Introduction
I’m currently reading an excellent book that I recommend you read as well, by Rosaria Butterfield, called Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age. And indeed, the age, or the sinful world around us is certainly feeding us lies… five at the very least. And we all too often believe them. And that’s a real problem. But I wonder, how often are we feeding ourselves lies? How often are we looking at our lives, looking at this world, and processing our desires and thinking that we know better than God? Even if we don’t actually say or think such things, how often do we live as though we do? I mean, there is no neutrality: if we are not submitting ourselves to the Lord, we are, in one way or another, claiming to be the Lord, or claiming that whatever or whoever we are submitting ourselves to is Lord.
Whether we realize it or not, that’s what we all do when we sin. Every time we sin, every time we desire something that God says we can’t have or shouldn’t want, we are putting ourselves in the place of God and saying that we think we know better than God. If we follow our hearts or our peers or whatever, whoever we follow is who we are saying is Lord of our life. We think they or we know what’s good for us, not God. We think they or we know what’s best for us, not God. We think they or we know what we want and what we need, not God. And in so doing we are really showing that we think we are God. Or that there’s some other god besides the One True God. The sins of envy, pride, and idolatry are behind every sin we commit or desire to commit. And we must repent.
Friends, God doesn’t hold out on us. He isn’t keeping us from what is true, good, and beautiful, from what is truly good and good for us. In fact, His ways always lead to what is truly good and fullness of joy. We dare not put ourselves in the place of God, for we could never measure up. And we dare not go to anyone or anything but God for what is truly good or true joy, for they could never measure up. Truth, goodness, beauty, true joy, salvation, and true satisfaction are ultimately found in Christ alone and His will for us. And that should change everything about who we are and how we live. And that’s what we’re going to see in God’s Word today. So look with me at Ephesians 1:4d-6.
Ephesians 1:4d-6
Last week we began looking at this letter written by Saint Paul to the Saints in Ephesus, though it was likely a circular letter meant to be read and applied by all the churches in the region, just as it is now read and applied by all true churches everywhere. And what we saw last week as we looked at Paul’s opening greeting was that he gives us a glimpse into what the whole letter is going to lay out. And what’s laid out is Christian doctrine and Christian duty; that is the Credenda of Christianity and the Agenda of Christianity. And Paul’s point in showing us this is to help us see who God is, who we are in Christ, and how to live in Christ. God is our gracious Father who has chosen us in Christ to be holy and blameless before Him. That’s who God is, that’s who we are, and that’s how we must live.
Later on Paul is going to say that we Christians are people who speak the truth in love. In other words, we know the truth, we speak the truth, and we live out the truth. People often accuse Christians of acting like we are holier than thou. Like we are better than everyone else… But that’s not the case. The depths of Christian doctrine teach us that our only boast is Christ. We are saved by God’s sovereign grace, and anything good in us is owing to God’s grace alone. All the glory belongs to God. But, with that said, we do have something the world doesn’t: we know and we have what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. So, it’s not that we’re better than everyone else, but we have something that is better… Someone who is better. We have what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful in Christ. And that’s something everyone wants and everyone needs, whether they realize it or not. And today Paul is going to give us a little more clarity around these same ideas, and the joy tied to them.
Our passage starts in the last part of verse 4 with, “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ…” Last week I pointed out that these two words, “In love…” could go with the ideas in verse 4 or the ideas in verse 5. This is what the way the ESV Bible lays it out communicates. By starting a new sentence with these two words, linking them to verse five, while at the same time leaving them in verse 4, it seems to say that the words belong to the ideas in verse 4 and verse 5. If you tie love to verse 4 it seems to be speaking of our love; and if you tie love to verse 5 it seems to be speaking of God’s love. But, both are true. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” But, that last part seems to be the main point here.
The very Greek word translated love here is the word agape, which by definition is divine love characterized by sacrifice in the pursuit of another person’s good. It’s the gospel love we see in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But, as 1 John 4:8 tells us, “God is love.” This is who He is. And indeed, that’s what we see in Christ… that the very nature and character of God is love. But, that’s also what’s being communicated to us when Paul says that God predestined us in love.
The Greek word translated predestined here is the word prohorizas, meaning a predetermined horizon, or a predetermined destiny or destination. As the captain of a ship has his heading and sets out for the horizon, so it is here with God’s gracious purpose for His people. God—our Captain—predetermines and predestines in love. This is what we see in one of the most beautiful parts of Romans 8. In verses 29-30 it says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
In other words, those who love God and are called according to His purpose are those whom He foreknew and predestined to be called, justified, sanctified, and glorified in Christ. Indeed, that is what Romans 8:28 means by good—conforming us, changing us into the image of Jesus. God doesn’t work all things together for our comfort or temporary prosperity, He works them together for our eternal good. He sovereignly ordains, rules, and reigns over all things so that His people will know Jesus, love Jesus, live for Jesus, become like Jesus, and be with Jesus forever. That’s the ultimate good. But notice it all starts with God’s foreknowledge.
On the one hand, to foreknow just means to know beforehand. But God is, always has been, and always will be all-knowing. He never learns anything because He knows all and ordains all that comes to pass. So, this has to be more than just general knowledge that God had beforehand. And indeed it is. You see, on the other hand, to foreknow means to love beforehand. The word know is often used in this sense. Adam knew his wife Eve and they conceived and had children. It was the consummation of their covenant union. Or in Matthew 7 when Jesus tells the workers of lawlessness who claimed to know Him that He never knew them. Jesus is God in the flesh who knows all. So, when He says that He never knew them He doesn’t mean He had no knowledge of them, but that He never knew them in the intimate covenant sense of the Word. They were not in right covenant with Him. They were not walking in faithfulness to Him and therefore were not under His covenant love. So, to foreknow means, in some sense, to fore-love, or to set His covenant love on beforehand. And this is the idea in Ephesians 1.
Because God is love—the One who defines love and exemplifies it in every way—He set His covenant love on His particular people, from the least to the greatest, people from all walks of life, every nation, and generation, and predetermined our horizon, our destination, so that we would be a people who know Jesus, love Jesus, live for Jesus, become like Jesus, and will be with Jesus forever. Indeed, God predestined us to be adopted into His family as sons because of His great love for us. This is how God has always worked. A good example of that is seen in how God worked with Israel.
In Deuteronomy 7:6-8 God says to Israel, “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers…” In other words, it wan’t because of who Israel was that God loved them and chose them, but because of who God is. As God says of Himself in Exodus 34:6, He is, “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…” He is the God who is love and who is faithful. It’s all rooted in who He is.
And lest we think that’s merely how things worked in the Old Covenant, listen to what Paul says of the church in the New Covenant. In 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 he says, “consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” It is because of God that we are Christians. He chose us. He saves us. Indeed, our only boast is in Him. For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. Surely to God be the glory alone. That’s how it worked in the Old Covenant and that’s how it works in the New. There is continuity across God’s Word because God does not change. Indeed, there is continuity because of who God is. And it is because of who God is that we are loved.
We typically assume that someone is loving when they love us because of who we are. But that’s not really what love is or how it works. I mean, do you want someone to love you just because they think you’re pretty or handsome or because of what you bring to the table? That seems a little too self-rewarding to truly be love, not to mention it’s incredibly hard to live up to something like that given that we are all constantly changing. I mean, if someone loves you for who you are today and tomorrow you change—you get a little older, a little wiser, and perhaps a little heavier, as most of us do… how do you know they will still love you if their love is all based on who you are today? You don’t. And that’s not really what love is or how it works. Love is a covenantal and sacrificial commitment for another person’s good. Remember, agape love, gospel love, biblical love is divine love characterized by sacrifice in the pursuit of another person’s good. And that’s exactly how God has loved us. Indeed, in order for so great a God to love sinners like us He has to sacrifice in order to do so.
We are sinners by nature. We are weak by nature. We are foolish by nature. But God is loving by nature. God is gracious by nature. God is faithful by nature. And it is because of who God is and how He’s sacrificed that any of us have been saved. And notice what it means to be saved here. It means to be adopted into God’s family as sons. In love He has predestined us to Himself for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. That is, because of who Jesus is and what He has done and is doing… Because Jesus is God the Son who came to earth and took on flesh, lived the perfect God-glorifying life that we have failed to live, and then took the punishment we deserve for our failure upon Himself, satisfying God’s wrath and dying in our place, then rose from the grave in victory justifying all who would look to Him by faith, and ascended to the right hand of the Father where He rules, reigns, and ever intercedes for us as our perfect Prophet, Priest, and King. Because of our union to who Jesus is and what He has done by faith, we are now brought into God’s family and have the status of a son, a firstborn son with rights to a full and glorious inheritance.
Again, Romans 8 helps us understand this reality. In Romans 8:12-17 Paul says, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” We are sons of God who are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ because we are united to Christ by faith. We are in a covenantal union with Christ, and therefore all that He has done and all that He is now covers us and belongs to us. But, notice how great the implications of that are. Because we are children of God we are no longer slaves. Though we were sinners by nature, weak by nature, and foolish by nature… slaves to sin, Satan, death, and fear… Now we are new creations in Christ, with new natures in Christ, with a new status in Christ, and a new ability to live in the victory of Christ.
Again, our passage says that God predestined us for adoption to Himself. That means we are truly His children now who don’t just have a new legal or moral status (though we do), but a real and right relationship with God. We are a part of the family of God. We are not second class citizens, but God’s children. We are saved, we are adopted to Him. But that also means that we are adopted for Him… that is for His glory. We have been brought into His family and have been baptized into the family name—in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and God expects us to live up to the family name. And by His grace we can. We are no longer slaves, but we are His children. So we can, and we must, live faithful lives for His glory in every area of life. We are righteous in Christ, and because of that we are to be righteous for Christ. We are to bring every area of life into joyful submission to the Lordship of Christ, and this says we can because this is what God predestined us to do—to live to Him and for Him. This is at the heart of what it means to be saved… We have been adopted into the family of God, and that has changed who we are and how we are to live.
Now, I understand that can be overwhelming. Faithfulness is hard, but it is always worth it. And that can be seen in the rest of our passage. Starting in the last part of verse 5 into the first part of verse 6 Paul says that God has done all of this, “according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace…” The ESV doesn’t really bring out the beauty here, so let me quote a couple of other versions as well. The KJV says it like this, “according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace…” And the NASB says it like this, “according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace…” And that’s what I don’t want you to miss. This is all flowing from and for His kind and good pleasure, and the praise of His glorious grace. This tells us that our salvation comes from an overflow of God’s delight… It tells us that our kind God takes great pleasure in our redemption and adoption. And it tells us that God’s will is kind and good as well. Our God ordains all things and whatever He ordains is right.
This is a reality that’s often incredibly hard for us to see. In fact, sometimes it’s impossible for us to see. What we see all too often is tragedy, hardship, pain, suffering, and loss. And none of those things seem right from our perspective. But, from God’s perspective they are right because they are all working together for good. That doesn’t mean that tragedy, hardship, pain, suffering, and loss are good in and of themselves. It just means that God is so good and so sovereign that even when horrible things happen God is bringing about good through them. Evil by definition is rebellion against God, and God is not capable of such things. Everything He does is good because good finds its source and definition in God Himself. As C. S. Lewis put it in The Great Divorce, “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” So, as I love to say, when you can’t trace God’s hand you must trust God’s character. And His character is good. And that’s what we see in our passage.
God has brought about our adoption into His family according to the good and kind pleasure of His will, for the praise of His glorious grace. God’s glorious grace and God’s goodness go hand in hand. God’s grace is His ill-deserve favor. And God’s ill-deserved favor comes to us ultimately in the person and work of Jesus. As I read earlier from Titus 2:11-14, “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people . . . . [in] the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us…” And Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus is the very radiance of the glory of God. So, when you think of God’s glorious grace you should immediately think of Jesus. Traditionally God’s glory is defined as the display of who God is in all of His beauty and attributes. It’s His weight and His worth… it’s the radiance of His majesty. And all of that is ultimately seen in Jesus. Jesus is the glory of God incarnate. And indeed, Jesus is the grace of God incarnate. As John Calvin once said, the grace of God comes to us in and through Jesus clothed in the gospel. And because that’s true, Jesus is directly tied to the good pleasure of God’s will. As Calvin also said, “Jesus Christ [is] the source and substance of all good.”
Putting this together then we see that God has sovereignly ordained and purposed our salvation, and all things, according to the good pleasure of His will for the praise of His glorious grace, which is really the same as saying for the praise of His Son, Jesus Christ. So, God’s good pleasure is tied to Jesus, and the result is tied to Jesus because it’s all for His praise. It’s fair to say then that God’s good purpose for His people comes from His overflowing delight in Jesus. In other words, if God were not passionate about His glory in Christ above all He would not love us at all. But He is, so He does. Because of His passion for the glory of His Son God loved us, chose us, redeemed us, and adopted us. And that should tell us a lot about how good Jesus is. From eternity past to eternity future God the Father has been delighting in God the Son above all else. And if the eternal God of the universe has not exhausted Jesus’ goodness, if He hasn’t grown bored of Christ, neither can we. There is nothing and no one better.
So, as I said earlier, faithfulness is hard, but it is always worth it. And that’s what we see here because we see that the good God has purposed all things for is His glory and our good. Indeed, all of this is tied to our ultimate good and our delight in the ultimate good, namely, Jesus Himself. Though God is completely sovereign and ordains all that comes to pass, notice He doesn’t treat us like or want us to be robots. He doesn’t want mere obedience, or begrudging obedience. He wants praise. And true praise by definition is not robotic or a forced act, but an overflow of delight.
C. S. Lewis explains this well in his reflections on the Psalms when he says, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”
You see, God wants us to be so overwhelmed by His goodness that we can’t help but praise Him… Indeed, our praise of Him is the completion of our enjoyment of Him. So, God has designed everything in such a way that His people would enjoy the greatest good their is, namely, Himself. And you see, this is why faithfulness, no matter how hard it may be, is always worth it. No matter what we may lose, no matter how painful something we go through is, if it gets us more of God it’s worth it. This is often what God is trying to get us to see in and through the ups and downs of our life. As Lewis writes elsewhere, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” All of those things we see and go through that we use as excuses to doubt God’s goodness are actually God’s megaphone to get our attention, so that we would see that only God is truly good. As Lewis also points out, “Human history is the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” And God keeps telling us, even shouting at us, that, as Augustine said, God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him.
If Lewis is right about human history, about us seeking happiness in anything and everything else but God, redemptive history is God showing us that true joy, true contentment, salvation, and satisfaction are found in Him alone. God, His ways, and His will for us are what is truly good and good for us. Our flesh may desire a whole host of things that go against God’s Word. And let’s be honest, it typically does. Which is why we must not trust our desires. Our desires often lead us astray, or at least they try to. But, God’s Word always leads us down the right path. And what this passage is telling us is that the right path is ultimately a path of true joy, because true praise is an overflow of joy, or a completion of joy, as Lewis put it. God doesn’t just want us in submission, He wants us to live in joyful submission to the Lordship of Christ. And we can do that because that is actually where true joy is found.
Look at what the whole of verse 6 says. It says that God has set this all up, redemptive history, our salvation, and all things, “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Notice, we are not merely being commanded to praise here; we are not merely being commanded to be so joyful in Christ that our delight overflows into praise… But, this is what we have been blessed in in Christ. The word Beloved in verse 6 is capitalized in the ESV and in the definite singular in the Greek because it’s speaking of Jesus here. Jesus is God’s beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. And we are those who are beloved in Him. We are so united to Jesus by faith that our heavenly Father delights in us as His children in whom He is well pleased as well. In Christ the good pleasure of the Father is upon us. And that’s actually what’s being said when Paul says that we are blessed.
The word blessed in verse 6 is not the same word that Paul used in verse 3 when he called us to bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here the word blessed is a form of the word grace. It means to give graciously and highly favor. So, the idea in verse 6 is that we are to live for the praise of God’s glorious grace with which He has graced us in Christ. This is our reality as Christians. We are in covenant with God in Christ, and when we walk in faithfulness we enjoy the blessings of that covenant. And it is in the overflow of our enjoyment that we truly praise the glorious grace of God in Christ. God so freely lavishes His goodness, His love, His mercy, His grace, and all of His covenant blessings upon us that we so enjoy them that we can’t help but praise Him. At least that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Let me give you one last C. S. Lewis quote to illustrate what I’m getting at. Referring to our tendency to constantly think we know better than God, or that we can find some greater joy than God, Lewis says, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Only, I would add that we are not actually pleased. We are lying to ourselves. We are suppressing the truth in our unrighteousness. True blessedness, true grace, true favor, true happiness, and true joy are found in Christ alone… And deep down we all know it. And for the Christian we can live it.
There is no greater good than God Himself. And God Himself has come to us and given Himself over for us, and brought us into the blessing of all that He has done and all that He is in Jesus Christ. Remember, God predestined us for adoption to Himself. He has brought us into His family in and through Jesus, according to His good pleasure, and for our joy. And now in our joy we can and we must live for Him. We must live for the praise of His glorious grace. But in God’s kindness we will find even more joy in doing so. Indeed, we will find the completion of our joy in living for the praise of God’s glorious grace in Christ. So, though faithfulness may be hard, it will show itself to be worth it, because come what may, we have what is true, good, and beautiful in Christ.
Conclusion
Our election, redemption, and adoption are all an overflow of God’s delight and pleasure in His own glory—in Jesus. It’s because God loves Jesus so much that He loves us. It is because God is well pleased with His perfect Son that He is well pleased with us. And indeed, His good pleasure and favor are upon us as He has now adopted us to Himself. He did not save us to be robots or to be mere slaves. He saved us to be His sons… In and through Christ we are adopted into the family of God, and we are called to live for the praise of God… We are to live up to the family name. And as we look at the goodness of God and His amazing grace, how can we not? And if we don’t we are robbing ourselves of the fullness of true goodness and joy. Indeed, if we don’t live for His praise we are robbing the world of true goodness and joy. So may we give ourselves to living for the praise of His glorious grace, until all people that on earth do dwell join us and praise our great God, for His glory and their good. For to point them anywhere else would be a lie.