our new house, or I love that shade of blue, or, well, I just love this new car, or where I come from, I love southern fried chicken. You know, chicken and cars and houses and colors can't understand and appreciate what's being poured on them.

And they don't need it to be complete, and they can't return it. So as a manner of speaking, we have abused the word love when we so use it. And I'd like to rescue the little word, shake it out of all of this abuse, and pick it up and leave it so that it's used only when it's appropriately used.

That's in two directions. To love people who are like you, and love God in whose image you are made. And that's the only time and place to use the word love. All these other things, like, enjoy, appreciate.

Some other word, please. Let's keep this word love so that it has some meaning when we really need it. Not wear it out in the useless and the trivial, but so when we come to want to actually express something, we have a trite and meaningless symbol.

God's Longing for Children and a Bride

Now, God had in his heart a great yearning and longing. God as father wanted children. And God as son, as bridegroom yearned for a bride. Someone with whom he could share all that he is, and all that he has, and all that he's doing, and wants to do.

They say that one reason men work hard, one of the primary drives of American and European energies and activities, is so that they can please the woman in their life, the wife, or whoever it might be.

But this is one of the primary driving forces in human experience. Men work so that they can have that which will please and satisfy that woman in their life for whom they're working. And we understand something of this.

We understand that God made the world as beautifully as he did, so that he might have something that would please his beloved. As father, he wanted to have that which would please his children. As bridegroom, he wanted to have that which would please his bride.

And so he made the world and all that's in it in that way and for that purpose. Now, this ancient longing, this ancient call, included the fact that this one, made in his image and made in his likeness, had to be given certain qualities if he was to be the object of his love.

I remember years ago at the University of Minnesota, a student said, why did God ever make man in the first place if he knew that man was going to do all the cruel things that he's doing? This was back in the Second World War, and word had come of some of the atrocities that had grown out of that time of carnage.

He said, why did God ever make man so that he could sin? Well, that's not an immature, childish question that should be passed off with a flip of the tongue or the finger or a toss of the head. It's an important question, and it's one that's involved here in his calling.

Temptation, Sin, and Human Freedom

After all, what is sin? I think that we've got two definitions that fit close together, and we should see them briefly in this context. First, what's temptation? Well, to find out what's temptation, you've got to find out how God made man.

When he made us, he said of the man that he had made, it is good. And we go back and we look at that creature that he had made in his image and said was good, and we find that he gave to that being, to man, certain drives or urges or propensities or appetites, you call them what you will, they're there.

For instance, he knew that we would be nourished by the repeated intake of food, so he wired us in such a way that our computer tells us now and then that we're hungry. We call that computer report an appetite.

We call it hunger, and God put it into us so that when there's a need for food, our systems rings a lot of bells and lights go on, so to speak, and say you better get some because we're running out down here.

This urge or drive for hunger was the way God put us together. It's the way he wired us up. And then he knew that we learn in sequence. We're microcosms of God in his image, but on a miniature scale. God is infinite and we're finite, and God knows everything simultaneously, never learns anything new.

And we don't know simultaneously, we only learn sequentially or in sequence. We learn, for instance, one day in school that two and two makes four. We think we've mastered arithmetic. We go back the next day and she tells us two and three makes five, and she's thrown us all out of gear and spoiled our whole relationship to arithmetic.

Because that's how we learn. One thing one day and another the next until we go on and on and on and either quit or just decide we've learned all we want to learn. But whatever we know today, we acquired item by item and fact by fact.

Now, there's a hunger that's in us that God put there. It's that hunger that's expressed by usually one of the first words your child learns. Why? Why, Mommy? What's this? Why, Mommy? Why? That is God's little bell ringing in there in the computer saying, there's so much to know and you've got to learn all you can as fast as you can.

Mother prays, O Heavenly Father, I don't want my child to be dumb and not able to speak. But six months later, she's saying, Lord, couldn't you slow him down a little? His why all the time is getting a little bit heavy.

I don't want him to be retarded, but just retard a few whys. No, it's not going to work that way. God wired that little tyke to learn and put into him a drive for knowledge, a drive for sex. God made Adam and Eve and out from that pair would come this beloved, these children that would satisfy his father's heart, this bride that would satisfy the bridegroom's heart.

So he gave to us a drive or an urge for sex. Then God had made such a wonderful world, he gave to us an urge or drive for, or hunger for beauty and for pleasure. He wanted us to enjoy what he had made.

Then he intended us to serve as the lords of and rulers of his creation. So he gave to us this drive to govern and to take charge and to control. So because he was a protecting, caring father, he gave to us an appetite for security.

So with the drive for knowledge and for hunger and for food and for sex and for security and for pleasure and for authority, he looked at the man into whom he'd put all of these and he said, it is good.

So don't talk about the appetites being bad. You malign the Creator when you do that. What happened? What was the difficulty? Into the garden came the serpent. And what did he do? He tempted Eve. Now, what's temptation?

I've said all of that to say this. What's temptation? Well, let me give you a definition. Temptation is the proposition presented to your intellect to satisfy a good appetite in a bad way. Now, there wasn't anything wrong with her appetite for food or pleasure or for even status, security, authority.

God had given her these. What was wrong with the whole proposition? Lucifer was proposing to her that she satisfy these good appetites in a way that God had forbidden. That's temptation. Now, what's sin?

Sin is the decision of the will to satisfy a good appetite in a bad way. Now, if God had made man so that he couldn't sin, then he would have had to have made man without an imagination, because it's at that level that we're tempted.

Mentally visualizing satisfying good appetites in a bad way. And, secondly, he would have had to have made man without the ability to decide to satisfy a good appetite in a bad way, and in thus man would have been a mere automaton, a machine.

Can you imagine a father away, as I was for years as an evangelist and in Bible teaching ministry, coming back to my little family and seeing my children there, now pretty well grown up? It's not nearly as appropriate as it once was.

But can you imagine my having to hypnotize my children until my mind controlled theirs, and then to give them orders to come over, stand in front of me, put your arms around my neck, place your lips upon my cheek, say, I love you, Daddy.

Can you see the little automatons march over like robots and go through that motion? Can you imagine that such a performance for a moment would satisfy the need in a lonely daddy's heart? Nor would it have been worthwhile for God to have waited from eternity past to have man turn out to be an automaton, a machine that marched over and said, God, I love you.

Christ's Incarnation and Sacrificial Mission

No, he had to make man capable of saying, I hate you, I won't, so that when he said, I love you, I will. That love, that obedience had meaning to the heart of God. Now, anticipating man's action, the Lord Jesus Christ became the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

He wanted the Beloved so much. He yearned with such an ancient yearning and longing. So deep was the desire of the father for children, of the bridegroom for a bride, that he was prepared to make man as he had to make him if he was to be child and bride to God, even so that he could sin.

And the Lord Jesus, as it were, said, Father, I am prepared to have that bride and for thou that thou canst have the children to die, to become what they are so that they can truly be remade in our image and in our likeness.

And so before he ever made man, the Lord Jesus Christ became the Lamb slain before the world was founded. Now, there was an expectation that he had. There was, in the fullness of time, the Lord Jesus, the one who ruled the universe, the one by whose outstretched hand and scepter the world had been created, by whose spoken word stars had leaped into existence and found their place and stayed in their course.

This one, God the Eternal Son, in the fullness of time, took off the diadem of his glory and he put it down. He took off the robes of his majesty and he folded them up in the scepter of his power and he laid it by.

And the next moment he answered the call, the eternal call in the heart of Triune God for a beloved. What was it? It was an answer to a call that had been there from before the world was made, and he was off on that journey.

That journey into time. And one cell in the body of Mary was quickened by the Holy Ghost who overshadowed her. God, in his omnipresence, compressed the Eternal Son by whom the world was made to join one cell, invisible save by a microscope, so that that life which was conceived in Mary and born of Mary was none other than Emmanuel, God come in the flesh, who had taken upon himself our form and likeness.

He'd made us in his image and now he was made in our image with a body like unto our body, with all the limitations of it, with all the appetites and urges and drives of it. As he made it, money said it was good.

And that babe which was born of Mary was truly God man, God come in the flesh. The council said he was very God of very God, for there were those who doubted his deity. He was very man of very man, for there were those who doubted his humanity.

And then he grew increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man in response to his call, the call of his heart. In his ministry he declared, I have no fear that my coming is in vain. The Father has told me that if I will declare what he's given to me to declare, that all that the Father's given me shall come unto me.

This wasn't a speculation. This wasn't just a fantasy trip. When the Lord Jesus came, he knew that there would be those who would receive his word and would believe on him. And so there can be no hope in this regard, because he has been told by the Father that all that the Father has given him shall come to him.

But there is another element that's involved in this text, the hope of his calling, the reasonable expectation based upon valid grounds. What is that? Well, if it is to be established as a fact that there would be those who would come, who would repent of their sins, and who would trust in his name and would be born into his family through faith in his finished work and faith in him, then it must be that this hope of his calling has to do with the kind of people that are being written to in this epistle.

Now, what kind of people are they? Saints at Ephesus, faithful in Christ Jesus, of whose faith the apostle could say he gave thanks, for he saw it certified with a hallmark of genuineness that couldn't be counterfeited, love unto all the saints.

So the hope of his calling must have to do with believers. It must be, therefore, something that a believer, someone that is in Christ, can do or can refuse to do. It must be something that this believer in Christ must be informed about, must understand, and then have the option to choose to do.

Or, if he's not informed, obviously he can't. And when he is informed, he may refuse. So when it says that the eyes of our understanding may be opened, that we may know what is the hope of his calling, I would believe that it would relate, perhaps, to something like Romans 12, 1 and 2.

You recall it, don't you? I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, said the apostle. But behind the apostle I see another standing, speaking through him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's holding out nail-scarred hands and pointing to a sword-riven side.

And I can hear him as he is entreating you and me, his beloved, redeemed by his blood. But I can hear him as he says, I beseech you, brethren, by these mercies, my love for you, my death for you, that you who have the full right to do it and the power not to do it, I beseech you, brethren, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Living by Grace Rather Than Self-Effort

And be not conformed to this world, but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God. Now, I believe that the hope of his calling is the expectation that Christ had that if you and I were to discover that we could not save ourselves by our own efforts, we could not accomplish the living of a life utterly unnatural to us in a world in which we had once been such rebels against God by our own natural effort, that if we had come to the conclusion that we had to be saved by grace and redeemed by the death of another for us, that we would not quickly after that make the groundless mistake of thinking that because we were pardoned from past sins, somehow now we were fixed up in such a way that we could go on in our own energy and strength, which wasn't enough to atone for one sin, and that somehow we could proceed to live the Christian life to the glory of God and the satisfaction of Christ in our own energy, in our own effort, in our own intelligence, in our own strength.

Now, I just believe that the hope of his calling was this, that if you had discovered that you couldn't save yourself by your own efforts, you would not have great difficulty in discovering that you couldn't live the Christian life by your own efforts.

If you couldn't redeem yourself from one sin, much less the mountain of your sins, by a lifetime of effort, then how could you ever make the mistake of thinking that you had somehow by pardon acquired the ability to live the Christian life to the glory of God and to the satisfaction of his lovely Son?

If you couldn't save yourself, no more could you live the Christian life. Reginald Wallace of England on one occasion said, The happiest day of my Christian life was the day I discovered that I couldn't live it.

Well, have you discovered that? Have you? Well, I have news for you. If you haven't discovered it, your family have. They know it. And your neighbors know it. And the people you work with know it. And I just got a sneaking suspicion you know it too.

You can't live the Christian life because it's utterly unnatural to you. It's his life and you can't live his life. You know, Sheldon wrote a book in his steps. And I read it and I was enamored with it and thrilled with it.

And it just seemed to be such an exciting concept to walk in his steps. And I tried it. It's like a little two-year-old, you know, striding along in the deep snow after his daddy who walks with a three-foot stride.

Pretty soon he's floundering and I was floundering. And I found absolutely no consolation or help in that. Because you see, Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh. And I'm just a sinner saved by grace.

And I haven't any ability to walk in his steps. The only thing that does is just bring me to the place where I cry out, Oh God, I can't. And sometimes that's a long time God getting us there. Because we've got a seemingly almost insatiable determination to prove that we can.

We can't. You can't live his life. And what is it, this hope of his calling? It's the expectation that you have, that he had, that if he had died for you and provided himself for you, that you were going to reckon that it was indispensable that Christ should not only save you from the penalty of what you've done, but that he should live his life in you.

His life in you. And you would count it your reasonable service to say, Lord Jesus, I can't. I can't. But you can. You can do it. You can live your life in me. Oh, I believe the hope of his calling was that everyone redeemed by his blood would recognize that his purpose wasn't just to save us from hell, but to save us from ourselves and save us from the futility of going on in a poor, stumbling, bumbling, failing effort to try to do something that he never intended for us to do and that we early should have found out we couldn't do.

And to bring us to the place where we would be prepared to say, Lord Jesus, I can't. But you can. You see, friend, when the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, his destination wasn't Bethlehem where he was born.

That wasn't the reason for his coming, the place to which he intended to come. Oh, it was one of the stops on the way. When he came into the world, his destination wasn't a refugee's home in Egypt where he lived for those eight years or more, maybe 12.

That wasn't where he intended to be. That wasn't his destination. When the Lord Jesus left his father's presence and came into the world, his destination wasn't a carpenter's home in Nazareth. And those of us that have been there and climbed down into that Nabataean cave over which the house was built, probably where the Lord lived, that wasn't his destination.

That was just a stopping place. Nor was it the house of friends in Capernaum, which he said the city that he loved. That wasn't his destination. When the Lord Jesus came into the world, his destination wasn't Jerusalem.

That wasn't why he came. Nor was it even a cross upon which he died. Oh, he came to die on the cross. That wasn't his destination. Nor was it the tomb into which he was laid. Oh, he came and he had to die and be buried.

But that wasn't his destination. Nor was it even to ascend from the tomb and rise from the dead and to then ascend into heaven and sit down in the right hand of the throne on high. You see, he'd been there from eternity past.

He didn't have to make this long journey to sit down at the right hand of the Father. When the Lord Jesus left heaven and came into the world, his destination was your heart, your life. He had to make that long journey from eternity into time in order to remove all the legal barriers and hindrances so that he could remake you in his image and fulfill the purpose for which you were made.

You were made for God. When God made us, he carved into us an enormous empty place so big that nothing in the universe can fill it but God. You're made for God. And when he came into the world, the destination that he had was to fill the empty place in your heart with himself.

Presenting Ourselves for Christ to Live Within Us

And the hope of his calling was that when you were redeemed from the penalty of your past sins by his poured-out life and given the assurance of life eternal in him, that you would not be content with just a through ticket to heaven, just a premium paid-up life in hell insurance policy, that you'd not be satisfied with anything less than the conscious, indwelling presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The hope of his calling was the expectation that he would be free because you would gladly present once and for all your body as a living sacrifice as Mary presented her body to the Holy Spirit so you would present yours to him so that he could live his life in you, his own life in you.

This was the hope of his calling, as I understand it, that everyone redeemed by his blood would count it their reasonable service to present their bodies a living sacrifice and invite the Lord Jesus Christ to live his life in and through them.

Has the hope, the valid expectation based upon reasonable grounds been realized in you? Has the Lord Jesus been free to live his life in you last week and the week before? Well, that's an academic question.

The important question is are you prepared that the Lord Jesus Christ should live his life in you? Tomorrow and all the today and tomorrow and all the days that lie ahead. That's one of the reasons we're here.

It's one of the reasons for this camp meeting so that there can be given to you an opportunity, an insight into the scripture on the one hand and an opportunity to respond to your discovered need on the other.

Now, I can't say to you that there's some great magic in your coming to this altar. I know better than that. But I also know that almost every major crisis in my life has been met at such an altar. When I had come to that point of such hunger and such desperation that I was prepared to acknowledge and seek the help of the Lord first and to make my need known to those who cared enough to share with me and to pray with me.

And we're going to give you an opportunity. We're going to just have a time of quiet prayer for a few moments and whereas the meal will be served shortly, there's another meal that's more important and that is to answer the hope of his calling, that ancient yearning that you would invite him to live his life in you, his life in you.

We're going to just have a word of prayer. Let's stand now. And then we're going to just sing as our director shall suggest. Briefly, one verse, two, no pressure. But if you're here and God has spoken to your heart and you can't wait because of the need you have, then we warmly ask you to come.

Perhaps it's not the particular need that I've identified, but it's the need that you feel uppermost in your heart. Now, Father of Jesus, thou art here to bless. First to bless us with the blessing of insight into our own selves, our needs and our problems and our failures.

And then to stir our hearts with the truth to the point where we can expect, because of the provisions of thy grace and the promises of thy word, that if we will respond, you will meet us. And so we pray for those that are present.

There's some here today, Lord, that have very keen, very pressing needs. And the most important thing that they could do today is to seek thy face in prayer now. And so we ask that all the unfinished business that's represented by us will be cared for.

In Jesus' name, amen.