Ephesians 1

Chapter 1. Chosen in HimFor he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace. (Ephesians 1:4-6)Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians is the most deeply spiritual of all his letters. It reaches a higher plane of spiritual experience than any of his lofty writings. It has been compared to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament as a manual of the higher Christian life and the saints’ inheritance in the Land of Promise. Some of the fathers have compared it to the place of the heart in the human body, the most vital and important organ, and therefore not in the extremities, but in the very core of our physical organism. So this epistle is in the very heart of the New Testament, and constitutes the very core of spiritual teaching and experience. The keynote is the third verse of the first chapter, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms [places] with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” All the Blessings of the Spirit in the Heavenlies This verse, unhappily translated “in heavenly places,” describes not so much a local situation as a spiritual region—that sphere of resurrection life, that realm of divine things, that higher, holier element of the supernatural where we know God and dwell with Jesus Christ in the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit, and find ourselves in a real world of unseen, yet glorious verities which the deeper senses of the spiritual nature alone can perceive and realize. We have been translated into this celestial realm through our resurrection life in Christ. It is illuminated and vivified by the Holy Spirit. It is the very element of our new life, and in it we have been introduced to the enjoyment of unspeakable blessings which are here called “spiritual blessings.” These blessings are unfolded in detail throughout the epistle. The first is the blessing of our divine election in the eternal purpose of God. Next is the blessing of redemption, followed by the blessing of our personal salvation and calling. Then comes the blessing of our sealing by the Holy Spirit. This is followed by the blessing of our divine illumination, to know “the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). These fill up the first chapter. The second chapter leads us into the unspeakable blessing of our quickening with Christ through death and resurrection, and our exaltation in Him to share His ascension life in the heavenlies. Next comes the blessing of our collective life as the Body, the Bride and the Building of God, the blessing which we share with the household of faith and the Church of Jesus Christ. This leads us into a still deeper personal experience of blessing as, “with all the saints,” we come to know in the third chapter, “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love… that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19). Having led us onward and upward to this infinite height of blessing, the apostle next brings us back to earth, and takes us to the practical sphere of our common life in our homes, our business and our social relationships; and he unfolds to us the blessing of practical holiness in all the minutiae of our daily experience as husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, brethren and citizens—representing Christ, living out His life amid the secularities, temptations and trials of common life. Finally, the crowning blessing is the supreme conflict and the complete victory of the risen life unfolded in the closing paragraph, where we meet at the very gates of heaven and in the very heavenlies, the principalities and powers of hell, and become “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). Such is the scope of this great epistle. Altogether it contains as many words as an ordinary sermon, it outweighs in richness, beauty and spiritual power all the sermons that have ever been written and all the combined libraries of earth. Let us reverently follow our heavenly Guide through all the blessings of the Spirit in the heavenlies, and, as each new vision unfolds, may faith hear Him say, “All this is yours,” for “we have… received… the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2:12). Chosen in Him We are approaching a theme which introduces us at once to the very highest region of thought. Let earthly reason grow dumb, and let faith listen with hushed veneration and submission to the voice of revelation and learn to believe even where she cannot see. We are exploring a realm of truth, which, notwithstanding all the difficulties which confront man’s poor intellect, is undoubtedly one of the teachings of divine revelation, and which we believe will be found one of the most comforting, encouraging and uplifting truths which the Holy Spirit has given to the disciples of Christ. Two great truths run with unbroken clearness through the Word of God. One is the purpose of God, and the other is the freedom of man. We may not always be able to harmonize them, but we know that both are true. When Joseph’s brethren cruelly and wickedly sold him into Egypt, we know that it was their voluntary sin, and years afterwards the finger of conscience pointed it out even to them in the lurid light of their own sorrows until they cried, “Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was… but we would not listen” (Genesis 42:21). But years afterwards Joseph also revealed the other side of this strange story when he said by inspiration, “God sent me ahead of you to… save your lives by a great deliverance…. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 45:7, Genesis 50:20). There is the fact of the freedom and responsibility of these wicked men, but there is the other fact that God’s purpose through it all is to accomplish His grand design for the world. So again, Peter, speaking to the men who crucified the Lord, declared with indignation and divine inspiration, “You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23) “though [Pilate] had decided to let him go” (Acts 3:13). But at the same time Peter says that “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). There are the two facts. Reject them if you can. They are both true, and yet reason’s feet are too limited to span the gulf between; but, thank God, as Dr. Cairns has said with graphic eloquence, “We can take the wings of faith and fly across the gulf from peak to peak, and believe them both, though we may not always be able to perfectly comprehend them.”

1. The Time of Our Election “He chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). At a bound we are carried back into the remotest ages of the past eternity, and we are taught that God was thinking about us, loving us and planning to bless us long ago. Redemption is then no afterthought, no hasty provision to remedy the catastrophe of the fall, but a great original and eternal thought of God’s heart of love. We seem to hear Him saying to us in the words of Jeremiah, “The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’” (Jeremiah 31:3), eternal in its beginning and in its duration. God chose us and purposed to save and bless us before He ever made us. Therefore He must have made us on purpose that He might save us. Our very creation must be designed for some higher destiny than human nature alone would indicate. We were always intended for the high dignity of the sons of God. Moreover, if this be true, God’s purpose for our salvation and blessing was anterior to the creation of the world itself. Therefore the very world must have been made with a view to man’s eternal future. The whole creation must have been designed to illustrate and set forth the greater work of the new creation. The light that shines in heaven must have been shot from the quiver of His hand in order that it might set forth the light of life. The beauty and glory of nature were constituted just as an alphabet, to spell out the story of redemption. Further, this implies that the thought of our salvation was prior to the fact of our fall. We were chosen in Him before Satan ever appeared upon the scene and sin ever entered earth’s spotless Eden to wreck man’s innocence and happiness. Therefore God began long before the devil did. Redemption is no second thought, no mere remedial scheme to undo the work of the fall, but God’s great primary plan for which all nature was formed, all existence brought into being and all other things created. What a wonderful sweep this gives to the wings of faith! What a wonderful horizon is extended before the vision of the heaven-taught soul! What a grandeur and a majesty it adds to existence and to the standpoint and outlook of the child of God and heir to glory!
2. The Christo-Centric Standpoint of Our Election “He chose us in him” (Ephesians 1:4). God’s purpose of blessing toward us is related to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to Him alone. He has been from all eternity the central Object of the Father’s thought and Agent of all His purposes and plans. Away back of the story of salvation is the ancient covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son—that sublime transaction in which the Father promised all the blessings of His grace, and the Son undertook to fulfill all the conditions through which He now claims the mighty reward, not only of man’s salvation, but of that inheritance of glory which was given Him for us in the remotest ages of the past. Christ, therefore, as the Son of God, the Son of man, the great Head of the covenant of redemption, stands above all things as the archetype for whom and by whom are all things. It was for Him as well as by Him that the first creation sprang into being. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). So the apostle expresses this sublime truth in the sister epistle to the Colossians, which he wrote about the same time that he wrote this one to the Ephesians. He is called in the book of Revelation, “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). In God’s thought He was always the Christ who was to live and to die, and rise and reign for the redemption of men. So we find Him in the remarkable vision of the eighth chapter of Proverbs speaking of the time when there were no depths, no fountains of water, before the mountains were brought forth, before the earth was spread abroad, before the firmament was stretched on high: “Then,” He says, “I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence” (Proverbs 8:30). Then, with unutterable tenderness he adds, “Rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind” (Proverbs 8:31). It was then that we were chosen in Him, and that God perfected the mighty plan of bringing many sons unto glory through the Captain of their salvation, and creating in the ages to come a new order of beings who should bridge the infinite chasm between the Creator and the creation.
3. Nature of the Election
4. “Chosen” (Ephesians 1:4)—this denotes our particular selection. “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16), He says to His disciples. “You are a chosen people” (1 Peter 2:9), the Apostle Peter declares to the saints to whom he wrote.
5. “Predestined” (Ephesians 1:5)—this carries the thought a step further, and expresses the idea of a particular purpose and destiny planned for the object of His choice. There is no doubt that God has such a plan, not only for the universe, but for every man, and the greatest thing that any of us can wish or obtain is to meet His thought and plan.
6. “In accordance with his pleasure and will” (Ephesians 1:5)—this denotes the sovereignty of His choice, the independence of His will, His right to choose, to plan, to own, to govern our life and being. In this age of license it is well to remember that there is one throne that is fixed of old; one scepter that is universal and supreme; one will that has the right to choose and to dispose; one Being who “does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the people of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to Him: ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35). It is well that earthly monarchs are limited because they are imperfect, but there is one monarchy that is not limited because it cannot err. Resist, rebel, refuse as we may, we are all inexorably tending to the footstool of that throne where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11), and the universe shall proclaim, “Our Lord God Almighty reigns” (Revelation 19:6). There is a place for the sovereignty of God, and that place is at the foundation of every true character and every spiritual blessing.
7. “To the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6)—that covers all the splendors of His throne with the halo of love, with the gentle light of grace. It is not arbitrary. It is not despotic, though it be so mighty and supreme; but it is always kind, and all its degrees are prompted by infinite love and the purpose to bless the subjects of His sway. Such is the doctrine of divine election.
8. Purpose of His Election
9. That we should be His sons (see Ephesians 1:5). His eternal object was that a new order of creation might be developed. The mightiest archangel in the glory was not a son—only a servant. But His Father-heart longed for the fellowship of children, and purposed that marvelous design which should bring into being a whole race of His own very offspring, representing on the one side the lower sphere of creation itself, and on the other the sublime height of His throne. This is the race to which it is our privilege to belong; not the creatures of God merely, not the servants of God only, but His very sons. Sons, not only by the new creation, but sons by our very union with the Lord Jesus Christ and the participation of His own nature, so that He can say of us, “my Father and your Father,… my God and your God” (John 20:17). “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1).
10. “To be holy and blameless in his sight” (Ephesians 1:4)—His purpose for us is that we should resemble Him, that we should wear His perfect image, that we should be beyond question of criticism, and that this holiness should consist in the perfection of love which is the glory and the essence of His own nature. It is very evident, therefore, that anyone who talks about being elected to salvation and being saved in consequence, no matter what they may do, is talking in the blindest ignorance. We are not elected to salvation and heaven; we are elected to holiness and faith, and if we are not receiving and exhibiting these qualities, it is an idle dream and a shocking mockery to rest in any such delusion, which is simply fatalism of the grossest kind.
11. We are elected “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6). We are to show in the ages to come, to the universe, how God can love and save a sinful race, and lift a being from the lowest to the highest condition, “in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).
12. Practical Value and Comfort
13. It heightens and intensifies our conception of the love of God. Time is an element in human affection. Old friends are especially dear. Love accumulates with the lapse of years, but the oldest friendship is but as yesterday compared with God’s ancient and eternal love. How long He has loved us! How long ago He thought of us! How infinitely touching to think that He made everything in this universe with special reference to our happiness and future destiny! He loved us before we were born. He wants us to know the length and strength of that eternal love, and He is ever saying to us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). Let us not think that even our choice of Him was the first choice. Why was I made to hear His voice And enter while there’s room, While others make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come? His was the love that spread the feast And sweetly drew me in, Lest I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin.
14. It guarantees security to the trusting soul. Our salvation becomes primarily God’s interest and part of God’s plan. The old Scotch woman had a sound theology when someone asked her, “Suppose God should some day let you go?” And she answered, “Well, if He did, He would lose much more than I.” God has staked His character and His glory upon our future, and we may humbly and yet triumphantly say, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
15. It gives grandeur to our spiritual outlook and our heavenly dignity. It makes us partakers of God’s two eternities. Not only can we look down through the ages that will never end and think of all that it means to be forever saved, but we can look back to the most distant past and know that we are partakers of His eternal years in the retrospect, as well as the prospect. There is a truth lying here half hidden which seems at least suggested, if not distinctly revealed. The life that we have received from God is not our old Adam-born life. That has been laid down, surrendered, crucified and buried, and we have received a new life in Jesus Christ and count ourselves alive in Him forevermore. But what is that new life? It is Christ’s life; and when we receive it from Him, we receive eternity with it. That life is not of yesterday. That life was in Him when He rose for us from the dead, and was born in us from His very heart, and is part of Him. Nay, that life was in Him in the ages long ago when He became our living Head first, and so we can look back to the time when we were in Him yet unborn. Have you ever had a strange consciousness through your being at the sight of some beautiful scene or the occurrence of some striking circumstance, that made you almost feel that you had been there before? The Buddhist would explain this by the doctrine of transmigration, but the child of God recognizes the loftier fact that he is sharing the thoughts of Him from whom his nature sprang, and whose goings forth have been of old, even from everlasting. The Psalmist has the true conception: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations” (Psalms 90:1). Let us realize our high calling and our heavenly dignity and live up to it.
16. What infinite comfort this truth brings to us in view of Satan’s assaults and life’s temptations! Our salvation was planned before Satan appeared upon the scene and his coming cannot change it. God knew all that was coming, and in the light of all the perils and pleasures that were to meet us He chose us. He looked down into the future, and He anticipated and provided against all that might ever come; and now, when trial and temptation meet us, let us just place over against it the eternal God and the purpose of His grace, which neither earth nor hell can turn aside if we only be true.
17. Let us not hinder His purpose. Cooperate with it, and by our implicit obedience enable Him to accomplish all that He has ever had in His heart for our life and destiny. There is a solemn and awful possibility lying somewhere here that we cannot ignore. There is such a thing as failing of the grace of God, and there is such a thing as being workers together with Him. Therefore one apostle prays that we may “not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully” (2 John 1:8), and another pleads that “God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). There is a very solemn parable in the book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 18:1-6) telling of a potter who wrought upon a wheel a plastic piece of clay, but through some failure of the clay to yield to his touch perhaps, the vessel was marred in the hands of the potter and he had to throw it aside for a time. Then he took it up again and wrought another vessel as it pleased him to make it. May it be that we, by failing to yield to His gentle touch may fall short of His first purpose for us, and that He will have to make some other use of our life, and give us His second best. Oh, let us watch and pray, and press hard up to His blessed will that we may not miss God’s best.
18. Let us make sure of being inside God’s purpose by choosing Christ ourselves, and making sure that we are in Him; for it is in Him we are chosen, and out of Him we have nothing. Talk as you will about all things ending well, it is only true that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Outside of Christ you are “excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Outside of Christ you are treading on crumbling ground; beneath you are a yawning grave and an eternal fire, and above you is a cloud all lurid with judgment and despair. In Him alone do you meet God and enter into His plan of love. That plan you can never understand till you get inside. As someone has finely illustrated it, it is like a splendid temple on whose front you will see these lines in golden letters, “Whoever is thirsty, let him come” (Revelation 22:17). But when you get inside you find another inscription, “he chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4); but you cannot understand this until you have first accepted the other. God has given you the freedom of choice or refusal; and when you have made that happy choice, you have made your “election sure” (2 Peter 1:10). Oh, make it now.