Sons and Daughters

Jacob Parodi

Union • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

Ephesians 1:1–6

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INTRODUCTION

We are starting a new series this morning, called Union: God Writes Heaven On Our Hearts. We will be spending the next few months working our way through the book of Ephesians in the New Testament. The apostle Paul wrote this letter to a church in Ephesus that he was instrumental in starting and cultivating. And he writes this to encourage and sustain them, even as he is currently under house arrest in Rome.

Ephesians is all about how God transforms your story, your identity, everything you are, and how, as God’s story becomes yours, you live that out, each and every day. Ephesians is about the union of heaven and earth in you. That union is God’s ultimate goal, the end of all things. What we find in the last pages of the Bible is a God who dwells eternally with mankind, where heaven and earth overlap, and we live wholly and completely under his reign and rule. We know that this is not how things are right now. We live in a society that fights against that union, because since the foundation of the world, mankind has sought to rule for himself, to make his own way and live his own life apart from God. But see, God has these little pockets of heaven, little windows to eternity, spaced out around the globe. These pockets are his disciples. Followers like you and me, who have been rescued from darkness, saved by grace, brought into his family. And so, when the world sees us, they see heaven—if we live out the life we claim to have found in Jesus.

So why Ephesians? As we have prayed and pursued God’s heart over the last year, something has been grabbing a hold of my heart has been to see you grow and mature. You, believer in Jesus, member of the church, you were not meant to stay right where you are, spiritually. I don’t care how old you are in Earth years or Heaven years, how long you’ve been a Christian or gone to gatherings or whatever—you were meant to grow deeper and wider in your relationship with Jesus, in your knowledge of him and his word, and in your love for others. And so we think that the best thing we can do to reach our region with the gospel of Jesus is to cultivate healthy, mature, passionate followers who multiply their faith wherever they go. And Ephesians is all about that.

Let’s pray and dig right in to the first few verses.

PRAY

Ephesians 1:1–6 CSB

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will: To the faithful saints in Christ Jesus at Ephesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.

Being Leads to Doing

Many years back, I was mentoring this 16 year old kid who was getting into all kinds of trouble at school. I mean you name it, he was doing it. He had been sent home that day on suspension, and I went and picked him up and was talking to him about what was going on and why he was making the choices he was. And as I was trying to help him come to grips with the gravity of his actions, he kept coming back with this argument: “These things I’m doing, they’re not who I am. They don’t define me. There’s more to me than the stuff I’m doing.”

And to a degree, he was right. There is more to him than his actions. He has relationships and thoughts and ideas, he has convictions about life, interests and pursuits that stretch far beyond the things he was doing. And I think all of us would agree that we would rather be judged by who we think we are rather than what we actually do, because most people probably think their hearts are in the right place, even if their actions say otherwise. The reality is though, because our actions speak so loudly as to the reality of our inward selves, it takes an enormous amount of grace to judge someone by our being instead of our doing, because our doing is often just the outward expression of our inward desires and convictions.

I think that’s the point of Ephesians. Paul’s letter can be divided into two halves: being, and doing. And the big truth that Paul wants the church to see is that who you are informs and inspires what you do. Being leads to doing.

I think we have been so turned around by the world at times that we get this backward. We want to be judged by our hearts, but we need to somehow prove our worth, and so we try desperately to tip the balance in our favor with good things and hope that they outweigh the bad. This happens all the time in Christian circles. Go to church, read my Bible, serve on a ministry team, convict my friends of their sins, and constantly communicate guilt that you aren’t doing enough. We are obsessed with doing. And I think this boils down to this idea that God expects so much from people, so much purity and holiness and perfection, that only the most fervent followers will earn God’s favor. And in recent years, there has been a growing exodus from the church and from Christianity itself, and as I read between the lines of the testimonies from those who leave, there seems to be a common thread. Those who have walked away have done all the right things, rose up through the ranks of Christian celebrity, wrote books and songs and sermons, and yet all that doing seems kinda pointless, because while the outside looks “Christian,” the inside has no idea why they do what they do. They lost their identity in all the doing. They don’t know who they are anymore, and so they do see the point in carrying on with all this ritual that has no meaning for them anymore.

And so it might surprise you, and I hope that it will comfort you, to find that following Jesus is not primarily about what you do. It’s about who you are in him. You cannot live out your faith unless you first get a handle on who you are. You’ll just be spinning your wheels if you don’t.

So, who are you? Better yet, who does God say that you are? Because that’s really the point: You don’t need to earn God’s love for you, his favor for you, his grace and forgiveness. Nothing that you do will change God’s mind about you. He’s made up his mind. And yeah, that’s kind of a scary thought, because you don’t have a say in the matter. But I promise you it’s good.

YOU ARE BLESSED

Ephesians 1:3 CSB

Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.

Let’s break down this verse just a bit. What word stands out to you there? It’s repeated three times in that sentence. Yeah, bless. There are two different words for bless in the New Testament. One means to favor or to make happy; to cause to flourish and grow. The other, which is this word here, simply means to speak well of, or to fill up. Now, who is blessed first? God! God is blessed. We praise God, we adore him, we speak so highly of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And why? Because he has blessed us. He has filled you up with every sense of well-being and the fullness of heaven, because you are in Christ.

What does it mean to be “in Christ?” That’s a phrase we are going to see a lot in Ephesians. In all honesty, I’ve tried to wrap my head around this phrase for some time now. I have massive books in my office dedicated to these two words. But at this moment, the simplest way I can explain in Christ is that, when you give your life to Jesus, when you believe that Jesus loves you and has died for you, and you accept his offer of grace and forgiveness and are reborn as a new creation, your life is forever linked with Jesus. You are no longer a son or daughter of Adam, no longer a creature of earth. Heaven is now embedded in you.

Now, look: this is the starting point of your relationship with Jesus. The starting point. Not the end, where you hope to end up. It’s the beginning. You are blessed by the Father. You didn’t earn that, God doesn’t speak well of you because you did so much to deserve it. God speaks highly of you, fills you with his spiritual strength, first and foremost, because he is good. Because union with God means you are given everything you need, you are satisfied, wholly and completely, in him. I quoted John Piper last week if you remember: “God is most glorified when I am most satisfied in him.” This is that! You express the glory of God most fully when you realize, first and foremost, that everything you could ever hope for, desire, want, is already being poured out to you. Every spiritual blessing in the heavens is given to you. Outside of Christ, the human nature strives and strains to earn this sort of well-spoken filling, this relational praise and adoration that comes from being known and valued. It’s a life-long pursuit; our word eulogy comes from this word—it’s tradition that when someone dies, we prepare a statement that speaks well of them, and we comb through their lives to give an explanation to why we value them like we do.

That’s the crazy thing: God has already prepared your eulogy, and it is entirely apart from the sum of your deeds and your actions, your experiences and your failures and flaws. God speaks well of you. You may be struggling with this; you may be hurting for someone to care for you, to know you, to desire you as you are. Here, right here, that person is a divine loving father who longs to for you to hear his voice and find your rest in him. You are blessed.

YOU ARE LOVED

Ephesians 1:4 CSB

For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him.

Here’s a powerful statement: your salvation, that you would be rescued by Jesus, that you would be saved from death and destruction and the curse of sin, it’s all part of God’s grand plan for the world. God’s pursuit of you has been in the works from the beginning of history. He knew you would need him, he knew you would be struck by the sickness of sin that creeps over you and takes root in your heart, and that you would die without him. And so before God laid down the first lay of the cosmos, he was mindful of you. He considered you. He loved you. And he called you out to be one of his, holy and blameless to his eyes.

Now, wait a second. Holy and blameless? That might describe you, but I know what I’ve done. I have not always lived a holy life, a life set apart for God, in God’s ways and aligned with his heart. I certainly have not lived a blameless life; I’m well aware of the stains of sin on my life that have poisoned relationships and messed up good things. So how can I be considered holy and blameless when I am so clearly not?

This is identity statement number 2. You are not holy and blameless because you deserved God’s choosing. You were not selected by God, and then evaluated to see if you indeed measure up. You are marked not by your failure, but by your rescue. Not by your stains, but by your salvation. And I cannot look my status before God as holy and blameless and see any of my own doing in there, so I have to look on to those two little words that follow that statement: in love.

I am loved. You are loved. Wholly, unconditionally, before you’ve done or said anything, even AFTER you’ve done or said anything. You are loved.

I’ve been a follower of Jesus for a long time, and I’ve understood this conceptually, but it was decades before it took root in my life. And it happened when my first child was born. Beth delivered our son on August 2, 2008, and we had two names picked out for him, but we wanted to wait until he born to decide what name fit him best. I’m holding him, and I look over at Beth and ask her what she thinks, and she’s so tired she just says, “you decide, I trust you.” And so I look down, and I’m just filled with joy and love for this little kid, and I decide right there that his name is Emmett, which is Hebrew for faithful and true. And in the days that followed, I would hold this child who has no usefulness to society in his present form, who is wholly dependent on his parents and who leeches every last ounce of energy out of his mother, and I would love him. Like more than I had ever loved another human, because he is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. And I knew, from that point on, that any child I would conceive with my wife, before I ever conceived them, I would love the same way. In that moment, they could never do anything to break free from my love for them, from my grace for them.

You are loved the way a Father loves his children. And that leads us to the last point.

YOU ARE FAMILY

Ephesians 1:5–6 CSB

He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.

You are blessed. You are loved. And you are family. Your identity, who you are that precedes anything you do, starts right here. God determined long before you ever walked this earth that you would be his child. You would be a son of the King, you would be a daughter to a heavenly father. It pleased God that you would be adopted into his family. Not born, but adopted.

Apart from Jesus, we are all spiritual orphans.The Bible says quite clearly that we are not born children of God and therefore must go through an adoption process. The price of our adoption was the death of God’s Son. Only Jesus has the natural right to call God Abba, to look on him as a son sees a good and loving Father. But Jesus gave up his place, descended to earth, and traded his life for yours, so that God might welcome you into his family and pour out his grace on you. God sent his only son to die so that he could call you his sons and daughters.

You are God’s adopted family. Theologically, this is one of most significant things about you. J.I. Packer wrote this about Adoption:

What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father. Adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification. To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.

Do you see that? A Christian is one who has God for his Father. According to Packer, a Christian is not one who has a morally superior lifestyle. A Christian is not one who follows all the spiritual rules and looks the part. A Christian is not one who knows all the right stuff, does all the right stuff, or is a better person. A Christian is one who has God for his Father.

I don’t have any first-person experience with adoption, but I have friends who do. PJ and Erica are friends of ours who live a few hours a way. And Erica has a heart condition that makes it extremely dangerous for her to have kids. So after their first daughter was born, they decided the safe thing to do was to adopt. And within a year or so, a young boy, about a year old, was placed with them. His biological parents struggled with addiction, his dad was violent and abusive, and the only future this boy had was if he could find a family that could truly care and provide for him. And so the Oswalds took him in. They gave him a new name, and from that point on, he became an Oswald. He was Oswaldian, you might say, known by Oswalds and marked by them. Now, that doesn’t mean it was easy. He didn’t look like them. He had features and traits that set him apart as “unnatural” to the Oswald name. He had physical issues and struggles with anger that lingered from his first family. But over time, his nature and heart have shifted and changed, and he is, without question, a beloved Oswaldian son.

That’s you, my friend. My brother and sister. You have been adopted into the family of God. We talk about being a family sometimes, and what we mean by that is that we act hospitably toward each other. We’re friendly and nice and helpful and generous and look for ways to serve and care for each other. But it’s helpful to know that your family identity was not forged by some cultural context unique to our church community. It was forged by God himself. Our family identity does not start with our brotherhood, but with our sonship.

You are Christian because in Christ, you are given a new name, a new marker, a father who loves and provides and cares for you. You are adopted, make no mistake. The issues and struggles of your old self, your old family, will linger for some time. But that does not change God’s kindness toward you, his grace for you. You may struggle to see God as your true father, and you as his true son or daughter, at least for a while. But God sees you this way, no matter what you feel. He does not give up on you, he pursues you. And he can’t wait until the day when you finally look up and see, not a judgmental God with his arms folded in condemnation, but a loving father who opens his arms wide and envelopes you with all your messed up things. You are his sons and daughters. You are family.

And that’s it. There’s nothing else you need to do. Just know that your identity is not forged by you do, or who know, or what you have. There’s no next steps on how to be a better a Christian, or to make God love you more. This is a message that God has for you. That before your fight to belong, to be known, to be loved, God already took care of that. You are his, and his alone. Just rest in that today. Enjoy him. Praise God, adore him, because of who he is, who you are in him.