Ephesians 1 Chapel (2)

What God Has Done, Eph. 1:3-11

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belong to His dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us His mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill His own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan. Ephesians 1:3-11

This is a passage of scripture that is describing past events. Can you see this? Even though Paul is calling for us to praise and glorify Him now, he’s reminding us of all that God has done in the past through Jesus.

So what has God done? Why should we praise and glorify Him?

God has blessed us

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. V3

When you hear the word blessed what do you think of?

Yes blessed is a word for happy, but it means so much more than that biblically.

Biblically, blessed is used to describe someone who is right with God. The word means praised, worthy of commendation.

So hear this, what Paul is saying is that we praise God because God has made us praiseworthy, worthy of commendation. What has made us praiseworthy, Jesus has. Our belief and trust in Jesus makes us praiseworthy, we are blessed because we have received God’s blessing of Jesus.

2. God has chosen us

Blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, these are not material blessings, but spiritual, first by having the Holy Spirit and in the invisible realms, not the physical and tangible, but the invisible spiritual realm where Paul will talk in chapter 6 is our true struggle.

All this because we are united with Christ.

God Loved us

Even before the He made the world, God loved us… V4a

How do we describe this? Before anything existed, the universe, the world, us, before we existed, God loved us. How can He love something that doesn’t exist?

God is omnipresent, He is above time, there is no such thing as time to God. He exists in the present, past and future, time is for us, because we are finite, we have a start date and time and and end date and time. Not God.

God knows the future because He is in the future, He knows all that is going to happen before anything comes to pass, but that’s not the focus here.

The focus here is that God loved us, before we existed, before anything in us made us lovable, in fact there is nothing in us that is lovable to God. We are sinful and wretched pre-Jesus, Bible says we have made ourselves enemies of God, in chapter 2 of this letter we are referred to as being dead, pre-Jesus.

But yet in His great love God loved us, by sending Jesus. Amazing!!

God has chosen us

Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. V4

What does it mean to be chosen? It means to be picked or selected over another.

Here, Paul isn’t speaking individually but rather in the plural, the word “us” is the indicator.

So what has been chosen or picked over another to be holy and without fault? The key is in Christ, those who are in Christ, which is all followers or called the Church, we are to be holy and without fault. Holy is separated, so separated from the unbelieving world to be blameless in His sight. Amazing!!

God has adopted us

God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. V5

God decided to adopt us into His own family, in the Roman culture adoption was permanent. You could disown a dishonorable son, but once adopted you could never get kicked out.

Also, all are not children of God, all are His creation, but not children. It takes Jesus’ death and our faith and trust in Him to make us right with God and then we are able to be adopted, that’s why it says through Jesus Christ.

What’s crazy is that this is what God wanted to do, that He longed to have us as part of His family, not only us but all people, and the fact that we’ve believed in His Son and He has adopted us it has given Him great pleasure. Amazing!!

God has purchased our freedom

He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. V7

It is because of the previously mentioned love, that God has first given us mercy, not giving us what we deserve.

The punishment for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, we deserve death because of our sin, but God didn’t put us to death, instead...

Instead God gave us grace, getting what we don’t deserve, Jesus, freedom, forgiveness, eternal life with Him.

The Bible says that we are slaves to sin, but through Christ we have freedom to not obey the master of sin, but now the power through the Holy Spirit to obey a new master, a good master, Jesus. Amazing!!

God has revealed His plan to us

God has now revealed His mysterious will regarding Christ… He will bring everything together under the authority of Jesus.. V9-10

Now because we are sons of God, empowered with His Holy Spirit, God lets us in on the plan from the beginning.

Sin has separated, man from God, and man from man, hate, racism, war have all resulted, it is man’s doing and God’s undoing.

Through Jesus all stand equal, before Jesus everyman is sinful and separated regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, etc. and after Jesus, by placing faith in Jesus, all are now a part of the adopted family of God, the Church.

There is now no separation, no division, no differences, racism, hatred, war should all be done away with in Christ.

Problem 1, not are all in Christ.

Problem 2, not all who are in Christ and living by the Holy Spirit.

Problem 3, men still have the capacity to be wicked and are also influenced by the enemy, more in chapter 6.

But the hope, the only way this world, people will have peace is through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Without Him it’s not possible and the word would be much worse.

So we praise God because of all that He’s done.