The Earnest of Our Inheritance

Ephesians 1:14

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:14

We are studying Ephesians because God gives us specific information about what the Church is, and for us that means what our new church ought to be. This statement is obviously a continuation of what the Apostle has been saying in verse 13 and especially concerning the sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise. It is not only a continuation of, but also an addition to that statement and to the entire statement which the Apostle has been making from the beginning of this Epistle.

The sealing with the Spirit is the assurance that we are the children of God. But the Apostle, in his desire to strengthen and to comfort and to build up the Ephesians, feels that he cannot leave the matter there, because there is another aspect of the truth which is in a sense still more precious. He deals with this in verse 14.

I emphasize that the Apostle is not repeating himself here or saying the same thing again in a different way. He is really taking us a step further, and still with the object and purpose of helping us to see something more of the glory of our position in Christ Jesus. It is all “to the praise of his glory.”

I. The Meaning of the Term Earnest

This term—“which is the earnest of our inheritance”—is a term which is used frequently in connection with business transactions, although it is not used as commonly today as was once the case. At one time it was a very common term in all transactions of buying and selling, and there is general agreement that it then had two meanings. One was that it was a kind of pledge that is given, a guarantee. A man buying a piece of land, for example, had not sufficient money to pay for it all; so the custom was that, as he promised to pay it all at a later date, for the time being he gave the other person something as a pledge that he would eventually pay the full price.

But there is a richer meaning to this term, namely, that it is not only a pledge but also an installment, actually a small part of the full price to be paid. There is a subtle but a real difference at this point.

Take a simple illustration. Imagine that you owe someone fifty dollars. You may give a pledge for that; for instance, you may give a book as a pledge. Then when you pay your debt you are given back your book. But if instead of giving a book as a pledge you gave an earnest, a dollar let us say, then when you come to settle up with the man from whom you borrowed, you do not get your dollar back, and then give him fifty dollars, you simply add forty-nine dollars. This is so because your earnest was actually a part of the whole.

An “earnest” then is something that is given us “on account.” The word until brings this out yet more clearly— “Who is the earnest of our inheritance until . . .” Until what? “until the redemption of the purchased possession.” It is clear that “the final completion of God’s plan” is the meaning which it carries here.

“Redemption” means deliverance by means of the payment of a ransom price, and it means here the ransom price of the blood of Christ that has been paid for our final redemption and deliverance. The blessing brought to us by the Holy Spirit, and the sealing in particular, is an installment given to us until we receive in all its fullness what Christ has purchased for us by his own precious blood.

II. The Message Conveyed by the Term Earnest

The first question is what is the difference between the sealing and the earnest. The seal assures me that I am an inheritor; it gives me an assurance with regard to my relationship to the inheritance. The earnest gives me the enjoyment of an actual portion of it and therefore increases my assurance that I shall receive all ultimately.

The Apostle’s teaching, then, is that the Holy Ghost has been given to me, and that he, by bearing witness with my spirit, has assured me that I am a child of God. God has said to me, “You are my child”, and given full proof through the sealing; but he has also given me this earnest of my inheritance so that I can begin enjoying it now.

Let us look first at the earnest as a pledge. The best way of looking at the Holy Spirit as the pledge of my inheritance is to look at the way in which the Apostle speaks of it in the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. Take, for instance, the eleventh verse: “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you.” The Apostle explains how in spirit we are already redeemed; we are “in Christ,” we are risen with him. But sin remains in us, and we are at times discouraged because of the fight against it. The Apostle’s comfort and encouragement is found in that verse. The fact that the Spirit dwells in us is an earnest, a pledge of what will yet happen to us completely and perfectly. There is a day coming when our very bodies will be entirely delivered from sin, the guarantee of his blessing being the presence of the Spirit within our bodies.

The Holy Spirit within us is not only a pledge, he is also an installment of our inheritance. The Apostle conveys this through the term “firstfruits.” It is a reference to an ancient custom among farming communities. At the time of harvest the farmer went out and reaped a certain amount of his crop. He then took it home and, having turned it into flour, said to his wife, “Bake this so that we can taste a sample of what is to come.” He had not yet gathered in the whole harvest but only the firstfruits. Having sown the seed in the spring, and having waited through the months of summer, at last the harvest has arrived, and he is anxious to try a little of it. The Spirit and his work within us, especially the sealing, is the firstfruits of the harvest that awaits us.

In other words, the Apostle’s teaching is that the Holy Spirit within us gives us what we as Christians should be enjoying—a foretaste of heaven! Our coming together in public worship should be a foretaste of heaven. We can safely say that the two chief blessings in heaven will be to see our blessed Lord and Savior, and to become like him. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). To see our blessed Lord and Savior face to face, to see God; this is beyond our comprehension, and we cannot grasp it because it is so glorious.

What the Apostle emphasizes is that we should be enjoying the firstfruits and the foretaste now. And elsewhere he gives us some idea as to what that means. In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 3, he writes: “Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” That happens now! We do not see him yet face to face, but we do see him with open face as in a mirror. It is by the Spirit that we are seeing a reflection of the glory of the Lord.

It is not only a guarantee, it is a part of the thing itself. I am entering into the glory even now. It begins here imperfectly and only in small portions; nevertheless it is real, a part of the glory itself.

The second aspect is that we become like our Lord, and share his life. To be like him means to be perfect. That is what we shall enjoy when we shall see him as he is, and shall have been made like him. But we are promised a foretaste of even that also in this life, for the Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. We know something about the joy of holiness, and a hatred of sin. We learn to hate sin as Christ hated it, and to enjoy holiness and purity.

Furthermore, love is a great characteristic of heaven. When we shall see him we shall love him perfectly; but we begin to love him here. St. Paul prays for the Ephesians in his third chapter, that “being strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man”, they may begin to know something of the “breadth and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that (they) might be filled with all the fullness of God.” In heaven you will love him absolutely. We are meant to do so; to know his love to us, to love him, and to love one another. In heaven we shall all love one another; but that begins here.

The same applies to joy. The joy of heaven begins here. “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). “Whom having not seen you love; in whom though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8)— now! If the Holy Spirit is in us we shall know this joy. That is why the Apostle repeatedly appeals to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice” (4:4). We also know “the peace of God that passes all understanding”. Heaven is perfect peace, and we know something about it here. Whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in, we may be at peace— whether we are in want, in need, or full and in abundance, we can always be enjoying this perfect peace of God.

Through the Holy Spirit within us as an earnest we begin enjoying heaven even here. We do not see it all, but God in his infinite grace and kindness and compassion has given us a foretaste. Let us truly enjoy it!

Thanks to God for Other Christians

Ephesians 1:15-16

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. Ephesians 1:15-16

We must never forget that the epistle to the Ephesians is a pastoral letter, and that its purpose was thoroughly practical. St. Paul’s object was to help Christians, to strengthen them, and to encourage them in their daily Christian living. The Apostles believed that the best way to help Christians was to make sure they understood who they were in Christ, and to help them live in terms of that.

The Apostle has been rejoicing in the fact that salvation in Christ is for Gentiles as well as for Jews. He is particularly concerned that those to whom he is writing should realize that they are partakers in these blessings; and so he begins his new section with an emphatic “wherefore,” a word that acts as the link between what has gone before and what is to follow. Because all that he has been describing is true of the Christians at Ephesus he tells them that he prays for them constantly—“Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.”

Observe that there are two aspects to his praying. First of all, he “ceases not” to give thanks for them. He thanks God for the fact that they are in this Christian life at all; for the fact that they have been made fellow-heirs with the Jews in the glorious kingdom of God. No one can truly be a Christian without rejoicing that others also have become Christians. Nothing should make us happier than to know that others also are enjoying the same blessings. Only then does he begin to offer his petitions, which are found from verse 17 to the end of the chapter.

As we turn to this last section of the chapter we find that the Apostle starts by thanking God for the Ephesian Christians. But what exactly has Paul heard about these Christians? What is it that gives the Apostle this definite assurance concerning them? This is important for the reason that it supplies us with tests that we can apply to ourselves. How do we know we are Christians? What are our grounds for thanking God that we are Christians, and for thanking God for other Christians? The mere fact that someone may say he is a Christian does not prove that he is. Sometimes those who have called themselves Christians have been the greatest enemies of the Christian faith. The mere fact that we think we are Christians is not enough; the fact that other people may say that we are Christians is not enough. There must be some test. If we are to have real and solid assurance, then we must have some valid tests to apply.

The Apostle gives us two tests. One refers mainly to our belief; the other mainly to our practice. The proof of true faith is that it shows itself in action. Here, the Apostle gives us these two things together—“Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints . . .” Of all the many things that St. Paul had heard about the Ephesians, he says these two things assure him that they are true Christians, and enable him to thank God for them.

I. Faith in the Lord Jesus

This is, of course, the most vital thing of all. We must not put conduct and behavior in the first position. There are many very good people who are not Christians. Many do not even claim to be; indeed they may be opponents of the Christian faith. But as regards life and living they are good people.

We must also be clear that it is not a vague, general, benevolent, idealistic view that makes a person a Christian. The kind of remark that is sometimes made about a man who has died is that he was not a Christian, but he was a great man, an able man, a man who did much good, and who had many noble ideas with respect to life; then, as if to sum it up, they add: “We may not be able to say that he was a formal Christian, but . . .” What they mean is that though he did not say that he was a Christian, and was not a member of a Christian church, and did not subscribe to the Christian Creeds, he was nevertheless a Christian. No man could have lived such a wonderful life without being a Christian. In other words, a man’s life, or a man’s ideas, or a man’s nobility of character, or his concern about the uplift of the race, or the improvement of life in general, determine whether he is a Christian.

But we must go even further. We are not even to start by asking whether a man believes in God. There are many people in the world who believe in God who are not Christians. Orthodox Jews today who may be strongly opposed to Christianity believe in God. Muslims are believers in God. So the Apostle emphasizes, “your faith in the Lord Jesus.” The Lord Jesus himself, this blessed Person, has to be at the center. This is an all-inclusive test.

A Christian is a person in whose life the Lord Jesus Christ is at the center. He sees everything in him. Jesus Christ has become the controlling factor. Many religious people and religious movements are very active and zealous, but often Jesus Christ is not mentioned by them. They talk about “Coming to God” and “Listening to God” and “Spirituality” and so on without Jesus Christ being mentioned. That by definition is not Christianity, however good they may seem to be.

There are some people who seem to think that to have faith in the Lord Jesus means that you believe that he came into the world to tell you that God loves you. But that is not faith in the Lord Jesus. Such people teach that the Cross is just a great declaration of the fact that God is ready to forgive you. But if that is so, then the Lord Jesus is not the Savior; he simply announces that God forgives and that salvation is possible. The New Testament, however, tells us that the Lord Jesus is himself the Savior, that he came into the world in order to save us. It is he, and what he has done on our behalf, that constitutes the means of our salvation. That is what “faith in the Lord Jesus” means. In other words, it means that if he had not come there would be no salvation.

But according to the other teaching, God would still forgive, and all the Lord Jesus does is to tell us that God forgives. The New Testament asserts that “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins”. Faith in the Lord Jesus means, then, that I cast my entire hope upon him and what he has done on my behalf; it means that I have no confidence in my good deeds, nor in those of anyone else; that I realize that I am a hopeless and a lost sinner, and that I am saved only because of “Jesus blood and righteousness”. A hymn by Count Zinzendorf, translated from the German by John Wesley, states it perfectly—

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness

My beauty are, my glorious dress;

Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed,

With joy shall I lift up my head.

Observe that St. Paul says “faith in the Lord Jesus.” He has been referring to him as “Christ Jesus”, as “Jesus Christ”, as “the Lord Jesus Christ” and so on; but here he deliberately says “faith in the Lord Jesus.”

Lord and Jesus are the two extremes which include everything. The Christian’s Savior is the Lord of glory, the eternal Son of God; yet Jesus also. This Lord is the Babe in a manger in his utter helplessness, the One who came down so low, the One who went to the Cross, the One who was buried, the One who rose again.

A Christian is one who believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son of God. A Christian believes in the Incarnation, in the Virgin Birth, and the miracle involved in that Birth; he ascribes to him no lesser term than this—The Lord! Elsewhere we find the Apostle referring to him as “our great God and Savior.” Of course, if a person believes this miracle he will have no difficulty in believing in the rest of Jesus” miracles. If the miracle of the Virgin Birth is true, every other miracle is a piece of cake.

Finally, we must emphasize that you cannot separate the Lord Jesus. If this is true a man cannot accept him as Savior only, and then perhaps later decide to accept him as Lord, for he is always the Lord. The One who died for our sins is the Lord. If I say that I need a Savior it is because I need a Savior from sin, including deliverance from the power of sin and everything connected with sin. We believe in one indivisible Person. In him there are two natures in one Person; and when we believe in him we believe in him as the Lord of glory and the Lord of our life.

II. Love Unto All the Saints

The one follows the other as the night the day. The Apostle Peter, having reminded the people to whom he was writing his First Epistle that they had purified their souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, proceeds immediately to say: “See that you love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1:22). Because of sin we all hate one another, as the Apostle reminds us. “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3) But Paul has heard that the Christians in Ephesus love all Christians; so he knows that something must have happened to them.

One who is not a Christian, has no interest in Christian people. He generally dislikes them because he finds them to be dull and uninteresting, and “narrow-minded,” and he certainly would not choose to spend hours in the presence of such people. He feels that there is no affinity, no community of interest. It follows therefore that when it can be said of a man that he loves Christians, you can be sure that the man has been given a new nature. “Birds of a feather flock together.” “Blood is thicker than water.” We are ready to forgive things in people related to us which we would not forgive in others, because we belong together and there is a community of interest. So when we find ourselves beginning to love Christian people, we have a proof that we must be one of them.

I have sometimes thanked God for this test when I have been assaulted by Satan, when he seemed to have pressed me hard by his accusations and driven me almost into a corner. At such times I have been glad to be able to fall back on this argument and say: “Well, whatever I am, I would rather spend my time in the company of the humblest Christian than with the greatest in the world who is not a Christian.” The devil has no answer to this. Or to state the matter in a different way; it is a proof that the Holy Spirit is in us. We cannot love truly unless the Holy Spirit is within us. It is he who produces love, and especially love of other Christians. The Apostle has been referring to the Holy Spirit as a “seal” and an “earnest” and as the One who dwells within us; and love of other Christians is a proof of it.

Note that the Apostle says that he has heard of their “love unto all the saints”. They not only love those whom they happen to like; but all the saints. Not only the smart ones, not only the pleasant ones, not only those who belong to a particular social group— no, all the saints. When a Christian meets a person for the first time he does not look at his clothing, he does not look at his general external appearance. He does not ask himself, Where has he come from, what school has he attended, what is his bank balance? He is interested in one thing only. Is he a child of God, is he my brother in Christ?

A good story is told in connection with Philip Henry, the father of Matthew Henry the Commentator. He and a certain young lady had fallen in love with each other. She belonged to a “higher” circle of society than he did, but the young lady had become a Christian, and therefore social standing no longer counted with her or constituted any kind of obstacle to their marriage. Her parents, however, were not pleased, and said, “This man Philip Henry, where has he come from?” to which she gave the immortal reply, “I don’t know where he has come from, but I know where he is going.”

We love the saints because we know where they are going. We are marching together to Zion. We belong to the same Father, to the same family; we are going to the same home and we know it. Some of us are very difficult, and very trying, and very hard to get along with; but, thank God, we are traveling together towards our heavenly home; and we know that the day will come when all our faults and blemishes will disappear and we shall all be perfected together, enjoying the same glorious eternity.

The Father of Glory

Ephesians 1:15-17

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

In this passage, the Apostle Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that he is praying for them, that he ceases not to give thanks for them, making mention of them in his prayers to God. We have already remarked on the fact that his prayer is divided, as prayer always should be, into thanksgiving, which includes general adoration and worship, and then petition. We now come to consider how the Apostle offers his petitions to God. We have here a great object lesson in this respect. There is perhaps no aspect of our Christian life that so frequently raises problems in people’s minds as prayer. And it is right that such should be the case, because prayer is, after all, the highest activity of the human soul.

Of course, those who “say their prayers” mechanically are not aware of any difficulties; all seems so simple. They simply repeat the Lord’s Prayer and offer up a few petitions and they imagine that they have prayed. But such a person has not started praying. The moment you begin to face what really happens in prayer you find inevitably that it is the profoundest activity in which you have ever engaged. It is not surprising that disciples of our Lord turned to him one day and said, “Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples” (Lk. 11:1). But they were probably not only thinking at that moment of John and his disciples; they had also been watching their Lord himself and the way He repeatedly withdrew for prayer.

The Apostle takes the trouble to tell us exactly what he prays and why he prays as he does. The first thing we observe is that the Apostle prays to God the Father. It is interesting to observe that the Bible, speaking generally, teaches us to address our prayers to God the Father.

I pause to make this point for one reason only, namely, that I have sometimes gained the impression that many Christians seem to think that the hallmark of spirituality is to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ. But when we turn to the Scriptures we discover that that is not really so, and that, as here, prayers are normally offered to the Father. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Mediator, not the end; He is the One who brings us to the Father. We go to the Father by him; He is the great High Priest; He is our representative. Normally we do not pray to him, but to the Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second matter which we observe is the way in which the Apostle prays to the Father. Let us pay close attention to his terms and ask ourselves why he said certain things, and expresses his thoughts in the way he does. It is good to talk to the Scriptures, to take every phrase carefully and ask, “Why did he say this, why that?” The Apostle pauses to remind himself of certain things. He has been reminding them of the riches of God’s grace, and of his rejoicing in the fact that they have experienced it. On their behalf he desires to thank God, but before doing so he pauses to remind himself of the One to whom he is going to speak.

He prays, he says, to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Why does he begin his words about prayer in this manner? Why does he not start with his first request? The answer is that he deliberately says he is not praying to an unknown God. He is going into the presence of God Who is known to him, the God who has made himself known by Jesus Christ.

In the Old Testament we find that the Psalmist and others prayed to “the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.” It is difficult for us to realize what such a phrase meant to an Old Testament believer. Their tendency was to be afraid to approach God. But then they remembered that this God was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and this caused them to feel that they were praying to a God whom they knew.

The Apostle, however, does not pray to “the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob”; he prays to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ”; and he does so because there is a new covenant in the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Paul reminds himself that he is praying to the God of our salvation, he is praying to the God who has originated and brought to pass all the things we have been considering from verse 3 to verse 14 in our chapter. He is praying to the God who has, before the foundation of the world, planned his glorious purpose in Christ for our final complete salvation. What a difference it makes to prayer when you begin in that manner! You no longer go to God with doubts as to whether He is going to receive you. You realize that you are approaching “the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:20).

St. Paul, however, goes even further, for his words remind us that God is actually the God of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Do we realize what that means? The Lord Jesus relied on God for everything; it was God who sustained him. Nothing is so obvious about our Lord’s life as his complete reliance upon God the Father. He received strength and power from him. So Paul says that he is praying to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who sustained him, the God who never forsook him. Even the terrible moment on the Cross when Jesus asked why God had forsaken him, was immediately followed by “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). It was God who raised him from the dead, who did not forsake him in hell or “leave his soul to see corruption.” This is the God to whom I am praying, says Paul, “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.” But even beyond that, He is the God in whose presence the Lord Jesus Christ is at this moment. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, “ever living to make intercession for us.” In the light of all this we can go with assurance to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We can sum it up by saying that our God is the God who cannot be thought of truly apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, because we cannot know God without him. “No man has seen God at any time: the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him” (Jn. 1:18). I enter into his presence in one way only, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says: “Having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:19). I am only admitted into the presence of God by the life and death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Whenever we pray to God we should always remind ourselves of these things. We should approach God with full assurance of faith, and full assurance of hope, because of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the Apostle adds even more; he describes the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as “the Father of glory.” Remember the words spoken to Moses at the burning bush: “Take off your shoes from off your feet, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5). “The Father of glory!” There can be no doubt but that this means, partly, that God is the source of all glory. Glory is God. The ultimate characteristic of God is glory. He is that in and of himself. We can only stand in amazement before this expression, “the Father of glory.” And this is the One whom you and I approach in prayer.

Moreover, everything God does is a manifestation of his glory. We recall how Paul ended his description of the plan of salvation in the words “unto the praise of his glory”, in verse 14. Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans that Christ was raised from the dead “by the glory of the Father” (6:4). “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). Everything He does is glorious, perfect in its beauty and in every other respect. I speak with reverence when I say that the greatest thing the Lord Jesus Christ did was to manifest the glory of God.

But Paul’s expression can also be read legitimately as “the glorious Father.” It is a form of expression frequently found in the Hebrew language. In that case it means that God the Father is not only glorious, and the source of all glory, and the summation of all glory in himself, He is also prepared to impart that glory. He is a Father, and as a Father He gives glory. He did so with the Son, and so we find our Lord saying in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel: Father, I pray that you would give me the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world (17:5). He had laid aside that glory for the purpose of the Incarnation, and now He asks that He may have it again. And the Father gave it to him.

The Apostle Peter writes, “Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God” (1 Pet. 1:21). The Father glorified the Son while He was here on earth. He gave him power to perform miracles, He gave him words to speak, He enabled him to raise the dead; He glorified him in his death, He glorified him in the resurrection. He is the glorious Father, the Father who gives his glory to the Son. This is a thought which staggers us because of its immensity, but it is true to say that, because He gives his glory to the Son, He is ready to give it also to us.

We are in the Son because He is our Lord Jesus Christ. So the glory that is in him becomes ours; and we go to the Father who is giving us this glory. Paul is about to pray that these Ephesians may have “the spirit of wisdom and of revelation” in the knowledge of this glory, so that, the eyes of their understanding being opened, they may see this glory and receive it fully.

Our Lord said, “Father, I will that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory” (Jn. 17:24). When we go in prayer into the presence of God we should do so expecting some revelation of this glory. “We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image, from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). The process of our glorification has already started; it will eventually be perfected, and we shall be glorified even in our bodies as well as in our spirits. We shall stand in the presence of the Father of glory and see him.

Let us never again attempt prayer without reminding ourselves that we are going to speak to “the Father of glory.” We need not be terrified; we must go with reverence and godly fear because of his glorious character; but at the same time we can go with confidence and assurance, because He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in him and through him our Father. So we pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.” And if we start in that way we cannot go wrong.

The Mighty Power That Creates and Sustains Faith

Ephesians 1:19-23

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

The exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all. Ephesians 1:19-23

To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with all our heart is one of the simplest things imaginable. Yet, to bring the human mind to exercise simple faith in Jesus is a work of the most astounding power. To bring down the pride of man, to subjugate his will and to captivate his passions, so that he shall cheerfully accept that which God presents to him in the person of Christ Jesus, is a labor worthy of a God. The blessed Spirit of God is always the secret Author of faith; it is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. St. Paul twice uses the strongest words which could be employed to set forth the Almighty power exhibited in bringing a soul to believe in Jesus, and in bringing that believing soul onward till it ascends to heaven.

We have first of all this expression, “The exceeding greatness of his power;” and then we have on the other side of the word “Believe,” these words, “According to the working of his mighty power.” The apostle was not content to say, “You believe through the power of God,” nor “through the greatness of that power,” but “through the exceeding greatness of his power.” The teaching of this passage is that the bringing of a soul to simple faith in Jesus, and the maintenance of that soul in the life of faith, displays an exercise of omnipotence such as God alone could put forth.

Let us never forget that the salvation of a soul is a creation. Now, no one has ever been able to create a fly, nor even a single molecule of matter. We know how to fashion metal or plastic into different forms; but to create the minutest atom, is utterly beyond our ability. God alone creates.

Now, in every Christian there is an absolute creation—“Created anew in Christ Jesus.” “The new man, after God, is created in righteousness.” Regeneration is not the reforming of principles which were there before, but the implanting of something which had no existence before. Since the new life created are the most glorious of all God’s works, I may say most boldly, that in the bringing of any man to believe in Christ, there is as true and proper a manifestation of creating power, as when God made the heavens and the earth.

Further than this, there is more than creation—there is destruction. No man can destroy anything. Since the world began, not a single particle of matter has ever been annihilated. You may cast matter into the depths of the sea, but there it is; it still exists. Cast it into the fire, and the fire consumes it: but either in the ash or in the smoke, every atom survives. Fire does not destroy a single particle. It is as great an exercise of divinity to destroy as it is to create.

Know that the Lord is God alone—

He can create and he destroy.

In the regeneration of every soul there is a destruction as well as a creation. The old nature has to be destroyed—the stony heart has to be taken away out of our flesh; and the day shall come when sin shall be utterly destroyed. When the morning stars sang together because a world was made, creation was their one theme. God made the world out of nothing. That was an easy task, compared with making a new heart and a right spirit, for “nothing” at least could not oppose God. But here, in salvation, God had to deal with opposition that he has to fight and to destroy; and when that has been reduced and overcome, then comes in the creating power by which we are made new creatures in Christ Jesus; so that it is a double miracle, something more than creation: it is creation and destruction combined.

The work of salvation is most truly a transformation. You who have been made new in Christ Jesus, know in your own hearts how great that transformation is. What a difference between a sinner and a saint, between “dead in trespasses and sins,” and made alive by God’s grace! If God should suddenly speak to the Atlantic Ocean, and command it to be wrapped in flames, we should not even then, see such a manifestation of his greatness as when he commands the human heart, and makes it submissive to his love.

Remember, too, as if this were not enough, that the conversion of a soul is constantly compared to raising the dead. How great the miracle when the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision suddenly became a great army! Greater still is the work of might when dead souls are quickened, and made to serve the living God. Indeed, it is not only the first act of conversion which displays God’s power, but the whole of the Christian life, until we come to perfection, that is a clear display of the same power. The Christian life is like walking on water. As Peter walked on the waves and did not sink so long as his faith looked to Jesus, so the believer every day, in every footstep that he takes is a living miracle.

The apostle declares to us by the Holy Ghost that the very same power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead and exalted him to the highest heaven is seen in the conversion and preservation of every individual believer.

Now, we shall first notice the analogy; secondly, we shall consider the reason of it; and thirdly, we shall observe the inferences which come from it.

I. The Analogy

In examining the wonderful picture before us, we begin with Christ in the grave, by noticing that it was in Christ’s case a real death. Those loving hands have taken him down from the cross. Tenderly the women have wrapped him about with spices and fine linen, and now he is about to be put into the tomb. He is assuredly dead. The heart has been pierced; blood and water have both freely flowed. Lift up the pierced hand and it falls at once to his side. The foot has no power of motion. Take up the corpse, and put it into the tomb—this is no trance, but most certainly death.

So is it with us; by nature we are really dead. We were dead in trespasses and sins. Try to stir the unconverted man to spiritual action, and you cannot do it. Lift up his hand to good works, he has no power to perform them. Try to make the feet run in the ways of righteousness; they will not move an inch. The fact is that the heart is dead. The living pulse of spiritual life has long ago ceased. The man is absolutely and entirely dead as to anything like spiritual life. There he lies in the grave of his corruption, unless God is gracious.

You see the parallel holds. We, too, in the same manner as Christ was raised from the dead, have been made to live in newness of life, even as the Master himself said, “As the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them; even so the Son quickens whom he will.”

I do not know whether I have brought forth the parallel completely. If you view our Lord as descending in his agony so deep, and then behold him in his glory so high; if by combining judgment and imagination, hope and fear, you can get some glimmering of a thought of how low the Savior went, and how loftily he climbed, then you may transfer that to your own state, for the same power is at work today, has been at work, and will be at work in you, to lift you up from equal depths to equal heights, that in all things you may be like unto Christ; and having been like him numbered with the transgressors, you may like him obtain the lot and the heritage to reign for ever and ever at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.

II. The Reason for This

Why does God put forth as much power towards every Christian as he did in his beloved Son? I believe the reason is not only that the same power was required, and that by this means he gets great glory, but the reason is this—union. There must be the same divine power in the member that there is in the head, or else where is the union? If we are one with Christ, members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, there must be a likeness. Note, first, that there cannot be a true living body at all—unless the limbs are of the same nature as the head. If here were a dog’s foot, and there a lion’s mane, and yet a man’s eyes and a human brow, you could never conceive of it as a body of God’s creation; you would look upon it as a strange monstrosity, a thing to be put out of sight, or to be hauled around on a trailer in a cage for fools to gaze at; but certainly not as a thing to display God’s wisdom and power. Thanks be unto God, he will not have a perfectly glorious head allied to members in which the divine energy has never been seen. The same power which sparkles about the head must shine in the members.

This is not the most forcible mode of putting it. Let us notice that if all the members were not like the head and did not display the same power it would not be glorious to God. Some of the old tapestries were made at different times and in different pieces, and occasionally the remark is heard, “That part of the battle-scene must have been wrought by a different needle from the other. You can see here an abundance, and there a deficiency of skill; that corner of the picture has been executed by a far inferior artist.” Now, suppose in this great tapestry which God is working—the great needlework of his love and power—the mystical person of Christ—that we should say, “The head has been made, we can see, by a divine hand; that glorious brow, those fire-darting eyes, those honey-dropping lips are of God, but that hand is by another and an inferior artist, and that foot is far from perfect in workmanship.” It would not be glorious to our Great Artist; but when the whole picture is by God himself we see that he did not begin what he could not finish.

Note again, that it would not be glorious to our head. I watched a few months ago, the stained glass window in the process of being installed in St. Matthias in Katy. I think the great person of Christ may be compared to that cathedral window made by Tiffany. Imagine that the artists had put in the head of the chief figure in the most beautiful glass that ever human skill could make, but imagine for an instant that the workers afterwards found that their money failed them, and they were obliged to fill in the rest with common glass. There is the window, there is nothing but a head in noble colors, and the rest is, perhaps, white glass, or some poor ordinary blue and yellow. It is never finished. What an unhappy thing, for who will care to see the head? But when all the rest of the picture has been made with just the same costly material as the first part, then the head itself shall be placed in a worthy position, and shall derive glory as well as confer glory upon the body.

Moreover, to conclude this point, the loving promise of our Lord will never be fulfilled (and he will never be contented unless it be), unless his people do have the same power spent upon them as he has. What is his prayer? “I will that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory;” and then he adds, “The glory which you gave me I have given them.” You know how the union stands—“I in them, and you in me.” We must be like our Head. Is he crowned—we must be crowned too. He is a good husband; he will enjoy nothing without his spouse. When she was poor, he became poor for her sake; when she was despised, he was spit upon too; and now that he is in heaven, he must have her there. If he sits on a throne, she must have a throne too; if he has fullness of joy, and honor, and glory for ever—then so must she. He will not be in heaven, and leave her behind; and he will not enjoy a single privilege of heaven, without her being a sharer with him. For all this reason, then you see it is clear why there should be the same power in the believer as there was in Christ.

III. What Are the Inferences from All This?

The first inference is this—what a marvelous thing a Christian is. I am by doubting and fearing led to look down upon myself as despicable, but when I reflect that the Eternal has exerted the whole of his omnipotence in me, and will continue to exert it till he brings me to himself—Lord, what is man! How near have you brought him to yourself, so that now there is no creature between God and man! God first made man as a creature far distant but yet second, as an adopted and regenerated being, brought as near to God as a son is brought to a father; and who shall tell how near this may be? Let us love and bless God who has done thus much for us.

Then, secondly, why should I doubt God’s power for others? If God has put forth so much power to save me, cannot he save anyone? The might which brought Christ from the dead and took him to heaven is such a tremendous power that it surely can bring the worst sinner to Christ. Let me pray, then, for the chief of sinners; let me encourage the vilest to believe in Jesus, for there is ability in Christ to save such.

Again, why should I ever have any doubts about my ultimate security? Is this irresistible power engaged to save me? Then I must be saved. Does the devil vow that he will destroy me? Do my corruptions threaten to overwhelm me? You enemies of my soul; I laugh you to scorn. If God be with us, who can be against us?

The Lord bless you with his mercy, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

The Final Consummation

Ephesians 1:19-23

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all. Ephesians 1:19-23

St. Paul prays without ceasing that these Ephesians might know the “exceeding great power of God, the energy of the strength of God’s might” which is working in them. The way to enjoy a rich experience in the Christian life is to have a clearer understanding of the truth. People who neglect truth rarely have great experiences. To concentrate on experience alone is generally to live a Christian life which is shallow and miserable.

Above all else we must know the truth concerning Jesus, and so we find that the Apostle closes on the note of the glory and the pre-eminence of Christ. We have already seen how the Apostle keeps on repeating the blessed Name as he leads us through the chapter. He starts with him. What is Paul? He is “an apostle of Jesus Christ.” Then he proceeds to, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I. What Is the Honor?

The Apostle tells us that if we are to understand this power which is working in us we must see it as it is illustrated in what God has done in Christ, in the power “which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead.” What a display of power that was! When all the forces of evil and of hell, when death and the grave were trying to hold him, he was raised by the mighty power of God. Death could not hold him, the grave could not retain him. He rose triumphant. But it did not stop at that! The Apostle says not only that God “raised him from the dead” but also that he “set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.” To be set at a host’s right hand in any function is always a mark of honor, and of authority. The Apostle assures us that God has raised his Son from the dead and has placed him in a position of authority. We have a similar statement, parallel to this, in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians: “Wherefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name” (Phil. 2:9).

God has “set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come”. Christ has been placed in a position of authority and honor which is above all powers. There are evil powers which have exercised dominion in this world, and there are also the good angels, the blessed angels. He has been set above them all.

A perfect description of this is found in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the author describes the greatness of the angels and their power, and then ends by saying that, after all, they are but “ministering spirits” (v. 14). They are not equal to the Son. God has not said to any of them, “You are my Son, this day have I begotten you” (Heb. 1:5).

But Paul adds to this again, and says: “He has put all things under his feet.” Every thing is in subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is master over every one of them. Or to look at it more positively: “and gave him to be the head over all things.” God has made his Son the Controller of all things, including the material universe. The universe is sustained actively by God, and he has handed that authority over to the Son. He is the Controller, the Head over all things. He controls “the stars in their courses,” the ocean in its movement, the wind and the rain, the sunshine, everything. All life is in his hands; he is “the head over all things.”

It is most important that we should realize certain related truths, in particular with respect to this description of the glory of Christ. First, we must realize that Christ’s honors are already his. There are many who are so anxious to emphasize the glory of Christ at his second coming that they become guilty of detracting from what is already true of him. They spend so much time in looking to the future that they forget the present, and completely underestimate the present position of the Lord and his people. Their attitude is that we have nothing to do but to wait for the coming glory and live as best we can in the present in the light of that hope. But God has already done these things in Christ. He has raised him from the dead, he has set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places far above other powers, he has put all things under his feet, and he has given him to be the Head over all things. It is because we so often forget this that we are so fearful and begin to harbor fears that the kingdom of Christ is perhaps going to be defeated in this world. The Lord Jesus Christ himself has already given the answer to all such fears by saying, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18).

Do not allow thoughts about the coming visible manifestation of the kingdom to rob you of the realization of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is reigning now. He is glorified, the crown is upon his brow; he is the King at this moment. He will come in visible manner; but he is King now, as certainly as he will be then. May “the eyes of our understanding be enlightened” that we may know this.

This glory and honor have been given to him, because of what he did while here on earth. It is because he so humbled and abased himself and suffered so much to redeem us, and rescue us that God has set him at his own right hand.

But let me repeat that the most precious aspect of this statement is that all this honor and dignity has been given to him as the Mediator, as the God-Man. He is at the right hand of God not only as the eternal Son. As the eternal Son he was there before the foundation of the world, he was there from eternity. The two statements are reconciled by the fact that the Apostle is writing about Christ here as the Son of Man, as the God-Man. Think of Paul’s words to the Philippians: “Wherefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (2:9-10). This means that human nature has been raised to that surpassing height of glory.

The Apostle’s purpose here, as we have continued to emphasize, is a very practical one. His Epistle is not cold theology. He is anxious to help Christians, and he tells us that we must realize that the power which is in us is to be measured by the fact that God has taken human nature in Jesus and has raised it in him to the right hand of God; and it is there now with all authority and power. What a staggering thought! The One who is at the right hand of God, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, the One under whose feet all things are in subjection, and to whom all power and authority have been given, is the One who once was a Babe, lying helplessly in a manger in Bethlehem! He is the little boy aged twelve who was found arguing with the doctors of the law in the temple. He is the carpenter of Nazareth. He is the young man who began to preach at the age of thirty. He is the One who knew what it was to be weak and tired and who once sat down by the side of a well about mid-day because he was weary and not able to accompany his disciples when they went to buy provisions. He is the One who slept from sheer fatigue in a boat. He is the One who was crucified, and apparently defeated. It is he, Jesus, who has thus been raised! This is the way to measure the exceeding greatness of God’s power. When he became man, when he took our human nature, he was made like unto us. He became subject to temptation, subject to the frailties of our flesh; and in him that human nature has now been raised to the heights and is at God’s right hand. Such is the measure of the power of God.

II. Why Did God Give Him This Power and Glory

God has given all this power and honor to him for the Church. “God has raised him from the dead, and has set him at his own right hand . . . and has put all things under his feet, and has made him to be head over all things” for the sake of the church. Not for his own sake alone, not only that he might participate in the full glory of his Father again, not only that he might exercise this great power and enjoy it; but for our sakes, “for the church which is his body”!

What does this mean to us and for us? We can answer in a number of simple statements. What is true of him is true of me, and is true of all of us who are Christians. God has given it all to him for the sake of “the Church which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all.”

O! the honor and privilege of being a Christian. We see great people in the world vying with one another for some mark or title of honor, for some high position, or to be near some notable personality. They are prepared to pay great sums of money for such honor and to make great sacrifices for it. Yet all Christians, whoever they are, and however unimportant they may be in the world, because they are “in Christ”, are, without exception, sharing our Lord’s exalted position in glory. This is actually true of us now, as the Apostle tells us in his second chapter— “And has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (v. 6).

But even in the present our position is wonderful. The Apostle again in that First Epistle to the Corinthians, after rebuking his readers for boasting of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or any other name, writes: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (3:21-23). This is true of us because of our relationship to Christ.

We must say a word also about the safety of our position. When you feel your weakness in the face of the forces that are set against you, remember that he, the Head of the body to which you belong, is at the right hand of God, that he is Head over all things. He can direct everything, the wind and the storm, the rain and the sunshine; he can order all things, and is doing so—for you!

That, in turn, leads me to say a word about the mystery of our position. “If you say,” says someone, “that all this is true, and that I am related to Christ in that way, why is it that I ever have to suffer, why is it that I am ever taken ill, why is it that calamities ever visit me, why is it that my crops are ever ruined by storms? Why should anyone dear to me die, why is it that I am not enjoying a perfect life without any problems?” We do not understand it fully, but we know that our trials are a part of the process of our Christian maturation. The Psalmist says: “Before I was afflicted I went astray”; “It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (Ps. 119:67, 71).

Many a Christian looking back across life has thanked God for a loss, for sorrow; these troubles helped in the nurture of his soul and his spiritual development. God knows best what is good for us; his heart is love, and we are in his hands. What we must always remember is that nothing can happen to us apart from him, and that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” Let us rest in his love and in the power of his might.

In the light of this elevated doctrine, our final position is certain and sure. The final security and perseverance of the saints is beyond doubt because we are members of Christ’s body, and he is at the right hand of God in the place of absolute authority and might and dominion. Nothing can be more certain than this: “He must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25).

The Church Which Is Christ's Body

Ephesians 1:22-23

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

God has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all.— Ephesians 1:22-23

The Apostle is praying that we may know the exceeding greatness of God’s power toward us who believe, but he seems to be carried away from his theme in describing that power. But actually, he wants us to realize the greatness of the power that is working in us, and to know exactly how it works.

The figure of speech that St. Paul uses to give us some idea of the Church is the picture of the Church as “the body” of Christ. It is not surprising that the Apostle should have prayed so earnestly that we might have the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation”; nor is it surprising that he repeats the petition and says that we need to have “the eyes of our understanding enlightened," for this is undoubtedly one of the most difficult to understand. It is only as we are enlightened by the Holy Spirit that we can understand it.

There is much talk today about not being bothered with doctrine. There is also much emphasis upon entertainment; but the church is not a place where people are to be entertained and then given a brief, light, comfortable sermonettes for Christianettes. If we are to become mature, if we are to rise to the height of our “high calling in Christ Jesus," then we must so exercise our minds, and all our senses, that we may begin to have some conception of ourselves in the body of Christ.

I. The Comparisons

The commonest of all St. Paul’s pictures is that of the Church as the body of Christ. But it is not the only picture. We find in the second chapter that he compares the Church to a building. Jesus Christ himself he says, is “the chief corner stone” and the apostles and prophets are the foundation. He also compares the Church to a household in which Christians are members of the “household of God," and to a great empire like the Roman Empire. There is the central seat of authority, the emperor, but she has her people scattered throughout the world, and various officers who govern the Empire. Later he says that the relationship between Christ and the Church is similar to that between a bridegroom and his bride. Our Lord himself in the fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel compares the Church to a vine and its branches.

All these pictures are designed to enable us to have some understanding of how the mighty power that is in Jesus comes into us, and enables us to live the Christian life and assures us that we are going to enjoy eternal life. We are interested in it that we may see how this “exceeding great power of God” actually operates in us.

What does that mean? First, we are “joined” to Christ. Think of a human body. From one standpoint a body is a collection of parts—fingers, toes, arms, legs, and so on. But the essential truth about the body is that it is not a number of loose parts which are somehow or other attached to one another. The marvel of the body is that all the parts are really one, they are in an organic, essential and vital unity. To put the point crudely, my fingers are not joined to the palm of my hand loosely, they are not simply tied on; it is a living connection, and there is a sense in which you cannot tell exactly where the palm ends and the fingers begin.

We must not press it too far, but it seems to me that every one of us is an off shoot of Christ, a development out of Christ. We have come out of him; we are not merely loosely attached to him. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians St Paul says: “We are all baptized by one Spirit into one body” (12:13). It is a spiritual unity, it is a mystical unity; and it is therefore something that is indissoluble.

It is a unity that we ourselves cannot bring into being. It is the work of the Holy Spirit alone which makes us Christians. This relationship of the Christian to Christ is not something which may exist today and not exist tomorrow. It is not something which depends upon our concentration or faithfulness. As it is the work of the Spirit, and done by him in his own way; it is permanent. You may backslide, but if you are in the body of Christ, you are in the body of Christ, and you will remain in the body of Christ.

The second principle which is particularly emphasized by the Apostle here is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. He says that God “has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all.” Christ as Head of the Church is the sole authority, and we must recognize no other.

He is concerned to say that Christ as the Head of the Church is the source and the center of the life of the Church. This is made quite clear by the analogy of the body. In the body the head is the source and the center of power. The body derives its vital energy from the head. There is not a part of the body which is not controlled by nerves and the nervous system. And all the nerves ultimately can be traced back to the brain, which is in the head. When the Apostle says that Christ is the Head of the Church he means we have no life apart from him; all the energy and power come from him.

Another obvious deduction is, that the same life is found in every single part and portion of the body; and that it is this that gives unity to the body. No part of the body has an independent existence; all parts are bound together and are made sensitive to one another. It is the Holy Spirit that makes the unity; it is the common life and energy that makes us one. The only unity is a unity in the Spirit, a unity which is made by the Spirit, and sustained by the Spirit.

Our third deduction is that Christ fills the body with his own life. We are told in the Scriptures that in the Lord Jesus Christ dwells “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9), and here we are told that in the same way the fullness of the Son is in the Church.

Once more the analogy of the human body is helpful. There is a sense in which every part of my body is full of my life and of me. My life and being are in every part of my body; indeed, the moment I cease to be, every individual member of my body will die. If you sever the main nerve, or the blood supply, for instance, to a finger, it will soon cease to be a part of my body. The whole of my life is in every single part. Christ’s “fullness” is in the Church, in us. The whole life of the vine is in the branch. So, as Christian people, we must realize that however much we may be conscious of our weakness, and of the strength of sin within us, and of the world and the flesh and the devil—all the powers and graces of the Lord Jesus Christ are in us as members of his body.

The body is one, and yet it consists of a number of individual members or parts. As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “You are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (12:27). In the human body, as he points out, the hand has one function and the foot has another; the nose and eyes and the ears and the various parts of the body all have their individual parts to play. There are “beautiful parts” and “less beautiful parts," but they are all essential and they all work together for the proper functioning of the whole body. But the energy we exercise all comes from him.

Jesus himself made this quite clear when he said: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” We may be very active and busy; but that is not of necessity doing his work. Without him we can do nothing; but with him all things are possible. So we may say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

All this is implicit in the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church; and so as we contemplate life and all its difficulties, and as we are tempted by Satan to feel that all is impossible, and that we cannot go on because we are so weak and the difficulties so baffling, we must remind ourselves of this truth and say: I am a very small and unimportant member, but I am a member of the body of Christ; I am “in him," and therefore, whatever may be true of me personally, the life of the Head is in me, and his vital energy is in me.

II. The Reality

I almost hesitate to mention the next great principle which is taught here in the phrase, “The church, which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all.” We have just seen that it means that his fullness is in the Church, his body. It also means that there is a sense in which we as the Church are his fulness. But let us be clear as to what this means. The Lord Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God is eternally self-sufficient and independent and has no need of us. But when we think of the Lord Jesus Christ as the One who has come to redeem us, and to present us to his Father, then in that sense he is joined to the Church and needs it. A head alone is not complete. A head needs a body, and you cannot think of a head without a body. So the body and the head are one in this mystical sense. As such we Christian people are a part of “the fulness” of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the amazing truth of the Church, and since the Lord Jesus Christ returned to heaven, the Church is being perfected. Think of a new-born baby. The child is perfect; but it can grow and develop, and mature. The same is true of the Christian Church. From the Ascension of Christ to his Second Coming, the body of Christ has been growing and developing; and there is a day coming when she will be complete and perfect. So I must learn to think of myself, humble, unworthy, insignificant Christian as I am, as someone who is essential and vital to the “fulness” of the mystical body of Christ. What an idea! To the extent to which we grasp this idea we shall receive strength not to sin. A member of this mystical body continuing in sin? Impossible! There is no way which leads so directly to holiness and sanctification as the understanding of this truth of the Church as the body of Christ. We are a part of “his fulness," of his mystical completeness as the One given to the Church by God to be its Head.

III. The Conclusions

In view of the fact that the Church is the body of Christ, and that he is the Head, we are entitled to say that what is true of him is true of us. We are now “in Christ”; he is the Head of the body of which we are the parts. Whatever the Head does the whole body does also. So we have been “crucified with Christ.” When he was crucified I was crucified. In that sense I am as dead as he was. I am “dead to sin," I am “dead to the law.” I have finished with both. But, St. Paul emphasizes is that I am also risen with him. Even as the power of God raised Christ from the dead, he also raised me with him.

All this follows inevitably from the truth concerning the Church as the Body of Christ. In the second chapter of Ephesians the Apostle actually tells us that we are already “seated in the heavenly places” with the Lord Jesus Christ because of our mystical union with him. Because he is the Head, and we are the body, what is true of him is true of us. Do you believe this? Are you living in the holy consciousness of it? Is this to you the most exhilarating thought you have ever met? It is true. This is not mere theory, it is fact. We are already “in Christ” in all these respects. We have finished with the law that condemns. We have finished with the death that finally leads to perdition. We are in Christ, risen with him, and seated in the heavenly places with him.

That brings us to a final thought. Many Christians often have difficulty with regard to the exact relationship of the Lord’s working in us and the necessity of our obedience. This metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ, should save us from confusion and enable us to see the relationship between his working and our working. Paul’s statement in the second chapter of his Epistle to the Philippians states it clearly: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do his good pleasure” (v. 13). Paul issues a specific command telling us that we must work “with fear and trembling because it is God who works in us.”

How can we reconcile the two statements? Think of a muscle in a man’s arm. There is life and power, supplied by the nerve that goes to it. The muscle cannot do anything in and of itself; but it is alive because it is receiving energy from the brain. In its normal state it is relaxed and flabby. The more we exercise the muscle, the greater will be the energy and the power supplied to it. These two things work together at the same time. We must not say that it is all from the brain, or that it is all in the muscle. The brain acts through the developed muscle.

Let us never forget that “the energy of the strength of God’s power” is in us because of our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Head of the body, of which we are parts. The energy is there, and I must use it, and I shall then find that there is infinitely more energy available. May God, by the Holy Spirit so enlighten “the eyes of our understanding” that we may know that we are members of his body!

The Human Condition

Ephesians 2:1-3

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

In the first three verses of Ephesians 2, Paul tells us what the human condition is. He tells us how sinful we are, and he does that to set the stage for describing the inestimable grace of God. Let us look at the human condition, and in the next sermon we will look at the grace of God in contrast with that.

There are many reasons for people today to be very depressed. In some senses the world we live in is a very depressing world. Our human condition, in some ways, is very, very depressing. I do not mean to put you under a cloud of doom and gloom, but we do need to be realistic about our situation. We have to say that there are truly many reasons to be discouraged and depressed. Jesus Christ does not make us into those who act as if everything is a bed of roses. No, we are realistic. Jesus Christ opens our minds and our eyes to the reality of our situation.

But while we say that there are many reasons to be depressed, we also know that everyone wants to be happy. I have never met anyone who says that he really wants to be sad and depressed, and that he is doing everything he can to make himself that way. People want to be happy.

We look at inflation, and unemployment, and we say that those things are bad. But we try to construct some way of looking at economics that will make us happy and will enable us to see rosy days ahead economically. That may not be true, but we like to make up stories that will make us hopeful.

Or we think of social conflict and see that there is racism, disintegration of the family, an absence of moral guidelines, and other elements of social conflict. We say that the situation is very depressing. But every now and then you can read an article in the newspaper that says things are really better than they ever were. Don’t long for the good old days, because the good old days really were not so good after all.

Some people look at the Bible and say, “That is what the Bible is. The Bible is just stories that make up a cheery atmosphere, but the world really isn’t that way at all. The Bible would lead you to believe that every bit of life is a bowl of cherries and that if you would only come to Jesus you would be happy all the time. The Bible really isn’t very realistic,” they say.

But right here in this passage, St. Paul is more realistic than most people would like for him to be. Paul tells us in the first three verses of Ephesians 2 that we have to go down into the deepest depths of the human condition before we are prepared to have a true picture of what is good. We must look directly into the face of the horror of the human condition and of ourselves as sinners before we are ready to appreciate the grace of God.

This applies to every single person. When St. Paul describes the human condition, he is not talking about those people “out there somewhere” who are not quite as religious and not quite as educated as we are. What Paul says in Ephesians 2:1-3 applies to every single one of us. He says in verse 3, “We were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” St. Paul is painting a very dark backdrop against which he is going to show the beauty of God’s grace in all its shining brilliance.

First of all, consider that Paul tells us that we were dead. Secondly, he says that we were slaves. We were not only dead, we were dead slaves. And then thirdly, Paul tells us that we were not only dead, and we were not only dead slaves, but we were condemned dead slaves.

I. We Were Dead

This is a statement of fact regarding everyone who is not a Christian. Paul is not trying to find some very insulting words so he can make everybody feel bad. He is giving a statement of fact. And first of all, he traces this statement of fact to our trespasses. In verse 1 he says, “You were dead in trespasses.” The word trespass means “a false step; to go in the wrong direction; to step off of the right way; to cross over a known boundary.”

Here is the picture: You are going down a road, and you come to a sign that says “No Trespassing, Violators will be prosecuted.” You stand there and read the sign, and then you take your wire cutters and cut the fence. You walk right past the sign and start hunting or fishing on the other person’s property. It is not that you just made a mistake without knowing about it. The sign told you which way to go, and you took a false step and went across a known boundary. You said, “I will purposely violate the law.”

Now that is a negative concept. The Word of God tells you the way that you are to go, but instead of going in that direction you say, “I will go in the other direction. I commit myself to a pathway of violating the known commands of God.”

Paul also traces our deadness in sin to the sins that we have committed. Technically speaking, there is a difference between trespass and sin. When Paul uses the word sin here, what he has in mind is “missing the mark.” An example might help to show the difference: You are on an archery range with a bow and arrow. You are trying to hit the target, but the arrow does not even come close. That is what sin is: missing the mark. But what if you are not looking at the target? What if you see the sign that says “Shoot downrange only,” and you turn around and shoot the nearest woman that you can find? That is a trespass. When you turn around and do the opposite of what the law says, you are trespassing. Sin is when you try to do what is right, but you miss the mark.

The Bible is covering the whole human condition. It is not just that we openly violate the Law of God. There are some people who say, “I’m trying as best I can. I’m trying to go in the right direction.” But the Bible says that even when we try to do our best, we miss the mark. That is pretty bad.

Before God we are both rebels against his Law and failures at doing what is right. That is what St. Paul means when he says that we are dead. We are completely alienated from God.

But non-Christians do not seem to be dead. In fact, they appear to be very lively. They win sporting events. They have lots of money. They seem to be very smart people. Some are movie stars. Are these people dead? They are breathing.

The Bible says that they are dead because they are blind to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and they are deaf to the voice of Jesus Christ. They have no love for God, and no desire to please him. They have no longing for fellowship with his people and could not care less about the Church. For all intents and purposes they are as unresponsive to God and to his concerns as a corpse would be. You might as well walk into a morgue and offer free ice cream to the first ten who will get up and ask for it.

And the tragedy of it all is that those who were created specifically by God and for God’s glory are now trying to live without him. They are trying to live as if God makes no difference whatsoever. They are dead to God.

II. We Were Slaves

We might think that being dead is bad enough. And it IS bad. I remind you that my purpose is not to depress you, nor was that St. Paul’s purpose. The purpose is to give us a realistic view of ourselves so that we will have a greater appreciation of the grace of God. In response to the question isn’t that bad enough? the answer is no, because it is not realistic yet. It is still too optimistic to say that we are dead in our sins and trespasses.

St. Paul goes on to tell us that we were enslaved to our sin. Paul says in verse two, “In which”— that is, in your trespasses and sin— “you once walked.” That is, it was the manner of your life to live in that way. You were enslaved to those things. St. Paul does not want us to have the idea that without Jesus Christ we are just on a pleasant stroll through life, a walk. No, he wants us to understand that we were in bondage beyond our control. We were enslaved to our sin.

He says first of all that we walked, according to the course of this world, this evil age in contrast with the age that Jesus Christ introduced. That is the Kingdom of Light, the Kingdom of the Son of God. He ushers his dear children into that Kingdom of freedom— freedom from sin, freedom from guilt, freedom from the power of sin, freedom and ability to do what pleases God, and what makes us happy. In contrast to that way of life, Paul says, “You were enslaved to the course of this world.” Paul wants us to think of the whole value system of the world that is built up without any reference to God.

Then he goes on to say that our walk was “According to the prince of the power of the air.” We lived according to the mandates and the desires of the prince of the power of the air. Now who is that? It is none other than Satan. It is not fashionable to say that you believe in a personal devil, but of course it is the Devil himself who makes it unfashionable to believe in him. That is his way of dominating the spirit of non-Christians.

Then St. Paul says that we also walked according to the lusts of the flesh. The rule for our society has become “If it feels good, do it” or “If it feels right, It must be right.” So we are told to follow our feelings, the passions of our sinful flesh.

Now there is nothing wrong with your bodily desires. There is nothing wrong with enjoying good food. There is nothing wrong with having enough sleep and enjoying your sleep or with lying in bed half awake in the morning and reveling in the fact that you still have another hour to go before you have to get up. But there is something wrong with gluttony, there is something wrong with sloth and laziness, and there is something wrong with lust. Sin causes us to take things that are good and make them bad.

In this phrase St. Paul also includes the passions of the mind: pride, ambition, rejection of God’s truth, and malicious and vengeful thoughts. There are many, many ways in which we can sin, not only in the sinful passions of our bodies, but also in the sinful passions of our minds as we reject God and his truth over and over again in many ways. So Paul says that we were dead and we were dead slaves.

III. We Were Condemned

St. Paul says that we were by nature children of wrath. Now who is the one who has this wrath? It is not Satan. Satan is not the Lord of punishment. It is God who is the Lord of punishment. It is God who brings his just judgment upon those who reject mercy. St. Paul say’s that we were dead slaves who were condemned as children of wrath. It is very important for us to understand that when Paul speaks in this way he is not going off into a fit of dramatic: fire and brimstone. Paul is not saying these things just to scare people. Paul is giving statements of fact, and he says that as a matter of fact those dead slaves are under the wrath of God.

God’s wrath is not a bad temper. God does not have a problem with a bad temper. I may have a problem with that, and you may have a problem with that, but God does not. When God’s wrath is poured out upon the world and upon wicked human beings, it is not because God is succumbing to the temptation of a bad temper. But that makes this even worse. If God just for a moment gave in to a fit of bad temper and apologized later, then we could say that things are not so bad.

But Paul wants us to understand that the wrath of God is God’s settled, determined, reasoned hatred for everything that is contrary to his nature and his Word. And God never changes his settled, determined opinion about that.

When we understand that, we begin to understand what an awful condition we are in. The problem is not just that sinners hate God and are rebelling against God. The remedy is not just for sinners to change their minds and come back to God and decide to love Jesus. That is not the point. The point is that God has deep-seated hatred against sin, and that is what needs to be changed. That is what needs to be removed from sinners. Until that is dealt with, there is no hope for you and me. We are under God’s condemnation.

The wrath of God is entirely predictable. It is not the whim of a moment. It is entirely personal. It is not just some deterministic machine that operates at random. It is God’s personal, righteous, and constant hostility to everything that is evil. It is God’s settled refusal to compromise. It is God’s resolve to condemn evil in every form.

Now you might say, “That doesn’t sound like the God of the Bible, at least the God of the New Testament. The God I worship is a God of love, and what you are talking about is incompatible with God’s love.” But as a matter of fact, it is very compatible with God’s love because God loves righteousness. God is perfectly and positively righteous. There is no wickedness in God. He hates wickedness, and he loves righteousness. And it is just because God loves righteousness so intensely, so infinitely, that he has such a settled hatred against all wickedness. It was God’s love of righteousness that caused him to send his Son Jesus Christ into the world to make us righteous. He hated our sins so much that he poured out his wrath upon his own Son to make us righteous. God so loved the sinful world that he gave his only begotten Son to bear the punishment deserved by us.

He says in verse five: “When we were dead in trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ. (By grace you have been saved.)” Paul makes this contrast, and he wants to make the contrast as extreme as he can. He wants us to understand how far down in sin we are and how great our condemnation is. By nature we are children of wrath. But by the grace of God we have been made alive and we have been made children of God.

In the next sermon we will look at the grace of God, but in preparation for that I want you to understand what a hopeless condition we were in until God went forth in all his power and grace to redeem us from that terrible condition, to draw us up out of that pit, and to set our feet on the solid ground of the Rock, Jesus Christ our Savior.

God's Compassion

Ephesians 2:4

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

In the last sermon we looked at a somewhat depressing description of the human condition [The Human Condition]. As I said, I was not going out of my way to be depressing and St. Paul was not going out of his way to depress us. The intention, rather, was to give us a realistic and accurate description of the human condition so that we might be in a position to appreciate God’s compassion.

After that somewhat gloomy description of the human condition—which IS gloomy and depressing—we come now to two of the most wonderful words in the whole Bible. They are the first two words in verse 4: “But God.” If we spend all of our time talking about the terrible condition that we are in and then say, “But we can’t help it” or “But we’re trying as hard as we can” or “But God shouldn’t be so mean,” then there is no hope, because those kinds of answers leave us in our terrible condition.

The “But God” here has the same sort of feeling you might have had if you have ever heard someone say, “Yes, I know all of that. Yes, I agree with all of that. But . . . .” And everything that follows the but is a denial of all that they said they agreed with. So the “but” serves as an extreme contrast or contradiction to everything that has previously been said. In this chapter of Ephesians the “But God” functions in the same way.

The two words “But God” introduce the whole Christian message, because those two words tell us very eloquently of God’s intervention. We have a gloomy picture of the human condition. Not only are we dead, but we are slaves in our deadness, and we are under the wrath and the condemnation of God. All those things are true.

But God intervenes. And those two words tell us that our hope and our rescue come wholly from outside of ourselves. He does not say, “But you can do something about it by repenting, by believing, by changing your situation.” He does not suggest to us that the solution or the deliverance comes from within us. Paul introduces something entirely new, and yet it is connected to what goes before because it is the solution to the problem.

First of all, let us consider what is true of us in our sin. Secondly, the specific teaching of the Gospel embodied in the words “But God.” Thirdly, we will make a few applications.

I. Man in His Sin

As we saw in the previous sermon, man is dead spiritually. He is governed by his own sinful mind, and he is dominated by an evil power outside of himself. As a result, he is also under the wrath of God. Man’s condition is utterly hopeless. He is utterly unable to do anything for himself.

This is the only real and adequate explanation for strife. In the book of James, James raises this question: Where do wars come from? Wars come from the lusts that war in our hearts. That is a general principle of the Word of God. It does not make any difference if we are talking about nations, families, races, or individuals.

No amount of education, and no amount of fear-mongering will stop sins from being repeated. We will never outgrow our need of policemen. If our world is to be put right, it must be done by God. And that is why the Apostle Paul begins verse 4 by saying “But God.”

It is only when we start with a realistic assessment of the human condition that we are prepared to appreciate what St. Paul means when he says, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”

But God. . . .

II. What Has God Done?

First let us consider a few things these words do not mean. The reason it is necessary to speak of what these words do not mean is that there are so many errors that are put forth in the name of the Church and in the name of Christianity. St. Paul wants us to know that there is no solution in anything that we do—patriotism, courage, good deeds, self-sacrifice, or Christian virtues. The solution is not there. The solution is nowhere to be found except in the power of God through the Holy Spirit. The only hope is in “But God.” It is not in anything that we can do, but in what God does. There is no solution until God, by his Holy Spirit, changes us by the Holy Spirit. The Christian message for the world is to call the world to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That is what the world needs to hear. That is what the Christian Church can offer to the world that nobody else can give.

God has done something. That is the beauty of the Lord’s Supper. It may seem strange to mention the Lord’s Supper at this point because St. Paul is not talking about the Lord’s Supper, but the beauty of the Lord’s Supper is that it declares that God has done something. The Lord’s Supper, week by week, gives eloquent testimony to the fact that we are sinners, that Jesus Christ had to die on the cross if there was to be any deliverance for sinners. God sent his Son. God acted. The Lord’s Supper, therefore, is not a sad time as much as it is a time of rejoicing and celebration because God has acted to do away with sin.

And what has God done? First of all, God restrains evil. For instance, consider the Tower of Babel. As the world began to be populated again after the Flood, all the people spoke one language and had one society. God told them to split up and spread out in the earth and replenish the earth. But they said, “No, we don’t want to do that. We want to stay here. Instead of building a world that is honoring to God, we want to build a city and a tower that will honor us. We want to be God walking on the earth, so we are not going to do what God says. We are going to make a name for ourselves.” God saw that sinful, wicked man, if left to himself and able without any kind of restraint to plan and to implement his plans, would create hell on earth. So what did God do? He confounded their language so that they could not understand each other anymore. He forced them to go their separate ways.

Just think how sinfu1 our world would be if we could get the Russians, the Americans, the Chinese, the French, the British, and the Arabs with all their power to agree to use their power for exactly the same purpose, just think what a hell we could create. God divided nations and kept them in conflict with one another in order to restrain evil. That is the message of the Tower of Babel.

The message of the Day of Pentecost is that God now in Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, and through the proclamation of the Gospel is undoing the effects of the Tower of Babel. It is not through diplomacy, but it is only through Jesus Christ and through the preaching of the Gospel that there can be true unity, true peace, and true love in the earth. That is the first thing God is doing. He is intervening even now in the present time, to restrain wickedness in the earth by various means.

The second thing that God is doing is delivering individuals from the wrath to come. He is acting by the Holy Spirit to regenerate sinners—that is, to give them new hearts and to deliver them from the wrath to come. This is not an appeal to individuals to reform themselves, but it is a statement of fact. God has acted. So, for instance, when Jesus speaks to Nicodemus in John 3 and says, “You must be born again,” he is not telling Nicodemus that there is something he must do. And Nicodemus understood that very well. He said, “How can that be? How can I climb back into my mother’s womb and be born again now that I am an old man?” And Jesus says, “Right, Nicodemus. You got the point. You can’t do that. The Holy Spirit must do that to you.” Often when people say, “You must be born again,” they mean for the sinner to do something. They say, “Be born again,” as though this were a command to the sinner. But, as a matter of fact, this is not an admonition to the individual to do anything. It is a statement of fact that the Holy Spirit must work in the person’s life.

The third positive thing that God has done is that he has made us citizens of a new kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He has taken us from that dark and gloomy slavery that we were in, and he has put us into the kingdom of his Dear Son. So here is the Gospel: God restrains our evil. God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, delivers us from the condemnation to come, and God puts us into the kingdom of his Dear Son.

III. Applications

The first application is that we must not, cannot, and do not pin our hopes for the future or rest our affections on this world. The Bible teaches us all the way through that Christians are pilgrims in this world. We do not seek an enduring city here. We always have our eye on Heaven. It is our goal, and we are moving in that direction. We view ourselves as pilgrims, and we do not trust in any of the measures that this world may devise in order to bring peace or happiness.

The second application is that because man is as he is and because it takes the intervention of a sovereign God to change sinners, then we are never surprised by what happens. We expect sinners to kill each other, to steal from each other, to be violent with each other, to lie, and to hate. We expect these things because that is the nature of the world. It is a sinful world, and we do not expect good from the world. In a sense, they cannot help it. That does not excuse what they do or make it right. That does not excuse our sins or make them right. But we do not expect them to do any more than that, and we are not surprised by the outworking of sin, because we know that they are dead and enslaved to sin.

The third application is that the Christian is more than a conqueror in Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that in Romans 8. When Paul says in Ephesians 2, “But God has made you alive,” he does not mean that God found you dead in your sins and sprayed perfume on you to make your dead body smell nice. He says that God made you alive. In Jesus Christ the Christian is alive forever.

So as we face the difficulties of our lives— whether they are on the national level or on the individual level, whether they are the problems that we face as a church or the problems that we face as families— we do not draw on our power, or on our abilities. The solution to all our problems is “But God.” We look at ourselves and all our difficulties, and temptations, and we take very seriously what Paul says in the first three verses of Ephesians 2, where he tells us that we are dead in sin, enslaved to sin, and unable to get out of it. There is no solution—“But God.” So we turn to God and find his answers in Christ.

The last application is that because God has intervened to deliver us from sin and all its consequences, we are safe in the hands of God. We will not fear what man can do to us, because we are heirs of glory. Do you think that God would go to all the trouble to find us in our dead, enslaved, condemned condition; join us to Jesus Christ; and then ten years later say, “What’s the use? I give up?” No, we are safe in the hands of God.

We can come to God and say, “Lord, you have displayed your almighty power on the cross of Jesus Christ and by the outpouring of your Holy Spirit to join me to Jesus Christ and to raise me from the dead, to give me new life. And I know now that because of that you will not leave me. You will not abandon your work half-finished, but you will finish your work. I am an heir of glory. I am safe in your hands.”

If you were depressed and gloomy after hearing in the previous sermon what we are in and of ourselves, let us now rejoice greatly because we are redeemed by Christ, and carried in the eternal arms of God.

The End of Human Pride

Ephesians 2:8-10

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

If we did not get the point from what Paul said in the first chapter and in the first few verses of chapter 2, he now is going to drive that point home. As a matter of fact, Paul delights in repeating himself, not for the purpose of boring us to tears, but because he knows the great difficulty that we have in understanding God’s way of rescuing the world.

St. Paul repeatedly draws our attention to the fact that we have the blessings of God only as we are in Christ Jesus. He draws attention to the fact that salvation is totally of God’s grace; it is God’s work from beginning to end and has nothing to do with our efforts or our plans. So he comes back to that same argument again, and in these three verses (Eph. 2:8-10) he gives us the end of all human pride and boasting.

There is probably no statement anywhere in all of Scripture more important than the first seven verses of Ephesians. Paul tells us in the first three verses that we are dead in trespasses and sins and are unable to help ourselves. In other words, he states the argument negatively. He asks us to see ourselves as we are before God: totally dead in our sins. He is laying the foundation for us to appreciate the riches of God’s mercy, because if the damage that sin has done to us only needs a little Band-aid, then God does not need to do much for us, and we do not need much help. As a matter of fact, we might be able to cure ourselves. But he says that we are not just wounded a little bit on the surface. No, we are dead in our sins and in our trespasses.

So after he has in verses 1-3 very eloquently made that point of the problem of sin, he turns positively to state the argument in verses 4-7, where he tells us that a remedy has been found – not by us, but by God. God is the One who has put forward the plan of salvation. He is the one who out of His mercy has saved us from our sins. And all of this, he tells us, is for the glory of God’s grace. “For by grace we have been saved.” This is a description of what it means to be a Christian.

Before we go further in expounding these verses, I want to say very clearly that the main reason we have difficulties in our Christian lives, both individually and corporately in the Church, is that we do not properly appreciate this very point. Christianity at the very beginning is nothing less than a realization that we are dead in our trespasses and our sins, and if there is any remedy for that problem it is that God must do everything. God must send His Son; Jesus Christ must die on the cross; and the Holy Spirit must come into our lives to enlighten us, to give us new hearts, and to make us alive. If we make a mistake at the very beginning, then the further down the road we get in our Christian lives, the more problems and troubles we will get into.

Now we turn to verses 8-10. Here Paul again states the argument, and this time he turns it around. Verses 1-3 were a negative statement, and verses 4-7 were a positive statement. Now he reverses this order: verse 8 is positive; verse 9 is negative. Then in verse 10 he combines those two things. Consider first of all that we are Christians solely as a result of God’s grace. Then, secondly, consider that being a Christian gives no reason for boasting. Thirdly, being a Christian is entirely the result of God’s work.

I. We Are Christians Solely by God’s Grace

As we have already seen we are saved because of the unmerited, undeserved favor of God. This arises solely and absolutely from God’s gracious character. It comes totally by God’s initiative. There is nothing that we do. As a matter of fact, it is in spite of ourselves.

There are some people who believe that human beings come into the world and live their lives in a kind of moral neutral gear. They believe that the car of their spiritual life is sitting there idling in neutral, and while they may not deserve God’s favor, because they have not done anything good to merit it, neither have they done anything particularly bad. So if something bad happens to them, they say, “What did I ever do to God to deserve such treatment as this?” Or if something good happens to them, then they sing the little song that is in The Sound of Music: “I Must Have Done Something Good.”

Paul’s argument goes far beyond that. It is not simply that we did nothing to deserve God’s grace, but as a matter of fact, we have done everything against God’s grace and against God’s favor. God’s grace comes to us in spite of what we deserve. It is not that we do not deserve anything. We do deserve the just punishment of God. That is the point of verses 1-3. We cannot imagine anything worse than the human condition apart from God.

In verse 5 Paul repeats the fact of our deadness, and he puts it right next to the grace of God so that we can see God’s grace very clearly. If we are really dead in sin, what conclusion could we draw other than that if we are saved, it must be totally God’s initiative that grows out of His grace. Paul is doing what Jesus did when he spoke to the Pharisees. The Pharisees would say something like, “Are you talking about us?” And Jesus did not say, “Oh, no, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about somebody else over there behind the bushes.”

No, Jesus does not say that. Jesus says, “Yes, I’m talking directly to you. I’m stepping on your toes, and I’m driving the point home right to you. I’m applying this passage of Scripture to you, and you are the ones who are in trouble.” Very often preachers tiptoe around and try to avoid controversy and confrontation when, as a matter of fact, the truth of God and the salvation of the individual soul are at stake. Because they tiptoe around the truth, the Church is weak and people are not being saved from their sins. St. Paul makes it very clear. He says, “You were as dead as a doornail.” And the only conclusion you can draw from that fact is that if you are saved, it must be by the grace of God alone.

What else can Paul himself say when he looks back on his own conversion? He did not see himself quietly sitting in his house in Jerusalem, studying the Talmud and having a good time smoking his water pipe along with all his friends. At the time of his conversion Paul was on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians, to throw them into jail, and maybe even to kill some of them. He was not just sitting in neutral, waiting for God to catch him. He was actually fighting against God. Jesus knocked him off his horse, and said to him in effect, “Paul, I could kill you right here in the road.” But He did not kill Paul. He redeemed him, and then He made him an apostle to the Gentiles.

Now having that as your conversion experience – meeting the Lord of Glory, in the middle of the road, while you are out trying to destroy his kingdom, and to have Him redeem you – what else can you say except that you were dead in your trespasses and sins and that you were saved solely as a result of God’s grace?

II. Being Redeemed Gives No Reason for Boasting

You have nothing to brag about if you are a Christian. You cannot pat yourself on the back and say, “Wasn’t I so smart? I figured out before hell got here that I needed to flee from the Day of Wrath and be a Christian.” No, Paul says that because it is all of grace, there is no room for human boasting. It is the end of human pride.

So I ask you, What is your idea of yourself as a Christian? How do you view yourself? Do you think of certain areas in which you would commend yourself, areas in which you are really doing pretty well and are in good shape? What is your Christianity dependent upon? What does your eternal security depend upon? Does it depend on you at all, even a little bit? If there is any room for boasting at all in your Christian experience, then according to what Paul says in verse 9, you are not a Christian, because the work of Jesus Christ in grace to save a poor sinner excludes all boasting.

Paul knew a great deal about boasting. Before he became a Christian he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was proud in every respect regarding his nationality and his tribe. He was a Pharisee. His religion was exemplary. His morality was beyond reproach. He had knowledge greater than everyone else. But when he became a Christian, when Jesus Christ captured him, Paul said, “I regard all the things that I had before, the things that I boasted about, as dirty, rotten, stinking dung.” Now that certainly is nothing to boast about.

The Apostle Paul knew human nature. He knew our sinful attitudes. He knew that we are always quick to boast about two things: something we have done, or that we have such great faith. We tend to look at ourselves and at our own works, and brag about them. The problem with the Pharisees was not just that they bragged about their works, but that they actually did good works – that is, after a fashion. They were opponents of Jesus Christ, they were good and religious people, not because they just talked all the time, but because they were trying by their works to save themselves. So they were boasting in their good works.

But when the Gospel of Jesus Christ comes, it strips us of all our good works. It takes away all our good notions of ourselves. It denounces our reliance upon our works and upon our pride. And we do not like that. We would like to come into God’s kingdom bringing a little bit of our own baggage with us. But God says, “No, it’s all excluded.” There is no room for human boasting in your own works, because to go that way is to walk in the way of condemnation. Even our best works are not good enough for God. Paul tells us in verse 10, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” God is the one who creates us unto good works. Let us not turn it around backwards.

The other reason that we are always ready to boast is because of our faith. There are some people who turn faith into a work. They say something like this: “The reason I am a Christian is that I believed. I have such great faith. I turned away from my sin and I now believe in Jesus Christ with great faith.” My dear friends, even though the Scriptures teach us that we must cling to Jesus Christ with great faith, even though the Bible does call us to repentance for our sins, and even though the Bible tells us that we must trust in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, the Bible never teaches us to believe that our faith is the foundation of our salvation. It is only and ever the work of Jesus Christ.

It is only because Jesus Christ has died on the cross for our sins, and God by the Holy Spirit has raised us to newness of life that we ever do believe in the first place. So our faith cannot be the ground of our salvation. It is Jesus Christ alone who is the ground of our salvation, and faith is only the channel by which we receive what God has done for us.

You see, if we take Paul’s argument in the first part of this chapter seriously – the argument that we are dead in our trespasses and sins – then how is it possible for a dead man to believe? If you go into a morgue and say to the dead bodies, “I have free ice cream for the first ten people who will get up and get it,” how is it possible for any of those dead people to believe that you are telling the truth? They cannot do it. They are dead. Faith is the action of a live person. So we cannot even boast in our faith.

III. Being a Christian Is the Result of God’s Work

Paul tells us in verse 10 that “we are His workmanship.” As if the point were not already clear enough, he now emphasizes it again: We are His workmanship. Nothing else but God’s workmanship would do. Paul is trying to combat our high conception of ourselves, and our conception of Christianity is too low if we think that we can do anything to make ourselves Christians. It is not even our deciding for Jesus that makes us Christians. It is Jesus’ deciding for us. It is Jesus who works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.

A Christian is not just a good person or an improved person. A Christian is one who has had the almighty power of God work in his life. The life of God has come into his soul. Being a Christian does not mean attending church, performing duties, singing songs, and praying. All of those things are excellent, but they can never make you a Christian. They can never make you alive if you are spiritually dead.

At the beginning of the world God created everything out of nothing, and that is exactly what He has to work with when He creates a new heart in the sinner. He does not take anything you have and morally improve it. He creates out of nothing. For us to think that our good works or our moral improvement can bring us closer to Jesus only makes us into Pharisees. It does not make us into Christians. The only thing that will make a Christian is the work of God.

We could make a list of all the things that people think will make them Christians. Then we could take the list to God and say, “These are the things that we are doing. Just look at this long list of all the moral activities that we are doing.” The Bible says that when God looks at those, what He sees is a big pile of filthy rags. That is what all our righteousnesses look like to God.

The only remedy is the love of Jesus Christ working in us to bring us to God. A Christian is one who is made new after the image and the pattern of the Son of God. We can praise God that it is not of works and it is not of believing. It is nothing of which we can boast.

As Paul said, “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” My dear friends, let us not glory in ourselves or in anything that we might accomplish, but let us glory only in the cross of Jesus Christ.

One Nation Under God, Indivisible

Ephesians 2:11-22

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

 “One nation, under God, indivisible”—these words from the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America express the hope and longing of mankind for security, for safety, for happiness, and for prosperity. Those words are a religious affirmation. They express not only allegiance to a country, but also a religious hope that we, by our human efforts and without divine aid, can solve all the problems we face, problems that are caused by sin. That is the American dream, the American religion. But, as wonderful an ideal that may be in the political realm, it is doomed to failure because it ignores the human condition that sin causes. It ignores the reality of sin and sin’s killing and enslaving effects upon us. And it ignores the only solution to the problem, which is in Jesus Christ and not in ourselves.

In Ephesians 2:11-22, the Apostle Paul describes a nation that is the true and only fulfillment of the hope “One nation, under God, indivisible.” Without the provision that God has made, there is only alienation from God and from man—and that in a world where we ought to enjoy fellowship with God and with one another in Jesus Christ. But because we have tried to build that hope on something other than Jesus Christ, we find only separation from God and from one another.

In the first two verses of chapter 2 Paul describes our human condition of alienation from God, and then he announces, “But God,” and describes God’s remedy. Then in the second half of the chapter, he discusses our alienation from one another, and then God’s remedy. So chapter 2 really has two parts, each with a parallel section. In each section he first describes the problem (Our alienation from God, our alienation from one another) then the remedy (God’s remedy to bring us back to himself, and his remedy to bring us back to one another).

In the Old Testament God created all things good, but then Adam and Eve sinned. God began to redeem sinners, first through Abraham, then through the Jews, who came from Abraham. In Ephesians 2, Paul refers first to our being created once again by Jesus Christ unto good works, and then to our being brought near to the covenant blessings of Israel.

Ephesians 2, especially beginning in verse 1 is a summary of the whole of Old Testament history.

God creates; man falls; then God brings people back to himself through Abraham and the covenant promises in Jesus. Now in the New Testament, in Jesus Christ, God re-creates us, gives us new life, an act that is parallel to the original creation. He brings us back to himself, as he says in the last half of this chapter.

Ephesians 2 summarizes all of the Old Testament. Paul does this so that we will understand that when God begins a work of salvation in Jesus Christ, he does not start all over again. He does not start from scratch. What he does is to take the Gentiles and graft them into the people and promise of Abraham by Jesus Christ.

If we really want to understand what Jesus Christ is doing for sinners in the present day, we must go back to the Old Testament and study what God originally intended to do at creation and with Abraham, Moses, and David, because what God announced there is what he is now doing in Jesus Christ. He is making successful and effective what he said in the Old Testament that he would do. He is bringing Gentiles into that family of Jews. I know it is difficult for us in a day of many denominations that are largely Gentile to appreciate what it means to be a Jew. But that is what Paul says in Ephesians 2.

The question in Paul’s day was: Is it necessary to become a Jew in order to be a Christian? Christianity was so intimately tied up with the Jews, with Abraham, with the promises that God made to the Jews, that the burning question in the Church at that time was, “Is it necessary to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.” We read in Acts 15 that the Council of Jerusalem settled the question. They declared that it was not necessary to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.

But in our day we have completely lost sight of that question. Now the question is this: Is it necessary to become a Gentile to be a Christian? Do Jews have to stop being Jewish in order to become a Christian? This puts the question exactly upside down. What we need to do, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, is to appreciate the Old Testament roots and foundation and background for our Christianity. Only then will we appreciate what Jesus Christ has done for us.

First consider what we used to be before we were joined to the covenant of Israel. Second, what has Jesus Christ done for us. Third, what we have become in Christ.

I. What We Were

The key phrase here is in verse 12: “At that time you were without Christ.” That is what you used to be. He also tells us that we were Gentiles and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. He is referring to relations between Jews and Gentiles. In the Old Testament God declared to Israel that they were to be the light to the nations; that is, they were to be missionaries spreading the good news to all the nations. But Israel soon forgot this command. They became an exclusive little Jewish country club, and they did not want anyone else to join. They said such things as “The Gentiles are dogs.” Of course, the Gentiles did the same thing. Each group called the other hateful names.

The Jews forgot the reality behind circumcision; that is, circumcision is not just the cutting the flesh, but of the heart. The meaning behind circumcision was the removal of the old sin nature and creation of a new heart. It was a picture of the removal of sin. But they forgot all about that. They took it as a badge for membership in their private club rather than as a picture of their mission to the Gentiles.

Then Paul points out that the Gentiles' real problem was not just that they were not members of the country club. He says, “At that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” They did not know that God would someday include them in Jesus Christ. They were foreigners and aliens to God’s promises of grace.

II. What Christ Has Done

In both sections of Ephesians 2 we have the phrase “But God,” or “But now,” and in both cases that phrase introduces the solution that God has provided. In the first half of the chapter it refers to all people: All are dead in trespasses and sins, “but God, who is rich in mercy,” has called you to himself in Jesus Christ. In the second half of this chapter, verses 11-22, the “But now in Christ Jesus” in verse 13 has particular reference to the Gentiles. He refers to them as “those who were far off” (v. 13). That is the Old Testament description of the Gentiles; they are far away, even though they may be living next door to the Jews.

The Gentiles are the ones who are far off from God, and Isaiah 49 tells of the Messiah who will be the One to bring them near. All of this is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He brings near to God those who were once far away.

How does Jesus do this? Paul says in verse 14, “Jesus Christ is our peace, who has made both Jew and Gentile one, and has broken down the middle wall of division between us.” That is the first thing that Jesus has done. He has overcome the obstacle by breaking down the middle wall of partition between them.

Paul is referring to the wall that separated the Gentiles from the Jews in the temple. The court of the Gentiles was outside the temple area. The Gentiles could come that far, but they could not come into the specific temple precincts where the sacrifices were made. Now Jesus Christ has opened the way of access to God through the sacrifice of his own body.

In verse 15 he tells us the second thing that Jesus Christ has done: he has “abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.” The Gentiles were also alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, as we saw in verse 12. Paul says, Jesus Christ has brought you near by abolishing that law that kept you away from God.

The third thing Jesus Christ has done is to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace. He has taken these two peoples, the Jews and the Gentiles, and he has brought them together in a new humanity. That is, now Paul moves from the negative (breaking down the middle wall of partition and taking away the law of commandments that condemned sinners) to the positive: Jesus Christ has actually built the Jews and the Gentiles into one new nation. Then he says that Jesus Christ has reconciled the Jew and the Gentile to God. He put to death the hostility between God and man and has brought peace between the two.

Finally, Jesus Christ preached peace to the Gentiles and to the Jews (v. 17). That is what Jesus Christ has done for us to take away the alienation that we all suffer because of our sin. If Jesus can heal that greatest of all racial division and hatred, what do you think he will be able to do with all the petty racial and other divisions we have sinfully established?

III. What We Have Become

In verses 19-22 we learn what we have become, and the key phrase here is “You are no longer strangers and foreigners.” First, Paul tells us that we are God’s commonwealth: “You are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” We who were aliens from that commonwealth have now been made part of it.

Let me give you a brief description of what most people usually say about the Church: “In the Old Testament God had a commonwealth, a nation, a theocracy. He had a specific ethnic nation called the Jews. But now in Jesus Christ God no longer has a nation. The Gospel is not ethnic, it is not tied to any one nation. It is not America or Britain or Germany or France or any other nation. There is no nation of God.”

Tell that to Paul. Paul says that you are now citizens in the commonwealth that you used to be far away from. In Jesus Christ God did not do away with what he planned in the Old Testament. He did not get rid of his commonwealth; he fixed it. His commonwealth was built upon Abraham and his descendants through David, and now Jesus Christ, the Descendent of David, the greater Son of David, sits on the throne of God’s commonwealth, and he stills brings people, Jew and Gentile, together in that one commonwealth. God’s commonwealth is not a nation of territory or of geography. God’s dominion is not limited by territorial or geographical boundaries. His dominion stretches over the whole earth.

The Apostle Paul tells us that our primary citizenship is not Rome, not America, not white, black, or brown. Our primary citizenship, the one that is most important, is our citizenship in this new commonwealth, this new nation that God has created in Christ Jesus. Do not be fooled by those who say there is no such thing as a Christian nation. There is. It stretches over the national boundaries that we have erected. There is a nation that owes its allegiance to one King, Jesus Christ, who rules over all.

The second thing that we have become is members of the household of God. We have become part of God’s family. This is a more ultimate picture than that of the Kingdom because this speaks not of coming humbly to the King, but coming joyfully to the Father.

Let me explain it this way. Imagine a very busy businessman who has a roomful of secretaries in the outer office to keep everybody away from him. The intercom buzzes and the secretary says, “Are you in?” And he answers, “No, I’m not in.”

But there is a back door to his office. One day he is working busily, the buzzer keeps going off, and he tells his secretary that he is not in. Then comes a little muffled knock at the back door. The door creaks open slightly, and he looks over to see his little girl peeking though the door. He doesn’t say, “Secretary, defend me from this urchin.” He doesn’t even try to keep his child away. He speaks very quietly so that no one in the outer office will hear him, and he sits his little girl on his lap, and they have a good time. No matter how busy he is, he spends time with his little girl.

That is what Paul is talking about here. It is not just a big kingdom with a King up there someplace who has a roomful of secretaries to screen his people from him. We are the members of his household, so we have access to the Father through the back door when other people are not allowed to come in.

Thirdly, we have become God’s temple. Paul says that we are now a building, being joined together, growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom we are also being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. Since Solomon first built the temple, the temple was the center of life among the Jews. But the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Romans, and God allowed it to happen.

It was absolutely imperative that the temple in Jerusalem fall down, because Jesus Christ is the new Temple, and we are now being built up into him as a living temple. God is no longer bound by sticks and stones in a city called Jerusalem.

This new temple is built upon Jesus Christ himself. And the whole building is growing, because it is alive. It is not just a pile of rocks. It is made up of individual, living stones, which include the Jews and the Gentiles. This temple is also the dwelling place of God. God dwells among us. We are the temple of God, and God is living in our midst. Thus Paul again points to the purpose of the temple in the Old Testament. We know from this passage that God is not tied to holy buildings or holy rooms; God is tied to holy people. We are the ones who have been brought near to God in Jesus Christ.

God's Plan for Human History

Ephesians 3:1-13

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

Is history just a random succession of events, or is there a plan? Is there any point to the events? Are we headed anywhere? Is there a goal, and are we going in the right direction toward that goal? God shows us in this passage that he has a plan, and that it is gracious plan.

I. The Mystery

A.  A mystery in the Bible is not something dark, obscure, or puzzling, but an open secret now proclaimed publicly. It is something that is beyond human discovery, that no human would have devised or discovered, but that has now been revealed by God.

B.  What is it? The truth of which Christ is both the source and the substance. The meaning is given in verse 6, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel. Three words describe the equality of Jew and Gentile in Jesus Christ. There is a double union with Christ, and with each other.

C.  How is it new? The OT and Jesus spoke of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the Abrahamic covenant, but they did not make clear that the Church would take the place of the Jewish nation, and that Jews and Gentiles would be on equal footing in the Church.

II. The Ministry

A.  In verse 6 St. Paul equates mystery with the Gospel. Mystery is the truth revealed to St. Paul, and the Gospel is the truth proclaimed by St. Paul. The Gospel proclamation announces the mystery. God’s first gift of grace was the mystery, and the second was the ministry exercised by the power of God working in the preachers of the Gospel.

B.  To the Gentiles—verse 8—the mystery was that the Gentiles would be incorporated in Christ, and so the ministry was directed to them. The riches described in Ephesians 1 & 2— new life, enthronement with Christ, reconciliation with God, a new society with the Jews, the end of hostility between Jew and Gentile, and the beginning of peace, access to the Father through Christ and by the Spirit, membership in his household and kingdom, the dwelling place of God among men, and the unsearchable riches of the glory to come—are the truth from God that enriches mankind.

C.  To all men—verse 9—Note the differences from verse 8.

1.  Not evangelize but enlighten

Ephesians 1:18—The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.

The condition of the recipients is one of the darkness of ignorance. Notice Christ’s commission to St. Paul.

Acts 26:17; 18—I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.

2 Corinthians 4:6—It is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

It is only by divine enlightenment that sinners’ eyes will be opened.

2.  The plan of the mystery—not the unsearchable riches of Christ, but that all will be made one in the Church. This shows us the importance of the visible Church.

3.  To all men and not just the Gentiles. God who created all things now recreates a new society—the Church.

D.  To spiritual powers—verse 10—The mystery was taking shape as a concrete reality—not an abstract idea. The wisdom of God is displayed as the story unfolds. But who are the audience? Spiritual beings, who are not omniscient—who don’t know all things as God does.

1 Peter 1:10-12—Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven— things which angels desire to look into.

They are watching us to find out God’s plan for history.

III. The Centrality of the Church

A.  Christianity is not simply a private, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Christians don’t put up with the Church as a necessary evil, or view the institutional Church as a hopeless loss. We must be careful not to despise the Church and so become blind to God’s work in history.

B.  The centrality of the Church to history—verse 11—This is the outworking of God’s eternal purpose (v. 9). God’s plan is the creation of a new humanity in Jesus Christ, which makes the Church the center of history. History is not about battles, dates when important laws were passed, or who was king or queen when a certain thing happened. Rather it is God’s story about how he is at work moving from his eternal plan to the climax at the end of time, and the focus of that is Christ and his Church. Secular history concentrates on VIP’s, but the Bible concentrates on the saints, that is on Christians. Secular history concentrates on wars, and the Bible concentrates on the war between good and evil. God’s promise that is over all of history is, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

C.  The centrality of the Church to the Gospel—verse 12—The modern gospel is too individualistic—“Just me, my Bible, and Jesus; Christ died for me, O, that will be glory for me.” But that is far from the full Gospel, which is the good news that God is making a new society, a new family, a whole new creation—the Church.

D.  The centrality of the Church to Christian living—verse 13—St. Paul’s sufferings would bring them glory. He suffered for the Church. Can we be irresponsible church members? Every member is responsible for worship, fellowship, and outreach, not only the minister. That is the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.

The Communion of Saints

Ephesians 3:14-21

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

In Ephesians, St. Paul gives us a great deal of helpful instruction about starting a new church. We learn here what the church is supposed to be, who we are as the Church of Jesus Christ, what Jesus has done for us, and so forth. We are trying to work our way carefully through the first part of the book because in the first three chapters St. Paul lays down the theological principles upon which the practical applications of chapters 4 through 6 will be made.

Practical application without the theological and biblical underpinning is simply moralism, and we don't want to be engaged in moralism. We are a Gospel church. The Church of Jesus Christ is built upon the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and His sovereign grace. So we are carefully working our way through that part so that we understand the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as we find it in the first three chapters. Then the practical applications will come out of chapters 4 through 6. Today we come to Ephesians 3:14-21. The opening words of this passage, "for this reason," refer  to the mystery of Jesus Christ, which is that Jew and Gentile together are made one new nation in Jesus Christ—not a civil nation with an army an air force and taxation and civil service and so forth, but the new nation that supersedes all other national boundaries and is based upon the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Now we are not considered Jew or Gentile, white, black, Hispanic, or whatever. National distinctions are done away with. We are all one in Christ, and it's a great mystery as to how that can work. It hasn't worked very successfully in any other area of the world. How can the Church make it work? That is what Jesus Christ has come to do through His blood. That is what the Holy Spirit has been poured out for, to make us one in Christ.

Every time I read that section of Scripture. I almost feel like saying, O.K, we're finished. There's not anything else to say. I'll just pronounce the benediction and we'll just go home because that is the most incredible statement in all of Scripture. But I'm sure if I read some other passage of Scripture, I'd have to say the same thing. It seems as though every time we come to a verse or passage, that one is the most important one in all of Scripture. But certainly if there is any passage for which that could truthfully be said, this is it. So this morning I want us to appreciate the communion of saints. That is what we have in this room. We are enjoying union and communion with each other and with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit right now, here this day. But we also enjoy that will all the rest of the Church throughout the world. The communion of saints is what Jesus Christ has purchased for us.

If I can go back just a bit and give you a few reminders of what we have done previously in this consideration of the book of Ephesians, St. Paul talks in chapter 1 about the riches of God's glory in Christ Jesus. In Ephesians 1:7, 18, he says, "In him [that is, in Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints." Now, I want to be very particular and very specific here. St. Paul does not say to us that God gives us riches, but he gives according to his riches. There's a big difference. The gifts of God are given to us out of the unlimited storehouse of riches that God has in heaven and in earth. God owns everything--the cattle on a thousand hills, all the stars in the sky. God owns all of it. He has this incredible storehouse, this unlimited, infinite wealth, and St. Paul says that in Jesus Christ, God is going to share that with you. He is going to give you out of that storehouse of his riches. In other places St. Paul says that one way to describe that is that God gives us himself. You don't possess a few pieces of gold or a few spiritual blessings here and there. No, you have the greatest of all riches, God himself. There is nothing greater that God can give to us. And that, you see, is what is the foundation for this communion of the saints that we enjoy in the Church.

I. The Foundation of Fellowship

The foundation of communion is the grace of Christ in raising us to newness of life. You see, we have already enjoyed the resurrection from the dead. We tend to think of the day coming one day out there in the future someplace when Jesus comes back to raise the dead to life again, and we will appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ. But for the Christian, we have already been given this resurrection to life. Jesus Christ has brought us from the dead and given us new life in him.

Secondly, St. Paul tells us that there is now the unity of Jew and Gentile in one household. We don't have any consideration, or we ought not to have any consideration in the Church any  longer regarding whether you are white or black or Arab or Chinese or what your national background is. We have all been made one with Jesus Christ in one household.

And then in the first 13 verses of this third chapter of Ephesians, Paul tells us about the wonderful purpose of God. It is God's purpose to give us not just riches now in this life but the riches of His glory forever, and also the dynamic of the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit, Christ dwells within us. Those things are the foundation of our fellowship

II. The Purpose of Fellowship

Why would God do such a thing as giving us this communion of saints or this wonderful fellowship in Christ? St. Paul tells us that the purpose of that fellowship is first of all strength, wisdom, comprehension, and knowledge. That is, we will be strong in the faith, strong in the Lord Jesus Christ, not blown about by every wind of doctrine, but we will have wisdom as we will not only know the truth but will have wisdom to know how to apply it. We will have comprehension of God's plan through the ages and knowledge of that.

But above all, St. Paul says, the purpose of our fellowship is love. There is a great danger, you see, in having a worship service like this in which I stand up and talk to you or where we say words out of a book. The danger is that we will tend to think that the substance of our faith is words or knowledge, and we become puffed up because of how much we know. The danger is that our faith becomes simply intellectual. We go home and pride ourselves in how much we know, how many Bible verses we can quote or how much of the Prayer Book we can quote. You know that story about the Baptist lady and the Episcopal lady who were friends in the neighborhood and the Baptist lady was concerned that her Episcopal friend was not converted. She didn't believe that Episcopalians really knew what it meant to love Jesus. So she was trying to think of a gentle, non-offensive way to communicate the Gospel to her Episcopal friend. So she hit upon the idea of giving her a Bible. So her friend thanked her very much, took the Bible home, and a week later she came back and said, "You know, I read that book. It's wonderful! It's just full of quotes from the Prayer Book!

The danger, you see is that we become so full of the words that we memorize, either from the Prayer Book or from the Bible that we think our Christianity is totally intellectual. But St. Paul reminds us that the main point of all of it is that we will love Jesus, love one another, and love those who have not yet heard the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Paul tells us in the book of Colossians, "Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worshiping angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind. These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh" (Colossians 2:18; 23).

Again, St. Paul says in I Timothy, "Do not give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith" (1 Timothy 1:4). And again, "If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions" (1 Timothy 6:3, 4). If you think that you know a lot because you can quote a lot of Bible verses or quote the 39 Articles of Religion, or quote all kinds of theological books, but you don't have love, you don't know anything, St. Paul says. You are "obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, and evil suspicions."

St. Paul is not arguing against a deficient faith because it is merely intellectual, but he is saying that “true knowledge” of God is unattainable without love. If there is no love, the Spirit of Christ is not present, and therefore there is no understanding or knowledge. You may know all kinds of things. You may have memorized the Bible from one end to the other, but if you don't love your neighbor, if you don't love those who have no knowledge of the Gospel, if you don't love Jesus Christ, if you don't love your brothers and sisters in the Church, you don't know anything. That is the message of the Gospel. (John 15:9-12— As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.)

III. The Necessity of Fellowship

It is not enough for you to have faith in Jesus by yourself. It's not enough for you to sit on a creek bank with your Bible and Prayer Book and have your faith in Jesus by yourself. The fellowship of other Christians is most necessary. That is, the truth can never be held by an individual in isolation from the Church, which is the reason St. Paul mentions the phrase “with all the saints.” It is also a very difficult task, which is the reason that St. Paul prays that we may be strong to earnestly grasp the truth. This is obviously not a mere intellectual exercise. For you to know the fullness of the Gospel, you have to learn to get along with some very scruffy individuals, like the people in this room. You look pretty nice, and you clean up well for Sunday worship, but St. Paul says that you have to learn to love people who have some pretty rough edges, who have some streaks of meanness to them. You cant use the excuse, "I just can't get along with that person. I'm going to another church." It doesn't work that way. The true Gospel means that we learn to work together in the fellowship of the Church, a most difficult task, which is why we need the Holy Spirit. We need to pray that God will empower us by the Holy Spirit to get along with each other.

The content of the knowledge and wisdom of God is love, and we will only grow as we use those gifts for the benefit of every other member of Christ's Church. We are of necessity limited in our understanding of the purpose of God until we see it working itself out in the family of God. What happens in a family when one child acts selfishly and alone without taking into consideration the interests of the other children or the parents? You know if you've been a parent very long and have more than one child—or maybe if you have only one child—when a child starts acting selfishly it disrupts everything. It breaks the unity of the family, the peace of the family, and that is exactly what happens in the family of God when people stop working together and being obedient to Christ and loving one another.

Paul says in Ephesians 4, "To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:7, 12, 13.) Christ didn't give this gift to us that you may go home and enjoy it all by yourself. He gave it to you for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ. If we all don't come together to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, then not one single one of us will come to the knowledge of the Gospel. We all have to come together, or nobody comes at all to a perfect man and the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So, my dear friends, St. Paul is hammering upon us this necessity of the fellowship and the communion and the love of the Church. We love Christ, and we love others for Christ's sake. St. Paul prays that we will know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Catch the play on words— that we will know what is past knowing. You see, it's not an intellectual exercise. You can't know this love; it's so deep, broad, and high that it passes human understanding. But St. Paul prays in the only words that are available to him that we will know that love, that is, that we will experience that love that is past knowing. It is far greater than we can know, and it is more than an object that can be known and studies. It must be experienced.

And then he prays that we will be filled with the fullness of God, not just one attribute or gift, not just love, knowledge, strength alone or in combination— but as I said at the beginning, we will know God himself. What an incredible thing that is to say, "I know God." Is it possible that we could in truth say such a thing and not be arrogant and proud and bragging? My dear friends, that is the whole reason Jesus came, so that we will know God in our experience day after day. As we read in St. John chapter 1, "Of his fullness," that is, the fullness of God, "we have all received, and grace for grace" (John 1:16). May God give us this blessing today that we may know what surpasses knowledge.

To God Be the Glory

Ephesians 3:20, 21

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

St. Paul has said that our redemption is the work of the Trinity—we have been brought from the dead, joined to the commonwealth of Israel, made one with those whom we formerly hated, built together with them into a dwelling of God, and that we have received the mystery, i.e. the Church.

Then he prays that we would be strengthened, rooted in love, that we would know the love of Christ with all the saints, and that we would be filled with God’s fullness.

What authority does St. Paul have for saying all of that? What hope does he have that it is actually true and actually coming to pass in our experience? God has riches in glory (v. 16), and God works powerfully within us. He has power that can do far more than we can imagine.

I. God’s Ability To Answer Prayer

A. He is able to do or work. He is not idle, inactive, or dead.

B. He is able to do what we ask—He hears and answers.

C. He is able to do what we think—he reads our thoughts, and sometimes we imagine things we dare not ask, and so we don’t ask.

D. He is able to do all we ask or think.

E. He is able to do more than we ask or think— “hyper”— beyond. His expectations are higher than ours.

F. He is able to do much more than we ask or think— more abundantly.

G. He is able to do very much more than we ask or think. He is the God of super-abundance.

II. By the Power That Works Within Us

A. There is nothing that is necessary to add to us. We don’t need spiritual additives, or a second work of grace.

B. The power is in us. Christ is in us by faith, which is not to say that we believe that he is in us, but that he is in us through the channel, or instrumentality of faith. He is in us as individuals (v. 17), and he is within us as a Church (2:22)

C. The power of the resurrection—God raised up Christ, seated him in heaven, and then enthroned us there with him.

D. St. Paul prays that we would love each other with the love of Christ that is beyond knowing, and then he says that the only way it can happen is by the power of God that is beyond our imagination— from limitless love to limitless power.

III. The Doxology— 1:3

A. There is nothing left to say or to explain if all of that is true. There is only praise to God.

B. Since the power comes from God, all the glory must go to Him.

C. The glory goes to Him from the Body and the Head, from the bride and the bridegroom. The Church is the outworking of God’s purpose, but the glory doesn’t go to the Church.

D. This glory will be given to God to all generations for ever and ever.

Who is the Greatest?

Ephesians 4:1, 2

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:1, 2

The question "Who is the greatest?" was asked at the institution of the Lord's Supper when greatest unity should be seen—there is always a tendency instead to have the greatest division, self-exaltation.

I. The Greatest Person—Jesus Christ

A. Paul is in prison, but his eyes are on Christ, not Caesar—he is Christ’s prisoner (3:1). He doesn’t fret about his chains and limitations. He sees beyond the external circumstances. He looks not to the seen, but the unseen (2 Cor. 4:18). We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Consider Jesus before Pilate (Jn 19:10, 11). What do you think of when trouble comes? People don’t like me.

B. Our calling is to reflect the character of Christ—Eph 1:4,22,23; 2:19-22; 3:9,10. We aren’t called to remain what we were before Christ took over our lives—that is, to live in accord with our own desires, old patterns, always trying to be accepted, get ahead, be the most important, be first. Now we are to submit to Christ. He is the greatest Person.

II. The Marks of Greatness

A. It is possible to make grandiose claims about displaying the character of Christ, while, in fact, we exalt ourselves at the expense of others. Why is there so little gentleness, but so much roughness? Is it not because we are always expecting our rights. The feeling is, you do something wrong to me, and therefore I have the right to do wrong to you. We should rather suffer wrong (1 Cor. 6).

B. Lowliness, meekness, patience—checks on sinful ambition and pride. God beats down all pride, and if he doesn’t, then we will never be able to help those in misery. We are to be kind, gentle, forgiving, thinking the best (Ro 12:14-21—Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion. Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Col 3:12-15— Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.

James 2:1-7— My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?

C. Are you satisfied to have your needs and desires met? To say that someone just doesn’t suit you, and that you are under no obligation to like them—much less show them the love of Christ? That you are within your rights to ignore them and spend your time with your comfortable circle of friends? That is what the Bible calls the sin of pride and is the source of strife in the church.

D. If people have trouble in the world, will they want a troubled church? Satan would love to stir up conflict—make us seek to be the greatest.

The Head and the Body

Romans 12 (Ephesians 4:16)

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

2006

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:16

St. Paul tells us that we have no life in ourselves if we are not one with Christ. He is the Head of the body which means that our life flows from him. And if we are one with him, we are also one with everyone who is joined to him by baptism and faith.

Walk worthy of your calling to be a Christian in patience, love, preserving the unity of the Spirit, using your gifts for the good of the saints, enjoying the fullness of Christ, and maintaining your stability in the truth.

I. Union with Christ

A. Essential to the life of the Church—We live because he lives—no Christ, no Church—are you joined to him?

B. Essential to the growth of the Church—If you want to grow you must get it from Christ. We cannot make one step toward heaven without him. Christ is building his Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Church, and only the Church, can do what other groups cannot do—show forth the life and power of Christ.

C. Essential to the perfection of the Church—Will there ever come a time when we are perfect without Christ, when we can stand before God without a mediator, or when we will have a spiritual beauty that renders the imputed righteousness of Christ unnecessary?

D. The honor of Christ is served by these—we receive nothing outside of our connection to Him.

II. Our Individuality

A. We must be united to Christ’s body, the Church, and we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians if we are not doing anything in connection with the Church. A beautiful part of the body is not beautiful if it is separated from the body. No one can have spiritual life if not joined to the body, the Church. It is each Christian’s duty to be in the visible Church. We are sheep, not dogs. Sometimes we see a man all by himself claiming to be a Christian though he seems to spend all his time snapping at everybody. I am afraid he is a dog after all. But when you see a person who enjoys the company of other Christians, who comforts and feeds them, then I say he acts like a sheep.

B. We must keep our true position in the body. The parts of the body are right where God put them for a good reason. The eyes, the feet, etc., are right where they should be. This means that each one of us should find out what part Christ meant us to play in the Church, and then do it. Some people have a great gift for finding fault with everyone around them, but there is no place in the body for that gift. It is a disease. Let each one do his work so well that no one can justly find fault.

C. Be careful of your own health. If your little finger, or your throat, hurts, your whole body is in pain. You have difficulty doing anything else until you get the problem fixed. That is, if the most insignificant member of the Church is in poor spiritual health, the rest of the Church suffers. Do not say that it makes no difference whether you pray or not, whether you stay in close contact with Christ, your Head, or that you are not an important member of the body.

D. Be careful to grow. If you care about the growth of the Church, then you must grow in your relationship to Christ. There is a great deal more to being a Christian than just making sure that you are going to heaven and escaping hell.

III. Our Relationship to Each Other

A. The joint-oil of love—bones grind against each other—some complain that there is no love in the Church. If you have it yourself, you may find some in response from others.

B. You are where you are by God’s choice. You need these particular Christians that God has put around you for your benefit and growth. They may seem prickly and obnoxious to you, but don’t reject them. God knows better than you do what you need.

C. Accept the ministry of others.

IV. Applications

A. How Can All This Be Done? Not by preaching or the preacher alone. It is the job of the members of the Church to

1.   Introduce non-Christians to Jesus Christ.

2.   Demonstrate to Christians the power of the Gospel to transform lives.

3.   Give other Christians the opportunity to be the channel of God’s grace.

B. Calvin on the Lord’s Supper

1.  The Lord’s Supper reminds us to seek all things pertaining to our souls in Jesus Christ—not half our life—not seeking one drop or crumb elsewhere.

2.   We are nothing—God calls us to Himself by knowing that Jesus Christ is given for our poverty. We have no righteousness, merit, or strength except in Him.

3.   We cannot partake of Him without also partaking of all the good things He has received from his Father.

4.   It is not just good things that we receive from Christ—righteousness, the benefit of his sacrifice and death, the obedience he rendered. He says, “I am yours. You can have me.”

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