Supporting Texts: Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 44:22; Matthew 26:28; John 8:34; Romans 5:1, 6:23; 1 Corinthians 1:30; Colossians 1:13; Hebrews 10: 10; 1 Peter 1:18-19; Revelation 5:8-10.
What a privilege it is to be able to study God’s Word together as a congregation. These are the very words of God that He designed for us to know and understand. Far from hiding His truth, God has clearly and transparently outlined His great blessings for our lives, both in the present and for the future. We know that He has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing through our Lord Jesus Christ. None of God’s rich treasures are withheld from those who have chosen to follow Him.
Some of the earliest ancient manuscripts of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians omit the name of the destination in verse one. There is just a space in the text. It reads, “To the saints who are (blank) and who are faithful…” That is really not surprising. Ephesus was a large city and a center of commerce for the entire region. It makes sense that Paul intended for this letter to be read in churches throughout the Roman Empire. Through God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, this small epistle to the Ephesians has traveled around the world, has been translated into hundreds of languages, and blessed the lives of Christians across the centuries and throughout the world. Only our Lord knows how many Christians, like those of us gathered here today, have been blessed to study the words we will discover. Through the Spirit, they will bless us as they have richly blessed others.
The Apostle Paul wrote thirteen epistles that have from the beginning of the Christian era been part of the New Testament canon and all have been inspired by God. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians joins Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, in a grouping known as Paul’s prison epistles. That is, Paul wrote these epistles to these churches and Philemon after being arrested in Jerusalem and eventually to be transported to Rome to stand before the Roman emperor for judgment. While imprisoned, Paul was chained to at least one Roman soldier at all times which ensured he was adequately guarded. Let me ask you a question. If you were in prison and chained to a guard, and you decided to write a letter to your friends at church, what would you write about? Would you plead with fellow Christians to send an attorney to help with your legal defense? Would you ask for money? Would you complain about your circumstances? Would you express your concern about why God had allowed you to be in prison even though you were innocent?
The apostle does none of that. I am certain that, just like you and I would, he found the removal of his freedom a great burden. Yet there were no complaints. Instead, as he opened his correspondence with these believers in Christ, he found himself worshiping and praising God for all His blessings and benefits and he called upon Christians to join him in worship. Look at what he has praised the Lord for in the first six verses. He worshiped the Lord for His unparalleled blessings, His choosing of the believers before the foundation of the world, and he praised the Lord for adopting Christians as sons and daughters and placing all of us together into His Beloved.
What is even more amazing is that he was not finished. His worship continued and he reflected on more of God’s wonderful blessings, freely given to each individual Christian at the moment of their receiving Christ into their lives. Unfolding before us today will be the great truth of redemption, the amazing blessing of God’s complete forgiveness, and His marvelous illumination of His will about what will happen in the future. Christian, these treasures belong to you, and they show you that you matter to the awesome and mighty God who created this universe. You are so important to the Lord that He sent His One and only Son to die a cruel and ugly death on a rugged cross so that you could be eternally redeemed. We could not help ourselves, but the Lord stepped in and paid the price to grant you, His salvation. We begin our study of the riches of His grace by looking at our redemption through His blood.
REDEMPTION THROUGH HIS BLOOD. Ephesians 1:6-7a
Five New Testament Words of Salvation. By 323 BC., Alexander had conquered Greece, the Persian Empire, Egypt and parts of India. In His great wisdom, God used Alexander’s conquests to establish Alexander’s Greek language as the trade language, through the years of the Empire of Greece and on into the Roman Empire. Greek words became woven into the fabric of Roman culture, and most people spoke and understood Greek. It became the language of the courtroom and many legal words had their basis in Greek. The Greek language became the language of the New Testament because of its nearly universal usage. So, there are important Greek words that help to frame New Testament theology, especially the Bible’s teaching on salvation. Please allow me to give you some examples.
Dikaioō refers to the legal acquittal of a charge and is used theologically to speak of a sinner’s being vindicated, justified, and declared righteous before God. It is used in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Aphiemi basically means to “send away” and is used to indicate the legal repayment or cancellation of a debt in the granting of a pardon. It is used here of God’s forgiveness of sin. Huiothesia referred to the legal process of adopting a child and is used in verse five by Paul to represent the believer’s adoption into God’s family.
Katallasō meant to legally reconcile two disputing parties in court and in the New Testament is used to indicate spiritual purchase or redemption. It is used in Second Corinthians 5:20, “Be reconciled to God.” “Redemption” in verse seven, comes from the word lutroō and it means to release from captivity. This word is used to refer to paying a ransom in order to release a person from bondage, especially that of slavery. During the days of the Roman Empire there were about six million slaves and the buying and selling of slaves was a major business. If a person wanted to free a loved one or a friend who was a slave, he would buy that slave for himself and then grant freedom to the slave, testifying to the deliverance by a written certificate. This is precisely the idea carried in the New Testament usage of the term “redemption,” to represent the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus paid the redemption price to buy for Himself fallen mankind and set them free from their sin. Every person is a slave to sin for which death is the necessary consequence. The Scripture teaches, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
The Redeemer. Notice carefully that it is “In Him we have redemption through His blood.” It is because believers are placed in Christ that we are redeemed. The Bible says, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Because the Christian has believed in Jesus Christ and received Him as Redeemer, they are redeemed and has “rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). And because we are in the Beloved, we too, are the beloved of God.
Did you notice the price of our redemption? The price, we are told, is “through His blood.” It cost the blood of the Son of God to purchase men and women back from the slave market of sin. “Through His blood” is a metonym for death. A metonym is one word that is used as a substitute for another. In this case, “blood” is used as a substitute for death, which is the penalty and price for sin. By shedding His blood, Jesus was the substitute for our death. Jesus made the payment for the sin that would have otherwise condemned all of us to death and hell. That is exactly what we find in Hebrews 10:10, “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
The Redeemed. Who, then, are the redeemed? This refers back to verse one, “to the saints;” the redeemed are the saints, and they are the ones who have believed in Jesus. The redemption of every believer required the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and is given to each one by God’s grace. Before being redeemed, we find that we “were dead in our trespasses and sins” and we “walked according to the course of this world” that is, “according to the prince and power of the air.” We were “without God” and “without hope.” The fourth chapter of Ephesians tells us that we walked according to the futility of our mind with darkened understanding and were excluded from the life of God. This is the kind of people God chose to redeem by His grace.
Let me illustrate this spiritual blessing of redemption. A small boy lived near the shore of a great lake, and he loved the water and sailing. So deep was his fascination that he, with his father’s help, spent months building a beautiful model boat, which, when finished, he brought to the water’s edge to sail. One day, as he watched his boat sail, a sudden gust of wind caught the tiny boat and carried it far out into the lake and out of sight. Utterly distraught, the boy returned home inconsolable. Day after day he would walk the shores of the lake in search of his treasure, but always returned without it. Then, one day, as he walked through town, he saw his beautiful boat in a store window. He approached the proprietor and announced his ownership, only to be told that the boat was not his, because the owner had paid a local fisherman good money for the boat. If the boy wanted the boat, he would have to pay the price. And so, the boy set himself to work, doing anything and everything until finally he returned to the store with the money. At last, holding his precious boat in his arms, he said with great joy, “You are twice mine now – because I made you and because I bought you.” Exactly! Redemption is the payment of a price or ransom. The price was Christ’s own blood and the object was our souls. All humanity was in the slave market of sin and powerless to affect self-deliverance, but Christ has purchased the redeemed with the infinite price of His sacrifice.
FORGIVENESS OF OUR TRESPASSES. Ephesians 1:7b-8a
Complete Forgiveness in Christ. As a consequence of the redemption found in Jesus, when a man or woman, boy or girl receives Christ into their lives as Savior, they are completely forgiven of all their sins. As we discovered earlier, “forgiveness” is a translation of aphiemi, which simply means to “send away.” The Bible has a beautiful picture of God’s forgiveness. This year, on October 2, the Jewish people will celebrate the Day of Atonement, which they call Yom Kippur. In Old Testament times, this was a sacred and holy day, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. On that day, when it came to the sacrifice for the nation’s sin, two young goats were selected for sacrifice. By lot, one was selected, and set aside for the blood sacrifice. The High Priest sprinkled the blood of that goat on the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies, as a covering for the sins of the people, for, without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. But what happened to the second goat? After sprinkling the blood of the first goat on the Mercy Seat, the High Priest would return to the door of the Tabernacle, lay his hands on the head of that goat, and audibly confess all of Israel’s sins. Then, he sent the goat away. This sending away of the goat symbolized the complete removal of sin. The goat would be led to the wilderness and released, never to be seen again. This did not actually remove the people’s sins, but it was a picture of what Christ would do through the shedding of His own blood.
God promised, that He would completely forgive. In Isaiah God said, “I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, and your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22). In the book of Psalms we read, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). In Christ, God has completely removed the sins of every Christian.
According to the Riches of God’s Grace. This forgiveness is according to the riches of God’s grace. What does “according to” mean? Let me see if I can illustrate it this way. Right now, Elon Musk is one of the world’s richest people. Suppose I met him and was able to tell him that I had a very important church project that would be of great benefit for my community and I needed $25,000 for it. If Mr. Musk took out his checkbook and wrote a check for $25.00, that amount would be out of his riches. But if he wrote a check for $50,000, that would be according to his riches. Out of the infinite wealth of God’s grace, He has forgiven all of our sins.
It is important to ask, when did God do this? We sometimes forget that God looked down the long ages of time even before the earth’s creation and placed the sins of the redeemed on the head of Jesus Christ, His Son, who took them an eternal distance away, never to be seen again. We do not deserve God’s forgiveness but it is full and complete. In Christ our sins, past, present, and future, are all forgiven.
Our Forgiveness Granted in Super-Abundance. In my Bible verse eight says, “which He lavished on us.” In this Paul was speaking of God’s grace. “Lavished” in the original language means, given in super-abundance. God did not just give a little grace – He gave us the grace of His forgiveness in infinite super-abundance. We are forgiven now and we are forgiven for eternity.
At the end of World War II, twenty-four Nazi war criminals were put on trial. Albert Speer was the only one to admit his guilt. For thirty-five years after the trial, Speer had accepted complete responsibility for his crime. His writings are filled with contrition and warning others to avoid his moral sin. He desperately sought forgiveness. All to no avail. He never applied the truth of God’s forgiveness through Christ to himself. He died miserable and unforgiven. We must remember the words of Jesus, “This is the blood of My covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). Are your sins forgiven?
THE MYSTERY OF HIS WILL. Ephesians 1:8b-10
The Mystery Now Revealed. Paul now turned his attention to the revelation of God’s plan and how it centers on the Lord Jesus. Through His Word, God has given us wisdom and insight. Wisdom can be defined as the knowledge which sees into the heart of things and which knows them as they really are. Insight can be defined as the understanding and discernment that leads to right action. It requires the wisdom and insight given by the Holy Spirit through the study of God’s Word to understand His mystery. This mystery was hidden in the past but is now revealed in Jesus Christ. This secret was kept from eternity past in God’s mind. It was His plan that was carried out in Christ. This plan was to redeem and forgive. This was a mystery, not because it was incomprehensible, but because it was completely undiscoverable by human reason. It could only be known by divine revelation.
God’s Purpose in Christ. This divine revelation is God’s purpose in history – to put all things under one head – that is the Lord Jesus. Ultimately all history will converge on one Person and all creation will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. In verse ten, the “administration” or “dispensation” refers to the coronation of Christ as King of kings, thus becoming the head or ruler of all things. This will take place when our Lord ascends to His throne as King during the Millennial Kingdom.
All Things Will Be Summed Up in Christ. When Jesus reigns, all authority and all government rule will come from Him because all things in heaven and on the earth will be summed up in Him. The Lord Jesus Christ is the center of all things. Through His selfless sacrifice, believers have experienced the abundance of God’s grace in redemption and forgiveness. Through God’s wisdom and insight, He has made known to Him what was a secret plan, that when all things are ready according to God’s purpose He will unite in His dear Son Jesus all things in heaven and on earth. So the Lord Jesus is Himself the provision of redemption, forgiveness and the One in whom God unites all things in heaven and on earth.
These are truly monumental blessings. God sent His Son to provide the means of our eternal redemption, the everlasting forgiveness of sins and granted us wisdom and insight so that we would have the joy of knowing that, despite the current grave difficulties of our world, ultimately, all things will center on Christ and He will rule in His righteousness and peace. And, as the Apostle Paul leads us, we, too, should praise the Lord for the glory of His grace. We should worship Him because these blessings are the riches of His grace which He has applied to us in super-abundance.
The Lord Jesus offers all of these blessings to anyone who will come by faith to trust in Him. His gracious granting of redemption and forgiveness are parts of the gospel message that the Lord has been sending to the ends of the earth. Anyone who receives Jesus as Savior will receive through Him eternal life and eternal blessings. If you have never called upon the Name of the Lord, please allow me to urge you to do that right now.
