The Triune Glory of God in Our Inheritance
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Notes:
Notes:
Call to Worship
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Prayer
Adoration (God’s wisdom)
Confession (Our failure to trust in view of this wisdom)
Thanksgiving
Supplication
Benediction
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Sermon:
Sermon:
(Read vs. 11-14)
Maybe you’ve had an experience in your life where someone has showed up at your door offering a bible study or a conference put on by the watchtower society—the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Or maybe you have a Jehovah’s Witness friend or neighbor, or have stopped to talk at one of their street displays. If you’ve had such a conversation, and the topic turned the doctrine of the Trinity, you may remember how strongly your Jehovah’s Witness friends argued against it.
The doctrine of trinity, simply put, is that God is:
“…one God in trinity, and trinity in unity”: that is, he is three persons, who are yet one essence, one being. The persons are distinct from each other—not mixed together. Yet, the substance of God is undivided—he is one God.
That is the historic, orthodox, and biblical faith.
But, if your eyes just rolled into the back of your head, or if your brain just started to shut down, or if you even felt a slight sense of panic at the mention of this doctrine, hang on. Stay with us.
Perhaps when you were talking with those Jehovah’s Witnesses, and got into an argument about the Triune nature of God, you were stumped at certain points. Or, perhaps you were able to hold your own. And yet, to you the doctrine of the trinity is really just an awkward, difficult doctrine—one which must be defended because it is true—but otherwise feels like a math problem that you just can’t solve… 1+nothing=3?
And Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only ones to object to God’s triune nature. They say that Jesus is only a god, and not God the Son in the flesh. Mormons, on the other hand, say that there are three separate gods who merely work together in unity (and many other gods besides). Unitarians and rationalists say that there is only one God, who has no triune nature, and that Jesus was not God in the flesh. They accuse us of being irrational, of contradicting ourselves when we say that there are three persons who are at the same time one God. And our Muslim friends sometimes even charge us with polytheism.
What should we say to these neighbors of ours? Are we crazy to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity? Spoiler alert: we are not. Their accusations, examined in the light of Scripture and of sound theology, don’t stick. God is, in truth, the Triune God. OK, so, that’s that. We may have our closing song and benediction.
But here’s the problem: we could spend lifetimes doing careful study of Scripture in order to refute those who deny the trinity. But do we really grasp it ourselves? And how does Scripture mean for us to grasp it? As an awkward math problem?
Certainly, in the Christian life, there is a place for simply saying, “the Bible says it, so I believe it.” When seeking truth, in fact, that is where we must start. And, the Bible teaches that there is only one God:
Isaiah 44:8 “Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”
Isaiah 45:21 “…there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.”
And the Bible also teaches that not only the Father, but also the Son and the Spirit are God. For example, Thomas says to Jesus:
John 20:28 “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus is truly and fully divine. And also, Paul says that God’s Spirit among us is God’s presence in his temple:
1 Cor 3:16 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
This is only possible if the Spirit is truly and fully God. And so, God’s triune nature is biblical truth. But this probably still doesn’t remove the awkwardness and confusion that you may feel about it. Brothers and sisters: it doesn’t need to be this way.
The truths of Scripture—especially about who God is—are never meant to be merely acknowledged and defended. They are meant to be a source of delight for us, leading us to a more joyous and exalted worship of God. So, we are supposed to grasp this glorious doctrine of the Trinity not merely by agreeing with it, but by delighting in it. And the key to this delight, at least in Ephesians 1, is to see that the gospel—our salvation—has a glorious, trinitarian shape to it.
Now, what I can’t do this morning is suddenly make God’s Triune nature easy for you or simple to grasp. There are two reasons for this:
God is lofty, high above us, mysterious and transcendent in his being. Because of this, there are things about him which are ultimately mysterious. Not illogical or irrational, but still mysterious and beyond the ability of creatures to grasp.
Rich theology can’t be microwaved. It’s not a TV dinner. It’s a slow roast. It takes time, soaking in God’s Word, hearing it preached, and contemplating his glorious perfections in worship, to develop a true and deep grasp of what God has revealed about himself to us.
But what our text this morning can do for us, if the Spirit will give us eyes to see, is give us a starting point for how to begin delighting in this great doctrine—to begin to know it more truly. And again, the starting point is this: to see that our salvation is trinity-shaped; that God has acted as a triune God in his work of redemption; that our experience of being saved is an experience of the trinity; and that even our fellowship with God is based on his triune nature.
And actually, the truth is, we’ve already been delighting in the Trinity for the past two Sundays. Remember: the Trinity is Father, Son, and Spirit. And what did we already learn about the Father in Ephesians? That he chose us before the world was made, to be adopted in love (1:4-5). But what was the basis, the framework for our adoption? God’s own Triune nature!
Listen to these words which the Son prayed to the Father just before he was arrested and crucified:
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Love from before the foundation of the world. Eternal love, from Father to Son. A glimpse into the fathomless nature of God. But just two verses later, he prayed:
I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
So the infinite and eternal love between Father and Son, as we saw, is mysteriously somehow now given to us—a richness of grace which cannot be measured. And we, mere creatures, are in this way lifted up and caused to experience the very life of God. And again, we do not become gods, or members of the Trinity, or part of God. Yet, we must not diminish the truth that we really do, in a creaturely way, experience and partake in the life of God. We have union with the Father through the Son.
So then, the Father chose us and predestined us to a trinity-shaped adoption. But what about the Son?
Well, as we saw, his eternal, only-begotten, unique sonship is the foundation for our own adoption, where we became the Father’s children. We call the Father, “Father,” because we are united with the Son.
And we also saw, last Sunday, that the Son is the one who made our redemption possible. By giving himself up for us on the cross, he secured our forgiveness and so opened up the way for us to be adopted.
So then, the Father chose us in love and predestined us for adoption, and we have been adopted in union with the Son. Also, the Father sent the Son to redeem us (1 John 4:14), and the Son accomplished our redemption on the cross. [Now, some of you may have noticed that someone is missing here: the Holy Spirit! Bear with me. He’s no less important in our salvation, and we’re going to see that in today’s passage.] But look the beauty of this: how the Father and the Son together accomplish our redemption.
Have you ever run across the idea that the Father is angry, but Jesus, the Son, is loving? Maybe you were raised with that idea of God, or have friends who talk like that, or just have been tempted to think about God in that way. There’s this picture of the Father and an angry Father, where the Son has to come and calm him down and try to make him love us.
Maybe you’ve just sinned. You yelled at your children, or participated in gossip, or gave in to lust, or discovered a nasty strain of pride in your heart. You can sense God’s displeasure—he is the God who is holy, and hates evil. And so you picture the anger of the Father, and you go to Jesus because, you think, he’s more relatable, more loving, more merciful.
In some sense this thought process is understandable. But it is still blasphemous to think about God in this way. First of all, it is not merely the Father, but God himself—Father, Son, Spirit—who hates sin. But second, it is not merely the Son, but God himself—Father, Son, Spirit—who has acted in love to rescue us from sin! It is the Father, Ephesians teaches, who predestined us in love for adoption and sent his Son to make it happen. And it is the Son who gave himself for our redemption in love.
And it’s not just redemption that proves the triune love of God to us. As we noted last week, this idea of redemption is based on how our own redemption from sin was foreshadowed by the redemption of Israel from Egypt. And we noted that Israel was not redeemed—rescued from Egyptian slavery—just to be left wandering in the desert: but they were given an inheritance by God. So also it is with us. Look again at the first part of verse 11: “In him we have obtained an inheritance.”
And this inheritance is really just the natural result of being adopted as God’s children. This is no second-rate adoption, but an adoption that brings with it an inheritance then which no greater inheritance can be imagined. And in just a moment, we’ll talk about what that inheritance actually is.
But notice what Paul does here. In verse 11, he mentions our inheritance in the Son, and then he secures it for us with the same truths that he used secure our adoption earlier in the chapter. Look at verse 11 again (read 11b). Predestined according to his purpose. This means that God said about you from before time: “I will save this one. I will adopt this one.” And not only that, but, “This one shall receive an inheritance.” From before time, if you have hoped in Christ, God said that about you.
And not only did he decide that from eternity past, but it says that he is the one who, “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” And this is really just summing up what we’ve seen so far:
The Father chose us
The Father predestined us for adoption
The Father sent the Son to redeem us
The Son gave himself up that we might be forgiven
The Father, through the Spirit, has opened our eyes, causing us to see the wisdom of the cross and so trust in Christ.
And in the moment of our faith, as we are about to see, the Spirit seals us as God’s own and becomes the down-payment of our future inheritance.
And so, he works all things according to the counsel of his will, for our salvation. In his infinite power, perfect wisdom, and overflowing grace, he does this. And so, we are safe in the everlasting arms.
And if you are tempted to doubt your safety with him, just remember these words from verse 11: God is the one who works all things. We have not just been predestined to adoption, but further, to inheritance. And the Father will ensure that we receive our inheritance in full. In Romans, Paul expresses it like this:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
And why did he do this? Verse 12: to the praise of his glory. That we, as we hope in Christ, and in receiving an inheritance from the Father, might display the glory of the Father’s grace, that he might be worshiped.
But this phrase—to the praise of his glory—is one that we’ve seen before. Look at verse 6: it says that we have been adopted, “to the praise of his glorious grace.” In the structure of this long, run-on sentence that goes from verse 3 to verse 14, the phrase actually occurs three times. Verse six is the first occurrence, where it concludes a section focused on the Father’s grace in choosing us for adoption. Verse 12 is the second occurrence, where it concludes a section focused on redemption and inheritance through the Son. And then, in verse 14, it concludes a section focused on the Spirit.
So this sentence isn’t just a complex tangle of truths—but when Paul chose to write the longest sentence in the New Testament, he chose to structure it based on God’s triune nature. This sentence is a monument to God’s triune glory as it is revealed to us in the gospel.
But after all the richness of what we’ve seen so far in the Father’s work to redeem us through his Son, you might wonder, “What could the Spirit possibly add?”
Listen to verses 13 and 14 again (read).
So, there was this moment for the Ephesian Christians—for all Christians—where their ears were opened, and they heard and believed the gospel. And in that moment, it says, they were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.
Why promised? Because, in the Old Testament, it was not only the Messiah, but God’s Spirit that was promised for the rescue of God’s people from sin:
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
The Spirit was promised long before he was given at Pentecost.
But there’s something in verse 13 which is vital, but easy to miss. The Spirit seals us in Christ. You could almost put parentheses in the verse like this: “In him you also (when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him) were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” So then, in Christ we have been sealed with the Spirit.
Christ won salvation for us, and we have this salvation by being united with him. But exactly how are we united with him? By the Spirit! The Spirit seals us in Christ, and thus we are redeemed.
Or, to say it in another way, Christ won redemption, forgiveness, adoption, and inheritance for us. But it is the Spirit who applies these things to us. He does this by first opening our eyes to the wisdom of the cross, so that we respond in faith, and then dwelling in us. And this work of the Spirit is what actually causes us to be adopted:
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
It’s by the Spirit that we are empowered to address God as Father, because the Spirit unites us with the Son.
But notice the language that it uses here in verse 13: you were sealed. In other words, God, by his Spirit, has set his seal on you, with two results:
You are identified as God’s. It is as if having the Spirit within you is like having a wax seal on you which says, property of Christ, bought with his blood. That is who you are: your worth is not tabulated by your feelings or accomplishments, but by blood of Christ, shed for you.
You are protected by God. The seal that is on you is God himself—an unbreakable security that you will, in fact, reach your inheritance in glory.
But then, next, Paul changes the image slightly. He says that the Spirit is, “the guarantee of our inheritance.” The word “guarantee” here means “down-payment.” What is a down-payment? The first installment which vouches that more will come. By giving us this down-payment, God has pledged himself, even obligated himself to ensure that we will obtain the inheritance in full.
Kyleigh and I are hoping, within the month, to make a down-payment on a house near Scholls. And that down-payment will be made with money. And then we will continue paying money until we own the house free and clear. The down-payment is the same stuff as the full price: human currency.
And it is the same with our inheritance from God: the Spirit, who unites us to Christ—the Spirit, who is God’s presence with us—is the down-payment. So then, what is the full inheritance? A far greater of a greater experience of God in Christ which is to come.
In Christ’s victory, we are victorious; in Christ’s reign, we reign; in Christ’s death, we die to sin; in Christ’s resurrection we have eternal life; in Christ’s righteousness we have justification. These things are our inheritance. But more central than even these, the Spirit is God’s presence with us: a down-payment of a far greater experience of God’s presence which is to come.
Or, to be more exact: by the Spirit, through the Son, we have communion with the Father now; and in the age to come, we will experience a much greater fulness of this, uninterrupted by sin, sorrow, and suffering. And this also will be to the praise of his glory.
And so, in summary, this is what we have seen: God acts as a triune God for our salvation, and destines us for a triune-shaped inheritance with him, to the praise of his glory. All praise to the Trinity: by him we are chosen, redeemed, and sealed for glory.
And so, now, what do you do when Jehovah’s Witnesses or others show up at your door, and deny the Trinity? Slam the door in their face! No, don’t do that. Actually, showing love, patience, and hospitality is the one of the best things you can do. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it also helps to break down some of the walls they’ve built against hearing the truth.
But how should you defend the Trinity? With joy! Certainly, we haven’t even come close to saying all that can be said about the trinity. Not by a long shot. But what should your posture be? Something like this: “Don’t you see?! The Father chose me, and through the Son I have true communion with God by the Spirit! If Jesus isn’t truly God, then that doesn’t work anymore. If the Spirit isn’t God, then that doesn’t work anymore. So, I am astounded by God’s triune beauty, and triune grace, and by comparison, the gospel you offer is cheap, small, and unable to save.”
But because of God’s triune mercy, we have, as Peter wrote:
1 Peter 1:4 “...an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…”
Speaking of such mercy, Calvin says:
“…the eloquence of both men and angels, after being strained to the utmost, falls immeasurably below the vastness of this subject.”
