In Him Pt. 1
Notes
Transcript
Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. It is a privilege and a blessing to be here with you all today - whether you are here in person or online. Please take your Bibles and open them with me to the book of Ephesians. What a blessing this book has been so far - and we’re only two weeks into our study. Paul isn’t going to slow down this week with the revelation and explanation of troublesome and difficult truths of the faith. Last week we scaled the heights of the exclusivity of the Christian faith as we looked at how God chose some to be predestined for adoption in His Son from before the foundation of the world - pronouncing them holy and blameless and thereby demonstrating both His kindness and His good pleasure.
Now Paul is going to expand on and expound on what he has started in the early verses of this great letter. Over the next few weeks we are going to look at three statements that Paul makes that all start with the phrase “In Him”. We’ve observed that Paul will refer to our status as being in Christ more than 30 times in the first three chapters of this Epistle. This Epistle has been referred to as the believer’s checkbook as it details all of the riches that we have been given by God. I think a more fitting moniker or descriptor would be the believer’s life in Christ as Paul spends so much time detailing all that we have as Christians as a part of Christ’s body, as an adopted son or daughter in His family.
In a world that is so solidly divided - what a blessing that we can share as believers to know and to recognize the unity that we have in Christ. Let us look now deep into His word and see more of what our position in Christ really means for each of us this morning.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace
that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.
He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ
as a plan for the right time—to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him.
Can you wrap your mind around the God we serve? Can you grasp the beauty of what Paul is writing here? It’s not easy because the truths contained here are some of the most attacked in Christianity today because they are not palatable to the modern mindset. Secular Humanist Bart Campolo asks this question “Why would you want to worship a god if you could imagine a better god. That’s what I don’t understand, like, if you could imagine a god that’s better than the one that you worship - trade up.” What we’re going to find out today is that we not only can’t imagine a better god but that the God we do serve is so amazing and beautiful - how can we fail to serve Him? We’re going to see the ideals of penal substitutionary atonement, the beauty of God’s unconditional forgiveness, the revelations of the mystery and the unity that will be revealed in Christ.
Two Remarkable Truths
Two Remarkable Truths
In Him....
The foundation of all Christianity - it is in Christ. It is through Christ. It is with Christ. It is from Christ. It is simply…Christ. Nothing more needs to be added.
In Him we have...
The most undeserving of people. To think that we are given anything from Christ should confound the mind.
300 Quotations for Preachers from the Reformation Christ Is the Righteousness of Believers
Christ is now the righteousness of all those who truly do believe in him. He for them paid their ransom by his death. He for them fulfilled the law in his life. So that now in him, and by him, every true Christian man may be called a fulfiller of the law, since that which their infirmity lacks, Christ’s justice has supplied.
THOMAS CRANMER
Redemption through His blood
Contrary to Abraham Maslow’s ideas, the greatest need that humans have is not food, water, shelter or even air. The greatest need of a human being is redemption. We are born slaves to our sinful nature and until that slavery is removed then even the presence of food, water, shelter etcetera is only a forestalling of our inevitable and justified end.
The idea that Paul is conveying here is the satisfaction of the deepest need that we have. The word for redemption is apolytrosis - and it carries the meaning of deliverance. This particular word only appears ten times in the New Testament and only once in the Septuagint - the Greek version of the Old Testament.
Non-biblical uses give us a more enlightening definition and is more applicable to what Paul is getting at here
Josephus - paying a ransom
Plutarch - holding for ransom
Used to refer to the freeing of slaves through the paying of a price
they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.
It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption
In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
But Christ has appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. In the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands (that is, not of this creation),
he entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.
Blood was the requirement for the forgiveness of sins throughout the Old Testament
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have appointed it to you to make atonement on the altar for your lives, since it is the lifeblood that makes atonement.
The writer of Hebrews clarifies this for us in even greater detail
According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
But the high priest alone enters the second room, and he does that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.
This is the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement
The idea that we have a sin debt to God and that there must be some payment to satisfy God’s righteous and just wrath - and the teaching of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is that Christ stands in for us and dies for us
The very idea that Jesus died for our sins is so offensive to our world today - just as it was to the world of the Ephesian believers.
There are those who say that this is a modern idea
That this idea originated in the Reformation
but listen to this quote
“Thus the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, became a curse on our behalf. And the Lamb of God not only did this, but was chastised on our behalf and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonor, which were due to us, and drew down upon Himself the appointed curse, being made a curse for us.”
Eusebius of Caesarea said this within 300 years of Christ’s death.
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold,
but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.
Now we need to understand why this was necessary in order to understand just how great this news is for us
We have been taught God hates the sin but loves the sinner
Divorces the sin nature that we are all born with from the person who we are
If we die apart from Christ - it is not our sin that is sent to Hell but our very person
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil cannot dwell with you.
The boastful cannot stand in your sight; you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who tell lies; the Lord abhors violent and treacherous people.
There is this dichotomy in view here in which God both hates and loves the sinner.
And in our unregenerate state we were worthy only of the wrath of God that abides on all those who are sent to Hell
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
God would rightly send us to Hell without the necessary sacrifice of His Son.
God cannot be either a loving or a just judge if He simply forgave sins without requiring a payment.
How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath.
Only He could be our scapegoat
That is the picture that we are given by Paul of Christ being our method of redemption.
He is not only the sacrificial lamb that is slain but also the scapegoat that carries our sins far away - so far away that they are remembered no more
He is not only our redemption but is also our forgiveness is found in Him
Not an infusion of righteousness that pronounces us clean up until that moment and we must now keep ourselves forgiven
Forgiveness of ALL sins
Past sins
Present sins
Future sins
300 Quotations and Prayers for Christmas How Can We Despair of Pardon When We Think of Jesus?
How can we, sinners as we are, despair of pardon, when we think of Jesus Christ? For this very object the Eternal Word humbled Himself so far as to take human flesh, that we might procure our pardon from God.
ALPHONSUS LIGUORI
Ephesians: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (The Redemptive Results)
Forgiveness in Jesus Christ is undeserved, but it is free and it is complete. Those who have Him have freedom from sin, now and throughout eternity. In Christ our sins—past, present, and future—“are forgiven … for His name’s sake”. They were forgiven countless ages before we committed them and will remain forgiven forever.
Oh that we would live in the reality of this forgiveness.
If God has forgiven you, why do you presume to think you can’t forgive yourself?
And here’s the beauty of this - He does it generously. Out of the abundance of His riches
If I’m a multi-millionaire and I give $20 a week to a ministry I give out of my riches
If I’m a multi-millionaire and I give $2000 a week to a ministry I give according to my riches
Christ withholds nothing to us and we can never out-sin His capability to forgive
Paul has just told us that God has lavished grace on us in Christ - in the Beloved One
He is not stingy with His forgiveness - like we are sometimes
Little children who begrudgingly forgive one another
He lavishes forgiveness on us
With all wisdom - This is God’s wisdom in devising the Gospel
Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption
We would never devise this plan - in fact men have tried to pervert this truth by calling it “divine child abuse” and maligning the character of God by saying that He is vindictive and mean and angry
God is never that - He reveals the beauty and the depths of His wisdom in this plan that Christ willingly submits to - He is both perfectly loving and perfectly just, perfectly holy and perfectly wrathful
And with all understanding - the sovereign knowledge that unless He acted on our behalf that no one would seek Him out
And then the beauty is that He shares this wisdom and understanding with us as He reveals the Gospel to us
A Great Mystery
A Great Mystery
This is not the type of mystery that Columbo or Perry Mason or even the Hardy Boys would solve
On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory.
God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains,
And most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
This concept of a mystery is something that was hidden in the past but is now revealed
Notice the progression here
God made known
the mystery of His will
according to His good pleasure
The Gospel is not plan B - it is the predetermined plan of God. The progressive revelation of the Gospel is not plan B either - it is the predetermined plan of God.
These are things that the prophets wished they had been able to know
These are things that the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11 and 12 wish they could have known
Do we recognize the beauty and gravity of this mystery that has been revealed to us?
And that this was the purpose for Christ’s coming
That this was the purpose for Christ taking on flesh and taking our place
This mystery of His will was revealed most fully in Christ
Perfect Timing
Perfect Timing
This was revealed as a plan for the right time
When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
When God’s good pleasure determined His Son came to earth to redeem for Him a people
To bring everything together in Christ
Both at the cross
And in the future
Christ, right now, rules from Heaven and sits at the right hand of God
Despite all the chaos going on around us and the division that we see - all things have been united in Christ
But there will be a day when all things will be physically united in Christ
For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth—
and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This does not mean that all things will be redeemed regardless of their reaction to Christ - this is not universalism
What it means is that God’s glory will be revealed in those who have submitted to Christ as well as those who have not
And the beauty is that God’s justice and love will both be on display
And we end the way we have begun - In Him
In Him we have redemption
In Him we have forgiveness
In Him, through Him, the mystery has been revealed
In Him all things will be brought together
What an amazing God - how could you imagine a better one?