EPHESIANS 1:3-14 - To The Praise of His Glorious Grace

Introduction

So the festivities surrounding the possible closure of Penn State Commonwealth campuses continues apace—everyone is jumping in to express their praise for Penn State DuBois right now. From students to alumni to faculty and staff, landlords who rent to students, the City of DuBois, Clearfield County commissioners, everyone is trying to get University Park to see how valuable and special Penn State DuBois is and why it should stay open after 2027. (But then again, as I never tire of pointing out, this is the same institution that fired Joe Paterno over the phone, so I don’t put a lot of stock in their decision-making abilities!)

As we begin moving into the book of Ephesians, we see Paul laying the foundation for the entire book with an extended expression of praise to God—the phrase “to the praise of His glory” appears three different times, marking off the major sections of the passage:

Ephesians 1:6 LSB

to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:12 LSB

to the end that we who first have hoped in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.

Ephesians 1:14 LSB

who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

These verses in our text this morning constitute one long run-on sentence in Greek—as if the Apostle Paul began praising the glory of God’s grace and just got carried away. Like a snowball rolling down a hill that gets bigger and faster as it goes, Paul doesn’t pause for breath or punctuate his words. The more he considers the glory of God’s grace in our salvation, the more intense and powerful his praise becomes. He is gripped by the glory of God’s grace to him in Christ, and the intensity of his praise has a profound effect on the way he writes (and on us who read it!)

Is that your experience with your praise of God this morning? Do you become more consumed by “praising the glory of God’s grace” to you in Christ the longer you consider it? Once people start thinking about how much Penn State DuBois has done for them they are ready to sign petitions and go to county commissioners’ meetings and call their state representative to tell them about it; when was the last time that your consideration of the grace of God in your salvation caused you to overflow with praise to someone else? When was the last time you were so gripped by the glory of God’s grace to you in your salvation during a worship service that you felt like Paul, ready to simply burst in gratitude and praise?

Now, mind you, I’m not talking about the empty emotionalism that is commonly passed off as “praise” in a lot of Christian circles today (what one of the students at CSF called a “church camp high”, where you come back from church camp emotionally fired up about God, but then a couple days later had cooled right back off again!) That’s the kind of praise that is a mile wide and an inch deep—it is great while it lasts, but it’s a hothouse flower. As long as you are in the environment that created that praise, it’s wonderful. But once church camp ends or once the worship service is over and you walk out of the sanctuary, that “high” is fading. And by Monday morning when the bills are stacked up and the laundry needs done and the reports are due and that night the show you’ve been watching has just dropped a new episode and one of the kids comes down with the flu and the dog has eaten your favorite slippers—that’s when all that praise of God seems to fade into the distance.

Much less will that empty, merely emotion-driven praise of God sustain you when your business closes, or the biopsy comes back malignant, or your family breaks up, or your child turns his back on God and His Church. When those things happen, the warm fuzzies of shallow praise of God will not only fail to stand up; they will become bitterness to you.

The praise that overtakes the Apostle Paul here in these verses is anything but shallow; these verses come barreling down on us like a freight train of glory; if we want to extend the metaphor we started last week, Ephesians 1:3-14 are like the first drop on a roller coaster; the momentum of Paul’s “praise of the glory of God’s grace” will literally carry us through the next six chapters, through every turn of God’s blueprint for living; our new identity in Christ, our new citizenship in Christ, our new culture, our new relationships in Him—everything in this letter is fueled by the glorious praise that Paul expresses in this first magnificent sentence.

This is how I want to pose the argument of this passage for us this morning:

Your PRAISE of God will be POTENT in your life when His GRACE is GLORIOUS in your eyes

The key to potent praise, beloved, is the depth of your understanding of God’s grace to you in Christ. Why is He so worthy of praise? What specifically makes His grace so glorious? In what particular ways has He acted toward you that give you reasons to praise Him? I think this is the missing piece in so much shallow praise of God; unless we have grasped the specific ways that His grace has reached us in our salvation, we will never praise Him with the power and potency that Paul does here in these verses.

Paul begins in verse 3 of Ephesians 1 with an overall statement of praise to God:

Ephesians 1:3 LSB

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

And from there he is off to the races, extolling one spiritual blessing in Christ after another. Now, if we use that phrase we noted earlier, “to the praise of His glory” as markers in our text, we can see three divisions of Paul’s praise that will guide us here. And what we find as we follow those divisions is that Paul’s praise of the glory of God’s grace is a profoundly Trinitarian glory. We will see God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all invested in the work of our salvation. The first division is from verses 4-6, where we see God the Father’s role in our salvation, Behold the glory of God’s grace toward you, Christian, as you consider

I. The ELECTING grace of God the Father (Ephesians 1:4-6)

Ephesians 1:4–6 LSB

just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love, by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved.

The first reason you have for praise of the glory of God’s grace according to these verses is that God the Father graciously decreed your salvation! The marvel of God’s love resting on you before you were even born is one of the reasons that Paul is so driven to praise Him—consider God the Father’s grace—it was

A SOVEREIGN and WISE choice (v. 4)

All throughout the Scriptures we see God choosing people for Himself—He chose Noah to find favor in His sight (Genesis 6); He chose Abraham to be the recipient of His covenant blessings (Gen 15); He chose the nation of Israel to be a light to the nations:

Deuteronomy 7:6 LSB

“For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for His own treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

And here in Ephesians 1 Paul reminds us that God made His decree to save you before the foundation of the world—it was a choice made entirely by God in His utter and uncontested sovereign reign. He chose you when you had no say in the matter; He set His sovereign will on you in His infinite wisdom and His perfect plan.

It was a sovereign and wise choice, and it is

A SANCTIFYING and PERFECTING choice (vv. 4-5)

Why did God choose you, Christian?

Ephesians 1:4 LSB

just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him...

He chose you to be holy before Him! He chose you to be set apart, He chose you to be unblemished, undefiled, perfected in holiness! What poor struggling Christian, fighting under a load of besetting sin and fainting in the fight, would not weep for joy to hear such a promise from the lips of Almighty God? Christian, as you spend your days battling sins of bitterness, anxiety, greed, anger, uncleanness, lust, envy and pride and wondering if you will ever make progress in defeating them—how can you not hear this word that your Heavenly Father has set His omnipotent and sovereign decree that He will perfect you in holiness—how can you not hear that word and be ready to burst with praise?!

God the Father chose you in His grace before the foundation of the world—a sovereign and wise choice, a sanctifying and perfecting choice, and it was

A LOVING and GRACIOUS choice (vv. 5-6; cp. Romans 8:15)

Ephesians 1:5–6 LSB

by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Why were you chosen, Christian? You were chosen in order to be adopted as His son through Jesus Christ—in other words, God the Father chose you to share in the status of “Son of God” through Christ. As we will continue to see, the phrase “in Christ” is foundational to the message of Ephesians. The process of adoption was well known in the Greco-Roman culture of Paul’s day; a Roman citizen could adopt someone outside his family and make him heir to his entire estate and give him all the privileges of being a biologically-descended offspring.

Here in verses 5-6 Paul is overwhelmed by the thought that in Christ he has been adopted as a Son of God as well! He writes in Romans 8:15

Romans 8:15 LSB

For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out, “Abba! Father!”

Consider what God the Father’s decree has done for you, Christian—when you had no say in the matter, when you had done nothing to earn it or deserve it, when you had nothing to commend you to His attention but the depth of your sin and depravity that would earn nothing but His eternal wrath poured out on you—He sovereignly chose you in love and grace and mercy and decreed that He would not only deliver you from the penalty of your sin, but He would make you a holy and blameless recipient of all of the blessings of being His child!

Your praise for God will be potent in your life when the electing grace of the Father is glorious in your eyes. Potent because you recognize the utter depths of your peril, the complete helplessness to save yourself, your certain eternal doom apart from His free and uncoerced choice to set His love on you. Now, I don’t know about you, but what triggers such potent praise in me from this truth is that if it had been up to me to choose to be saved, I would not have done it! There is no way to find your own escape from your trespasses and sins, your sinful and rebellious nature, the spiritual death of your natural hatred for God, apart from the electing grace of God the Father setting His sights on you from before the foundation of the world and saying, “Him. I choose him to be one of Mine. Her—I will have her as my beloved child for all eternity.”

Christian, your praise of God will be potent in your life when His grace is glorious in your eyes. Consider the electing grace of God the Father—and in verses 7-10 consider

II. The REDEEMING grace of God the Son (Ephesians 1:7-10)

In verses 4-6 we see God the Father decreeing our salvation, and in verses 7-10 we see God the Son securing our salvation:

Ephesians 1:7–8 LSB

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of His grace which He caused to abound to us in all wisdom and insight,

God the Father decreed from eternity past to set His electing love on you, and then in the fulness of time God the Son descended in human flesh—fully God and fully human—to purchase that salvation by His blood. By Christ’s death on that Cross, Christian

You have been REDEEMED (vv. 7-8; cp. Col. 1:13-14)

You have been brought out of slavery—just as God bought His people out of their slavery in Egypt under the blood of the Passover lamb, so you have been purchased out of your slavery to sin by the blood of Christ. In Colossians 1, Paul rejoices in the work of God

Colossians 1:13–14 LSB

Who rescued us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

When you were utterly helpless to escape your depravity, Jesus paid the price to free you. Revelation 1:5 says that Jesus “loves us and released us from our sins by His blood”—when your darkness had such a hold of you, when your own wickedness had so thoroughly ensnared you, Jesus loved you—and He loved you enough to die in your place.

This is what creates potent praise that will endure no matter what else tries to intrude—the praise that comes from reckoning what it cost Jesus to redeem you from your sin. Remember the account of the sinful woman who comes to Jesus when He is a guest of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7—she couldn’t even speak; all she could do is weep at His feet as she anointed Him with her perfume. She loved much, said Jesus, because she has been forgiven much.

When you grasp how much you have been forgiven, when you come to realize just how wretched you were apart from His mercy, your praise of God’s glorious grace will not be a shallow, inconsequential feeling of self-worth; it will be a deep, abiding and potent source of praise for the riches of God’s redeeming grace in His Son.

Paul says that by the redeeming grace of God the Son you have been redeemed, and by His grace

You have received REVELATION (v. 8-10)

Paul says that the forgiveness of our sins has come to us according to the riches of His grace

Ephesians 1:8–10 LSB

which He caused to abound to us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him for an administration of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in Him.

Here is another way that God has lavished His grace on us (Verse 6 literally translates that God “graced us with His grace!”) When He applies the riches of His grace to you in salvation, the whole world makes sense—it is all being summed up in Jesus Christ! Everything that was lost in the Garden when Adam fell is being restored in Christ; and not just restored but surpassed—the entire momentum and purpose for the whole cosmos finds its termination on Him. As one commentator puts it:

“In the fullness of time, God’s two creations, his whole universe and his whole church, will be unified under the cosmic Christ who is the supreme head of both” (JRW Stott, Ephesians, 44, quoted in Merida, T. (2014). Exalting Jesus in Ephesians (p. 29). Holman Reference.

When God’s grace reveals to you the fulness of Jesus Christ as the utter and complete summation of all things in heaven and earth, then it is hard to give Him shallow, frothy praise, isn’t it? You can’t come into the presence of the cosmic Christ, the summation of the entire purposes of God Almighty, the Source and Destination of all things, the One Who has purchased your redemption and is reigning in supreme majesty and undying glory, and be careless or flippant about it, can you?

This Christ cannot just be attended to for an hour or two on Sunday morning and then disregarded for the rest of the week—if everything is being summed up in Christ, then everything you do in every sphere of life; every thought in your heart and every motion of your affections must terminate on Him! Your praise of God will be potent in your life when the redeeming grace of His Son is glorious in your eyes.

Paul blesses God for all the spiritual blessings we have in Christ—the electing grace of God the Father, the redeeming grace of God the Son, and in verses 11-14 of our text we see

III. The SEALING grace of God the Spirit (Ephesians 1:11-14)

God the Father decreed your salvation, God the Son purchased your salvation, and God the Holy Spirit applies your salvation:

Ephesians 1:11 LSB

In Him, we also have been made an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,

Consider the work of the Holy Spirit in this verse—see here

His PROVIDENCE in your CONVERSION (v. 11-13)

Paul says that

Ephesians 1:13 LSB

In Him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,

God by His Holy Spirit “works all things according to the counsel of His will”—God the Father had decreed your salvation, and God the Holy Spirit arranges your life in such a way that you freely and genuinely listened to the Gospel and believed it!

This is the way the London Baptist Confession explains the work of the Holy Spirit in our conversion:

Those whom God has predestinated unto life, He is pleased in His appointed, and accepted time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving to them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace. Sproul, R. C., ed. (2015). The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition) (p. 2483). Reformation Trust.

Consider the amazing providence of the Spirit of God that He can so call those who have been predestined to eternal life that He does so without doing any violence whatsoever to their own will! Yes, God predestines those He will save, but they also freely and genuinely choose to be saved! Who but God could so perfectly bring together His decree to predestine you and your free and genuine and uncoerced choice to be saved?! It is indeed a mystery to us, but not to God—it is hard for us to see how both can be true but praise God it is not hard for Him! The Spirit of God in His providential ordering of every detail of your life—where you went, what had happened in your life, down to the very thoughts you were thinking—all of it perfectly orchestrated in every detail so that you would freely and genuinely choose to respond to His call to be saved!

Let the potency of your praise flow from the sealing grace of the Holy Spirit Whose providence resulted in your willing conversion—and let your praise flow from the promise here in verse 14 that

He GUARANTEES your INHERITANCE (vv. 13-14)

Ephesians 1:13–14 LSB

In Him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

I picked this up off the floor of the loading dock when I worked at the A&P supermarket in Clifton, NJ back when I was in seminary. When a truck would come in, before we could unload, the driver would have the manager sign the manifest to verify that the number on the page matched the number stamped into this plastic loop—it was proof that the pallets of groceries inside the trailer had not been tampered with or altered since leaving the distribution center.

Christian, this is the grace of God the Holy Spirit in your life—He personally guarantees that you will never be lost on your way to Heaven. You will be delivered safely into His presence in glory; you will pass through a lifetime of “dangers, toils and snares”, of temptations and sorrows and doubts and darkness that will drag on you and threaten to tear you away from your faith, but you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise—the One promised by God the Son to come and be your Comforter, the One given by God the Father as a pledge that you will receive your inheritance of salvation, marking you as His own possession.

Christian, this is where potent praise comes from—the realization that if you could have ignored the Gospel when it was preached to you, you would have. The realization that if you could lose your salvation, you would lose it. That if it were up to you to seal your own salvation with your own promises to God that you would certainly break them. That if it were up to you to guarantee your own arrival at the Celestial City, you would have no hope at all.

Christian, find here in this magnificent opening sentence of Ephesians the cure for lifeless, shallow, indifferent praise. Here is your foundation for praise that recognizes the unsearchable sovereign grace of God the Father choosing you before the foundation of the world; the amazing sacrificial grace of God the Son purchasing your salvation with His own bloody agony poured out on the Cross; the comforting grace of God the Holy Spirit applying that salvation to you at just the right time, sealing you with His unbreakable omnipotent promise that you will arrive safe and sound in glory one day. To see these glories of the grace of God is to produce praise in you that is potent in humility and gratitude, it creates in you a desire to praise Him with the holiness of your life, it creates a praise in you that will not be silenced by trials or heartbreak; it will produce a praise in you that will not just fill your heart and mind and mouth on Sunday mornings in worship, but will flow from you every day of your life. Feed on the glories of God’s grace laid out here in His Word; grow in the humility, joy, gratitude and peace that is laid out for you here.

And if you are here this morning apart from Christ; if you have no interest in Him or relationship with Him today, can’t you see the glories of His grace extended to you this morning? God is a sovereign God—He is in utter authority over every single molecule of His Creation, and He has decreed since before the foundation of the world that you would be here today to hear His Word. You freely chose to come here this morning, and your free choice was the result of innumerable factors in your life that led you to freely choose to be here. And you are here this morning because of the glorious grace of God.

You are here this morning to hear about the glorious redeeming grace of God the Son, Jesus Christ—fully God and fully man—who lived a perfectly righteous life with no sin whatsoever. He was condemned as a sinner by wicked men and tortured to death on a Cross as a punishment for sins He never committed. And so the death that He died to satisfy the wrath of God for sin is counted to all who believe in Him. All of your sin and wickedness and perversions and evil will be paid for in full when you come in repentance to Him by faith.

John 3:16 LSB

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

You are here this morning in the presence of God the Holy Spirit, Who has been sent to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment—He graciously opens the eyes of the blind and brings the spiritually dead back to life and takes out the stony heart of sin and replaces it with the living heart of flesh to grant repentance and faith. And so here is the great, gracious call of the Triune God this morning—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as His redeemed church—all say to you this morning

Revelation 22:17 LSB

...let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who wishes receive the water of life without cost.

The Father has decreed it, the Son has purchased it, the Spirit bestows it—forgiveness of sin, a new birth of holiness, the water of life, eternal salvation—all of it promised to you when you come (and welcome!) to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

What does it mean to “praise” someone or something? What makes something (or someone) “praiseworthy”? What are some of the reasons God is praiseworthy according to the Apostle Paul in this text?

How is each Person of the Trinity represented in Paul’s writing? What part does the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit play in your salvation? How should this be reflected in the way you praise Him in worship?

How would you explain to a non-Christian what Christ did to accomplish your redemption? How is the grace of God shown to be glorious in Christ’s work for you?

How does knowing that God works all things according to the counsel of His will affect you? Why do we need to reflect on this truth?

Using concepts from this text, explain who the Holy Spirit is and summarize His role in salvation. What would you say is the most glorious aspect of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit’s work in your life?