Ephesians 1:1-2
Sermon preached on November 6, 2005 by Laurence W. Veinott.
© Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Other sermons can be
found at http://www.newlifeop.org/.
Have you heard of the birthday problem? It asks the
question,
"How many people would you need to have at a birthday party so that there is a better than 50-50 chance that two of them will share the same birthday?"
Most people would intuitively guess a large number—the first answer that might pop into your head could be 183. That seems about right. But 183 is no where near right. Indeed, half of that, 90, is still too high. And half of that, 45, is still far from the mark. Indeed, the correct answer is 23. If you have 23 people in a room, you have more than a 50-50 chance that two of them share the same birthday. That number seems way too low, but if you do the math, that's the answer. If you have a group of 60 people, the chances are nearly 100% (actually 99.4%) that two people within that group will share the same birthday.
I don't know about you, but it took me awhile to get my head around that. At first, 23 seems way off. Most of us don't intuitively see it that way. Our common sense guess is all wrong—it's way off.
That's exactly that way it is with us as we look at God's grace. Only we do the opposite there—without thinking about it—we tend to act like it's a lot lower in our lives that it really is. I know when I was growing up, I was a little bit smart. I know that my general impression about it was, "Well, that's just the way I am." That's basically how I thought about it. I believe that's the way that most people are. If someone is good looking, beautiful or handsome—how do they think about it? I think most people would simply say, "That's the way I am. That's just the way it is." If someone is good at a sport, whether it's hockey, soccer, basketball, running or biking—how do they think about it—they think it's natural, that it's just the way that they are.
I watched a few minutes of a TV show on food eating contests this week—I couldn't watch all of it because it was so disgusting. They have a lot of different ones—some involve hot dogs, pies and food like that. But one that they have in Texas, near the Mexican border—is different. It's a jalapeño eating contest. They eat as many hot peppers as they can in a certain time. The guy who won ate something like 250 in a few minutes. They had an interview with him and asked him how he got into it. He said that when he was in high school he was in the Spanish Club and they had a jalapeño eating contest. It was to see how many someone could eat in two minutes. He said he won the contest. He ate 40. He said the person who came second ate 6. Then he said something like,
"It was then I realized I have a real talent for this."
His response is typical. Most people, even Christians, tend to see things that way. That's our intuitive gut feeling. We accept the talents we are as the norm, as just the way things are.
Now if we thought about it. If we did the Biblical math, we'd see that those things are all about God's grace. The answer would be 100%.
Now to help us see things that way, and live our lives with that understanding, I'm going to look at the first part of Ephesians. For that part of Ephesians is, as John Calvin tells us, chiefly about,
"commending the grace of God."
It's about God's initiative in our salvation, in good works, in bringing the Gentiles in—it's all of grace. Calvin tells us that Paul's aim is,
"to lead them to gratitude to God for so many favors, and to testify to that gratitude by consecrating themselves wholly to him…"
Thus the great lesson of our text is:
all good things you have are the result of God's grace.
Paul sets the tone in his opening sentence. He writes,
"Paul,
an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God,"
Paul
begins with himself and shows that he had received great
grace.
Why was
Paul an apostle? It wasn't because he sought God—it
was because God sought him. You'll remember the story of
Paul's conversion. After he had held the coats of those who
stoned Stephen, he was filled with anger against
Christians. In
Acts 9:1 we read,
"Saul
was still breathing out
murderous threats
against the Lord's disciples.
He went to the high priest
and asked him for letters
to the synagogues in Damascus,
so that if he found any there
who belonged to the Way,
whether men or women,
he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem."
It was
at that point that God's grace reached out to Paul and
saved him. As he neared Damascus, a bright light flashed
around him and Jesus said,
"Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me?"
It was
there that Jesus converted Saul. He then told him to go
into the city and wait to be told what to do. Then God
appeared to Ananias in a vision and told him to go and lay
his hands on Saul and heal his blindness. When Ananias
argued, God said to him, (Acts 9:15)
"Go!
This man is my chosen instrument
to carry my name
before the Gentiles and their kings
and before the people of Israel."
God took
the initiative, saved Paul and made him the apostle to the
Gentiles. It was God's doing. It was all of God. That's why
Paul writes, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will
of God." His apostleship was, as
Charles Hodge writes,
"a gift, or grace from God,"
As Paul put it in Romans 1:5, referring to Jesus Christ,
"Through
him and for his name's sake,
we received grace and apostleship
to call people from among all the Gentiles
to the obedience that comes from faith."
It was
all of grace and it was through Jesus Christ and for His
name's sake.
Some Christians today will try to put the emphasis on
salvation on man's decision. I hear it all the time. They
will say something like,
"God will not force anyone to become a Christian against his will."
In a certain sense, they're right. That's correct. But how they interpret it is wrong. They are basically saying that a man has to change his will, by himself, before God will do anything to save him. That's incorrect. God doesn't force anyone to be a Christian against his will. The point is that God changes his will. God changed Paul's will. As Augustine wrote, (St. Augustine on the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises and Moral Treatises: Nicene and Post-Nicene, p. 248)
"God's mercy ... goes before the unwilling to make him willing."
Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 15:10 Paul summed up his whole life, his apostleship, his hard work—and gave all the credit to God. He said,
"But by
the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace to me was not without effect.
No, I worked harder than all of them—
yet not I,
but the grace of God
that was with me."
Martyn
Lloyd-Jones writes, (God's Ultimate Purpose, p. 14)
"we should always contemplate our salvation in this way. We must not start with ourselves and then ascend to God; we must start with the sovereignty of God, God over all, and then come down to ourselves."
Secondly, we see that
Paul spoke about the Ephesians and how they received grace.
Paul continued,
"To the
saints in Ephesus,
the faithful in Christ Jesus:"
Today's
society usually thinks about saints according to the
Roman Catholic conception. Saints
are super Christians though whom God has worked miracles.
But that's not the biblical meaning of the term. According
to the Bible,
saints are those who are set apart by
God.
Paul is here addressing not a elite minority in Ephesus,
but all the Christians there. In chapter 5 he has a section
addressed to
husbands,
another addressed to
wives. In
chapter 6 he has a section addressed to
children,
another to
parents,
another to
slaves,
another to
masters. So
it's clear that this is addressed to everyone at Ephesus.
So as John Stott writes, when Paul refers to the saints at
Ephesus, he is not, (God's New Society, p. 22)
"to some spiritual elite within the congregation, a minority of exceptionally holy Christians, but rather to all God's people. They are called 'saints' (that is, 'holy') because they had been set apart to belong to him."
The literal word here is 'holy'. Christians are the holy ones.
The thing to be noted here is that God makes people holy. He sets apart people to Himself. We do not make ourselves saints, God makes us saints. Someone who is a Christian is someone who has been 'born again' or 'born from above'—from the spirit. As Charles Hodge writes,
"the… saints, are those who are cleansed by the blood of Christ, and by the renewing of the Holy Ghost, and thus separated from the world and consecrated to God."
We see this clearly from chapter 2. Chapter 2 describes how God took the Ephesians, who were dead in trespasses and sins, who were by nature objects of God's wrath—and made them alive in Christ Jesus. God did that. Then the chapter goes on to describe how God destroyed the barrier between Jews and Gentiles, by abolishing in his flesh the law and its commandments and regulations. God has now made one new man out of two by the work of Christ. Then Paul says, (Ephesians 2:19, ESV)
"So then
you are no longer strangers and aliens,
but you are fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God,"
They
were fellow citizen with the saints. In other words, they
are all saints—both Jewish and Gentile Christians.
They are all one in Christ.
It's very clear from Ephesians 2 that God has done that.
It's all of God. All of grace. The Ephesian Christians were
saints because God made them saints.
We also see this in Paul's next designation of the Ephesian
Christians.
The
Ephesian Christians were the faithful in Christ Jesus.
Paul
wrote,
"To the
saints in Ephesus,
the faithful in Christ Jesus:"
They
were the ones who trusted in Jesus, who exercised faith in
Him.
But where did this faith come from? Did it come from them?
In Ephesians 2:8f Paul made it very clear that this faith
was a gift of God. He wrote,
"For it
is by grace you have been saved,
through faith—
and this not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God"
Thus
Paul's very introduction mentioning his himself and the
Ephesians, shows that what they had was all of grace.
Then Paul writes something very interesting. He tells them
that
what
they need is grace and peace.
What do
they need more than anything else? He writes,
"Grace
and peace to you
from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ."
H.
H.
Esser writes,
( NIDNTT)
"the use of charis at the beginning and end of the Pauline letters is much more than a mere polite cliché. 'Grace' is not just a good wish for salvation; it is qualified as the grace of Christ…"
What is grace? John Stott tells us that grace is God's, (Stott, New Society, p. 27)
"free and undeserved mercy"
It is God showing kindness to those who don't deserve it and pouring out blessings on them in spite of their unworthiness. H. H. Esser writes, ( NIDNTT)
"For Paul charis is the essence of God's decisive saving act in Jesus Christ, which took place in his sacrificial death, and also of all its consequences in the present and future (Rom. 3:24 ff.)."
Grace encompasses all the consequences of Christ's work on the cross.
The word 'peace' in the Scripture has different meanings. John Calvin suggests that peace here, is not so much tranquility of conscience, but the peace that we have as the result of God's initiative in reconciling sinners to himself. Paul speaks about that in Romans 5 when he says that we have,
"Therefore,
since we have been
justified through faith,
we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith
into this grace in which we now stand.
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God."
John Eadie says
that 'peace', (Ephesians, p. 7)
"denotes that form of spiritual blessing which keeps the heart in a state of happy repose. It is therefore but another phrase, or rather it is the result, of the previous xaris."
It is peace in its widest form, including not being filled with fear in the face of our enemies, not being troubled when facing danger or death, not losing hope when everything seems against us. No, the peace that we have is the peace that is the result of being saved by Jesus, of being adopted into His family, of knowing that our sins have been washed away, that Christ's righteousness is ours, and that we are now in a state of peace with God. As Charles Hodge writes, (Ephesians)
"Peace… means well-being in general. It comprehends all blessings flowing from the goodness of God."
Now the great question is:
Why do we need grace and peace?
What would we be like without grace and peace? It is horrible to contemplate because without grace and peace we would have nothing good.
Without grace we would not see anyone believe.
In Acts 18:11 we read that when Apollos arrived in Achaia,
"he was
a great help
to those who by grace had believed."
Without
grace we would not see any conversions. Our evangelism with
be completely without success.
Indeed,
without grace we would not do anything good at all.
I've
already quoted from 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul said that
Paul said that he was what he was because of grace. It was
all the result of God's grace. He knew there was nothing
good in him apart from God's grace. As he wrote in Romans
7:18,
"I know
that nothing good lives in me,
that is,
in my sinful nature."
In
1 Corinthians 3:10 Paul
talked about how he was able to do so much good for the
church. He wrote,
"By the
grace God has given me,
I laid a foundation as an expert builder,"
Paul's conduct among the churches was exemplary.
Why was
that? In
2 Corinthians 1:12 Paul
tells us that it was because of God's grace. He wrote,
"Our
conscience testifies
that we have conducted ourselves in the world,
and especially in our relations with you,
in the holiness and sincerity that are from God.
We have done so not according to worldly wisdom
but according to God's grace."
It's
interesting that when the gospel was preached in Antioch,
the Barnabas was sent by the church in Jerusalem to
investigate. Here's how Luke puts it in Acts 11:23,
"When he
arrived
and saw the evidence of the grace of God,
he was glad and encouraged them all
to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts."
In other
words,
everything good he saw was attributed to the grace of God.
These people had been saved, translated from darkness to
light, and we behaving as Christians—and Luke gave
all the credit to the grace of God.
We see the same principle taught in
Romans 12:6 where
Paul taught that every spiritual gift Christians have is
the result of grace. He wrote,
"We have
different gifts,
according to the grace given us."
Without
God's grace, we would not have one spiritual gift. In the
New Testament everything is traced to God's grace.
Without
grace would we grow in our faith?
In his
farewell address to the Ephesian elders, Paul said, (Acts
20:32)
"Now I
commit you to God
and to the word of his grace,
which can build you up
and give you an inheritance
among all those who are sanctified."
It's the
word of God's grace that builds us up. Indeed Paul states
here that
without
grace we Christians would be lost.
It's
God's grace that gives us an inheritance among those who
are sanctified. Without it we would not persevere. Why do
we persevere in the faith? It's because of God's grace. As
Paul wrote in
Philippians 1:6,
"being
confident of this,
that he who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion
until the day of Christ Jesus."
Peter is
only in heaven today because Jesus prayed for him, that his
faith fail not. (Luke 22:32) Without God's grace we would
not persevere.
Indeed,
without God's grace we would have no hope.
In
Romans 4:16 Paul wrote,
"Therefore,
the promise comes by faith,
so that it may be by grace
and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring"
Without
God's grace all the promises in the Bible would be no good
to us. We would not be able to take one to heart.
Indeed, without God's grace, Christ could not have died for
us. In
Hebrews 2:9 we read,
"But we
see Jesus,
who was made a little lower than the angels,
now crowned with glory and honor
because he suffered death,
so that by the grace of God
he might taste death for everyone."
Without
grace would we experience anything good, would our lives be
one punishment after another?
Remember
how Jeremiah put it in
Lamentations 3:22,
"Because
of the LORD's great love
we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail."
Every
day we fail to love God with all our heart, all our soul,
all our strength—so every day we deserve punishment
after punishment.
But God does not treat us as we deserve. He sends grace our
way.
I could go on and on—but the point is that grace and
peace is what we need. Without them—we are nothing.
Lastly, we need to note how these blessings come to us.
The
Father and Jesus Christ are the source of grace and peace.
It's
interesting
that in these first two verses Paul mentions Jesus Christ
three times. He's
an apostle of Christ Jesus. It's written to the faithful in
Christ Jesus. He prays that grace and peace would come to
them from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
accurate to say that
Paul viewed Jesus Christ as central to the grace and peace
that he wished for the Ephesians. It
came through Him. As Jesus said in
John 14:6,
"I am
the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father
except through me."
The
exclusivism of Christianity is an affront to the world
today. As
Philip Ryken writes,
(The Message of Salvation, p. 55)
"To the secular mind, anyone who claims to know the absolute truth, not to mention the only way of salvation, is utterly and hopelessly conceited. In the words of one young man, 'I get real angry at these Christians who tell me that Jesus is the only way to heaven. I mean, what kind of arrogance is that?"
People don't like the exclusivism of Christianity.
Unfortunately some professing Christians are proposing a way around this problem. They say that God is love and must have a plan for saving more people than are Christians. Ryken writes, (p. 55)
"some theologians who identify themselves as evangelicals are promoting Jesus as the One Ultimate Reality who unifies all the diverse religions. According to this view, the spiritual supermarket is full of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and many other worshippers who are really 'anonymous Christians'. They are saved by Christ, even though they do not know Christ in a personal way at all."
Ryken is correct in rejecting this. How can it be? What does Romans 10 tell us? (Verses 9f)
"if you
confess with your mouth,
'Jesus is Lord',
and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are
justified,
and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
As the Scripture says,
'Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.'
For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—
the same Lord is Lord of all
and richly blesses all who call on him,
for, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
will be saved.
How, then, can they call on the one
they have not believed in?
And how can they believe in the one
of whom they have not heard?
And how can they hear
without someone preaching to them?
And how can they preach unless they are sent?"
Romans
10 makes clear that we are saved by faith in Jesus. You
can't be saved by Jesus without knowing Him, without
trusting Him. No, as Paul says here,
"Grace
and peace to you
from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ."
The
grace comes to us through Jesus Christ.
If you're not a Christian, you need to trust in Jesus. He's
your only hope. You need grace. So far you've experience
much of it. All the good things you've experienced have
been because of God's grace. But it will not last. The day
of judgment is coming. All God's goodness to you so far has
been designed to lead you to repentance. As we read in
Romans 2:4,
"Or do
you show contempt
for the riches of his kindness,
tolerance and patience,
not realizing that
God's kindness leads you toward repentance?"
Don't
show contempt for all the good that God has showed to you
already. Go to Jesus and find fullness of grace in Him.
That's what you need. You need to be saved. You need grace.
Only Christ can give it to you. Go to Him now.