Chosen Sons and Daughters of God

CHOSEN SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD Spring Valley Mennonite; October 11, 2020; Ephesians 1:4-6 Open your Bibles this morning to the first chapter of Ephesians. While the Apostle's intention is to teach great truths about God and redemption, we find in these first verses Paul's heart over-flowing with a great doxology of praise to God for His incredible blessings. It is as if he cannot stop praising His gracious Heavenly Father. One of my favorite hymns begins with the words "I know not why God's wondrous grace to me He did make known, not why unworthy, Christ in love, redeemed me for His own." Grace truly is amazing, and the best we can do is simply accept the fact that God's love is beyond our understanding. A large part of worship is grasping God's greatness and admitting that He is beyond our understanding and that His ways are not always our ways. We are to bow in humility before His mystery. True worship acknowledges that He is God and we are not! The fact that much about God is beyond our understanding is difficult for man to accept. The root of man's rebellion is pride and self-exaltation; man shakes his fist in the face of God and declares his independence. Of course, any such independence is illusionary and self-deceiving. Freedom from God is slavery to sin. By God's grace, we find when we bow in repentance and humility to God, we truly are liberated from the prison of sin. Colossians 1:13: "For He delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son..." In our new spiritual kingdom we have received "every spiritual blessing", incredible riches in Christ. In this first chapter, Paul lists these riches, beginning with the glorious truth that through God's sovereign grace-and grace alone-we have been CHOSEN by the Father to receive new status as sons and daughters. How did such a wonderful thing happen? It is through God's INITIATING love. After telling us that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing through our relationship in Christ in verse 3, Paul begins to specify those blessings, the first being that: I. WE HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY GOD (Read verse 4) As a child I went through the agony of Elementary School playground baseball. Actually, it was softball, and it was the boy's game of choice every recess from third grade through sixth. Every day as we went outside, five days a week, the morning recess began the same way: we lined up and two self-appointed captains, usually the same athletically gifted boys, began the process of choosing sides. We all knew who was going to be picked first, and who was going to bear the humiliation of being last. The only drama was the order in which the rest of us would go. Players were picked on the basis of their perceived skill at the game. I suppose such experiences built character! We are told in verse 4 that God chose us, not on the basis of any skill or personality trait or attractiveness or anything we had done. Observe the time the choosing took place-BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD! Before this sphere we call the earth even existed; before there was a single man or woman on earth, God chose me to be His own child. Before I was even alive, God chose me in Christ. Theologians call this the Doctrine of Election, and many of us find it difficult to accept. However difficult it is to accept or understand, it is impossible to ignore, for we find this principle of God sovereignly choosing throughout the Word. In the Old Testament, we remember that God chose Abraham. Abraham had done nothing to earn this honor and blessing. He was a pagan living outside the knowledge of the One True God. He most likely worshipped multiple gods. God sovereignly chose to make a covenant with Abraham and later with the Jewish people. We call the Jews "The Chosen People." We find later in Ephesians that from Pentecost to Christ's return God joins both Gentile and Jewish believers into a single entity called "The Church." Jesus spoke of this issue of God's choosing in John 15:16 when He said, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you..." Our Lord spoke also in John 6:44, "No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day." Romans 3:11 tells us that "there is no one who seeks for God..." Luke 19:10 tells us that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost: if we could "find ourselves" we would not be lost! Clearly, without God's choosing, without His drawing, without His seeking, we would remain lost in our sins. YET...we also clearly understand that in Matthew 11:28 Jesus issues this invitation: "Come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." The Holy Spirit speaks through Paul in Acts 16:31 to "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." Such verses speak clearly that it is up to us; we can never become a Christian until we choose to come. SO, both are true: we are chosen before the foundation of the world, and we must individually choose to come to Christ! John 6:37 expresses both these truths in a single verse: "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out." Our puny finite minds struggle to reconcile these two truths. Nevertheless, we must accept them both as true. J.I. Packer discusses man's problem with these words: "The root cause is the same as in most cases of error in the Church-the intruding of rationalistic speculations, the passion for systematic consistency, a reluctance to recognize the existence of mystery and to let God be wiser than men, and a consequent subjecting of Scripture to the supposed demands of human logic. People see the Bible teaches man's responsibility for his actions; they do not see (man, indeed, cannot see) how this is consistent with the sovereign Lordship of God over those actions. They are not content to let the two truths live side by side, as they do in the Scriptures, but jump to the conclusion that, in order to uphold the biblical truth of human responsibility, they are bound to reject the equally biblical and equally true doctrine of divine sovereignty, and to explain away the great number of texts that teach it. The desire to over-simplify the Bible by cutting out the mysteries is natural to our perverse minds, and it is not surprising that even godly men should fall victim to it.1 These two seeming contradictory ideas have been illustrated in the following way: all mankind are moving down a wide road toward certain destruction. From a narrow doorway, the loving voice of Jesus calls to all who are passing: "Come unto Me, all who are carrying heavy loads of sin." The door has written above it the words, "Whosoever will, may come." Some people stop and consider, then move on. Others laugh and ridicule the very idea of turning off the wide road. But some feel a strange longing in their heart which causes them to stop; they are drawn to make their way through the crowd, and they step through the narrow door. As they pass through the door inscribed "whosoever will" they turn around and looking back see written above the door, "Chosen before the foundation of the world." This truth humbles us, for it tells us that we are children of God simply by grace, not on the basis of any merit of our own. And this is the witness of all scripture: Romans 3:28: "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law. Ephesians 2:8-9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. 2 Timothy 1:9: "(God) has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity..." We simply accept the free gift of God. Think what this truth of being chosen tells us about our identity as Christians: we are not afterthoughts in God's plan! We are not accidental members of His body. There are no second- class citizens in the church of Jesus Christ; we are all equal, chosen of the Father, selected to be members of His family, added to the new order God is producing in this world. And God will not "unchoose us." Another of God's wonderful gifts listed in verse 4 is that: II. WE ARE MADE HOLY AND BLAMELESS BEFORE GOD This is a result of His choice of us. God requires that we be perfectly righteous, holy, and blameless before we can have a relationship with Him. Let me ask you, is there any possible way we can become holy and blameless on our own? Of course not! Since we could not make ourselves holy and blameless, and thus were children of wrath, God took the initiative. That is what being chosen by God is all about. God did it all for me. I need to speak about this term "blameless," for with its understanding comes incredible freedom from guilt. Many people are trapped in feelings of guilt about past actions. To such ones, when I say we are "blameless" they simply cannot believe it. Perhaps part of the problem is that we many be confusing the term "blameless" with "sinless." Never having done anything wrong is sinless. To be blameless is something else. It is a glorious gift of God that we can be blameless even after we have sinned! How is this possible? By "handling" your sin in the right way. Let me illustrate: If you did something that injured someone, and the full result was not evident at the time, but later you realized how you had hurt them; if you acknowledged it, and went to them and asked forgiveness, and did what you could to set it right, then from that point on, you would be blameless. You did all that could be done to set it right, you would not be sinless, but handled it rightly. The idea is the same with our sins in relation with God. What can we do about all the sins we have committed? We cannot go back in time and undo them, but you can accept God's forgiveness for them. You can acknowledge your need for forgiveness and put it back into His hands to straighten out the results. If your sin involves another person, then He gives you the courage to go to that person and ask forgiveness, and perhaps to make restitution. And when you have done that, you are blameless! We somehow feel that we should bear the punishment for our own sins, and foolishly we continue to carry guilt and self-condemnation, even after we have accepted God's forgiveness for them. Dear brothers and sisters: to carry such feelings of guilt is not God's desire for you; such feelings are a tactic of Satan to steal your joy and witness. It is foolishness to say, "God may forgive me, but I can't forgive myself." God says we are blameless before Him. God has chosen us to learn this wonderful process of becoming holy and blameless-I say process, not from God's side, but that it takes us time to understand that He sees us as holy and blameless, Saints who are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Accept it! Rest in it! Count on it! See yourselves seated with Christ in the heavenlies, holy and blameless! Paul speaks of another glorious gift: III. WE HAVE BEEN PREDESTINED TO ADOPTION AS SONS (Read v. 5). This term "predestined" is another term over which we struggle. Our understanding of the term will be helped if we underscore the two words before verse 5: "in love." God's predestination is always spoken of in terms of His blessings to believers. Never is predestination spoken of in terms of non-believers. Check it out! We are told here that we are predestined to what? To adoption as sons! This explains in part how God takes a sinner with thousands upon thousands of offenses on the books and makes us "holy and blameless." He does it by means of a change of our family relationship. We are "adopted" into a new family and given the status of sons. We are familiar with the concept of adoption: adoption means leaving one family and legally joining another. Paul is drawing this idea from the Roman society. One authority on Roman adoption practices states, "In adoption, an individual's old relationships were severed. Old debts and obligations were canceled. The person was placed under the authority of the father of the new family. The father was considered the owner of all the adoptee's possessions and was believed to have the right to control the adoptee's behavior. The father also had the right to discipline and became liable for the new son or daughter's actions. Each was committed by the act of adoption to support and help maintain the other." Think what being adopted as sons of God means: it means we owe no allegiance to our old masters: Galatians 4:4-7: But when the fulness of time came, God sent for the His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law in order that he might redeem those who were under the Law, and that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." Have you noticed how children resemble their parents? Each child inherits a mixture of characteristics from his human parents. We all initially belong to the family of Adam and exhibit the family characteristics of the Adamic nature. Adam's family members are completely rebellious, carrying about them the stench of death, following slavishly the ways of Satan. But because if His initiating love, God has taken us out of the awful, depraved, hell-bound family of Adam and has adopted us, bringing us into the family of God. This action restores our true original humanity, reflecting God's image, and we no longer need to be possessed by our old family ways. We have the ability to put the Adamic family characteristics behind us. Because we are adopted, all our old obligations and debts caused by sin have been cancelled. This is the glorious truth of Colossians 2:13-14: "And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." We are no longer under the condemnation and the guilt of all our sins, past, present and future! Adoption teaches us that we now owe total allegiance to God, and that all we have is His. We are under God's gracious authority, and under His loving discipline which trains us in righteousness. God also commits Himself to provide for all our needs, and we have become objects of His profound love. "In love He predestined us to adoption as sons." We have been given status as full-grown, mature sons upon our adoption. We are not adopted into God's family as children, someday to inherit the blessings of our new family, but adoption means literally "son-standing." Although it difficult for us to grasp, we are joint heirs with Christ. As Galatians 4 assures us, we now can cry out "Abba, Father!" Abba is equivalent to our English word "daddy" and carries the idea of deep affection. A slave in the household might use the word "Father" but never "Abba." Romans 8:15 confirms this with the words, "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" Why would God do this for us? It is very simple, but very profound. Look at the last words of verse 4, then verses 5 and 6 (Read, beginning with "in love..) There are three aspects to it: first, it was "in love He predestined us". Second, "according to the kind intention of His will" and third, "to the praise of His glory." Our new position in Christ truly is all of God: He loved us, so He purposed it, literally, according to the "good pleasure" of His will-it gives God pleasure to do it, to the final end that it results in great joy, in praise to Him giving glory for His grace. Once again, it is all by grace. Unearned, unmerited favor which has been lavished up each one of us who responds in faith. We have been adopted as full-grown, full-privileged sons. What wonderful riches we have! But these blessings are reserved for those who have been adopted into the family of God, those who have responded to the calling of God by believing. What wonderful, good news! It is true that God chooses us; it is equally true that we must personally believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. Both of these truths exist within the mystery of God. Guard against thinking we have to understand; do not reject what is beyond our understanding. Accept that some things about God are beyond our present capacity to know. There is an old hymn with the line, "We will understand it better by and by." 1 MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1986). Ephesians (p. 12). Chicago: Moody Press; (quoting J.I. Packer) --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ 2