Ephesians 1

CHAPTER 1THEME: The church is a body; Introduction; God the Father planned the church; God the Son paid the price for the church; God the Holy Spirit protects the church; prayer of Paul for knowledge and power for the EphesiansEphesians begins with the doctrinal section concerning the heavenly calling of the church, the vocalization.

Ephesians 1:1

INTRODUCTIONThis is the briefest of all the introductions to Paul’s epistles. It’s brief because, very frankly, this epistle was sent to the church in Ephesus but was intended to be for all the churches. In some of the better manuscripts en Epheso is left outit’s not there. Ephesians was apparently the epistle that Paul referred to when he said in Colossians to read the epistle to the Laodiceans. In other words, this was a circular letter for the churches in that day. He’s not writing here to the local church as much as he is to the church in general, that is, the invisible body of believers. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ” should be changed to Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. I hope you’ll not think I’m splitting hairs here, but all the way through this epistle and in many other places it should be Christ Jesus. The word Christ is His title. That’s who He is: “…Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mat_16:16). Jesus was His human name. Paul could say that “We know Him no longer after the flesh” (see 2Co_5:16). Paul didn’t know Him as the Jesus of the three-years’ ministry but rather as the glorified Christ he met on the Damascus road. Paul always emphasized the name of Christ firstChrist Jesus. Paul states that he is “an apostle.” What is an apostle? It is the highest office the church has ever had. No one today is an apostle in the church for the simple reason that they cannot meet the requirements of an apostle. Here are the requirements: (1) The apostles received their commission directly from the living lips of Jesus. Paul made that claim for himself. He wrote, “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)” (Gal_1:1).

This is the reason I believe Paul took the place of Judas. The disciples had selected Mathias, but I don’t find anywhere that Jesus Christ made him an apostle. Apparently all the apostles received their commission directly from the Lord Jesus. (2) The apostle saw the Savior after His resurrection. Paul could meet that requirement. (3) The apostles exercised a special inspiration. They expounded and wrote Scripture (see Joh_14:26; Joh_16:13; Gal_1:11-12). Certainly Paul measures up to that more than any other apostle. (4) They exercised supreme authority (see Joh_20:22-23; 2Co_10:8). (5) The badge of their authority was the power to work miracles (see Mar_6:13; Luk_9:1-2; Act_2:43).

I do not believe such power is invested in men today. That was the badge of an apostle. John wrote at the end of the first century, “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed” (2Jn_1:10). The badge was no longer the ability to work miracles but having the right doctrine. (6) They were given a universal commission to found churches (see 2Co_11:28). Paul expressly met these six requirements for apostleship. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” Paul rested his apostleship upon the will of God rather than any personal ambition or will of man or request of a church. He wrote to the Galatians: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen …” (Gal_1:15-16, italics mine). Paul said to Timothy: “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1Ti_1:12-13). Paul made constant reference to the will of God as the foundation of his apostleship. You can check 1Co_1:1; 2Co_1:1; Col_1:1; 2Ti_1:1. He says it in all these places. “To the saints …at Ephesus.” The word for saint is hagios which means “holy” or “separated.” The primary intent of the word is “set aside for the sole use of God, that which belongs to God.” The pots and pans in the tabernacle were called holy vessels. Why? Because they were especially holy and very fine and nice? No. I think they were all beat up and battered after that long wilderness journey. They were holy because they were for the use of God.

A saint, my friend, is one who has trusted Christ and is set aside for the sole use of God. There are only two kinds of people today: the saints and the ain’ts. If you are a saint, then you are not an ain’t. If you ain’t an ain’t, then you are a saint. Now there are some saints who are not being used of God. That is their fault.

They are set aside for the use of God and for His service. Saints should act saintly, it’s true. But they’re not saints because of the way they act. They are saints because of their position in Christ. They belong to Him to be used of Him. “At Ephesus.” We have already referred to that. You can put in the name of your town here. For me it could be “at Pasadena.” “And to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” These are the believers. The believers and the saints are the same, you see. A saint should be saintly and a believer should be faithful. A believer is one who has trusted Christ and a saint is the same one. The term saint is the Godward aspect of the Christian. The term believer is the manward aspect of the Christian. “In Christ Jesus.” This is the most wonderful thing of all. This epistle is going to amplify that so much, that I will be dwelling on that in more detail later on. To me the most important word in the New Testament is the little preposition in. Theologians have come up with some “lulus” trying to tell us what it means to be saved. How do you define our salvation? There are words like redemption, atonement, justification, reconciliation, propitiation, and the vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice of Christ.

All of these words are good; they are wonderful, but each one of them merely gives one aspect of our salvation. What does it really mean to be saved? It means to be in Christ. We are irrevocably and organically joined to Christ by the baptism of the Holy Spirit (see 1Co_12:12-13). We are put into the body of believers. We are told, “…he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1Co_6:17).

We belong to Him, and there’s nothing as wonderful as that. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus …” (Rom_8:1). Can you improve on that? Being in Christ Jesus is the great accomplishment of salvation. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer found that the word in occurred one hundred and thirty times in the New Testament. The Lord Jesus said, “Ye in me and I in you” (see Joh_15:4).

How wonderful! We are in Christ. I can’t explain it; it’s so profound. Analogies may help us here: The bird is in the air; the air is in the bird. The fish is in the water; the water is in the fish. The iron is in the fire; the fire is in the iron. The believer is in Christ and Christ is in the believer. We are joined to Him. The head is in the body and the body is in the head. My body can’t move without the head directing it. The church, which is “the body of Christ” is in Christ, the Head. All the truths of Ephesians revolve around this fact. Take time to look carefully at this epistle. I feel very keenly that along with Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, Ephesians should be given top priority among the epistles. I feel that these epistles have a throbbing, personal, living message for you and me today, probably as no other portion of Scripture does. They are the great doctrinal epistles. When God said to Joshua, “…arise, go over this Jordan” (Jos_1:2), I know He’s not talking to me; but He is giving instructions to Joshua. Yet, to me it has an application. The Epistle to the Ephesians is the Book of Joshua of the New Testament, and it speaks directly to me in a personal way. “Grace be to you.” Grace was the form of greeting of the Gentile world in Paul’s day. The Greek word was charis. Two men met on the street and one would say to the other, “Charis.” I walked down the streets of Athens with a Greek friend of mine who is a missionary. He spoke to several people as we went by, and I said to him, “It sounds to me like you greet them with the word charis.” He laughed and said, “Well, it’s similar to it.” Apparently it’s still a form of greeting today. “And peace.” The greeting in the religious world was “Peace.” That is the word you hear in Jerusalem: “Shalom!” Paul takes these two words which were the common greeting of the day and gives both of them a wonderful meaning and lifts them to the heights. The grace of God is the means by which He saves us. You must know the grace of God before you can experience the peace of God. Paul always puts them in that ordergrace before peace. You must have grace before you can experience peace. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom_5:1). You see the word peace everywhere today. Generally it refers to peace in some section of the world, or world peace. But the world can never know peace until it knows the grace of God. The interesting thing is, you don’t see the word grace around very much. You see the word love and the word peace. They are very familiar words, and they are supposed to be taken from the Bible, but often they don’t mean what they mean in the Word of God. Peace is peace with God because our sins are forgiven. Our sins can never be forgiven until we know something of the grace of God. “From God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” The grace and peace are from God our Father. In fact, He becomes our Father when we experience the grace of God and are regenerated by the Spirit of God. Grace and peace also come from the Lord Jesus Christ. Why didn’t Paul say they also came from the Holy Spirit? Doesn’t Paul believe in the Trinity? Oh, yes, but the Holy Spirit was already in Ephesus indwelling believers. The Lord Jesus was seated at God’s right hand in the heavens. We need to keep our geography straight when we study the Bible. A great many people get their theology warped because they don’t have their geography right; and when we get that straightened out, it even helps our theology.

Ephesians 1:3

GOD THE FATHER PLANNED THE CHURCHWe come now to the second major division of the first chapter. It begins with a most marvelous verse. We notice something that is very important here. He has blessed us. We praise Him with our lips because He first made us blessed. Our blessing is a declaration. His blessings are deeds. We pronounce Him blessed.

He makes us blessed. The word blessed has in it the thought of happiness and joy. God is rejoicing today. He is happy because He has a way of saving you and He can bless you. It says He hath blessed us. I can’t think of anything more wonderful than this.

He is not speaking here of something that may be ours when we get to heaven but of something that is ours right now. Somebody says to me, “Have you had the second blessing?” Second blessing! My friend, I’m working way up in the hundredsin fact, up in the thousands. I’ve not only had a second blessing; I’ve had a thousand blessings. He’s blessed us, and He’s done it in Christ. “In heavenly places in Christ.” You will notice that “places” is in italics in the text. It literally states, “in the heavenlies in Christ.” Here we are, blessed with all spiritual blessings, and it is in the heavenlies. I don’t know exactly where the heavenlies are, but I do know where the Lord Jesus is. He is at God’s right hand, and we are told here that these blessings are in Christ. May I say to you that we need to be careful with this. It does not say here that these blessings are with Christ (there are those who read it like that).

Right now you and I are seated in Christ. When somebody asks, “Are you going to heaven some day?” the answer generally given is, “Well, I hope so.” Let me say this to you: if you’re going to heaven, you’re already there in Christ. He has blessed you in the heavenlies in Christ, and you are there regardless of what your position is down here. Your practice down here may not be good, but if you are a child of God, you are already in Christ. Some people even misunderstand it in another way. I was teaching Ephesians at a conference once, and they called on a brother at the end of the service to lead the prayer.

He started by saying, “Lord, we just thank you that this morning we’ve been sitting in the heavenly places in Christ.” Well, he missed the point. We don’t have to come to a Bible study (as important as that is) and have our hearts thrilled with these great spiritual truths to be sitting in the heavenlies. The fact of the matter is, you are in the heavenlies in Christ even when you are down in the dumps. Everyone who is in Christ is seated in the heavenlies in Him. That is the position which He has given to us. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We praise Him. Why? Because He has blessed us. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. The parallel here is Joshua in the Old Testament. We saw in the study of that book that Canaan was given to the children of Israel by God.

Canaan is not a picture of heaven. Canaan is a picture of where we live today. It could never be heaven because there were enemies to be fought and battles to be won. Down here is where the battle is being fought. When we get to heaven, there will be no more battles. The interesting point here is that God gave them Canaan.

All they had to do was lay hold of their possession. God told Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses” (Jos_1:3). Joshua could say, “Well, Lord, you’ve already given it to us. You let us walk in and take it.” My friend, God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. We are in Christ. Have you ever stopped to think of what we have in Christ? Christ has been made unto us justification and sanctification. When I started out in church as a boy, I was working for my salvation. I didn’t do very well with that.

Then I learned that Christ is my justification. I tried to work to be good after I was saved, and I didn’t do very well at that either. Then I learned that Christ has been made unto me sanctification. You see, I have everything in Christ; I have been blessed with all spiritual blessings. You can’t improve on that, can you? When you come to Christ, you have everything in Him.

Don’t come and tell me today that I have to wait until later on, that I have to tarry for the Holy Spirit to give me something specialfor example, a baptism. I have it all in Christ. When you tell me that I did not get everything in Christ, you are denying what Christ did for me. I got everything when I came to Him. Now there are two ways to treat these blessings, which are actually your spiritual possessions: either to lay hold of them or not to lay hold of them. Two stories illustrate what I mean, and both of them are true. When I was in Chicago many years ago, I picked up the evening paper during the week and read a little article and clipped it out. It was way down at the bottom of the front page and wasn’t apt to be noticed. It read: “The flophouses and saloons of Chicago’s Skid Row were searched today for one Stanley William McKenna Walker, 50, an Oxford graduate and heir to half of an $8,000,000 English estate. The missing persons detail hoped that somewhere among the down-and-outers who line the curbs and sleep off wine binges in the cheap hotels they would find Walker, son of a wealthy British shipbuilder.” I thought how tragic it was.

Imagine being an heir to half of $8,000,000 and being a wino who’s sleeping in two-bit hotels. I felt like sitting down and weeping for that poor fellow. Then I began thinking of the children of God today who are living in cheap hotels, living off the little “wine” of this world. I don’t mean that literally, but that they engage in cheap entertainment down here. They are wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus and are blessed with all spiritual blessings, but they live like paupers down here. There are a lot of folk in our churches who live like that today, and it’s tragic.

I was telling this story when I was a pastor in Los Angeles, and a lady who was visiting from Chicago came up afterward and asked, “Dr. McGee, do you know the end of that story?” I said, “No, I never heard.” She said, “Well, they found him.” “Oh,” I replied, “that was wonderful.” “No,” she said, “they found him dead in a doorway on a cold night later on that fall.” How tragic to die like that man died. Many Christians live and die like that, and yet they are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ. The second true story happened out West here, years ago. An heir to a British nobleman was living in poverty and barely eking out an existence. After the nobleman died, they began to look for his heir and when they found him, they told him about his inheritance. A great deal of publicity was made of it. Do you know what that fellow did? He immediately went down to the clothing store and ordered their best suit and then bought a first class ticket to return to England in style.

Do you know why? He believed the inheritance was his, and he acted upon it. My friend, you can go either route. You can travel your Christian life in first class or in steerage. You can go second, third, or fourth class, and there are a lot of Christians doing that today. God wants you to know that you’ve been blessed with all spiritual blessings.

He hasn’t promised us physical blessings, but He has promised spiritual ones, and these are in the heavenlies in Christ. My friend, you’re not going to have any spiritual blessing in this life that doesn’t come to you through Jesus Christ. That’s just how important He is. He not only has saved us, but He is also the One who blesses us. How we need to lay hold of Him today and to start living as a child of God should live! We come now to a very important section. We are in that division of the outline which states that God the Father planned the church. You would not build a house today without a blueprint. What is God’s blueprint? What did God do in planning for the church? We find in this section that He did three things: (1) He chose us in Christ; (2) He predestinated us to the place of sonship; and (3) He made us accepted in the Beloved. Now I know that we have come to a passage of Scripture that is difficult. You’ll have to gird up the loins of your mind because this is a very strong passage in the Word of God. We are going to talk about election and about predestination. These are two words that are frightening. Many people run for cover when they hear these words mentioned. But they are Bible words, and they have a meaning which is important for us to see.

Ephesians 1:4

This verse and the verses that follow are essentially the most difficult verses in Scripture to grasp. They are repulsive to the natural man, and the average believer finds them difficult to accept at face value. Although the statements are clear, the truth they contain is hard to receive. These verses are like a walnuthard to crack but with a lot of goodies on the inside. “According as” is a connective which modifies the preceding statement in verse three. The spiritual blessings which you and I are given are in accord with the divine will. All is done in perfect unison with God’s purpose. This world and this universe will operate according to the plan and purpose of Almighty God. “According as” looks back to the three-in-one blessing of the last verse. There are actually and ought to be three ins in verse three. There is, first of all, “in all spiritual blessings,” which are then wrapped “in the heavenlies,” and finally put in the larger package of “in Christ.” The whole thought is: Open your gift and see what God has done for you, and then move out in faith and lay hold of it and live today on the high plane to which God has brought you.

He’s made you a son and blessed you with all spiritual blessings. We need to live like that in the world today. Now all this was according to His plan. God the Father planned the church, God the Son paid for the church, and God the Holy Spirit protects the church. The source of all our blessings is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He carries our mind back to eternity past to make us realize that salvation is altogether of God and not at all of ourselves. You and I are not the originators or the promoters or the consummators of our salvation. God did it all. An old hymn puts it like this: ‘Tis not that I did choose Thee For, Lord, that could not be. This heart would still refuse Thee But Thou hast chosen me. A favorite hymn of today says: Jesus sought me when a stranger Wandering from the fold of God. He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood. “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” God planned our salvation way back yonder in eternity before you and I were even in this world at all. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who came down in time, and He wrought out our salvation upon the cross when the fullness of time had come. God the Holy Spirit is the One who convicts us today. He brings us to the place of faith in Christ and to a saving knowledge of the grace of God that is revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. I heard this story many years ago. A black boy in Memphis, Tennessee, wanted to join a conservative, fundamental church, and the deacons were examining him. They asked him, “How did you get saved?” He answered, “I did my part, and God did His part.” The deacons thought they had him, so they asked him what was his part and what was God’s part. He said, “My part was the sinning. I ran from God as fast as these rebellious legs would take me and my sinful heart would lead me. I ran from Him. But you know, He done took out after me ’til He done run me down.” My friend, there is nothing in a theology book that tells it as well as that. God is the One who did the saving. Our part was the sinning. The late Dr. Harry A. Ironside told this story. A little boy was asked, “Have you found Jesus?” The little fellow answered, “Sir, I didn’t know He was lost. But I was lost and He found me.” My friend, you don’t find Jesus. He finds you. He is the One who went out after the lost sheep, and He is the One who found that sheep. God chose believers in Christ before the foundation of the world, way back in eternity past. That means that you and I didn’t do the choosing. He did not choose us because we were good or because we would do some good, but He did choose us so that we could do some good. The entire choice is thrown back upon the sovereignty of the wisdom and goodness of God alone. It was Charles Spurgeon who once said, “God chose me before I came into the world, because if He’d waited until I got here, He never would have chosen me.” It is God who has chosen uswe have not chosen Him. The Lord Jesus said to His own in the Upper Room, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you …” (Joh_15:16).

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan commented, “That puts the responsibility on Him. If He did the choosing, then He’s responsible.” That makes it quite wonderful! Israel furnishes us an example of this divine choosing. “Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amo_3:1-2). God chose Israel in time; He chose the church in eternity. Since God made the choice in eternity, there has not arisen anything unforeseen to Him which has caused Him to revamp His program or change His mind. He knew the end from the beginning (see Act_15:18). God did all this for a purpose: “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” God chose us in order to sanctify us. He saves us and He sanctifies us that we might be holy. That’s the positive side of His purpose. It has to do with the inner life of the believer. A holy life is demanded by God’s election. Now don’t tell me that you can say, “Well, I’m one of the elected.

I have been saved by grace, and now I can do as I please.” Paul answered that kind of reasoning. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Rom_6:1-2). You can’t use grace as a license to sin, my friend. If you go on living in sin, it is because you are a sinner who hasn’t been saved.

A sinner who has saved will show a change in his way of living. Not only did God elect us in order that we should be holy but also that we should be “without blame.” Now this is the negative side. The believer in Christ is seen before God as without blame. Again we see an example of this in Israel. God would not permit Balaam to curse Israel or to find fault with His people. “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Num_23:21). Yes, but if you had gone down there into the camp of Israel, you would have found that God did find fault with them and He judged themHe was sanctifying and purifying that camp. God has chosen you in order that He might make you holy and in order that He might make you without blame. It means that your life has been changed. If there is no evidence of change, then you are not one of the elect. God wants his children to live lives which are not marked or spotted with sin. He has made every provision to absolve them from all blame. “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1Jn_2:1-2). By the way, that answers once and for all the question of a limited atonement, that is, that Christ died only for the elect. This verse in 1 John makes it clear that He died for the world. I don’t care who you are, there is a legitimate offer that has been sent out to you today from God, and that offer is that Jesus Christ has died for you. You can’t hide and say, “I am not one of the elect.” You are of the elect if you hear His voice. You also have free will not to hear His voice. It is a glorious and wonderful thing that the God of heaven would elect some of us down here and save us. I don’t propose to understand all thatI just believe it. The Lord gave us a picture of a great big, wide highway and off that highway is a little, narrow entrance. Over the entrance it says, “…I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (Joh_14:6), and “I am the door …” (Joh_10:9). Now the interesting thing is that the broad highway on which most of the people are traveling leads down and gets narrower and narrower until finally it leads to destruction. You can keep on that broad highway if you wish, but you can also turn off if you want to. You can turn off at the invitation, “…him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (Joh_6:37). You can enter in at that narrow way, and the interesting thing is that the entrance is narrow, but then the road widens out. “…I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (Joh_10:10).

You talk about the broad way! The broad way comes after you get through the narrow gate. But, you see, you must make the choice. Whosoever will may comethat includes you. It is a legitimate invitation. D. L. Moody put it in his quaint way. He said, “The whosoeverwills are the elect and the whosoeverwon’ts are the nonelect.” It is up to you. The Lord has extended the invitation. Whosoever will may come.

Don’t try to say that you are left out. God so loved the world. Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish. That “whosoever” means J. Vernon McGee. It means youyou can put your name right in there.

Just because there are the elect, it does not mean we know who they are. You have no right to say that you are of the nonelect. If you will open your heart, you can come. That is all you have to do. I don’t believe in the idea today that you can have “mental reservations.” The problem is that you have sin in your life, and the Bible condemns it. If you come to Christ, it means you’ll have to turn from that sin, and some folk just don’t want to turn from their sin. “Chosen us in him.” Again and again the Word of God emphasizes God’s sovereign choice. Paul states, “But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2Th_2:13-14). Peter writes in 1Pe_1:2, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ….” The interesting thing is that election and sanctification seem to go together and they are both in the Lord Jesus Christ. If God has saved you, He hasn’t saved you because you are good but because you are not good. Paul puts it in such a marvelous way: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?

God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom_9:14-16). Moses had gone to God in prayer, and God had answered, “Moses, I am going to hear and answer your prayer, but it is not because you are Moses and the deliverer. It is because I will show mercy on whom I will and I’ll show compassion on whom I will. It is not to him that wills or to him that works but it is I who shows compassion.” Now, do you want to experience the compassion of God?

Then you will have to turn to Him. I think the best illustration of this is over in Acts 27. You remember that Paul was in a ship and there was a terrific storm so that the ship was listing and about ready to go down. They had already cast some of the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. Then Paul went to the captain and said, “And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee” (Act_27:22-24). Now that was God’s foreknowledge.

That is election. God had elected that nobody on that ship would be lost. Just a little later, Paul found a group of the sailors about to let down a lifeboat into the sea. They intended to go overboard, hoping to get to land in that way. Then Paul said to the captain, “…Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved” (Act_27:31). The captain could have said, “Wait a minute.

You already told me that none would perish,” and he would have been right. That is what Paul had said. That was God’s side of itnone would perish. But the condition was, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” That was man’s side of itthey had to stay in the ship. Now God knows who the elect are. I don’t. Someone came to Spurgeon one time and said, “Mr Spurgeon, if I believed as you do, I would not preach like you do. You say you believe that there are the elect, and yet you preach as if everybody can be saved.” Spurgeon’s answer was, “They can all be saved. If God had put a yellow streak up and down the backs of the elect, I’d go up and down the streets lifting up shirt tails to find out who had the yellow streak up and down his back. Then I’d give that person the gospel.

But God didn’t do that. He told me to preach the gospel to every creature and that whosoever will may come.” That is our marching order, and as far as I am concerned, until God gives me the roll call of the elect, I am going to preach the “whosoever will” gospel. That is the gospel we are to preach today. Someone else has put it like this. On the door to heaven, from our side, it says, “Whosoever will may enter. I am the door: by Me if any man….” Any manthat means you. You can come in and find pasture and find life. When you get on the other side of the door someday in heaven, you’re going to look back, and on that door you will find written, “Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.” I haven’t seen that side of the door yet; therefore, I give God (since He is God) the right to plan His church. A friend of mine down in Florida once showed me the blueprint of a home he was going to build. He had planned it and had it all marked out in the blueprint. They had only laid the foundation, but he and his wife showed me where everything was going to be. Later on when we were in that home to visit them, it was just like they planned it. They didn’t have supernatural knowledge, but as far as I know, no one has questioned whether they had the right to do that or not. They did have the right, and they did it according to their plan. God has planned the church. After all, this is His universe, and the church is His church. What is His plan? “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” Now the words in love are not connected with verse four, but actually with verse five. “In love,”

Ephesians 1:5

Somebody says, “Oooh, there’s that word predestination, and that’s another frightful term!” Friend, that’s one of the most wonderful words we have in Scripture, and this a glorious section. It is something we don’t hear too much about today. If I were not going through the Bible, I would have probably avoided this and would have chosen something else. I would have talked about the comfort there is for the saints, which is the big theme of even most fundamental preachers today. We’re all talking about comfort, but what we have here is strong medicine. Some folk won’t be able to take the medicine; but if you take it, it’ll do you good.

We need something pretty strong in this flabby age in which we live. We need to know that we’ve been chosen in Him in order to stand for God today. It will make a world of difference in your life. We are treading on the mountaintops in Ephesians. We’re in eternity past when God planned the church. I wasn’t back there to give Him any suggestions or tell Him how I wanted it done, but He’s telling me how He did it. In essence, God says to you and me, “You either take it or leave it. This is the way I did it. Maybe you don’t like it, but this is the way I did it, and I’m the One who is running this universe, you see.” God hasn’t turned it over to any political party yet.

Thank God for that! He hasn’t turned it over to any individual either. We can thank Him for that. He certainly hasn’t turned it over to me, and I tell you, all of us can shout a hearty “Amen” to that and thank Him He didn’t do it that way. God has done three things for us, however, in planning the church. First of all, we’ve seen that He chose usand that’s a pretty hard pill for us to swallow.

Secondly, the Father predestinated us to the place of sonship. Thirdly, the Father made us accepted in the Beloved. I cannot repeat often enough that election is God’s choosing us in Christ. I emphasize again that men are not lost because they have not been elected. They are lost because they are sinners and that is the way they want it and that is the way they have chosen. The free will of man is never violated because of the election of God. The lost man makes his own choice. Augustine expressed it like this: “If there be not free will grace in God, how can He save the world? And if there be not free will in man, how can the world by God be judged?” Here again is Paul’s strong statement, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid” (Rom_9:14). Now if you think that there is some unrighteousness with God, you had better change your mind. I get the impression in some of the evangelistic campaigns today that people are asked to come forward and even that coming forward is doing something. May I say to you that God says He is not saving any of us because we came forward, or because we are nice little boys or nice little girls, or because we have joined a church, or even because we have an inclination to turn to Him. God says that it is because He extends mercy. He had to say that even to Moses. Moses could have gone to the Lord and said, “Look, I’m Moses. I’m leading the children of Israel out of Egypt.

I’m really up there at the top. You’d have a problem getting along without me. Therefore, I want You to hear my prayer.” If you read his prayers, Moses never prayed like that. It was God who said, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion.” He told Moses that He was going to hear and answer his prayer, but not because he was Moses, but because “…it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom_9:16). My friend, I’m going to be in heaven someday, and I’m not going to be there because Vernon McGee is a nice little boy. He’s not. You don’t know me like I know myself. If you knew me, you would tune me out right now. But wait a minutedon’t tune me out, because if I knew you like you know yourself, I wouldn’t even speak to you. So let’s stay together, shall we?

We are both in the same boatwe are all lost sinners. I will not be in heaven because I am a preacher or because I joined a church. It will not be because I was baptized. I have been sprinkled and immersed. My wife belonged to a Southern Baptist church and she has always prided herself on being immersed. I tease her and say it sure will be funny if we get to heaven and find out the Lord really meant sprinkled after all.

I tell her that that would leave her out, but I’m safe because I’ve been baptized both ways. You see, that is ridiculousnone of those things will put a person into heaven. The only reason I am going to be in heaven is because of the mercy of God. I am a lost sinner. Until you and I are willing to come to God as a nobody and then let Him make us a somebody, you and I will never be saved. Your best resolutions must totally be waived, Your highest ambitions be crossed. You need never think that you will ever be saved, Until first you have learned that you’re lost. It is to the lost sinner that God is prepared to extend His mercy. Don’t tell me you have “intellectual problems"hurdles to get over. The problem with you and the problem with me was not that we had trouble with Jonah, or with Noah and the ark. Our problem today is that the Bible condemns the sin in our lives. God will save you when your heart is willing to turn to Him. He’s planned it like this in order that He might bring you and me into heaven someday; and when we get there, we are going to find out that He’s the One who did it. Now in verse five we come to the next thing God did for us. “In love having predestinated us.” Some are going to say that they never knew you could get predestination and love together even in the same county, let alone in the same verse. But here they are. God’s love is involved in this word which has been frightful to a great many people. The word predestination comes from the Greek proorisos, and it literally means “to define, to mark out, to set apart.” It means “to horizon.” If you go outside and look around (especially if you’re in flat country), you only can see to the horizon. You’re “horizoned”; you’re put in that area. When it refers to God, predestination has to do with God’s purpose with those He chooses. Predestination is never used in reference to unsaved people. God has never predestinated anybody to be lost. If you are lost, it is because you have rejected God’s remedy. It is like a dying man to whom the doctor offers curing medicine. “If you take this, it’ll heal you.” The man looks at the doctor in amazement and says, “I don’t believe you.” Now the man dies and the doctor’s report says he died of a certain disease, and that’s accurate. But may I say to you, there was a remedy, and he actually died because he didn’t take the remedy. God has provided a remedy. Let me repeat, God has never predestined anybody to be lost. That’s where your free will comes in, and you have to determine for yourself what your choice will be. Predestination refers only to those who are saved. What it actually means is that when God starts out with one hundred sheep, He is going to come through with one hundred sheep. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom_8:28-29). Dr. R. A.

Torrey used to say that this is a wonderful pillow for a tired heart. Those who are called according to His purpose are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son. We’re talking now about saved people. Romans goes on to explain how this is done. “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified” (Rom_8:30). When God starts out with one hundred sheep, He will come through with one hundred sheep. You must admit that that is a good percentage. Years ago I was told by a sheep rancher in San Angelo, Texas, that he would appreciate coming out with 65 percent. He said, “We can make money if we get to market 65 percent of the sheep that we start out with.” That makes you feel that it wouldn’t hurt too much if one little sheep got lost. The Lord Jesus told a parable about a man who had one hundred sheep, and one little sheep got lost. You know, most of us get lost even after we have been saved. That doesn’t mean we lose our salvation, but we surely get out of fellowship with Him. Some people can get lost so far that they actually fear they have lost their salvation. But the little lost sheep is still a sheep even though he is way out yonder and lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray …” (Isa_53:6). That’s our propensity; that’s our tendency; that’s the direction we go.

We don’t go toward God, but we go away from Him. So what does the Shepherd do? He goes out to look for that one lost sheep! I’m confident that the man who raised sheep in Texas wouldn’t get up and go out into a cold, blustery, stormy night to get one little sheep. I think he would say, “Let him go.” Thank God, we have a Shepherd who never says that! He says, “I started out with one hundred sheep and I’m going to come through with that one hundred sheep.” Now, suppose the day comes when He is counting His sheep up in heaven, way out there somewhere in the future.

He starts out, “One, two, three, four, five …ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, ninety-nine, ninety-ninewhat in the world happened to Vernon McGee? Well, We’ve just lost one, so We’ll let it go at that. A lot of folk didn’t think Vernon McGee was going to make it anyway.” Thank God, He will not do it that way. If I am not there when He counts in His sheep, He is going to go out and look for me, and He is going to bring me in. That is what predestination means. I love that word.

It is God’s guarantee. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (Joh_10:27-28). Always remember that if sheep are saved, it is not because they are smart little sheep. They are stupid little fellows. If they are safe, it is because they have a wonderful Shepherd. That is the glorious truth. We are predestinated “unto the adoption of the children by Jesus Christ to himself.” Adoption means that we are brought into the place of full-grown sons. We have dealt with that in the Epistle to the Galatians. It implies two very important things. Adoption into sonship means regeneration. We have been regenerated by the Spirit of God. The child of God has been born again “…not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1Pe_1:23).

He is born again into a new relationship. That is what the Lord Jesus meant when He told Nicodemus that he must be born again. Adoption also means a place of position and privilege. When we are saved, we are born into the family of God as a babe in Christ; but, in addition, we are given the position of an adult son. We are in a position where we can understand the Word of the Father because He has given us the Holy Spirit as our Teacher. When my little grandson was almost two years old, he talked constantly, but I could understand only a few words that he said. Yet I could pretty well tell what he wanted and needed. He was just a little, bitty fellow and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t always understand me either, by the way. The wonderful thing is that I have a Heavenly Father todayand I’ve been a babe a long timeand He’s told me that He’s put me in a position where I can understand Him. How wonderful it’s going to be as my grandson grows up and we can really understand one another.

God, however, communicates to us now. Paul tells us how: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1Co_2:12). All of this is done in Christ Jesus. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1Ti_2:5).

Ephesians 1:6

Since all is for the glory of God, Paul sings this glorious doxology, this wonderful psalm of praise. All is done on the basis of His grace and the end is the glory of God. The inception is grace; the conception is adoption; the reception is for His glory. “Wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” Who is the Beloved? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Lord Jesus who said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (Joh_17:24). God sees the believer in Christ and He accepts the believer just as He receives His own Son. That is wonderful. That is the only basis on which I will be in heaven.

I cannot stand there on the merit of Vernon McGee. I am accepted only in the Beloved. God loves me just as He loves Christ, because I am in Christ. Jesus said, “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (Joh_17:23). There has been, therefore, a threefold work performed by God the Father. He chose us in Christ. He predestinated us to the place of sonship. He has made us accepted in the Beloved. It is all to the praise of the glory of His grace. He is the One who gets the praise. He is the One who did it all. All of this is for your good and my good. I just like to revel in this, I like to rejoice in this, and I talk about this because it is worth talking about. It is so much more valuable than a lot of the chitchat that I hear today that goes under the name of religion. How we need to see the grace of God as it is revealed in Christ!

Ephesians 1:7

GOD THE SON PAID THE PRICE FOR THE CHURCHBack in eternity past God chose us, predestinated us, and made us accepted in the Beloved. Now we move out of eternity into time, where the plans of God the Father are placed into the hands of Christ, who moves into space and time to construct the church. It is an historical fact that Jesus was born into this world over nineteen hundred years ago. God intruded into humanity and after being on this earth for thirty-three years, He died upon a cross, was buried, rose again bodily, and ascended into heaven. Those are the historical facts that the Word of God gives us. While He was here, He redeemed us, and that redemption is through His blood. This is something which is not popular today. Most people want a beautiful religion, one that appeals to their esthetic nature.

The cross of Christ does not appeal to the esthetic part of man; it doesn’t appeal to the pride of man. Unfortunately, the liberal churches and even a few so-called Bible churches make an appeal to the old nature of man and, therefore, there is no emphasis on the blood of Christit is considered repulsive. Years ago a lady came up to the late Dr. G. Campbell Morgan. She was one of these dowagers who had a lorgnette ( a lorgnette is a sneer on the end of a stick). She looked at him through her lorgnette and said, “Dr. Morgan, I don’t like to hear about the blood. It is repulsive to me and offends my esthetic nature.” Dr. Morgan replied, “I agree with you that it is repulsive, but the only thing repulsive about it is your sin and mine.” Sin is the thing that is repulsive about the blood redemption, my friend. A new pastor came to a great church in Washington, D.C., and a couple came to him and said, “We trust that you will not put too much emphasis on the blood. The former pastor we had talked a great deal about the blood, and we hope that you will not emphasize it too much.” He answered, “You can be assured that I won’t emphasize it too much.” They looked pleased and thanked him for it. He said, “Wait a minute. It is not possible to emphasize it too much.” And he continued to stress the blood. It is repulsive to man, but it is through His blood that we have redemption. After God the Father had drawn the blueprint, the Son came to this earth to form the church with nail-pierced hands. The entire context of the Old Testament sets forth the expiation of sins by the blood of an animal sacrifice. Yet this could not take away sinsonly Christ could execute that. The writer to the Hebrews says it this way: “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.

He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool” (Heb_10:6-13). “In whom we have redemption.” “In whom” refers to the Beloved, who is Christ. We are accepted in the Beloved, in Christ. Redemption is the primary work of Christ. The literal here is “In whom we have the redemption.” The word the gives it prominence, and the fact that it is named first gives it top priority. This is the reason Christ came to earth. “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mat_20:28). He came to pay a price for your redemption and mine. We were slaves in sin, and He came to deliver us and give us liberty by paying a price for us. There are three Greek words in the New Testament which are translated by the one English word redemption. The Greek word agorazo means “to buy at the marketplace.” Here is the picture of a housewife out in the morning shopping for the day. She sees some vegetables and a roast and puts down cash on the barrelhead. She pays the price and now they belong to her, of course. The only thought in this word agorazo, then, is to buy and take out. This is the word Paul used in 1Co_6:20: “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” The Greek word exagorazo means “to buy out of the market,” and it has the thought of buying something for one’s own use. You see, somebody could go into the marketplace and buy that roast and those vegetables and go down to the next town, where they are short of those items, and put them up for sale at a profit. Exagorazo means, however, to take goods out of the market place and never to sell them again, but rather to keep them for one’s own use. This is the word which is used in Gal_3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” This means that Christ redeemed us so that we would not be exposed for sale again. He has paid the price, and He has taken us off the market. We belong to Him. The third Greek word for redemption is apolutrosis which is the word used here in verse seven. It means “to liberate by the paying of a ransom in order to set a person free.” It carries this same meaning in Luk_21:28: “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Redemption is a marvelous word. It means not only to go into the marketplace and put cash on the barrelhead; it means not only to take it out of the market for your own private use, never to sell it to anyone else; but it also means to set free or to liberate after paying the price. The last applies to buying a slave out of slavery in order to set him free, and this is the word for redemption we have here in this verse. Man has been sold under sin and is in the bondage of sin. All one needs to do is look around to see that this is true.

Man is a rotten, corrupt sinner and he cannot do anything else but sinhe is a slave to sin. Christ came to pay the price of man’s freedom. That is what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Joh_8:36). This redemption is “through his blood"that was the price which He paid. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1Pe_1:18-19). The blood of Christ is more valuable than silver and gold. For one thing, there is not much of it. A limited supply increases the value of a substance, but that really is not the reason for its value. One drop of the blood of the holy Son of God can save every sinner on topside of this earth, if that sinner will put his trust in the Savior. We have redemption through His blood, and the reason He saves us in that way is because “…without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb_9:22).

This is an Old Testament principle which is applicable to the entire human race from Adam down to the last man. We have been redeemed now, not with the blood of bulls and goatsthat can’t redeem youbut with the precious blood of Christ. “The forgiveness of sins.” Forgiveness is not the act of an indulgent deity who is moved by sentiment to the exclusion of justice, righteousness, and holiness. Forgiveness depends on the shedding of blood: it demands and depends on the payment of the penalty for sin. Christ’s death and the shedding of His blood is the foundation for forgiveness and, without that, there could be no forgiveness. I think here we need to learn the distinction between human forgiveness and divine forgivenessthey are not the same. Human forgiveness is always based on the fact that a penalty is deserved and that the penalty is not imposed. It simply means that one wipes out the account. God is holy and righteous. Therefore divine forgiveness is always based on the fact that there has been the execution of the penalty and the price has been paid. Human forgiveness comes before the penalty is executed.

Divine forgiveness depends upon the penalty being executed. It is really too bad that this is something which has bogged down our entire legal system today. That is why we are living in a lawless nation where it is not even safe to be on the streets of our cities at night. There has been a confusion between human forgiveness and the righteousness of the law. We are in trouble because of the leniency on the part of certain judges throughout our land. They sit on the bench and think they are being bighearted by letting the criminals go free.

My friend, the righteousness of the law demands that a penalty must be paid. I once heard a judge say, “If God can forgive, then I can forgive.” But God paid the penalty and then He forgave. Is the judge on the bench willing to go and pay the penalty? I don’t think you have any right to take men out of death row unless you are willing to take their place, because a penalty must be executed. A righteous God forgives on the basis that a penalty has been executed. When was it executed? When Jesus Christ shed His blood over nineteen hundred years ago. Sure, that’s not esthetic. It doesn’t appeal to the refined nature of civilized man today. Of course it doesn’tman thinks his sin doesn’t really seem so bad.

He tries to be sophisticated; he thinks he is suave and very clever. Friend, we are lost, hell-doomed sinners, and God cannot forgive us until the penalty has been executed. The good news is that the penalty has been executed. That is the reason that in the Word of God you will find forgiveness back to back with the blood of Jesus Christ. Forgiveness depends on the blood of Christ. That is how valuable His blood is.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: you come to God as a nobody and let Him make you a somebody. He can forgive you your sins because He paid the penalty for your sins. This is the only way that you and I can have forgiveness for our sins. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “…Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luk_24:46-47). Paul says the same thing in Col_1:14: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” When Jesus met Paul on the Damascus road, He told him to go to the Gentiles, “to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Act_26:18). The shedding of the blood of Christ and His death on the cross is the foundation for forgivenesssine qua non or without this there is nothing. God cannot forgive until the penalty has been paid. The word for sins is paraptoma which means “an offense or a falling aside.” Paul describes the first sin of man as an offense in Rom_5:15. He uses the same word in Rom_4:25, “Who was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification.” “Sins” includes the entire list of sins which is chargeable to man. Augustine stated it succinctly: “Christ bought the church foul that He might make it fair.” He bought it with His own blood and paid the penalty for our sin. “According to the riches of his grace.” That is an interesting expression. It doesn’t say out of riches of His grace but according to the riches of His grace. Let me illustrate the difference. I read many years ago that when the late John D. Rockefeller played golf in Florida he always gave the caddy a dime. I always felt that that must have almost broke the man to pay out such an handsome sum.

You see, he didn’t give according to his richeshe gave out of his riches. I think he could have done a little better than that, and if he had paid according to his riches, the caddy would have been rich. God has redeemed us according to the riches of His grace. God is rich in grace, and He is willing to give according to His riches of grace. He has had to bestow so much on me, but He has enough left for you who are reading this way up in Alaska. It may be cold up there, but God’s grace is rich up there.

Some of you across the Pacific may read this, and He has grace for you. God can save you, and He can keep you, and it is due to His grace. We are dealing with the work of God the Son on behalf of the church. That work is threefold: (1) Christ redeemed us through His blood; (2) He has revealed the mystery of His will; and (3) He rewards us with an inheritance. We looked at the Greek words for redemption and saw that it involved the paying of a price which was the blood of Christ: we can have forgiveness because He paid the price. We know that God went into the marketplace where we were sold on the slave block of sin and He bought us, all of us. He is going to use us for HimselfHe establishes a personal relationship. We saw also that He bought us in order to set us free. Now somebody will ask, “Doesn’t that upset the hymn that says, ‘I gave, I gave My life for thee. What hast thou done for Me?’?” My friend, it surely does.

The very word for redemption in verse seven, apolutrosis, means that God never asks you what you have done for Him. That is the glorious thing about grace: when God saves you by grace, it doesn’t put you in debt to Him. He bought you in order to set you free. Someone else will ask, “But aren’t we supposed to serve Him?” Certainly. But it is on another basis, a new relationshipthe relationship now is love. The Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15). He didn’t say, “Because I’m dying for you, you are to keep My commandments.” He said, “If you love Me.” Today, if you love Him, He wants your service. If you don’t love Him, then forget about this business of service. One hears so much today about commitment to Christ. Friend, you and I have very little to commit to Him. We are to respond in love to Him, and that is a different basis altogether. We love Him because He first loved us. I heard this story many years ago, and it’s the kind of story that you are not supposed to tell today, but I still tell it. I guess I’m still a square. It illustrates a great truth. In the Southand I hate to say, in the days of slaverythere was a beautiful girl who was put on the slave block to be sold. There was a very cruel slave owner, a brutal fellow, who began to bid for her. Every time he would bid, the girl would cringe and a look of fear would come over her face.

A plantation owner who was kind to his slaves was there, and he began to bid for the girl. He outbid the other fellow and purchased her. He put down the price and started to walk away. The girl followed him, but he turned to her and said, “You misunderstand. I didn’t buy you because I needed a slave. I bought you to set you free.” She simply stood there, stunned for just a moment.

Then she suddenly fell to her knees. “Why,” she said, “I will serve you forever!” Now that illustrates the basis on which the Lord Jesus wants us to serve Him. He loved you. He paid a price for you. He gave Himself and shed His blood so that you could have forgiveness of sins. This is all yours if you are willing to come to Him and accept Him as your Savior. Now what if someone says, “But I don’t love Him.” Then He is not asking you to serve Him. But if you do love Him, then He wants you to serve Him. That is what it is all about. Never forget, your redemption and your forgiveness are “according to the riches of his grace.” Now we are ready for the second work of God the Son on behalf of the church: Christ revealed the mystery of His will.

Ephesians 1:8

What is a mystery in Scripture? It is not a whodunit or a mystery story, and it is not something you wonder about, like, Was it the butler who committed the crime? It is not something Agatha Christie wrote or a Sherlock Holmes story, by any means. A mystery in Scripture means that God is revealing something that, up to that time, He had not revealed. There are two elements which always enter into a New Testament mystery: (1) It cannot be discovered by human agencies, for it is always a revelation from God; and (2) it is revealed at the proper time and not concealed, and enough is revealed to establish the fact without all the details being disclosed. The Scofield Reference Bible (p. 1014) lists eleven mysteries in the New Testament: The greater mysteries are: (1) the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (Mat_13:3-50); (2) the mystery of Israel’s blindness during this age (Rom_11:25, with context); (3) the mystery of the translation of living saints at the end of this age (1Co_15:51-52; 1Th_4:13-17); (4) the mystery of the N.T. Church as one body composed of Jews and Gentiles (Eph_3:1-12; Rom_16:25; Eph_6:19; Col_4:3); (5) the mystery of the Church as the bride of Christ (Eph_5:23-32); (6) the mystery of the in-living Christ (Gal_2:20; Col_1:26-27); (7) the “mystery of God even Christ,” i.e., Christ as the incarnate fullness of the Godhead embodied, in whom all the divine wisdom for man subsists (1Co_2:7; Col_2:2,9); (8) the mystery of the processes by which godlikeness is restored to man (1Ti_3:16); (9) the mystery of iniquity (2Th_2:7; cp. Mat_13:33); (10) the mystery of the seven stars (Rev_1:20); and (11) the mystery of Babylon (Rev_17:5,7). Yet, even with all these, did you know that God hasn’t told us everything? There are a lot of things God hasn’t told us. There are many questions that I would like to ask God myself. A great many people send us questions, and we attempt to answer them. I have questions, too, but I don’t know who to ask because nobody down here knows the answers. Someday He will reveal them to us. A mystery then is something God hasn’t previously revealed but now reveals to us. Now in these verses is a wonderful mystery that was not revealed in the Old Testament. First let me restate verses eight and nine to amplify their meaning somewhat: “Which He caused (made) to abound toward us: having made known [aorist tense] unto us in all wisdom and prudence the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him (Christ).” Notice that “in all wisdom and prudence” properly belongs with verse nine. What is the mystery of His will? First of all, it is something which is revealed according to wisdom and prudence. It is not some simple little “a-b-c” something.

I very frankly rejoice that there are so many agencies and individuals who try to get out what they call the “simple gospel.” I thank the Lord that people write and tell us that we are making the gospel simple and they can understand it. I appreciate that because that is what we must do. Dr. H. A. Ironside used to say, “Put the cookies on the bottom shelf where the kiddies can get to them.” There is a “simple gospel” but, may I say to you, there are the depths and the wisdom of God that you and I can’t easily probesometimes not at all.

We need to use all the mental acumen that we have in order to try to understand something of the great purposes of God, the plan of God. God wants us to know these things because now this mystery has been revealed. “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ.” Dispensation is another word like mystery. It is often misunderstood, and a great many people today think it is a dirty word. It is a great word! Some Bible teachers won’t even use the word because it is a word that is hated. There are a lot of words in the Bible that are hatedwords like blood, and redemption, and the Cross. Paul says the Cross is an offense, but that cannot keep us from preaching about it. The Bible teaches dispensations, and so we will not avoid the subject at all. Let me say first of all that a dispensation is not a period of time. That is where dispensation differs from the word age. We hear of the “age of grace"that is a period of time. Dispensation is an altogether different word that is translated in several different ways. It can mean “a stewardship,” “an order,” or “an administration.” An English transliteration of the Greek word would be “economy.” It is an order or a system that is put into effect; it is the way of doing things. For example, girls in school take a course called home economics or domestic economy. They learn how to run a household. When a woman has her own home, she may decide to have baked beans one night and a roast the next night. She sets up the order of meals and that is the way she organizes her schedule. Down the street the mother in another family decides they won’t have a roast that night, but they will have fish. That is the way she runs her house, and she has a right to run it like that.

There is also a political economya subject that is taught in our colleges today. A lot of young men go into that field, and they learn how to run the government, the way to run a nation. England runs her government differently from the way we do in the United States. Each has a right to its own system and I wouldn’t say that either place has the right system. Russia has an entirely different system; we certainly wouldn’t better ours by taking theirs. Countries even have different systems of running traffic.

In England they drive down the left side of the street. I enjoyed kidding our driver when we were in England, “Look out, there comes a car on the wrong side of the street!” “That’s all right,” he would say, “I’m going on the wrong side myself.” In England, the right side is the left side. Now that is confusing to a poor American visiting over there. A dispensation may fit into a certain period of time, but it actually means the way God runs something at a particular time: it is the way God does things. It is evident that God had Adam on a different arrangement than He has for you and me. I think even the most ardent antidispensationalist can understand that the Garden of Eden was different from Southern California today. And God dealt with Adam in a different way than He deals with us. (Now, I will admit that when people first moved out to Southern California, they thought it was the Garden of Eden. I thought so, too, when I first came here, but now it is filled with smog and traffic!) Now God has never had but one method of saving folk; everything rests upon one method of salvation. The approach and the man under the system have been different, however. For example, Abel offered a lamb to God, and so did Abraham. The Old Testament priests offered lambs to God. God had said that was the right way. But I hope you didn’t bring a lamb to church last Sunday! That is not the way God tells us to approach Him today. We are under a different economy. “Of the fulness of times.” What is the “fulness of times”? I can’t go into all phases of that, but God is moving everything forward to the time when Christ will rule over all things in heaven and earth. This is the fullness, the pleroma, when everything is going to be brought under the rulership of Jesus Christ. The pleroma is like a vast receptacle into which centuries and millenniums have been falling. All that is past, present, and future is moving toward the time when every knee must bow and every tongue must confess that Jesus is Lord. This is the mystery that is revealed to us, “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.” We learn this about Christ, that God “…hast put all things in subjection under his feet.

For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (Heb_2:8). This states very clearly that we have not yet come to that time. We are under a different dispensation today; we live under a different economy. But God has revealed this to us that is to come to pass, something that had not been revealed in the past. Heaven and earth are not in tune todaywe are playing our own little tune. We have our rock music going down here, while the only Rock up there is the Lord Jesus. He is the Rock. He is that precious Stone that is the foundation upon which the church rests today. And the day will come when heaven and earth will be in tune and all things will be gathered together in Christ. Now we come to the third work of God the Son on behalf of the church: Christ rewards us with an inheritance.

Ephesians 1:11

Here is another marvelous truth. He gives us an inheritanceHe rewards us for something we have not done. It is the overall purpose and plan of God that believers should have a part in Christ’s inheritance. They are going to inherit with Christ because they are in Christ. Paul writes, “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Rom_8:17). “Therefore let no man glory in men. For 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” (1Co_3:21-23).

I really don’t grasp at all this tremendous statement God makes to us, but it causes me to be lifted from the seat in which I’m sitting and carries me right into the sky. Everything is mine! Christ belongs to me. Paul belongs to me. Even death may belong to me. All is mine.

It is mine because He has given it to me. Christ is mine. God is mine. What an experience for us! I feel like shouting because this is so wonderful. God has predestinated this; He has determined it. This refers to the savedremember that God never predestinated anybody to be lost. He predestinated us to receive an inheritance. If He hadn’t predestinated it to me, I would never get one. It is something I do not deserve. It is a reward out of His grace and not out of my merit. This is God’s will, and that is the only basis on which it is done. It is good, and it is right, and it is the best. Why? Because God has purposed it. You just can’t have it any better than that. Oh, these are the three marvelous things Christ has done for us: He’s redeemed us with His blood; He’s revealed the mystery of His will; and He rewards us with an inheritance. How wonderful it isI can’t lose! He paid for the church, and I belong to Him because He paid a price. May I say that the church is very important to Him today. The little plans of men down herethey’re not important. We think they are. Men are running around with a blueprint for the world today, but they won’t even be around here in the next one hundred yearsthat crowd will all be gone. But God’s great plans will be carried out. Thank God for that! Verse twelve is one of those glorious doxologies that we find throughout the epistles. You will notice that Paul stops and “sings” the doxology after he tells what each person of the Godhead has done. He has just finished telling us about the work of the Son. Then he writes, “That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.” God does not exist to satisfy the whim and wish of the believer. The believer exists for the glory of God. When the believer is in the center of the will of God, he is living a life of fullness and of satisfaction and of joy.

That will deliver you from the hands of psychologists, friend. But when you are not in the will of God, there is trouble brewing for you. Living in God’s will adds purpose and meaning to life: we are going to be for the praise of His glory. God will be able throughout the endless ages of eternity future to point to you and me and say, “Look there, they weren’t worth saving but I loved them and I saved them.” That is the thing which gives worth and standing and dignity and purpose and joy and glory to life. We exist today to the praise of His glory and that is enough. This doxology looks forward, of course, to the coming of Christ. The third doxology, we shall see, concerns the work of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 1:13

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT PROTECTS THE CHURCHWhen we look at the work of the Holy Spirit, we see that (1) He regenerates us, (2) He is a refuge for us, and (3) He gives reality to our lives. We come first to regeneration. This section, I believe, is one of the most wonderful in Scripture. “Well,” somebody says, “he doesn’t mention regeneration here.” Actually he does, and in a marvelous way, because now we’re passing from God’s work for us to the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The work of God in planning the church and the work of the Lord Jesus in redeeming the church and paying for it were objective. The work of the Holy Spirit in protecting the church is different because it is subjective; it is in us. In this work of regeneration and renewing, the Holy Spirit causes the sinner to hear and believe in his heart, and that makes him a child of God. The Lord Jesus said, “…Ye must be born again” (Joh_3:7). How are we to be born again? John explains, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (Joh_1:12). We need simply to believe on His name. “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth.” Hearing means to hear not just the sound of words but to hear with understanding. Paul wrote, “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1Co_1:23-24). Who are the called? Are they the ones that just heard the sound of words? No, it means those who heard with understanding. God called them.

It was not just a call of hearing words, but a call where the Holy Spirit made those words real. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, according to Rom_10:17. Those who are called hear the Word of God and they respond to it. Then what happens? Peter puts it this way: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1Pe_1:23). The Word of God goes out as it is going out even through this printed page.

We are saying that the Son of God died for you and if you trust Him, you will be saved. “Well,” someone may say, “I read these words, but they mean nothing to me.” Someone else, however, will read or hear this message, and the Spirit of God will apply it to his heart so that he believeshe trustsand the moment he trusts in Christ, he is regenerated. Believing is the logical step after hearing. It may not be the next chronological step, but it is the logical step. “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth.” This is the best explanation of what it means to be born again that I know of in the Word of God. You hear the Word of Truththe gospel of your salvation, the good news of your deliveranceand you put your trust in Christ. “In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.” I would like to remove the word after from this verse because these are not time clauses. They are what is known in the Greek as genitive absolutes, and they are all the same tense as the main verb. It means that when you heard and you believed, you were also sealed: it all took place at the same time. A truer translation would be, “In whom also you, upon hearing [aorist tense] the word of truth, the good news of your salvation, in whom also on believing [aorist tense] you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” This is, by the way, when the baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs. You are baptized the moment that you trust Christ. You are also sealed the moment that you trust Christ.

The Holy Spirit first opens the ear to hear, and then He implants faith. His next logical step, you see, is to seal the believer. There are people today who argue whether God the Father or God the Son seals with the Holy Spirit, or whether the Holy Spirit Himself does the sealing. That type of argument wearies me. They tried to split hairs in that way in the Middle Ages and would argue how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. You toss that around for a little while, and it will get you nowhere. I understand this verse to mean that the Holy Spirit is the seal. God the Father gave the Son to die on the cross, but the Son offered up Himself willingly.

So both the Father and the Son gave. God the Father and God the Son both sent the Holy Spirit to perform a definite work, but it is the Spirit who does the work. He regenerates the sinner and He seals the sinner at the same time, and I think that the Spirit Himself is that seal. There is a twofold purpose in the sealing work of the Holy Spirit. He implants the image of God upon the heart to give reality to the believer. You know that a seal is put down on a document and that seal has an image on it. I think that is exactly what the Spirit of God does to the believer. “He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true” (Joh_3:33). Apparently, this is the thought hereGod has put His implant upon the believer. The second purpose of the sealing is to denote rightful ownership. “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his. And, let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2Ti_2:19). The fact that He makes you secure does not mean that you can live in sin. If you name the name of Christ, you are going to depart from iniquity. If there is not this evidence, then you were not regenerated or sealed. The Holy Spirit is the seal, and that guarantees that God is going to deliver us. We are sealed until the day of redemption. The day will come when the Holy Spirit will deliver us to Christ. It’s nice to be sealed like thatwe are just like a letter that is insured. In the old days they would put a seal on it. Today they just stamp it with a special stamp, but it still means that the post office guarantees to deliver that letter. Now we come to the third and final work of the Holy Spirit in protecting the church.

Ephesians 1:14

Earnest money is the money that is put forth as a down payment and pledge on a piece of property. It means you want them to hold the property for you. It also means that you promise there is more money to follow. The Holy Spirit is our earnest money. He has been given as a pledge and token that there is more to follow in the way of spiritual blessings. We have already seen that we have an inheritancethere is more to follow. The Holy Spirit is that earnest, that guarantee. All of this is to “the praise of his glory.” This is now the third doxology in this chapter. As we have seen, Paul gives a doxology after he considers the work of each member of the Trinity. Here it is to the praise of the glory of God that the Holy Spirit regenerates us, becomes our refuge and seal, and gives us reality. All these glorious truths now move Paul to prayer.

Ephesians 1:15

PRAYER OF PAUL FOR KNOWLEDGE AND POWER FOR THE EPHESIANSThe Ephesian church was noted for its faith and love. Love wasn’t just a motto, not just a bumper sticker, for these people. There was real love expressed by the saints. It was based on their faith in the Lord Jesus. This was the church at its highest. In the Book of Revelation the Ephesian church represents the early church at its very best. Because of their faith and love, Paul thanks God for the Ephesians. It seems that the circumstances that motivate us to pray are trouble, sickness, distress, or a crisis. People asked me to pray for a church recently because it was in trouble: there was no love for the brethren, it was filled with gossip, and Bible study no longer held the highest priority. I love this church and I do pray for them, but it is sad that there are so many negative things that always seem to motivate us to pray. Paul was often motivated by the good things. When you hear something good about a child of God, are you motivated to say, “Oh God, I thank You for this brother and the way You are using him”? When you hear of a wonderful Bible church where God is blessing the preacher, and the Word of God is going out, do you get down on your knees and thank God for it?

My friend, isn’t it true that too often we turn in a kind of grocery list to God? “I want this, I want that, I want the other thing.” “Lord, will You do this, will You do that?” God is not a messenger boy. Why don’t we thank Him sometimes? We need more thanksgiving services. I think He would appreciate all of us having a time of thanksgiving regularlynot just once a year. A preacher friend of mine told me that their prayer meeting got so stale and so dull and so small that they tried something new. They decided that at the prayer meeting they would do nothing but praise God and thank Him. He declared, “We sure had some brief prayers, but we had a good prayer meeting that night. Nobody asked God for anything. They just thanked Him for what He had done.” Paul says, when he heard the good news and wonderful reports about the Ephesian church, “I …cease not to give thanks for you.” It’s interesting that we don’t too often think of Paul as an outstanding man of prayer. We would put him at the top of the list as a great missionary of the cross. We can’t think of any greater example of apostleship than Paul. If you were to make a list of ten of the greatest preachers of the church, you would certainly put Paul as number one. He was also one of the greatest teachers. The Lord Jesus was, of course, the greatest of all”…Never man spake like this man” (Joh_7:46)and Paul certainly followed in that tradition.

He is also an example of a good pastor. According to Dr. Luke, Paul wept with the believers at Ephesus when he took leave of them. He loved them, and they loved him. I always judge the spiritual life of a church by the way they love their pastor, providing he stands for the Word of God. One can pretty well judge the attitude of the people by the way they love their pastor. Today we need to judge folk by their attitude toward the Word of God rather than how big a Bible they carry under their arms. The Ephesians not only loved Paul, but they loved God’s Word. When you think of anyone excelling in any field of service in the early church, Paul the apostle must be up toward the top. How about being representative of a great man of prayerwould you put Paul in that list? We think of Moses as the great intercessor on the top of the mountain. We think of David with his psalms and his confession of his awful sin. We think of Elijah who stood alone before an altar drenched with water at Mount Carmel. Then there was Daniel who opened his window toward Jerusalem and prayed even though he lived in a hostile land under a hostile power.

The Lord Jesus was the Man of prayer, so much so that one of His disciples asked Him, “…Lord, teach us to pray …” (Luk_11:1). Did you know that Paul was also a great man of prayer? When I was teaching in the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, I would ask the students during their study of the epistles of Paul to make a list of all the prayers of the apostle Paul. They were to put down every time he said he was praying for someone. Lo and behold, student after student would come to me and say, “I had no idea that Paul had such a prayer list. I didn’t know he prayed for so many people!” Paul was a great man of prayer. There are two of the prayers of Paul in this epistle. We are looking at the first one. Having set before us the children of Israel as the body of Christ, Paul falls to his knees and begins to pray. The other prayer is at the end of the third chapter. These two prayers in this epistle indicate Paul’s concern as a child of God for other believers. One of the ways one can judge whether or not a person is a child of God is by his prayer life.

How much does he feel a dependence on God? If he has a need, he will go to God in prayer for himself. He will also go to God in intercession for others. Many people who have written from all over this country, and from other countries as well, have told me when I’ve met them, “I remember you in prayer.” Well, that to me is an indication of their faith. Remember that Ananias in the city of Damascus was disturbed when the angel told him to go to Saul of Tarsus. He objected because Saul was the man who was persecuting the church, but the angel said to him, “…behold, he prayeth” (Act_9:11).

That was an indication to Ananias that something had happened to Saul of Tarsus. “Cease not to give thanks for you.” Paul first of all gives thanks to God for the Ephesians. They were on his prayer list, and I guess all the churches were. “Making mention of you in my prayers.” That means he called them all by name. I was with a great preacher one time, and some folk came up and spoke to him and shook hands with us. One man said to him, “I’m praying for you.” I shall never forget what the preacher asked him, “Thank you very much, but do you mention me by name? I don’t want the Lord to get me mixed up with somebody else.” Call people by name when you pray for them. We have seen that the motive for Paul’s prayer was good news. Now we will see that he does not pray for material things but for spiritual blessings. These are the blessings that are all-important.

Ephesians 1:17

Paul, having written that the church is the body of Christ, and that God the Father planned it, God the Son paid for it, and God the Holy Spirit protects it, recognized that the Ephesians wouldn’t be able to understand all this unless the Spirit of God was their teacher and opened the Word of God to them. Only the Holy Spirit of God could reveal the knowledge of God. When Dr. H. A. Ironside lived in Southern California as a young man and was preaching in this area, he would sometimes visit a wonderful man of God who had come from Northern Ireland because of his health. This man had what was called in those days “galloping consumption,” and he was living his last days in a little tent out back of the home of Dr. Ironside’s parents.

He had been greatly used of God in teaching the Word. While Dr. Ironside would sit with him, he would open up the Scriptures in such an amazing way that Dr. Ironside one day asked him, “Where did you learn that?” “Well,” this man said, “I didn’t get it by going to seminary because I never went to seminary. I never learned it by going to college. No one particularly taught me.

Rather I learned these things on my knees on the mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland. There with my open Bible before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time and ask the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul, and open the Word to my heart. He taught me more on my knees on that mud floor than I could have learned in all the seminaries and colleges of the world.” Having known Dr. Ironside personally, I can say that he too practiced a dependence on the Holy Spirit in his own ministry. I remember when he was teaching us the Song of Solomon, he said that he was never satisfied with what he found in the commentaries, and he just got down on his knees and asked God to reveal to him the message of that book. Well, he wrote a commentary on the Song of Solomon and, very frankly, his interpretation of it is the only one that has ever satisfied my own heart. What a wonderful, glorious thing it is to have the Spirit of God be the One to teach us. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ …may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” How will that take place? It will take place by the Spirit of Godthe only One who can open our eyesteaching us God’s Word.

Ephesians 1:18

More literally it reads, “the eyes of your heart being enlightened.” It is not the eyes of your mind but the eyes of your heart that must understand. One can be very brilliant intellectually, but that is no guarantee that there will be an understanding of spiritual truth. Scripture puts more emphasis on the understanding of the heart than of the head. Paul writes, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom_10:9-10). I have no understanding of music whatsoever. I can’t sing and I can’t carry a tune. I recognize very few tunes, and I do not know what a pitch is. It is all a foreign field to me. One time a music director made the statement publicly that he could teach anybody to sing. I stood up immediately and said, “Brother, you have a pupil.

Nobody has ever been able to teach me to sing.” The congregation laughed, and we made an engagement. I met with him every Thursday afternoon for a month, and at the end of the month he gave up. He said, “I believe you are right. You’ll never be able to learn music.” I asked, “How could I ever learn?” He said, “The only way in the world would be for you to be born again.” He didn’t mean spiritually; he meant born another person. My friend, as far as spiritual knowledge is concerned, no person can understand it apart from the Spirit of God. This is what we are told in 1Co_2:9-10: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” I knew a dear lady in Sherman, Texas. We all called her “Grandma,” and she was a wonderful lady, but she could neither read nor write. I was just a first-year seminary student and I thought I had the answer to everything, so I went to visit her. I started out by trying to explain John 14 to her. I thought I’d make it simple for Grandma. She listened about five minutes and then said, “Young man, have you ever noticed this in that chapter?“and then she went on to point out something from that Scripture. Well, to be honest, I hadn’t noticed it. I couldn’t understand how she could have such insight when she couldn’t read or write. She knew things I couldn’t find in the commentaries. How did she know? The eyes of her heart were opened by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God wants to teach us today. One of the reasons that God’s people are not in the Word of God is because they are not willing for the Spirit of God to teach them. They depend on a poor preacher like me or on a home Bible class. These all have their place but, Christian friend, why don’t you let the Spirit of God teach you? Spend time in the Scriptures. When you come to a particular passage of Scripture, you may think it to be a barren place. If you don’t understand it and you read it many times and don’t seem to see much of anything in it, then get down on your knees before the Lord and say to the Lord, “I missed the point and You will have to teach me.” This is what I do. He teaches me, and I know He will teach you. “That ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” We have learned that we have an inheritance in the Lord. We are also to know that He has an inheritance in us. I think an illustration of this would be the land of Canaan. The land belonged to God, but He gave it to the children of Israel as their possession. The children of Israel are tied into that land; yet the day will come when God will take possession of this entire universe and will reclaim Israel as well as the land as His own. Today you and I, as believers, are His church and God operates through us, but the time is coming when we shall rule and reign with Him.

He will claim us as His inheritance. I have wondered about thatthis is an area that is just too deep for me to apprehend. I need the Spirit of God to make this real to me. Paul continues his petition:

Ephesians 1:19

Let me amplify this: What is the exceeding (intense) greatness of His power (dunameosdynamite power) to usward who believe, according to the working (energeianthe energizing) of the strength of His might. How great is that dynamite power, that energizing strength?

Ephesians 1:20

It is power enough to raise Christ from the deada tremendous power. Not only is it resurrection power, but it is the power that set Christ at God’s right hand, and that is ascension power. We don’t make much of the Ascension in our Bible churches today; we emphasize Christmas and Easter, but we seem to forget the events after that. Have you ever stopped to think of the power that took Him back to the right hand of God? That, my friend, is power. We are beginning to see a little of it.

Think of the power it takes to lift a missile off its base and take it out into space, and the power it took to take men to the moon and bring them back. That is power in the physical realm. The power that took Christ to the right hand of God is the same power that is available to believers today. That is why Paul prays that believers may know the greatness of that power. He writes, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection …” (Php_3:10).

Ephesians 1:21

Paul concludes on a tremendously high note. The church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the Head of the church. Someday everything is going to be under Him. The writer to the Hebrews makes it clear, “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (Heb_2:8). At the present time the only thing that is under Him is the church. By this I mean the true church, the real believers. There are many organized groups who call themselves churches who are not listening to the Lord Jesus. These churches are paralyzed. You see, the most tragic sight is a child of God lying on a bed, helpless, as if his brain is detached from his body. I’ve been in many churches that have been like that and there are many individual Christians today who act as if they are detached from Christ, the Head of the body.

He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15). In other words, I can wiggle my little finger because my head is in charge of it; and when He wants you to “wiggle"that is, exercise whatever gift He has given youdown here, you do it because of love, or else you’re not attached to Him. How important this is today! Paul pictures the church and our relationship to it in this way: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1Co_12:12-13). The thing we need to see is that Christ is the Head of the body, His church, and we are under Him.