Ephesians Series

 by Athol Walter

Part 9 - Ephesians 1:6&7

One of the Family

As we move on to verse six of this first chapter of Ephesians, we come to the conclusion of the first section of the chapter which has been dealing with the "Will of The Father". And what wondrous things have been revealed to us as we have explored something of what Paul has said about that Will. the end of this section is marked by the phrase "To the praise of the glory of His grace", and as I noted in an earlier study, similar words come in verse 12 - "That we should be to the praise of his glory", where again it marks the transition into the third section dealing with the "Witness of the Spirit". The second section, beginning at verse 7, deals with the "Work of the Son".

But first we must look at verse 6. this verse reminds us (and I think we need reminding often) that all the wonderful things that we have read in the proceeding verses have been done not so much for us but rather to the praise of His grace. Part of our lot as humans is that we are self-centred to say the least. we tend to relate everything to ourselves in some way or another. I sometimes wonder if this trait is a corruption of some lovely characteristic that God intended for His unfallen people, or is it just something that has come about as a result of dam's sin and now causes us all sorts of problems.

Well, I'm not sure about that but I mention it here to make the point that contrary to what we ay have been taught and what we may naturally like to think, all the great acts of God and the conflict of the ages that has been raging since the overthrow of the world, really is not just for our benefit, nor is it just on our behalf. We certainly are players in the great drama but there is much more going on than just our salvation, as wondrous as that is. I think it is necessary and good for our spiritual health, to know and be reminded on a regular basis, that all of God's great work is not for our glory, but ultimately for His glory.

When everything is said and done, it is God's glory, position, authority, prestige and power that has been challenged and attacked by the work of Satan. So when the final victory is brought about - and there is no doubt that it will be, then God will be seen to have been vindicated in every way and we will then understand in a way that is impossible for us now, just how it has all been to the praise of the glory of His grace.

Yet all that makes it even more remarkable and marvellous that, in His grace, He has found a place for us, who, as chapter 2 tells us, were without hope, without any place and even without God. Wondrous grace indeed.

The next part of the verse says: "Wherein (literally, in which) he hath made us accepted in the Beloved." Accepted in the Beloved! What a lovely statement. I love the sound of the words and the way they flow. They are very euphonious to my ear (now there's a word for you to look up). But even more wonderful than the sound of the words is the truth they convey. Accepted in the Beloved. Surely this is the very crux of the Gospel, no matter what aspect of the Gospel you may be considering.

In an earlier study, I pointed out how often words such as "in Christ" or "in Him", or some such, occur throughout these verses and I make no apology for emphasising the point again. Just as in these first 6 verses alone we have "in Christ Jesus"; "in Christ"; "in Him"; "by Jesus Christ" and "accepted in the Beloved". And even though the subject changes at verse 7 from the "Will of the Father" to the "Work of the Son" we find that this theme of "in Christ" continues. More on that later.

In Matthew's Gospel there are three times when Christ is referred to as the Beloved Son and I think it is helpful to set them before you.

"And lo a voice from heaven saying , This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". (Matt. 3:17)

Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles". (Matt12;18. Please read context as well.)

"While he yet spake, behold, a white cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice from out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." (Matt. 17:5)

I will eave you to contemplate those verses at your leisure. Coming back to Ephesians, I want you to notice that in Colossians, which in many ways parallels Ephesians, we do not find the words "the Beloved". But don't worry, for the thought is there in chapter 1:13, where we read "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son."  I am a little sorry that the Authorised Version does not translate these verses literally for what Paul wrote was this "and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." And there are some more beautiful words - the Son of his love.

I noted earlier that the word "wherein" in verse 6 is literally "in which" in the Greek. An English reader might wonder for a moment just what the word "which" refers to but there is no doubt in the Greek. Nouns, adjectives etc. in Greek have gender and the gender of the word "which" is feminine. The word "grace" is also feminine and this fact ties the two words together. It is in the grace of the Father that we have been made accepted in the Beloved.

I want to look just a little more deeply at this sentence for there is a rich truth embedded in it. While we read in English, "Wherein he has made us accepted in the Beloved", a believer in the Ephesian assembly at the time Paul sent this letter to them would have read "wherein he has greatly graced us in the Beloved".

The Greek word translated "made us accepted" occurs in the New Testament only one other time and it comes in Luke 1:28. These are the words of the angel to Mary "Hail thou that arty HIGHLY FAVOURED ... among women". For what it is worth, this word is never word is never used in classical Greek. It is used once by a Greek translator of the Old Testament but apart from that, these are the only two times it appears in any writing.

While we do not worship Mary, we certainly recognise her unique position and privilege. She was used by God in a way that that no other woman has been or ever could be used. Through her the embryo prophesied in Gen. 3:15 was fulfilled. Highly favoured or greatly graced, the Scriptures say of her. And the only time this word is used of anyone else is when Paul tells us that in the wonderful grace of God the Father we once despised and almost forgotten Gentiles have been highly favoured in the Son of His love.

We could spend a long time writing about what it means to be accepted in the Beloved but I think two verses of a hymn by Catesby Paget that we often sing says it better than I can.

"So near, so very near to God,

I cannot nearer be.

For in the person of his Son,

I am near as He.

 

So dear, so very near to God,

More dear I could not be.

The love wherewith He loves the Son.

Such is His love to me.

What unutterable grace is ours, not only that such words can be written about us but that they are true! Praise be to God. And just to finish off this part of our study, let me point out that we read about the riches of the Lord's grace elsewhere in Scripture but it is ONLY in Ephesians that we read of the exceeding riches of His grace and the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Now from verses 7 to 11 the subject is the Work of the Son and here too we will find truth expressed that will challenge our minds to comprehend it and our faith to accept it. 

The first statement refers to redemption. Let me caution you. The very next phrase says "the forgiveness of sins", and it so easy for us to assume that redemption and forgiveness are one and the same. They are not and we need to apply the principle of right division and understand the difference. Certainly, they and the other things which are involved in the work of the Son are part of the overall work of salvation but we lose much right truth if we jumble these parts all together as if they are synonyms. So we will think about redemption for a little while, keeping it separate from forgiveness of sins.

Redemption is not a term used by ordinary people very much at all, although you might hear accountants and other financial types talk about the redemption price of some bonds or other. If you look up your dictionary, you will find that the word redeem means to buy something back that has been sold or pawned or perhaps given away. So it is a term well understood in financial circles. And if you try and tell an accountant that redeeming something has to do with salvation, he might, unless he happened to be a well instructed Christian believer, look at you as though you were off the planet a little.

But it is a very common concept right throughout the Bible, not only the thought of God redeeming His people but also of goods or people such as slaves being redeemed, or in other words, bought back and in the case of those who had been in bondage, then being set free. Now already the images that I have been conjuring up should have your minds going quite a number of different passages of Scripture.

Someone once said that the redemption of the sinner by God is so costly, that it must be free. When I was a very small child I knew that salvation was free because it was God's gift. I understood very little about it all at that time but I did know what free meant. It didn't cost anything. If I wanted this salvation (whatever it was), I would not have to part with any of the little pocket money my parents let me have. That's what free meant. And of course, it has been my great privilege to often preach the Gospel since then and stress the fact that it is obtained without money and without price. I said that above, that as a child, I thought that salvation didn't cost anything but I have since learned that is only partly true. It comes to us without price but its cost to God who provided it is beyond the ability of this world or anyone in it to pay.

And how grateful we should be to our Heavenly Father for this freely given gift of life, for his redemption of us from the bondage of death and sin. In Psalm 49, verses 7 and 8 we read:

"Alas! No man can ever ransom himself nor pay God the price of that release; his ransom would cost too much, for ever beyond his power to pay... " (New English Bible)

Then again Paul lays down the challenge in 1 Cor. 6:19&20:

"What? Know yo not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God..."

And we could not go on without looking at Peter's words in 1 Pet. 1:18&19:

"Forasmuch as ye know that ye are not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold ... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish or without spot."

This constant emphasis in both Old and New Testaments on the necessity for sin to be dealt with by the shedding of blood is something that causes revulsion with some people. Certainly, it is not a pleasant subject but neither is sin. Humans, with their fallen and sinful nature, naturally tend to underestimate the seriousness of sin but those of us who are children of God must fully understand and acknowledge God's estimation of and attitude to sin.

Back in the early days of human history God said very clearly to Adam, "In the day that you eat of the fruit thereof (i.e. the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you will surely die". That was the one restriction placed on Adam, and as we well know, that was the one point that Satan attacked when he approached Eve. 

Out of many important truths to come out of these events, the one to be emphasised in this context is that after Adam and Eve had broken the restriction placed on them, in other words had sinned, God dealt with that sin by the sacrifice of two animals. In other words He shed blood. If any reader wonders where this idea of two animals being sacrificed in the Garden of Eden comes from, let me remind you that God took away the covering of leaves that Adam and Eve had provided for themselves and clothed them with animal skins. I believe that this is telling us that two animals were killed and sacrificed and then skinned. I think we are also meant to see that those two animals were slain in the place of Adam and Eve.

Immediately sin entered the picture God covers it with blood. Why? Because the life (of a person or animal) is in the blood. Adam should have died that day and I believe he would have died that day, if it had not been for the free salvation that God, in His foreknowledge, had already planned for. And that plan called for a lamb, without spot or blemish, to die for the sins of the world and undo all the dreadful results of Adam's sin.

Therefore in every book of the Bible, this principle that for sin to be properly dealt with, there must be the shedding of blood, or in other words the death of the victim, is either stated or implied. And it is clearly stated in Ephesians:

1:7. "In whom we have redemption through His blood."

2:13. "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."

There are tow similar statements in Colossians.

So redemption is provided through the Lamb of God who would shed His blood, or in other words, die in the place of the guilty. And this required a human who had never sinned in any way. The Lamb had to be without spot or blemish.

But why did it have to be a human? God had, for centuries, been happy with animal sacrifices hadn't He? Well, yes and no. At best the animal sacrifices were only poor substitutes. They were pictures (the Scriptural word is types) that prefigured the real Lamb of God whose sacrifice took away the sins of the world. As Heb. 10:4 tells us, "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away ant sins."

the main reason, however, why the sacrifice had to be human is deeper than that.

In the Old Testament the subject of redemption is put forward in a number of ways. But several important principles stand out. First of all, the one who would redeem had two jobs to do. The first was to buy back the lost person or property and the second was to avenge the death or injury of the person concerned. Now these two sides of redemption did not go together.

The second principle that stands out is that the redeemer-avenger had to be a near kinsman. Not just anyone could take on themselves the role of redeemer. the redeemer had to be "one of the family." And in fact, in the Old Testament the Hebrew word for redeemer literally means "kinsman-redeemer." So this is why it is not ultimately possible for bulls and goats to be used as the substitutes for humans. the Law of God, indeed, the Holiness off God demands that it must be a human who makes the redemption.

We have an example of at least some of these points in Gen. 14, where Uncle Abraham not only rescued Lot from those who had taken him and others captive but he also avenged the deed by killing those involved and taking their goods as spoils. If Lot had not been his nephew, Abraham would not have lifted a finger.

But come back to God's way of dealing with the problem of sin. For Him to provide a way out for those who would accept it and also without compromising His own laws and righteousness, a sinless man had to be found. (I hope that God saying the sacrifice had to be male does not upset the women. If that is a problem for you, you will need to take it up with God whenever you get the opportunity.)

Now if we think about it for a moment of two we will see that God had a real problem here. Where would He find such a person, someone who had no sins of his own and therefore not be dying for himself? God's answer was a special baby, a miracle baby really. The virgin conception allowed that baby to escape the fallen nature bequeathed to the rest of us by Adam. So that was the first hurdle overcome. 

But then, He had to live a sinless life, which in spite of some cruel testings, He did. And this One, known as Jesus  of Nazareth to the world but the Lord Jesus Christ to those of us who have come under the shelter of His shed blood, paid the price of sin, HE DIED AS IF HE HAD BEEN THE GUILTY ONE, and in that way redeemed us, or bought us back from the power of sin and death and translated us into the kingdom of the Beloved Son of God.

What a plan! What a magnificent purpose! No wonder Paul told us back in verse 3 to speak well of the Father who has spoken well of us in Christ. And it is for all these reasons that I love the lines of the old Gospel song that say:

"Tell me the story slowly,

That I might take it in,

That wonderful redemption, 

God's remedy for sin.

 

Tell me the story often,

For I forget so soon,

The early dew of morning

Has passed away at noon

This site is produced by the Berean Bible Fellowship of Australia (BBFA)
Contact our web administrator at webmaster@spiritualblessings.org

Publications, articles, recordings and other items on this site are included at the discretion of the administrators, the Berean Bible Fellowship of Australia (BBFA) - however, interpretations of Scripture by the various authors and speakers may not necessarily be those held by the majority of the Fellowship. The BBFA is not responsible for content published on external websites, to which there are links from the Spiritual Blessings website, and may not endorse every interpretation of Scripture published on those sites.

| Privacy | | About | | Articles | | Books | | Top | | Magazine | | Meetings | | Donate | | Contact | | Links |