Blessed Be God

Ephesians 1:3-14

The Story About Me

I have been telling the kids the story of Nogal, Ellebara and Nalyd. I started with Nogal when Logan was young. I told him story after story… and I never told him that Nogal was, of course, Logan spelled backwards. I looked forward to the day he would discover that the story was all about him.

It took years. In fact, I had added in Ellebara to the story by then. Ellebara was growing up.

And I heard “Dad… how do you spell Nogal?” Awesome. Arabelle figured it out quickly, pretty sure Logan tipped her off. Dylan never got to discover the mystery, the kids told him he was Nalyd right off the bat.

Now they all know, and every story has to revolve around all three of them. If I focus too much on Nogal, Ellebara gets ticked. Sometimes Nalyd saves everyone, and Nogal and Ellebara are amused… but “can the next one be about me???”

Can the story be about me?

We Are the Stars

That is a question we have each been asking our whole life.

Our whole lives we have been hearing, experiencing, a story.

You are the hero of your story. Everything happens to you, you react to it, you adapt. You struggle. You overcome. You are changed in your story, you grow, you mature.

And we see everything through the lens of our story.

This is natural, this is normal. But what if it isn’t true. This is food for thought:

What if it isn’t about you?

Blessed Be God

Right after the initial greetings in verses 1 and 2, Paul begins his letter to the church with one tremendous sentence.

Like all the best things in life, it begins with a song (or a Psalm). Some scholars see an early Christian hymn here, I think Paul is writing it at the moment, introducing his major themes of unity for Ephesians… but that doesn’t make it not a song. One long run on sentence, but it isn’t a run-on in Greek. He is tacking on dependent clause upon dependent clause.

I thought about reading it in one breath… but I tried it and it was hard. So hear this whole thing as one song, one burst of praise.

Ephesians 1:3-14

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 13 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, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

First I notice all the things having to do with me. Blessings! I get blessings. All the spiritual blessing.

And I am chosen. I am the Chosen One. This sounds perfect, it is all about me. This word is elect. I am the ELECT. That sounds great. And I start thinking about how it all works and when it started. Predestined for adoption. These are words of destiny, and it makes me wonder and think about the details of how it works.

Predestination. How does that interact with my free will? I am interested, I am fascinated and…

And it’s all about me. I am the One. And I want to tease out the details of how I got saved and how I got blessed, how can I get blessed more, and tell me more about my glorious inheritance, please!

But I am working on this question: what if it isn’t about me?

God the Subject

If this is one sentence… what is the Subject of the sentence? God, the Father. This whole thing is a song of blessing. Bless God (it could be a command). God is blessed (a statement of fact). A wish, a hope: may all blessings go to God. All three at once.

This is God the Father’s sentence, and then He is threaded throughout the rest.

It is the Father’s purpose and will in verses 4, 5, 9 and 11; to His glory in 6, 12, and 14.

Christ the Mediator and Purpose

But God the Father is not the only character here. The Father is the subject, but most of the content is Jesus Christ.

All of this blessing happens by means of Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ. Every step of the way, if the song has a repeated refrain it is this:

en Xristos. In Christ. In Christ. Over and over, In Christ. In verse 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, twice in 10, 11, 12, twice in 13.

By way of Christ, by means of Christ, by inclusion into Jesus. If God is the lyrics of this song, Jesus is the melody.

The Spirit Seal

And to round out the Trinitiarian awesome-ness, we get the domain of the Holy Spirit hinted at at the beginning in “all spiritual blessings” and then, it is the Spirit that ties us in. Drawing us into this closed loop of the Lover and the Beloved, the Father and the Son, we are sealed in by the Holy Spirit.

It is the Holy Spirit that guarantees our inheritance, but even that, puts the focus back on the “glory of the Father” full circle.

If the Father is the lyrics and the Son is the melody, the Holy Spirit is the rhythm, bringing and sealing it all together.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We are the Object

It is not about us. We are not the actors in this story. In this long sentence: we are the object. We are mostly acted upon.

We are the cowbell. Adding to the song… unless we think it is all about us, then it’s just obnoxious.

Divisive Issue of Predestination

In our next week, possibly two, in Ephesians, we are going to dive into what this song has to reveal about salvation. When does it happen, how does it happen, what does that imply about the way God is working and acting.

This is predestination. This is election. This is Calvinism and Arminianism. Free-will and Divine Sovereignity. Big stuff. Big ideas. And incredibly divisive.

Churches have split. Whole denominations! Not kidding, wars have been fought where this was at issue. And in this room, I guarantee we have some different ideas, some guesses, some convictions deeply held about how this all works. It is an important question. How am I saved? When am I saved? And when did it happen, how did it happen, and how does it affect my neighbor who isn’t saved?

Whatever we discover in these verses about salvation, it must be framed by, guided by, built upon this truth. It is about God.

The story is not about you. It is about God the Father, creating and then rescuing a Universe through His Son, for His Son, all of it by the agency and power of His Spirit. You are either a loved crown in the Son’s jewel or passing rebellious memory; either way, the story isn’t about you.

You are not the One.

He is the One.

Here is the story. Blessed be God the Father: he is drawing all things together, the whole universe, to unite heaven and earth in His Son Jesus, including you in Jesus by his Holy Spirit.

So you are in the story. You are loved, you are rescued, you are saved, you are chosen, you are predestined and elect even… but it still isn’t about you. He is the One.

You – Learning it is not about you

This might be a definition of maturity: learning it is not about you.

Babies are completely self-absorbed. They only know their own needs. You only enter into the picture as it meets their needs.

As you grow, you might start to discover that there are other stories going on that don’t revolve around you.

But we all know some people who never move beyond this stage. It is always about them.

And this could be a definition of Original sin. Pssstt. Eve. It’s all about you. It is all about your rise to knowledge and power and the fruit of the tree is your next step to Godhood. And Eve was ready to hear that, eager to hear that, quick to explore and embrace the idea that it was all about her.

So we need to hear this over and over:

It isn’t about you. It isn’t about you. Ultimately, it isn’t about you.

There is something within you that rejects this idea. You are going to continue to live almost every moment of your life as if it is all about you. You have your hungers, your thirsts, you get tired, you go to sleep, you need attention, you need love, you need help, you have wants and needs and most of your life is going to be in pursuit of those.

But maturity, Christian maturity, looks like this. You realize it isn’t about you. You start to sacrifice your story for His story. We start to sacrifice our wants for His glory, small ones at first. Then larger. Then we start to sacrifice our needs for His glory.

Paul writes this letter from prison, probably in Rome. He is literally suffering for Jesus. And yet His first words say this: Blessed be God. Grace and peace to you from God… and Praise be to God. He saw his moment of suffering in light of God’s story. His was a chapter in a novel in a series, set in a library and that whole library was about God the Father bringing all things together in the Son through the Holy Spirit.

What a perspective that put on his life. To be able, in that moment, to speak of blessing God and blessing others. We recognize that as selfless love. We recognize that as noble, as heroic in its own way. And it is possible because Paul realized it wasn’t all about him. The story didn’t revolve around his present circumstances. Even though things looked grim for his chapter, the story was one of glory and Victory!

I would rather be in the background of His epic story than the star of my tiny one.

I can try and be the center of my sad little Universe. Or I can be a beloved, chosen part of The Beloved of the Universe’s Beloved Bride, the Church of Jesus Christ. I am a part of the Object of His affection.

So your life isn’t about you. It is about God, the whole Trinity, and rescuing you is a part of that story from eternity.

Your family isn’t about you. That has power to bring some serious peace to family relations and interactions. It isn’t about you. And it isn’t about that one member of your family who always thinks it’s about them. But mostly, it isn’t about you.

This church isn’t about you. It is about God, the whole Trinity, and redeeming us together is part of that story from eternity.

We – Following the One

How does one “win” in an action movie? You can’t decide to be the hero if it isn’t about you.

But if you can identify the hero and follow him, and if the hero lets you, you can share in His glory.

You can follow the hero into the breach. You can be rescued by the hero, just when things look darkest. You can have the touching death while the hero weeps over you… but if your hero then defeats the power of death, then he can resurrect you and you get to live happily ever after.

And each of our lives becomes a part of something larger, more epic. My life gets drawn together with you and we become a local church. The local church is unified across space and time with all the people of God as the Church. The Church is unified in Christ as the Beloved Bride of the Beloved Son. And the whole Universe, heaven and earth, is being made One under and to the glory of the Son by the Father by agency of the Holy Spirit.

We take place in His story. We are a people striving to live for His glory. Striving to follow the hero into the battle. And this is our battle cry: Blessed be God the Father, by the Power of the Holy Spirit, to the Victory and Glory of the Son.

It’s not about me… it’s about Him.