Blessed by the Best

Ephesians 1:7-12

  

Theme: one grand blessing believers have is the fact that we belong to God our Father as a result of His infinite grace towards us in Christ Jesus. We should “bless” or praise Him for the spiritual blessings of redemption, forgiveness, purpose and an inheritance in Christ.

Introduction:

We are blessed by the best! No one compares to our heavenly Father when we consider these gracious acts towards fallen humanity. Indeed, all spiritual blessings belong to us who claim Christ as Savior (Eph. 1:3). Some blessings such as being chosen, adoption, predestination, and acceptance are direct graceful actions of the Father towards repentant sinners (Eph. 1:3-6). He also affords blessings to us through the Holy Spirit like sealing us to guarantee our full salvation (Eph. 1:12-14). Beloved, we are the recipients of the finest treatment a sinner could never deserved! We are blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Eph. 1:3). We are blessed by the Most High God; we are lavished most extravagantly by our merciful heavenly Father. We enjoy the best blessings possible from the most extravagant Source possible! These precious truths are worth rehearsing on a rainy day…during a hard season…amid the battles…while agonizing over defeat…when faced with rejection and on the mountain tops. They can restore needed balance to our perspectives.

Now Paul focuses attention on the blessings every believer enjoys through Jesus Christ. Note the great goodness of the Father through God the Son (Eph. 1:7-12). We should not think that each Person of the Godhead works independently, because each member works together to make possible our salvation.

Study:

I.       What are some spiritual blessings we have through Christ?  (v. 7-12)

Each Person of the Godhead has a distinct office and role to fulfil, a particular ‘spiritual installment’ to make in our lives. In this section we will concentrate on the specific blessings we enjoy through our Lord Jesus. As we trace the awe-inspiring arc of God’s grand salvation strategy for His people, we now focus on the reality of redemption.

A.  Christ Has Redeemed us (v. 7 a).

To redeem means "to purchase and set free by paying a price." A man could purchase a slave and set him free, and this is what Jesus did for us. The price was His own blood (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Redemption refers to release or deliverance from a state of slavery. The term relates to paying the required ransom to God for the release of a person from bondage (Rom. 3:24; 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:7, 14; 4:30; Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:15). Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary paid that price for everyone enslaved by sin, buying them out of the slave market of iniquity (2 Cor. 5:18, 19). This redemption is from sin (Heb. 9:15), and thus this work of Christ delivers believers from slavery to sin. We are freed from the bondage and guilt of sin and introduced into a life of liberty. The Lord Jesus is the Redeemer.

This means that we are free from the Law (Gal 5:1), free from slavery to sin (Rom 6), as well as free from the power of Satan and the world (Gal 1:4; Col 1:13-14). If we were slaves, we would have zero options or prerogatives, but because we are sons, all the will of the Father is ours to explore!

B.  Christ Has Revealed God’s Will to Us (v. 8-10).  

This letter has much to say about God’s plan for His people, a plan that was not fully understood among the early churches in the first century. The word “mystery” (1:9) has nothing to do with eerie novels, or something that cannot be understood. It means a "sacred secret, once hidden but now revealed to God's people." God took the initiative to inform His people of His grand redemptive plan.

Paul explains particularly how God has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence by making known unto us the mystery of His will. This is the overriding thesis of the letter—the magnificent truth concerning Christ and the church. This glorious plan originated in the heart of a sovereign God, quite apart from any outside influences: it was according to His good pleasure. And the grand subject of the plan is the Lord Jesus Christ—which He hath purposed in Himself.

Dr. McGee highlighted these mysteries saying,

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 (1 Cor. 15:51–52; 1 The. 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 (1 Cor. 2:7; Col. 2:2,9); (8) the mystery of the processes by which godlikeness is restored to man (1 Tim. 3:16); (9) the mystery of iniquity (2 The. 2:7; cp. Mt. 13:33); (10) the mystery of the seven stars (Rev. 1:20); and (11) the mystery of Babylon (Rev. 17:5,7).–McGee, J. V. Thru the Bible Commentary

God in His infinite grace brought into this awareness…he took initiative to inform and afford insight into his plans. We are able to share in the secret that God will one day unite everything in Christ.

Another interesting term Paul uses in this passage is dispensation. A dispensation (Eph. 1:10; Heb 1:2)) is an arrangement of things; a scheme—a plan of management or an administration—or a system of principles for a stewardship. It generally refers to the administration of God blessings. Dispensationalism deals with the administration of God’s eternal plan through the various ages of the earth and human experience. It may fit into a certain period of time, but it actually refers to the way God administrates His plan from eternity to eternity.  A dispensation is the way God manages His affairs among fallen men—the conditions of life He establishes. It is evident that God had Adam, Abraham, and Moses on a different arrangement than He has for you and me.

There are seven dispensations recognized by many premillennialists.

i. Innocence. Man was created innocent, set in an ideal environment, placed under a simple test and warned of the result of disobedience. (1 Tim 2:14; Gen 3:24).

ii. Conscience. By an act of disobedience man came to an experiential knowledge of good and evil. The result of this testing was complete degeneration ending in the judgment of the Flood (Gen 6-9).

iii. Human Government. The declaration of the covenant with Noah after the Flood (Gen 8:20-9:27) put man under a new test, featured by the inauguration of human government, the highest function of which was the judicial taking of life. Man is responsible to govern the world for God. The world is still Gentile-governed, and hence this dispensation overlaps other dispensations and will not strictly come to an end until the second coming of Christ.

iv. Promise. This era went from the call of Abraham (Gen 12:1) to the giving of the Mosaic Law (Ex 19:8). The dispensation was under the Abrahamic covenant and was exclusively Israelite.

v. Law. This era reaches from Sinai to Calvary. The period was a time of teaching used to bring Israel to Christ and was governed by the Mosaic covenant (Ex 20-31).

vi. Grace. This period began with the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom 3:24-26; 4:24-25). The predicted end of the testing of man under grace is the apostasy of the professing church (2 Tim 3:1-8) and the subsequent apocalyptic judgments.

vii. The Kingdom. This is the last of the ordered ages regulating human life on the earth, previous to the eternal state. It involves the establishment of the kingdom covenanted to David (2 Sam 7:8-17; Zech 12:8; Luke 1:31-33). This will include Israel’s restoration and conversion (Rom 11:25-27) and her rehabilitation as a high-priestly nation in fellowship with God and as head over the millennial nations (Zech 3; 6:9-15). –The New Unger's Bible Dictionary

Now God has never had but one method of saving folk; everything rests upon one method of salvation (Rom 3:21-31; Heb. 9:11-28). 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 this Sunday! That is not the way God tells us to approach Him today. We are under a different economy.

David Cloud observed,

[I]t is plain that God has dispensations in the sense of dealing with man in different ways in different eras. Man is no longer tending the Garden of Eden, or building arks, or setting up tabernacles, or offering animal sacrifices, or rearing magnificent temples. Creation is over; the Flood is over; the Law is over; Pentecost is over. It is apparent that we have moved from the Mosaic dispensation to the Church dispensation. These are all examples of dispensational divisions in God’s program. Those who interpret Bible prophecy literally and see Israel’s kingdom as something yet future are dispensationalists…. –Way of Life Encyclopedia

“Dispensation of the fullness of times.” What is the “fullness of times”? This is the seventh and last of the ordered ages which condition human life on earth.  It is the final stewardship committed to men, which will bring the purposes of God to fruition in human history.

God is sovereignty executing His grand plan for the ages in multiple stages bringing it to its ultimate climax, Christ ruling supreme over all.  He is skillfully moving everything forward to the time when Christ will rule over all things in heaven and earth—the Kingdom Age (2Sam. 7:8-17; Luke 1:31-33). This is the fullness when everything is brought under the rule of Jesus Christ. Through Christ, God will restore original universal unity, when all things are brought back into harmony with himself and under the leadership of Christ (1Cor. 15:24-25). All other times and ages or dispensations will be brought to their completion (Dan. 2:44-45; 7:13-14; Rom. 8:19-21; Rev. 20:4-6).

We know 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 to us what is to come to pass, something that had not been revealed in the past.

Ever since sin came into the world, things have been falling apart. First, man was separated from God (Gen 3). Then man was separated from man, as Cain killed Abel (Gen 4). People tried to maintain a kind of unity by building the Tower of Babel (Gen 11), but God judged them and scattered them across the world. God called Abraham and put a difference between the Jew and the Gentile, a difference that was maintained until Christ’s death on the cross. Sin is tearing everything apart, but in Christ, God will gather everything together in the culmination of the ages–the Millennial Kingdom. We are a part of this great eternal program and God has disclosed it to us so that we will work to build unity in His local assemblies today.

C.  Christ Has Given Us an Inheritance (vv. 11-12). Notice it reads, “In whom also we have obtained an inheritance.” 

In Christ we have a wonderful inheritance (Eph. 1:14; Acts 26:18; Col. 1:5, 12; 3:24; Heb. 9:15; 1 Peter 1:1-5). It includes God himself, the consummation of our redemption hope, receiving eternal rewards, and the heavenly estate and endowment that all saints will enjoy because we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17; 1Cor. 3:21-23).

Also, in Christ we are an inheritance (Eph 1:18). We are valuable to Him. Think of the price God paid to purchase us and make us part of His inheritance! God the Son is the Father’s love gift to us; and we are the Father’s love gift to His Son. Read John 17 and note how many times Christ calls us ‘those whom Thou hast given Me’ (Jn. 17:6, 9, 11, 24).

The churches are Christ’s body (Eph 1:22-23), building (Eph 2:19-22), and bride (Eph 5:22-23); Christ’s future inheritance is wrapped up in His churches. We are “joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17), which means that He cannot claim His inheritance apart from us! Like Ephesians, the Book of 1 Peter begins with a wonderful tribute to the spiritual blessings we have through Christ. Read 1 Peter 1:3–9 for another expression of praise for all that we have been given in Jesus.

II.    God forgives our sins through the blood of Christ. What difference does this make in our daily life?  (v. 7)

To be forgiven by anyone is a wonderful gift, but to be forgiven by a holy God is a blessing of extraordinary value and benefit. Our guilt before God is gone, the responsibility for our sins was taken in Christ’s death, and we enjoy peace, assurance, and release. Life with God is marked by confidence and a solid sense that we are accepted by the Lord. We are not merely tolerated by God; we are wanted and welcomed by Him. The blood of Jesus Christ made this possible. It is good to pause and thank God for the redemptive sacrifice of our Lord Jesus! Now, let us take a closer look. 

A.     God has forgiven us (v. 7). “The forgiveness of sins.”

Forgiveness is not the same as redemption; it is one of its fruits. Forgiveness is God releasing the sinner from the condemnation of the Law strictly on account of the Cross of Christ. God removes the guilt of sin and the sinner’s actual liability to an eternity in Hell through Christ. Christ had to make full satisfaction for our sins before they could be forgiven (Matt. 26:28; Luke 24:47). This was done at the cross (Rom 3:21-28; Col. 2:13-14; Heb 10:16-18; 1John 2:12).

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. All of our sins are forgiven freely the very moment we place our faith in the complete work of Christ (Isa. 53:4-6, 8, 11-12; Acts 5:31; 13:38-39; 1John 1:6-9).

Forgiveness is not the act of an indulgent deity who is moved by sentiment to the exclusion of justice, righteousness, and holiness observed Dr. McGee. He also stated,

I think here we need to learn the distinction between human forgiveness and divine forgiveness—they 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. –McGee, J. V. Thru the Bible Commentary

B.      God’s Forgiveness is Infinite! (v. 7)

The word forgive means “a dismissal or release,” or even "to carry away." This reminds us of the ritual on the Jewish Day of Atonement when the high priest sent the scapegoat into the wilderness (Lev 16). First the priest killed one of the two goats and sprinkled its blood before God on the mercy seat. Then he confessed Israel’s sins over the live goat, and had the goat taken into the wilderness to be lost. Christ died to carry away our sins so they might never again be seen (Ps 103:12; John 1:29; Heb. 9:11-28; 10:19-25; Jn. 1:7, 9). No written accusation stands against us because our sins have been taken away! Sin made us poor, but grace makes us rich.

It was Dr. MacDonald who said,

The measure of our forgiveness is given in the words, according to the riches of His grace (Eph. 1:7). If we can measure the riches of God’s grace, then we can measure how fully He has forgiven us. His grace is infinite! So is His forgiveness! –MacDonald, W. Believer's Bible Commentary

Dear Friend, salvation is through Christ Jesus alone. It does not matter how hard we work, sincere we are, how much we serve, how long we have been a part of some church or religious organization, or how hard we try; we cannot secure our own salvation. God can save anyone who truly turns to Him regardless of how sinful, wicked, rebellious, and offensive our lives have been to Him. We must repent (have a change of mind and heart leading to a change of direction) and come to God through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the full and complete payment for our awful sins. Sin is vile rebellion against a righteous and perfectly holy God. Some sins are acts committed while other sins are acts omitted. It includes our thoughts, desires, and deeds! Yes, every human being, without any exceptions, stands utterly guilty before God until we receive His forgiveness. After all, nobody is perfect…right?

Turn from your sin and its devastating eternal consequences unto Jesus Christ to save you. Ask Him in faith to save you immediately. Turn from your past of unbelief and rejection of God’s salvation and use your faith to embrace Jesus Christ fully as your Lord and Savior. In faith cry out to God and ask Him to forgive you for your sin; ask Him to give you eternal life because you accept Jesus Christ. God will save anyone who comes to Him on His terms. This is His solemn promise to you. Turn to God through faith in Christ; do it today!