Ephesians 1:11-12
Date: September 22nd, 2024
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Ephesians 1:11-12
Exegetical Outline
MIT: God has given us an inheritance so that we would be evidence of his glory.
11: Part of God’s predestining purpose is to give us an inheritance.
12: God gave those that hope in Christ this inheritance so that we would be evidence of his glory.
MIS: God predestined the faith necessary to and the reward for hoping in Jesus to glorify his glory.
Being predestined according to the purpose of God’s will and hoping in Christ are the same thing.
God has been generous with his gifts so that we will be the evidence of his glory.
Introduction:
Two weeks ago, we preached through Ephesians 1:5-6, which reads:
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.
We saw that God has ordained and order all of history and space-time to bring about his eternal purpose, namely, to adopt you, every follower of Jesus, into his family. We saw this great love story take place as our God literally moved heaven and earth to pay the great price of his only begotten Son to purchase you into his family.
In that sermon, we thought about what it means for God to predestine. We thought about how it demonstrates his love, in that, he set his affection on you from before the foundation of the world, and he superintended everything that has ever happened in order to orchestrate your rescue. That means the great things of history, the conquests of the Alexander the Great or the American revolution, and the insignificant things, the very flapping of a single butterflies wings in sub-Saharan Africa or the barking of your neighbor’s dog, were all ordained with a purpose to bring you to himself. This is the love that your Father has for you.
But we also wrestled with the hard things about predestination. If God ordains and predestines all things, has he ordained evil? And the answer is yes. He has ordained evil, but he is not responsible for evil. Isaiah 45:6-7 says:
Isaiah 45:6-7
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
7 I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the Lord, who does all these things.
All that happens, happens because God has ordained it. And yet, although he ordains that evil exist, he is not responsible for the evil actions of individuals.
In fact, he has ordained evil in order to demonstrate the greatest good possible, namely, the glory and beauty of his grace and kindness in Christ. We saw in Romans 9 that God has ordained evil so that we might understand his wrath and by understanding his wrath we might understand his grace. How can you understand the free gift of God’s kindness in Christ if you do not know the seriousness of sin and the danger of coming under the condemnation of an all-powerful God? Evil exists in the world so that we would know God’s grace and kindness in Christ.
I recap all of that for you in order to set up this week’s sermon. In order to give you a road map, I have been telling you that these first five sermons in Ephesians 1 were highlighting five things that God has done in his great work of salvation: he elected, predestined, redeemed, gave an inheritance, and guaranteed that inheritance by giving us his Holy Spirit. We have seen the first three, elected, predestined and redeemed, and this week we will see the inheritance.
But the problem with such a simple division of the text is that it could seem like each one of those actions are independent of one another. We talked about predestination two weeks ago and it really has nothing to do with the inheritance that we have been given this week. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you read carefully, the election described in verses 3 and 4 is present in verses 5 and 6, but instead of election it is called the purpose of his will. Election and predestination are present in verses 7 through 10 when Paul says that, through redemption, the Father has made known the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ. And this week, in verses 11 and 12, Paul again returns to election and predestination when he describes the inheritance that we have in Christ.
We did not say all that there was to say about these topics two weeks ago, moving on to other topics. Rather, all these aspects of salvation are crucial to understanding how the Father saves. We must build upon the precepts we have already learned in order to see the greater truths about salvation to be revealed. Let’s read Ephesians 1:11-12 and see how our faith and the Father’s sovereign predestination work together to accomplish his eternal purposes.
Ephesians 1:11-12
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.
Two weeks ago we saw that the Father’s predestination demonstrates his great love for his people and does not make him responsible for evil. This week, we will see that God’s sovereign ordering of history does not make us robots. The main idea of our sermon is this: God predestined the faith necessary to and the reward for hoping in Jesus in order to glorify himself. Meaning, the inheritance we have received and the faith necessary to receive it are the work of God the Father. He has given us this great inheritance in Christ by ordaining everything according to the counsel of his will so that those who hope in Christ become the evidence of his glory to the world.
To see this, we must first see the connection between verse 11 and 12. This connection is the first point in our sermon, and here it is: Being predestined according to the purpose of God’s will, in verse 11, and hoping in Christ, in verse 12, are the same thing. Meaning, the faith necessary to hope in Jesus has been predestined according to the will of the Father, and yet, we are still free in our decision to believe. To understand this, we have to understand what the Bible teaches about the freedom of the will. As we will see, the Bible does not prescribe libertarian freedom or absolute autonomy in decision making, rather, it teaches that we are free to act consistently with our nature. God’s work in salvation guarantees that we get a new nature, that we are those that he has declared that the Spirit will regenerate, and when we are regenerated, we are given a new nature, with new desires, and we freely choose to follow Christ.
Once we understand that God has given us the faith necessary to believe, we will then see that he also has given us a great inheritance. But the value of this inheritance is not merely in the extravagance of the gift, its real value is that God’s generosity is a demonstration of his glory. The second point of our sermon is that God has been generous with his gifts so that we will be the evidence of his glory to the world. Look at verse 12. It might read at first glance like Paul is saying that God has been generous to us so that we would praise his glory. But actually, the verse says that he has been generous to us so that we might be to the praise of his glory, that we might be evidence that he is a generous and benevolent Father. The glory of God is seen in the way that he has been gracious to an unworthy people. The less we deserve the inheritance he gives us, the more benevolent he appears. And in this, we become walking testimonies to his kindness and mercy.
God has ordered space and time to bring glory to himself. When God brings about his eternal purpose in history, we get to be the beneficiaries of it. He gives us the faith necessary to believe and the reward that comes along with the believing. In this, he is sovereign, we are blessed, and he glorifies himself through our happiness in him.
Being predestined according to the purpose of God’s will and hoping in Christ are the same thing.
Before we can understand how God glorifies himself by being generous to his people, we must first see an essential connection between verse 11 and 12 that is the foundation of these two verses. The first point of our sermon is that being someone that is predestined according to God’s eternal purpose is the same thing as being someone that hopes in Christ.
Look at verses 11 and 12 again.
Ephesians 1:11-12
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
If we simplify these verses, we could restate the core of Paul’s message like this. “In him we have obtained an inheritance so that we might be to the praise of his glory.” There is more to the verse, but those extras clarify and expound on the core of what Paul is saying.
In verse 11, the clarifying thing Paul says is that the means by which we have obtained our inheritance is the predestination that Paul has already explained from verse 5, namely that we were predestined to be adopted. Which makes sense, because an inheritance is only appropriate for sons. As we think about an inheritance, you don’t give an inheritance to your neighbor’s children. You give an inheritance to your own children. That we have been predestined for adoption is reason to receive the benefits of sonship.
The second clarifying phrase Paul uses is in verse 12. He expounds on who he is talking about. The one’s that have been predestined are also described as those that were the first to hope in Christ. Meaning, those that put their faith in Jesus.
So, the connection between verse 11 and verse 12 is group of people Paul is talking about. In verse 11, he is talking about those that have been predestined to be adopted according to the mystery of God’s eternal will. He describes that same group of people very differently in verse 12. In verse 12, they are described as those that put their faith in Jesus. So that, those who are predestined for adoption are also those that put their faith in Jesus.
Meaning, even the faith necessary to believe is the predestining work of God. It is does not first and foremost originate with men, but with God. Which is exactly what Paul explains in Ephesians chapter 2. Look with me at Ephesians Chapter 2, beginning in verse 8:
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Paul starts with this emphatic proposition: you have been saved by grace through faith. By grace, Paul means the free and unmerited kindness of God to regenerate you, and by faith, he means the free choice to trust in the saving work of Christ alone. It seems like both God and man are working together to accomplish the great work of salvation.
But that is immediately contradicted in the next sentence. “And this is not your doing: it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” What is a gift of God: the grace or the faith? Paul is saying both. The regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and the free choice to believe are both credited to God as his work, not ours. Otherwise, the faith necessary to be saved becomes a work by which we are able to boast. Therefore even the decision to trust in Jesus must originate in the Father in such a way that it can be credited to him and not to the one making the choice to believe in the Gospel.
This point Paul is making is so crucial, let me attempt to illustrate this with a thought experiment. Say there are two unsaved people in a room that have never heard the Gospel and have no prior experience with Christianity at all. For the sake of the argument, pretend that there is nothing in their past that might predispose either person to accepting the Gospel. One evangelist walks into the room and shares a three minute Gospel presentation with both lost people at the exact same time. At the end, the evangelist asks them to believe in Christ as their only hope in life and death and one person accepts Christ and the other does not. Can we say that the person that believed did the right thing?
Romans 16:25-27 says that God has commanded the world to believe in Christ. Listen to what Paul says:
Romans 16:25-27
25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Did you catch what Paul said at the end of verse 26? The eternal God has commanded the obedience of faith. The Gospel has gone out into the world through the writings of the prophets, through the preaching of the apostles, and most importantly in the person of Jesus Christ, and the world is commanded to believe. That they don’t is sin.
So can the person who accepted Christ in our thought experiment look at the person next to them that refuses to believe and boast that they made the right decision when this other person made the wrong decision? If faith is a work that we do, then the answer must be yes, but Paul is saying that faith is not a work that we do. So the answer must be no. Person A is no more to boast in their salvation than Person B has a right to complain that they are going to face the consequences of their sin.
Which should make us ask this crucial question: what role does the freedom of the will play in salvation? Are we robots or do we actually play a material role in our salvation? The answer is found in our definition of freedom. The Bible does agree that man is free, but not in the way most of us would expect.
Let me explain. As Americans that have grown up in Western culture, we have a concept of freedom known as libertarian freedom, also known as the freedom to choose otherwise. If you walk into Baskin Robbins, you think you have 31 choices, and actually, true libertarian freedom would mean that you have 62 choices. You could choose any one flavor or you could turn around and walk right back out the door and not choose any of the flavors. No matter what choice you made, you were always unconstrained. You could have chosen A or not A, B or not B. The common American conception of freedom is complete and total autonomy.
This is not the kind of freedom that Scripture teaches we have. Not even God has this kind of autonomy. God cannot choose to do things that are inconsistent with his nature. He could not stop existing or choose to do evil. He is the self-existent God. In him is light and there is no darkness.
What Scripture teaches is not that we are completely autonomous, but that we are free to act consistently with our natures. Our nature drive our desires and our desires drive our choices. If Baskin Robbins decided to make an ice cream out of mud and garbage, I guarantee no one would choose it. Not because it is not a choice but because mud and garbage are not food for humans. If we were earth worms, we might love it, but given that we are men, it is not consistent with our nature.
But we can actually go further than that. Not only does our nature constrain our choices, I can’t walk out into the parking lot and fly away like a bird, but our nature constrains our desires. I go into Baskin Robbins and I don’t like nuts in my ice cream, but I love caramel. All things being equal, my desires constrain my choices so that I would never choose rocky road and I always choose their Gold Medal Ribbon flavor.
So, if this is true, that nature constrains our desires which constrain our choices, what does Scripture say about the nature of mankind? In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul says:
Ephesians 2:1-3
2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
The natural state in which all men find themselves in after the Fall is that you are dead. Our sins and trespasses have killed us. We could never choose God because we don’t want God. God is life and life is antithetical to death. Who goes into a graveyard to offer the people in the grave a steak dinner? Or who offers them shelter or clothes? Who offers those that are physically dead the things that are necessary for life? No one. It is nonsensical. Dead people don’t need meals, or shelter, or clothing. They are dead.
The natural man’s nature is death. He can’t choose God, because he does not want God. In order to want God, we must have a new nature, and praise be to God that this is exactly what he has done. Look at verse 4 of Ephesians 2:
Ephesians 2:4-5
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul says it like this:
2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
The only way that anyone chooses God is if they get a new nature. The same creative work that brought everything into existence out of nothing is the same creative power that calls people out of the grave. The free gift of God is that even when we were stone cold dead, in the grave, with no desire for God or awareness of the peril of our sin, God, in his kindness called into the grave and said, “Lazarus, come forth.” He said, “Let there be life.” He reached into your lifeless chest, pulled out the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh.
And in that moment, that spiritual heart started pumping the lifeblood of faith through your cold, dead spirit and you came alive. With new eyes and new ears, you realized your great peril and you freely accepted the offer of escape. So that, you couldn’t possibly claim credit for your faith. It was a product of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit as the Father made you alive. There has never been a baby on this planet that chose to be born, and that first breath they take out of the womb is no more choice than their conception. Healthy babies that are alive breath, and healthy Christians that have just been born again believe. It all is the work of God, so that no one can boast.
This is essential to Paul’s point in Ephesians 1:11-12. The predestination of all of history to adopt you into his family and the faith necessary to effectuate salvation are the same event, one takes place in eternity and one takes place in time. All of it is the sovereign work of Almighty God.
God has been generous with his gifts so that we will be the evidence of his glory.
Which brings us to the core of what Paul is saying in these verses. God has done it all. He made the choice from before time began, he ordered all of time and space to bring you to himself, he gave you the faith necessary to trust in the promise that he made in his Son, and he gave you the reward that such a righteous choice deserves.
Why? What was God attempting to accomplish with such unwarranted generosity? The second point of our sermon answers this question: God has been generous with his gifts so that we will be the evidence of his glory to the world.
Let’s reread the passage one more time, but this, focus on the core of Paul’s message.
Ephesians 1:11-12
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.
The core of what Paul is communicating is this: In him, we have obtained an inheritance, so that we might be to the praise of his glory.
Why does God save? Why has he gone to such great lengths at such great cost to himself to rescue rebellious sinners that wouldn’t have chosen him if we had given them the choice? Why did he choose us when we refused to choose him?
Three times in eleven verses Paul uses this all important phrase, “To the praise of his glory.” God’s benevolent, self-sacrificial, loving, generous action is seen for all splendor and magnificence in contrast to the absolute unworthiness of the recipients of his kindness. The more unworthy we are of receiving his kindness the more beneficent he is seen to be when he gives it. You are a living, breathing, walking testimony to the benevolence of your king because you have received such an inheritance in Christ that you so utterly do not deserve it can only testify to the glory of the great giver of the gift.
Isn’t that amazing? By merely existing and being the recipient of his kindness, you testify to the fact that he is good. You are evidence of his glory.
So, I think the appropriate question to ask is how do we maximize the opportunity to give evidence to and demonstrate the goodness of God’s glory in our lives? If, from eternity past, God’s great plan has been to glorify himself by being kind to those that do not deserve it, and you are one of the objects of his grace, doesn’t it become incumbent upon you to make the most of the opportunity he has given you to glorify him?
Let me give you three ways to maximize the opportunity to demonstrate the glory of God in your life.
First, enjoy the inheritance you have received in Christ. The Westminster Shorter Catechism poses its first question: What is the chief end of man? The answer given is: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. John Piper modifies the answer by saying the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
If we are to evidence the kindness of the Father, one way that we can do that is by enjoying his kindness. Loving the giver of the gift by loving this gift he has given us. And what is the gift that the Father has given. 1 John 4:16 says:
1 John 4:16
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
Second, grow in personal holiness. 1 Peter 1:14-16:
1 Peter 1:14-16
14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
When we grow in holiness, we demonstrate the holiness of God. He makes us to stand and to struggle in this life to progress in holiness, and one day, he will perfect our holiness in glory. While we are here, as we struggle to grow in holiness, we show that this life is temporary and its pleasures are fleeting. There is something greater to live for in eternity that changes the way we live today. We show the glory of his grace when we live now with the holiness that will be required in the age to come.
Third, and finally, love his people. 1 John 3:16 says,
1 John 3:16
14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.
We demonstrate that our God is a giver of life when we love the brothers and sisters in the Church. The love we have for one another is not natural. There are a lot of unlovable people in the Church. Whenever we love God’s people, because God has loved us, we demonstrate that our God waters deserts, that he brings unity among disunity, that he really can overcome the sinfulness of men and transform a people.
God has been kind to you in order to make out of you an example of his grace. You are his workmanship. Evidence that he is a God that is kind and benevolent. His great purpose in us and our great purpose for our lives is to bring him as much attention as possible. Demonstrate with the affections of your life and the way that you live in this world that there is something greater to be treasured than what this world has to offer.