Ephesians 1:5-6
Date: August 25th, 2024
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Ephesians 1:5-6
Exegetical Outline
MIT: God predestined history according to his sovereign choice so that his people would be united to Christ through adoption and have reason to praise his glorious grace demonstrated in Christ.
5a: God’s loving choice predestined his people to be adopted in Christ, making them sons.
5b: God’s electing choice is the foundation of his ordering of history.
6: So that, we might praise his unmerited kindness which we receive in Christ.
Homiletical Outline
MIS: Predestination secures God’s loving choice to unite his people to Christ in the Church.
Predestination is an act of divine love to adopt you through Christ.
Predestination is a display of his glorious grace to stoke the affection of his people.
Introduction:
Ephesians 1:3-6
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 to himself 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.
I want you to see all of Ephesians 1:3-14 as a unit, but our sermon will focus on verses 5 and 6. God has done five things in his great work of salvation: he has chosen us to be his people; he has predestined all of history to bring about his choice; he has redeemed us, forgiving our sins at the cost of his only begotten Son; he has promised us a future inheritance in the kingdom of God; and he has given us his own Spirit as a seal and guarantee of that inheritance until the future day when we can lay hold of his promise in Christ. Two weeks ago, we saw clearly that Ephesians is not merely interested in the fact that God has saved us from sin, but also that he has saved us for the purpose of being united to Christ in the Church. So Paul begins this first Chapter by explaining God’s cosmic and timeless work of salvation so that we can contextualize the importance of our union to Christ in the Church. The purpose of God’s creative work in this world is ultimately to unite his people to his Son in the eternal reality that is the Church. That is a massive, profound, paradigm shifting truth.
Last week, we saw the first step in God’s plan of salvation, namely, that God made a choice before time began. That choice was his and his alone. We don’t know why he made it, only that because he did make it. That choice, Paul says, was to unite his people to Christ and make them holy and blameless. He declared the end from the beginning and chose to be kind to his people.
This week, we see the second thing that God did in the great work of salvation. Now, it is not as if these actually happened in sequence, but because God made the choice he made, in the same action, he ordered history to bring it about. When an all-powerful, all-knowing being that exists everywhere and in every time at the same time makes any decision, it becomes reality. Otherwise he is not all-powerful and all-knowing and everywhere at all times. If his decisions are not definitive, he is not God. The choice that God made in verse 4 to unite his people to his Son must mean that, in the same moment, he ordered all of time and space to bring about his purpose.
This is the topic of our sermon today. What we see in Ephesians 1:5-6 is this: Predestination secures God’s loving choice to unite his people to Christ in the Church. What does it mean for God to predestine us for adoption to himself as sons? It means that in the same moment he chose us, he ordered all of history to bring about his will.
Our sermon will have two points. First, predestination is an act of divine love to adopt you through Christ. The measure of God’s love for you is that he wrote the story of time in order to adopt you to himself. If you are in Christ, all of history is a divine love story with you as the target of God’s affection. Now some of us might squirm at that idea because it sounds to man-centered, but this is Paul’s point in verse 5. God sovereignly chose you and predestined all of history in order to bring about the sacrifice of his only begotten Son so that he might adopt you to himself as a son or daughter. Can you even begin to process the scandal of such a love? We who treasure the glory and supremacy of God sometimes move to quickly past his love. You, Christian, are a part of a cosmic love story. God paid an infinite price to show his love and affection for you, and we want to think about the role God’s predestination plays in the demonstration of his love to you.
Then we can ask the question, why would God do such a thing? Yes he loves us, but is there a greater purpose to this adoption? Not only does God want you to know that he loves you, but he wants you to see something important. The second point of our sermon is that predestination is the display of God’s glorious grace to stoke the affection of his people. God has shown the immensity of his love for you so that you might appreciate the beauty of his grace. The beauty of the story he is weaving through Creation as he superintends time and space is to woo your heart to see and appreciate his kindness, to see his majesty, to know him for the loving and caring God that he is. In essence, God made you the object of his love in order to glorify himself.
As we saw last week, and as we will continue to see in the weeks ahead, God’s great plan for salvation is the foundation for the praises of his people. We bless him because he has blessed us. This week we focus on the second spiritual blessing with which God has blessed us. Predestination secures in time God’s eternal, loving choice to unite his people to Christ in the Church.
Predestination is an act of divine love to adopt you through Christ.
Let’s think more deeply about this together and consider our first point: Predestination is an act of divine love to adopt you through Christ. Read verse 5 with me one more time:
Ephesians 1:5
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
What is predestination? How does it work? Predestination is God’s sovereign ordering of history to bring about his elective choice. There is no greater place in Scripture to see this than the passage we read for our Call to Worship this morning. Look at Isaiah 46:8-11:
Isaiah 46:8-11
8 “Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
11 calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.
What does this passage say about God? First, it says that he is unique. Look at verse 9, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.” This could not be a more clear declaration of the singularity of God. He is in a class of his own. There are no other Gods like him. There is no one that can challenge him. He is so unique that every attempt to describe him fails. He is God and there is no other.
But Isaiah goes on to explain how we experience his uniqueness. Look at verse 10 it says: “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.” One of the things that makes God, God, is that he ordains all of history. He is not observing history. He is not wringing his hands wondering how it will turn out. He has a purpose and he will accomplish it. Verse 11 says, “I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.” God’s predestination of history is total and complete. Charles Spurgeon said:
Charles Spurgeon
“I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of . . . leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.”
Everything that happens is a product of God’s eternal and timeless choice, and nothing happens in contradiction to his will. This is what Paul means by predestination. God is in control because he is God, and he does whatever he pleases.
Therefore, if God predestines in such a way that he declares the end from the beginning, then he is providentially in control of Creation and he is providentially in control of history. He has made us, the Church, the object of his divine affection. He has declared every decision of kings, every law that was passed, every judgment that was made, every cause in the long line of causes that led Christ to the cross and led you to the Gospel. What Paul is saying in verse 5 of Ephesians 1 is that God cared so much about you that the turn of every leaf, the cast of every die, the turning of every atom was designed to bring you to himself, to make you part of his family. He chose you and declared that the river of history would bring you to himself to be adopted into his family and to make you his child.
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting across the table in my office from a guy that was lost. I was sharing the Gospel with him and trying to explain this to him. That God loved him so much, that he gave the most valuable thing inside or outside this universe, his only begotten Son, to save him from his sin, and I said, “Isn’t it amazing that God loves you that much!” And he said, no one could ever love me that much. There is nothing in me worth loving. And I said, “God doesn’t love you because you’re lovely. God loves you simply because he chose to love you.” And he said, “No Sam you don’t understand. I am too evil for God to love me.” And as we talked it became very clear to me that this actually hated himself. It was a really sad conversation, because the more I tried to encourage him with the Gospel, the harder and more determined he became that no one could love him. There was nothing I could do to change his mind because if he couldn’t love himself he was certain no one else could.
Brothers and sisters, the kind of love we are talking about does not make sense to this world, because it does not originate in this world. Before this world was created, God set an eternal affection upon you. That kind of love is incomprehensible because it is wholly different than anything we can experience apart from God. But my lost friend is not the only one that I have encountered that believed they were unlovable. I have met Christians that struggle to believe that God loves them unconditionally. They would never say that out loud, but they live it with their lives. They are unwilling to forgive themselves when they sin and keep beating themselves up with guilt. They expect the worst in every situation and look at the world with distrust and pessimism, doubting that anything is ever as good as it seems or will ever go their way. They are constantly worried what everyone thinks about them and, *gasp*, what the pastor thinks about them because they have never been taught what God thinks about them.
This is what I would say to that Christian. Perhaps you struggle to live in the reality that God loves you the way Paul is describing in Ephesians because your understanding of God is too small. Because you have neglected the doctrine of election and predestination. Those words are scary and they raise more problems than they are worth. It is time to put that fear aside and wrestle with these doctrines, because your God loves you. He has revealed these truths to you so that you will know the cosmic, reality defining, universe crafting, dust mote ordaining love with which he has loved you.
Predestination is a display of his glorious grace to stoke the affection of his people.
Which brings us to the second point of our sermon. If God stopped at merely predestining all of history to demonstrate his love for you then he would be at risk of idolatry. Meaning, that would make the story of all stories about man and not about God. So Paul goes on in verse 6 to teach us that God not only predestined you for adoption, but he did it for a purpose. Predestination has a greater purpose. The second point of our sermon is this: Predestination is a display of his glorious grace to stoke the affection of his people. Let’s read Ephesians 1:5-6 to see it all, but our point comes from verse 6:
Ephesians 1:5-6
In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself 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.
God chose to predestine all of history so that he might put on display his glorious grace to those that are in the Beloved, that is, those that are in the body of Christ.
To see this clearly, I want to bring another very important passage to bear on our conversation about Ephesians 1:6, and I want to ask a very challenging question. If it is true that Scripture teaches that God has ordained all things, how then is God not responsible for evil? By answering this question, we will see the glory of God’s grace revealed in predestination.
Turn with me to Romans 9:6-24. Let’s read it together:
Romans 9:6-24
6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
Now, it is not possible for me to unpack all of this text and it is not actually my goal. My goal is to get you to see the majesty of God’s kindness toward you in predestination. We can accomplish this by seeing the shape of his argument in Romans 9 even if we do not unpack every detail.
In Romans 9, Paul is dealing with a problem: Israel, as a nation, rejected the Messiah, and he is dealing with a legitimate question: has God failed to accomplish his purpose of salvation if the people he has chosen did not accept the Messiah? And his answer is a resounding “No! God has not failed.”
In verses 6-13, he says the word of God has not failed because not all of Israel is Israel. We know this to be true, because not all of Abraham’s children were party to the promise. Isaac was chosen, Ishmael was not. We also see this in starker contrast with the next generation. Isaac’s twin sons, Esau and Jacob, born from the same woman in the same conception, were not both party to the promises. Before either were born or had done anything good or evil, Paul reminds us that God chose Jacob over Esau.
And he gets to verse 14 and he asks the question that we all want to ask: how is that fair? How is God not unjust to make such a decision before either one of them had an opportunity to show their merits? Is God unjust? And Paul says “No! God is not unjust because God is free.” His will is not dependent on human will or human desires. He decides to whom he will be merciful because he is free. And when he chooses to not show mercy to those that do not deserve it, it is always for a purpose.
The historical example of this is Pharaoh. God told Moses in Exodus 4:21, before Moses ever began the journey back to Egypt, that he would purposefully harden Pharaoh’s heart. He raised Pharaoh up to oppress his people, to resist the Lord 9 times, in order that on the tenth plague his people might understand the power of their God.
And if you begin to feel a question welling up in your heart, you are in good company, because Paul asks it for you. In verse 19, Paul says, “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’” And the correct answer is no one. He is God. If he declares it to be, it will be. So how is that fair? How is God not responsible for the evil that is present in the world?
The answer Paul gives is not what you would expect. Look at verse 20:
Romans 9:20
20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
Paul responds with two very important points. The first point is this: you are asking the wrong question because you have the wrong perspective. The question is not: how is fair that every single person does not receive mercy? That is a man centered question. The question should be: how is it fair that the perfect man, that only deserved a reward for his righteousness, would have to sacrifice himself that even one sinner might be saved? We need to change our perspective about how the universe works.
God is free to be merciful or compassionate because we all deserve condemnation. There is only one person that has ever deserved God’s kindness and he gave up his right to all that he deserved when he hung on a cross for you and for me. It should not be shocking to us that God condemns sinners to hell, it should be shocking that even one sinner finds grace. God is already justified to judge guilty sinners and he became justified to show mercy to sinners when Christ paid the due penalty for their sins, so that God is both the just and the justifier of the one that has faith in Jesus.
The second point Paul makes that is so helpful is that nothing God does is without purpose. God has a purpose for evil. His purpose is to make known his gracious love to the vessels mercy by pouring out his judgment on the vessels of wrath.
I love to bake: bread, cookies, cakes, all kinds of stuff. When baking a cake, the best part of any cake is the frosting. Frosting is not complicated. It is some kind of fat and some kind of sugar that has been whipped together to add sweetness to the sponge of the cake. Many of us have had a piece of cake that was all sweetness. I have put more than one piece of cake down after the first bite because it is just too sweet to enjoy. The frosting overpowers everything else and the only person that enjoys that cake are 5-7 year olds that are already so hyped up on sugar that they can’t taste anything anyway. Frosting is made up predominately of fat and sugar, but a frosting that is only made up of fat and sugar is practically inedible.
So, when making a good frosting, I always add two things that make the frosting amazing: salt and acid. Contrary to popular belief, salt does not add flavor, it brings out the complexity of the flavors that are already there and allows your tastebuds to distinguish them. The acid can take many forms. It could be something fermented like cream cheese or something like citric acid. A little bit goes a long way, but the sour flavor of the acid cuts through the sweetness and balances the flavors. In essence, the briny flavor of salt and the sour flavor of acid are essential to making a cake taste sweet.
What Paul is saying in Romans 9 is that the Creator of the universe loved you enough to plan for evil in the world so that he would be able to show you what you are being saved from. The presence of evil in the world allows you to actually taste his grace and savor his kindness.
Jonathan Edwards explains this in an essay he wrote:
Jonathan Edwards, “Dissertation Concerning the Divine Decrees in General and Election in Particular”
It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all; for then the effulgence would not answer the reality. For the same reason it is not proper that one should be manifested exceedingly, and another but very little. It is highly proper that the effulgent glory of God should answer his real excellency; that the splendour should be answerable to the real and essential glory, for the same reason that it is proper and excellent for God to glorify himself at all.
Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from.
What Edwards is saying is that the beams of God’s glory in the world must be seen in proportion to one another. We cannot magnify his love to the exclusion of his wrath. In fact, we cannot actually understand his love apart from his wrath. The manifestation of God’s grace is only possible against the contrast of evil and God’s hatred of it.
Why does evil exist in the world? Because God ordained it, but not in such a way that he is responsible for the evil. Evil is always done by those that want to do evil, and God is always just to punish evildoers. But God ordains evil so that his grace and mercy can be known by those that he loves.
That was a lot. I want everyone to take a mental breath and let all of that process for just a moment. When I say God loves you, all that we have discussed about predestination should inform what that phrase means in your mind. And as you think about that, we should ask the question, what do I do with that? Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:6. Look at it one more time. God has done all of this work in predestination:
Ephesians 1:6
6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
What do you do with predestination? You praise his glorious grace! Not just that he saved you from your own love for sin, but that he united you to Christ in the Church. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have found God’s purpose for you in this life. You have found the place where you are supposed to be, with God’s people, in God’s house, singing the excellencies of him who knew no sin but became sin for many. The glorious grace of God that is revealed in the doctrine of divine election and predestination is the blessing to be admired. God has been so kind to you, he has shown you a cosmic love, so love him in return.
Conclusion
As we conclude, I want to return to an idea from Romans 9. In verse 11, Paul said
Romans 9:11-13
11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
In a sermon about predestination, there is danger on all sides. When speaking about the mystery of God’s work in salvation, we could speak to confidently about what he has revealed, or on the other side, we could minimize the parts that we don’t like and soften the edges that Scripture makes clear. We need to preserve the tension that exists in God’s word, so let me attempt to do that as we close.
Romans 9 makes it clear. God has so ordained history that there are Jacob’s and there are Esau’s in this world. In fact, in all the ways that we could classify human beings, this is the only classification that makes sense. God has foreordained those that will be shown mercy and grace and God has foreordained those that he will not save.
As we have seen in our message this morning, there is great joy in this truth. The foundation of the worship of God’s Church and our ability to appreciate the grace he has shown us in Christ are dependent on us understanding this reality.
However, there is also great sorrow in this truth. Every single person in this room knows someone that is not a follower of Jesus, and that person could be incredibly dear to us. It could be a friend or a co-worker. It could be a mom or a dad. It could be a child. We feel that ache in our heart for them to know the love that we have found and so the doctrine of predestination can seem to cut us instead of bringing us joy.
But it should not. While the Scriptures are clear, there are Jacob’s and there are Esau’s. Scripture is also clear that only God knows. We do not know who is and who is not elect. There is still hope for your loved one to find God’s kindness.
The predestining election of God should not make you throw your hands up in despair, it should light a fire in your heart to be the means by which God saves. In the light of the reality that God has foreordained all things, what hope do the lost have? They have you. They have the Church that carries the message of Christ Jesus. Give them the Gospel because as you know, it is their only hope.
Let’s pray.