Union with Christ

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Please enjoy the following sermon. Someone asked me this afternoon, are we going to be studying the book of Ephesians?

As some of you know, we studied the book of Ephesians about a year, year and a half ago. We're not back in the book of Ephesians.

We will be, Lord willing, one day, but just not yet. Instead, what we'll be doing is taking a break from our regular series in 1

Timothy. I intend to speak with you for the next couple of weeks on the theme of the believer's union with Christ.

In reality, as it relates to this theme of the believer's union in Christ, there are fewer subjects that are more important and more worthy of our attention than this.

Charles Spurgeon once wrote on this topic saying, there is no joy in this world like union with Christ.

Similarly, one of our Presbyterian brothers, a man named Lane Tipton has said, there are no benefits of the gospel apart from union with Christ.

Another theologian hammering this point home said, union with Christ is the essence of what it means to be a

Christian. And if you'll tolerate one last quote, John Owen said of this, union with Christ is the greatest, most honorable, and most glorious of all graces that we are made partakers of union with Christ.

It is inevitable. If you study systematic theology and you take up a good, a solid text, you will hear about union with Christ.

If over the course of your break from work, if you have a break over the next week or so, if you take up a classic from the

Puritans, one of their great devotional works, you will read at some point about union with Christ.

Even the apostle Paul's letters, perhaps especially the book of Ephesians.

If you take it up and read it, you will find a book that is filled to the brim with this theme of the union of the believer with Christ.

And yet there is a problem as we deal with this theme of the union of Christ, isn't there?

And perhaps you recognize that problem with a sense of unease that you might be feeling as I speak about this important union that we have.

And it is this, that even as I share these quotes about the indispensable nature of the believer's union with Christ, the reality is most

Christians in the church today have no idea what I am talking about when

I speak about the believer's union with Christ. And in fact,

I would venture to guess that even if you were to poll many pastors in churches today, they would have little to no idea what

I or Spurgeon or Owen mean when we speak about union with Christ.

And I think that this is evident because while this theme fills the pages of our

New Testaments, it really does. While it fills the pages of our New Testaments, it is stunningly absent from our pulpits.

And therefore it is a theme that is altogether removed from our pews. Union with Christ.

Some of you might think that I am overstating this, but let me ask you, and I'm going to use the words of Scripture to interrogate you in this respect.

In the course of your daily interactions with brothers and sisters in the Lord, how often do your conversations erupt with expressions of joy at being united with Jesus Christ in all things?

Where you are able to speak about the wonders of what it means to abide in Christ and through Him to bear much fruit as you enjoy intimate communion with Him.

Or if we were to evaluate the presence of this subject in your prayer lives, when was the last time as you approached

God in prayer that you thanked Him, that you are in Christ, in Christ, and that Christ is in you, and that you are now hidden with Christ in God, and that Christ Himself is your very life?

Or in your theological reasoning, because everyone is a theologian, when was the last time you considered to quote from the

Apostle Paul that because of God you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption?

So as to say that it is through this sacred union with Him that we have come to experience all of the blessings of the gospel.

I must confess that if you have not thought much about this, maybe it's because we have not been explicit in our preaching about this.

Union with Christ is something that permeates everything that we read about in the

New Testament. And yet so rarely, and I say this myself included, so rarely as a preacher we explicitly speak about the glories of this union.

But today I want to change that. We have a small group. Many people are out of town.

A lot of people aren't going to hear Timothy if I preach on that. But even more importantly, there is something for us to discover in this text of scripture that is,

I think, of the utmost importance. Though it hasn't been long since we've been in Ephesians.

As we look, we're going to go to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3. I invite you to turn there with me.

And we're going to look at verses 3 through 14. And I want to show you a truth that perhaps you have been largely overlooking for much of your

Christian life. I think I've introduced it enough, but that is this theme of your union with Christ.

It is a concept that is found all throughout our New Testaments. It is a subject that reveals some of the richest blessings that we can know as Christians on this side of eternity.

And I want to make it very plain to you so that, to quote Charles Spurgeon, you would know no other joy in this world like union with Christ.

So, we're in Ephesians 1 and verse 3. It is not that long ago that we have been in verses 3 through 14.

You might remember the wording that we used when we said we're going to do a series within a series.

And we looked at the every spiritual blessing of the Christian dealing with this paragraph that is before us.

I want to warn you in advance, I am not going to retrace all of my steps. We're not going to exhaust this passage.

But what I want to show you is that how, as we look at every one of these spiritual blessings, we find them, you'll see this word again and again, in him, in union with Christ.

And so the first thing that I want to show you is this, the blessings or that we have been blessed in union with Christ.

You'll see this in the outline in the bulletin if you want to follow along. And we're going to define together what it means that we are in union with Christ.

In Ephesians 1 and verse 3, we really reach the magnum opus of this theme in the apostle

Paul's writings. And he writes this, 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.

In verse 3, Paul begins the substance of his letter to the

Ephesians with an opening benediction. I don't know if you remember that. We've looked at it in the past.

And it is what the Hebrews would call a barricade. It's a Hebrew benediction not offered to men like we're used to when we receive the benediction at the end of the service, but a benediction offered to God that consists of two parts.

The first part is it is a heartfelt blessing given to God himself.

And secondly, it consists of naming the basis for this blessings or this blessing.

And as we look at these kinds of benedictions in the Bible, they're found throughout.

We find that they are in their most prominent places, a demonstration of God's people blessing him for his immeasurable goodness and praising him for the kindness that he has shown to them.

Whenever we find these barricades, they almost always come after the people of God have received some kind of monumental blessing that God has given them.

And so then God's people respond in return, reciprocating the blessing. A couple of examples that we find through Moses, we see for instance, that God commanded

Israel to bless the Lord for the promised land that they were sure to inherit.

That when they were to come into the land that they were to receive, the land that was promised to their forefather

Abraham, as they were to enter the land, what were they to do? They were to bless the Lord.

Jethro, Moses' father -in -law, you might recall in the book of Exodus, when

God had delivered the nation from the hand of the Egyptians, from hundreds of years of slavery, what did he do?

But he uttering these words, blessed God. David blessed

God when he was rescued from the hand of King Saul with his murderous intentions.

When the temple had been built, if you can picture this with me, and the ark of God, the ark of the covenant of God was brought into the temple, and all of the leaders of the people assembled.

And as Solomon stood before that temple and dedicated it, what did he do? But he blessed

God with a barricade. When the nation rebelled against God and fell into sin, and they were driven into exile, and then

God returned them to their land, and they rebuilt the temple. And once more, they consecrated it.

What did they do? But they blessed God. When the time came for the

Messiah to be born, in case you were looking for a Christmas message, John the Baptist's father,

Zechariah, named his son John. And you might remember in that instant, his tongue was loosened so that he could speak once more.

And what did he do when he could speak? He blessed God. He blessed

God, the Lord, because he was going to visit and redeem his people.

Every time we see these blessings offered to God, there is something significant happening.

And here in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3, we find one. And the logical next question is why?

As Paul utters this benediction, the train leaves the station.

And we see why he is blessing the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, it is because in Christ, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Now, when we preached on this last text or this text last, we focused on all of the spiritual blessings that God has given to us.

You might remember that even as we did this, I gave you a couple of nicknames that have been given to the book of Ephesians.

It's been called the believer's bank, the Christian's checkbook, the treasure house of the

Bible. And that is because in it, it contains all of the wonderful gifts that the

Lord our God has given to us. This is true. We're going to itemize some of them, but today

I want to focus the majority of our time on how we receive these blessings.

And the key to understanding what it means to receive these blessings, how it is that we receive these blessings is found in two words in verse three.

Maybe you can look there. I want you to guess with me what two words they could be. Blessed be the

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us. Here they are in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

If you, as I was introducing the theme, were asking yourself, he keeps quoting about this idea of union with Christ.

He keeps telling me that no one in the church or very few in the church understand what it means, that it isn't preached from the pulpit.

He's talking about union with Christ, but what does it mean? It can be summarized in these two words, in Christ.

Unlike the doctrines of justification or regeneration, the

New Testament doesn't provide us a neatly packaged definition of union with Christ.

And instead, you might even say, even better, it gives us over 100 verses that speak to this union with words like in Christ, or in the

Lord, or with Christ, or with the Lord, or abiding in him, or abiding in his word.

The phrase in Christ appears 89 times in our New Testaments.

Over 80 of those are in the Pauline epistles. The expression in the

Lord appears 51 times in our Bibles, from ideas ranging from justification to getting married in the

Lord. The phrase with Christ appears another 11 times.

I would encourage you this week to go home, look up in your concordance or in a

Bible app, or I'll make a photocopy for you. And you can read all 151 verses that we find in Scripture about this theme from those few brief expressions, in Christ, with Christ, in the

Lord. This week I looked at all 151 references, and I'm going to tell you, and I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, that I was surprised to find that most of my favorite

Bible passages in the New Testament include a reference to union with Christ.

And I would venture to say that it's probably the same for many of you. In fact, I'm going to take you, I've pretty much committed to every cross -reference

I'm going to give you today is a union with Christ cross -reference. And you will see that is one of my favorites.

That is one of my favorites. How is it that that is one of my favorites? And I've never seen this. Before. Now I'm not going to read all 151 verses.

So I'm going to give you a brief definition of what it means that we have union with Christ.

If you'll let me summarize what these passages say, this is what we will see. That the concept of union with Christ describes the

Christian's new life in Christ. To be in union with Christ means that you now belong to Christ, and you share in all of the blessings that are his in the gospel.

What this means is that when a man or woman is saved by God, I want you to listen to this distinction very carefully.

When a man or woman is saved by God, we are not only fully and freely justified by Christ, but we are fully and freely justified in Christ.

And there is a difference. This means that the believer's life is grafted into Christ like a branch is grafted into the vine.

It means that we live in Christ and that he lives in us.

And as the lifeblood of the vine sustains the branches, every good thing that we receive in salvation is received in and through Christ.

Louis Burkhoff, in his famous systematic theology, has defined union with Christ in these words.

And I'll say this, I wrestled with this point in my text more than all the others, because I'm trying to convey a very challenging idea in as few and as simple words as I can.

So I'm trying to give you as many definitions as I can that lead us all to the same place. Louis Burkhoff says union with Christ is intimate, vital, and spiritual union between Christ and his people, in virtue of which he is the source of their life and strength of their blessedness and salvation.

You see, sometimes we think about justification and we hear words or expressions like Martin Luther's term, alien righteousness.

And this description of our righteousness in Christ is true. That what it means that we possess an alien righteousness is the righteousness that saves us is not our own, but it is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.

It is something outside of us that is credited to our accounts and we are accepted in the beloved in that.

And yet, I think sometimes I know I can become so fixated on this aspect of our salvation that we simply believe that that imputed righteousness is conveyed to us by airmail, that it comes to us over Wi -Fi, that we are never in connection with that Christ.

It simply comes to us and then it is that we remain separated from Christ and his blessings come to us in his absence.

No, no, no, no. Brethren, we were saved when we were saved in Christ Jesus.

We not only got the blessings of Christ, but we got Christ himself.

So that when the Lord saved us, he justified us fully, freely. It is of his own merit, but he not only gave us the salvation we needed, he gave us himself.

And that this is the substance of unity with Christ. Perhaps the reason why this doctrine is so neglected is because it is spiritual.

It is mystical in nature. It can't be placed. For those of you who know me, you know,

I like everything to be in order. Our brother Steve mocked me just an hour ago for fixing the blinds so that I would have them just the way

I like them. We love things when they're in order. That's why we love things like the ordo salutis, the order of our salvation, because we can look at justification, regeneration, sanctification, glorification.

We can see this on a timeline. Union with Christ, it does not fit as one point on the timeline.

It is superimposed over the whole timeline that every blessing we enjoy in this life is a blessing we enjoy in Christ.

Now for some of you, this might seem like a strange new concept.

Am I trying to enforce or somehow insert a different idea, a different gospel into the text?

I want to show you what I know for some of you is one of your favorite texts in all of Scripture.

And I want to show you that what it is conveying is this very truth that I am proclaiming.

Galatians chapter two and verse 20. It used to be,

I believe it was in our very first membership prayer guide, every member of the church had their favorite

Bible verse with their name and their address. Maybe we should do that again at some point.

And I remember seeing this verse here. This has been called one of the most succinct passages on union with Christ in the whole

Bible. What does it say? Here Paul writes, I have been crucified, what?

With Christ. It is no longer I who live, but what?

But Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh,

I live by faith in whom? In the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

What a remarkable truth that we not only believe in Christ, we are not only saved by Christ, but our old selves have been crucified with this

Christ. And we now live this life in union with our blessed savior.

How can we not say with the apostle Paul and with so many others, blessed be the

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now next,

Paul goes on to describe the dimensions of these spiritual blessings that we find in union with Christ.

And the first that he identifies in verse four is this, that we are chosen in union with Christ.

In verse four, we read, 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 to himself 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.

You can see he bookends this idea of being chosen, predestined with union with Christ.

First in verse four, he chose us in him. And then at the end of verse six, which he has blessed us in the beloved, as if to say in him once more.

Now in verse four, Paul tells us then that we've been chosen in union with Christ from before the foundation of the world.

We know that some people have tried to tie themselves into pretzels to explain this in a way that preserves man's free moral agency.

There are men like Roger Olson. When I preached on this passage about a year and a half ago, I shared this quote.

It's too interesting not to share it again. Where he says, a God whose salvation is absolutely unconditional and solely an act of God.

I think most of us would finish that sentence and say, it's a glorious God, is a sovereign

God, is a majestic and awesome and all powerful and all gracious God.

But he says, no, a God whose salvation is absolutely unconditional, solely an act of God.

That God is a moral monster. There are some who believe that and they read texts like Ephesians chapter one in verse four and they say,

God cannot choose. I must choose. God will never choose me.

I will choose him and only I will choose him. But what we see here, the fact of the matter is that the words of this text are so clear that they cannot mean anything other than what

Olson condemns. The word chosen, it's not a special term.

It's not a niche word here that has a broad semantic range that means a whole variety of things.

But it is the ordinary word that connotes or denotes to pick out, to select, to elect, to choose.

Now some people might come and say, but there are at least a few kinds of election, aren't there?

And I will grant them that, that there are three, at least three kinds of election that we see in scripture.

We see that a form of theocratic election, what is sometimes called national election.

When God chooses a nation as he did Israel, when he said, for you are a holy people to the

Lord, the Lord, your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession.

There's another form of election, what is sometimes called vocational election. There are some who are chosen to be apostles and prophets and priests.

Jeremiah was told before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born,

I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. There's a third kind of election and that is what theologians call salvational election.

That is God, before time and space, before the foundation of the world, set his electing love on individual men and women and he predestined them to eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Now when you look at this passage, let me ask you, what kind of election do we find?

Paul tells us that he chose us in Christ, in him, before the foundation of the world, to the end that we would be holy and blameless.

That he predestined us for adoption as sons to the praise of his glorious grace.

If we approach this passage with any level of intellectual honesty, we will find this, that God is not choosing a new nation for himself in the midst of the

Ephesians. God is not calling them all to be apostles or to be prophets.

What has he called them to do? He has called them to belong to himself, to enjoy salvation as we know it.

And what this text teaches us then, is that we have been chosen, when we look at that before the foundation of the world, we have been chosen of God in Christ unconditionally.

I like what Spurgeon says on this. He says, it is a good thing that God chose me before I was born, because he would surely not have chosen me afterwards.

So as to say there was nothing in his life to commend himself to God. Our election, our having been chosen in Christ, is unconditional.

This passage tells us that we have been chosen to be holy. This speaks to the moral conduct of the

Christian. But in order to accomplish this, in union with Christ, he had to first give us a new heart and a new nature, with new desires.

So that Paul tells us, and I'm about to list a bunch of people's verses that you have memorized.

You can pull these up and they speak to union of Christ. So that Paul tells us in 2nd

Corinthians 5 .17, therefore, if anyone is, what, in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. So that our regeneration, as we know it, what enables us to seek our

God, and to seek to live holy lives, albeit imperfectly, is the result of that union with him.

We're told that we have been chosen for adoption. John says in one of the sweetest passages in all of Scripture, behold, what manner of love the

Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are.

And this too is by union with Christ. Galatians 3 .26 says, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God, through faith.

Can't you see? So that every blessing we receive is by our being engrafted into the vine, in Christ, that we belong to him, that we are his, that we are not just the mere recipients of some kind of clinical, legal, forensic justification.

Not merely that. That and more. That we are in Christ, and everything we enjoy is found in that Christ.

Now when I'm speaking about election, I know that I am preaching to the higher. I am grateful to the

Lord. And I don't say this to flatter. Some people would think this is a real criticism actually.

So you can take it for whatever it is. But I don't think there are very many churches in this whole city that treasure the doctrine of God's sovereign election the way that this church does.

Last week I prayed through the tulip formulation.

And someone came afterwards and they said, brother, that was excellent. You prayed

Calvinism. I prayed Christ. And I know that brother means that as well.

We weren't merely chosen though. We weren't merely chosen before the foundation of the world.

But we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

And that is of tremendous consequence. Firstly, Sinclair Ferguson writes this.

He says, union with Christ, which we experience through Christ, is not first of all grounded in our faith.

You are not united with Christ primarily because you picked him. Don't you know?

He says, but it is rooted in God's gracious choice. And continuing he goes, this must be of tremendous encouragement to us.

Our faith falters, but this does not mean that our union with Christ falters because it is grounded in God's eternal purposes and not in ours.

There's a second aspect to this where Michael Horton, another Presbyterian theologian,

I believe he's Presbyterian. He says, chosen, chosen, redeemed and justified in Christ alone.

There are no gifts that we receive apart from God or sorry, from God, apart from Christ.

And his work is inseparable from his person. It is impossible to receive the benefits of Christ apart from Christ himself.

You cannot have the gifts without the giver. And one of these great gifts that we have through that giver is our election, our having been chosen.

We should consider that this every time we think about the doctrine of election. For those of you who love this doctrine,

God's electing grace has not come to us in abstraction. It has not come to us in a cool, detached way, distant from God as if he is somewhere out there and there you go.

But it comes to us in the person and in the faith preserving power of Jesus Christ.

So that our election is very personal. It is a blessing wrought through Christ.

So that if you are in Christ, if you are in union with him, you might be a nobody in the world.

And I don't know about you, I love when I find someone in the Bible and they're mentioned once and you know almost nothing about them and you see them.

And I've said this to my children. I've said it to some of you when you talk about slogging through the first several chapters of 1

Chronicles. Like, you know, one name I can't pronounce after another name I can't pronounce. And I've said to some of you, and just think that somehow, some way in God's good providence, they got their name in the living and abiding word of God.

So I want to read that name. If you are in Christ, you might be a nobody in the world.

And yet if you are in Christ, you're like another nobody in the world.

There's a man named Rufus. It's an interesting name. Rufus in Romans chapter 16 and verse 3.

And we can only know two things about him, one of which is his name. In Romans 16 -3, or sorry, 16 -13,

Paul says, Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord.

Chosen in the Lord. If you are nobody, but you are in the

Lord, you have more than everyone, in that you are chosen in the

Lord. The Puritan John Aerosmith has said of this doctrine, Election, having once pitched upon a man, will find him out and call him home, wherever he be.

It called Zacchaeus out of the accursed Jericho, Abraham out of the idolatrous

Ur of the Chaldees, Nicodemus and Paul from the college of the Pharisees, Christ's sworn enemies,

Dionysius and Damaris out of the superstitious Athens. And whatever dunghills gods elect or hid, election will find them out and bring them home.

What a glorious truth. From what dunghill did Christ find you? And if you have been found, you have been found in him.

The third aspect that we find here, so we're not only chosen in Christ, but we are redeemed in union with Christ.

In verse seven, we read in him. It's not gloss over those words.

I see it in myself, even as I read these passages. 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.

In Christ. As a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him.

Things in heaven and things on earth. There are some people, and I hope that you do not mistake me as I preach on this theme, that I am seeking to do this.

There are some people who seek to pit the doctrine of the union with Christ against the doctrine of our penal substitutionary atonement found in Christ.

As if to say that they are mutually exclusive and you need to pick one or the other.

There are some, I have a friend who has this perspective. He has rejected penal substitutionary atonement, and he says, what we need to do is be united with Christ.

That is how we find our justification. He's not wrong in saying we need to be in union with Christ.

We cannot receive any spiritual good apart from that union with Christ. But it's not one or the other, it is both.

Here the apostle Paul clearly connects these important themes of substitution with union.

Now where, you ask? In him, verse 7. In union with Christ, we have redemption through his blood.

When he speaks about redemption, what is Paul talking about? He is speaking about the payment that is required to ransom a person from bondage.

In this we see that Christ does not merely save by the ingrafting of believers into himself.

It's not as if Christ came incarnate, he lived here, he died a natural death, and now he says, come and join, be ingrafted into me.

But what did he do? But that the Lord Jesus Christ shed his own blood to pay the debt of his people in full.

That he might ransom us, like Israel in their bondage to Egypt, that he might ransom us from our bondage to sin and shame and to the last enemy death itself.

In the words of John MacArthur, he says, Christ's sacrifice on the cross paid the price for every elect person enslaved by sin, buying them out of the slave market of iniquity.

That word redemption, that is what is contained in that word. That we have been bought with a price, this

Paul says in Corinthians. But here we see that this

Redeemer is not an angel. It's not a man.

There is a Redeemer. It is Jesus Christ, God's own Son. This time of year you see all kinds of things about baby

Jesus and away in the manger and all of that. And I'm not here to pooh -pooh on your celebrations of Christ's incarnation.

But there's something key that we need to remember. That Christ Jesus came into this world to die.

He came into this world to live, of course, to live the righteous life that we could never live.

So that His righteousness, that righteousness that we could never accomplish, could be imputed to us.

And when He was done fulfilling all righteousness, what did He do? He came to die.

To die in a curse of death on that tree, in our place, shedding

His blood as our penal substitute. And that through, so that through that blood shed, we might have remission of sins.

We read in Scripture that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Why is that?

Because sin calls for the death of the sinner. And on that cross,

Christ died that death for His people, the sinners. And this is not at odds with union with Christ, but it is perfectly, perfectly in accord with our union with Christ.

After all, it is in Him, it is in Him that we have redemption through His blood.

It is through union with this Christ that these benefits of His atonement are communicated to us.

This is where we see more of our favorite passages in all of Scripture intersecting with this vital spiritual union that we experience with the

Lord Jesus. Think about this. How many of these verses have you memorized?

Memorized at camp? Memorized simply because you love these verses, and I'm telling you, they are teaching you about union with Christ.

Romans 3, 23 and 24. What does it say?

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2, 13. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Ephesians 4, 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

One of my personal favorites in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 19 through 21.

That in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself.

Not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of God, be reconciled to God.

And this is one of my favorites. In all of the world for our sake He made

Him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Or in Romans chapter 8 and verse 1, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Perhaps there's no better time for me to ask you this question. Are you in Christ Jesus?

You know, our brother was praying for those in our midst, he said, who do not know the

Lord. And I was thinking as he was praying, I think

I would have added one more category. No offense brother. That we prayed for the children in our midst.

We prayed for friends and family and visitors. And I thought, are there members in our midst who secretly do not know what it means to be in Christ Jesus?

Not to cast doubt upon your profession of faith. But are you in Christ Jesus?

If you are not, then the logical outworking of Romans 8, 1 is that you are condemned apart from Christ Jesus.

Dear friends, we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We must repent, that is to turn to God and believe in Jesus if we will be saved.

And if we have repented, if you have believed, then you are in Christ Jesus. That he has given you not only salvation, but he has given you himself.

Oh, that God would enable every person here to be in Christ Jesus, to believe him, to believe on him, to trust in him, and to be saved.

Brothers and sisters, if you are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation for you.

There's a story from the life of D .L. Moody, where one day someone said to him, I cannot feel that I am saved.

The man had zero certainty of his salvation. And Moody replied to the man, he said,

I ask you a question. Was it Noah's feelings that saved him, or was it the ark?

I ask you the same question. Was it Noah's feelings, or was it the ark?

Where was Noah when the rain fell? But he was in the ark with the door shut.

Are you in Christ Jesus? Your feelings matter not. You can be in the hull of that ark and hear the rain, and the thunder, and the crashing of the waves.

It does not matter. If you are in the ark, you will be saved. If you are in Christ Jesus, you are saved.

For you have died, Colossians 3, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Calvin says on this, his righteousness overwhelms your sins. His salvation wipes out your condemnation.

With his worthiness, he intercedes that your unworthiness may not come before God's sight.

Surely this is so. We ought not to separate Christ from ourselves, or ourselves from him.

Rather, we ought to hold fast bravely with both hands to that fellowship by which he has bound himself to us.

And in verse 10, we're told that when we are in Christ Jesus, and when we have this redemption and this forgiveness of our sins, when we have these riches of grace that have been lavished upon us, that we have been united to him, in him, to unite all things in him, whether in heaven or on earth.

I'm going to talk about it more next week. I'm just going to dip my toe into it for a moment and ask you a question.

Does your salvation, does your being in Christ translate into a vital communion with Christ?

John chapter 17 in verse 3. This is another one of my favorite verses in the

Bible. And this is eternal life. Oh, what is eternal life, Lord?

That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

If God has blessed you this week with a break, can I challenge you to do something between now and the next time we see each other?

Would you press on to know the Lord better? That you have not been saved to be saved.

You have been saved. You have been brought into union with Christ that you might know

Christ. John Owen, who is known for his verbosity, a word, for his verboseness, he says something very clearly, very succinctly here on this point.

He says how few of us are experimentally acquainted with this privilege of holding immediate communion with the

Father in love. And don't you know that because you have been saved in Christ, Christ purchased this very thing for you.

It's like parents who move heaven and earth to buy their child the greatest gift in all the world, and the child sits there and fumbles with the wrapping paper, and they say, behold the gift.

But I like the shiny wrapping paper better. Behold the gift that we have in Christ.

Communion with Christ. We're told in verse 11 that we have been granted an inheritance in union with Christ.

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 are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

Where do we find this inheritance? In the beginning of verse 11. In him, the word inheritance appears in our

Bibles 264 times. 230 of those times are in the Old Testament.

What is Paul speaking about? I need to be fast here. What does Paul have in mind when he speaks about inheritance?

It is every good thing that the Lord Jesus Christ has purchased for us on his cross.

It is redemption. It is righteousness. It is salvation.

It is eternal life. It is God himself and an eternity spent with him.

Everything that Christ has and everything that Christ is,

I'm quoting here from John Piper, or I'm summarizing something that I heard from John Piper.

Everything that Christ has and everything that Christ is which he can share is ours in Christ.

What that means, brother and sister, is that in Christ you possess eternal life, but in Christ also you possess sonship, daughtership in Christ.

If you can think about this, to the extent that Christ can share this, the communion that the

Lord Jesus Christ enjoyed with his father is the same communion that you can enjoy with his father.

Michael Horton says on this, when a person trusts in Christ, to him or her is granted the entire inheritance that Christ won for us in history.

The last will and testimony goes into effect which declares even the ungodly to be justified and even strangers and aliens to be adopted children of God and co -heirs with Christ.

What a word, co -heirs. John Calvin saying, having been engrafted into the body of Christ, we are made partakers of divine adoption and heirs of heaven.

He says, this is the purpose of the gospel that Christ should become ours and that we should be engrafted into his body.

Or Jonathan Edwards who says, by virtue of the believer's union with Christ, he really does possess all things.

I didn't ask our brother for permission, so I hope you'll forgive me, but I remember Lowell coming to me one day.

The first time we sang or one of the first times that we sang that song, yet not I, but through Christ in me.

And he asked the question, what does it mean? Oh, how strange and divine I can sing, all is mine.

And I was not satisfied with my answer when I gave that answer. I'd like to re -answer that question.

What does it mean that all things are ours? That we are in union with Christ and everything that he has accomplished in history is ours.

Everything that he can share with us is ours. Oh, how strange and divine.

We can sing it. We can meet it. All is ours in Christ Jesus. We have been sealed in union with Christ.

In verse 13, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the promise 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.

What does it mean that we have been sealed? What does it mean when Christ's tomb was sealed and it was given that Roman seal?

What did that convey? Because that's, I think exactly what Paul is seeking to convey here. It communicates security.

When they stamped that tomb, they were saying, this is under guard of the

Roman government, of the Roman army. I am grateful

God's army is much better than the Roman army. That we have security so that we can say that there is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

That seal signifies authenticity. That we authentically belong to him so that we can say,

I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I can tell you who

I was before Christ, and I can tell you who I am in Christ.

And though I grieve the Holy Spirit, and though I sin, and I fall, and I fail, and I do so many things,

I can tell you with certainty, and the people who know me well, they can bear witness that the

Spirit of Christ is in me, and I am authentically his.

It's not just a profession. It's not just words. It has rocked my life, and I am different because the

Spirit of God dwells in me. It conveys ownership. That when the

Spirit seals us, we are not our own. We are his now. We are not our own to do with us as we wish.

We are his. We belong to him, and we will do his will. It conveys his authority that we are, if we are in Christ, if you are in Christ, you're not just a subject of the

High King of Heaven. You are a son or daughter of the High King of Heaven, and you are under his authority, under his protection, under everything that is his.

And the sealing, it doesn't come with a wax stamp. It comes with the indwelt

Spirit of God. So that our Lord could say to his disciples in John 16 7, nevertheless,

I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. We might ask if we were alive with Christ, why is it to our advantage,

Lord, that you should leave us? We are here with you now. I can touch you.

I can see you. You hear people sometimes who say, if they could travel back in time, they would want to go and meet with Christ.

I would say, if you're a believer, that is to your disadvantage. Why is that? Because he says later in verse 16, and I will ask the

Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the

Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

One of the means by which we enjoy union with Christ, is the fact that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us.

So we are in him and he is in us. Paul asked the Corinthians, do you not know that you are

God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? And this is the guarantee of our inheritance.

So that we can say with the apostle Paul, for I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

We have all of this in Christ Jesus. And then what is the chief end of our union with Christ?

We see it in three places. In verse 6, in verse 12, and verse 14.

How does verse 6 begin? To the praise of his glorious grace.

How does verse 12 end? To the praise of his glory.

How does verse 14 end? To the praise of his glory. What is this union with Christ moving toward?

It is to the praise of our God. Don't you see that the

Lord has blessed us with this union so that entering into this union, recognizing this union, enjoying this union, we might praise our

God forever. He has given us this union to the end that all nations would come before the throne of God and that every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God. In his book on this subject,

Sinclair Ferguson has pointed out that another brother, B .B. Warfield, he said that Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 14 should never, ever, ever be read in the church.

That's interesting. If you know B .B. Warfield. B .B. Warfield was really a defender of the faith.

He went to battle fighting for the inspiration and the authority of Scripture.

He's written some of the best works on that theme. How could a man devoted to that task say that we should not read part of this inspired word in the church?

He said, we should not read Ephesians 1, 3 to 14 aloud in the church because we should sing it.

We should see this and it should make our hearts erupt in praise to God that all praise would be to him.

That all blessing and honor and glory would be to him. That we would come back to verse 3 and we would say with Paul, what?

Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in him.

I want to finish my sermon in a way that I never have finished a sermon. And that is,

I'm going to invite you to preach the sermon with me. If you have the

Trinity hymnal, it's Roman numeral 16. It's XVI.

It is the doxology. I don't think that we have

Ephesians 1 set to music, but the doxology is a lot like it.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below.

Praise him above all ye heavenly hosts. Praise father, son, and Holy Ghost.

So if you'd be okay to stand, we'll finish our sermon this way and then we'll pray.

Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church. If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our

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