Studying Ephesians some time ago, I had cause to revisit the extensive notes I took at the time. The notes are gleaned from Tom Wright, The NIV Application Commentary or P.T. O’Brien’s Pillar Commentary on Ephesians. Rereading them, I found them extremely helpful, re-assuring, inspiring and comforting. I decided to reproduce them as a blog. Here they are!
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The entire prayer, all 11 verses of it, is woven through and through with the story of what God has done in Jesus the Messiah. He has blessed us in the King (verse three); he chose us in him (verse four), foreordained us through him (verse five), poured grace on us in him (verse six), gave us redemption in him (verse seven), set out his plan in him (verse nine), intending to sum up everything in him (verse 10). We have obtained our inheritance in him (verse 11), because we have set our hope on him (verse 12), and have been sealed in him with the spirit as the guarantee of what is to come (versus 13 – 14).
God’s character is best described as a “God for us” (cf. Rom. 8:31), the one who has chosen us. God has always been and always will be this kind of God. God is the God of past, present, and future, and in all three he is at work for us. Our security rests on what he did before the foundation of the world, on what he did and continues to do in Christ and in the Spirit, and on what he has promised for the future. God has intentionally chosen and planned to go to great lengths to achieve salvation for people.
In Christ” with its 164 occurrences, 36 of which are in Ephesians, is much more likely the central motif, or at least a central motif. Just as redemption is “in Christ” (1:7), so justification and every other act of God take place in Christ. In fact, the only way that the atonement makes sense, the only way that Christ’s death is effective for us, is if the union between Christ and believers is so strong that in some way his death is our death and his life is our life. This solidarity is achieved by a double identification via the Incarnation and faith. In the Incarnation Christ identifies with us and by faith we identify with him.
Our salvation in Christ is a vital stage only a stage, on the way to the much larger purpose of God. God’s plan is for the whole cosmos, the entire universe; his choosing and calling of us, and his shaping and directing of us in the Messiah, are somehow connected with that larger intention. The point is that we aren’t chosen for our own sake but for the sake of what God wants to accomplish through us.
This alerts us to the other hidden story which Paul is telling all through this great prayer. It is the story of the Exodus from Egypt. God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the bearers of his promised salvation for the world — the rescue of the whole cosmos, humankind especially, from the sin and death that had come about through human rebellion. When Paul says that God chose us “in Christ” — the “us” here being the whole company of Christians — he is saying that those who believe in Jesus are now part of the fulfilment of that ancient purpose.
See also Genesis 18:17-19
As the language of grace and election shows, most of this doxology is really about God’s valuing of us. God blessed us, chose us from eternity, graced us, planned for us, sent Christ for us, revealed to us, will sum up all things in Christ in whom we have a part, gave us the Spirit as a guarantee, and will redeem us as his own people. The threefold repetition to the praise of his glory (1:6, 12, 14) shows the only possible response — worship and thanks to the God who values us and acts for us. The text is both a call to worship and a classic example of what worship should be.
People who know the value God has for them find both worship and obedience natural — not necessarily easy, but natural. The problem is that so many of us have difficulty believing that God really does value us personally and individually. Mere words about God’s valuing will not change the perception of those who already have negative self-images or who have been beaten down by life. The church has a responsibility in valuing people. With their worship Christians attest to the “real reality” where God values and seeks each human, and with their own actions Christians convey value to others by the way they live.
Paul does not spell out here the responsibility that comes with grace, but clearly “cheap grace” is not a viable option. If God has lavished so much value on us, we cannot devalue his efforts by ignoring him or the implications for life. Grace must lead to the very place it does in this text — to gratitude, a gratitude that is both spoken and lived. For Christianity, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude. The first response to God’s valuing us must be thanks and praise to God. All the rest of Christian living flows from this.
In the Old Testament the inheritance was the land of Canaan. What is the new promised land? What is the promised inheritance? The standard Christian answer has been “Heaven”.
However the inheritance Paul has in mind, so it appears from the present passage and the whole chapter is the whole world, when it has been renewed by a fresh act of God’s power and love. Paul has already said in verse 10 that God’s plan in the Messiah is to sum up everything in heaven and earth. God , after all, is the creator; he has no interest in leaving Earth to rot and making do for all eternity with only half of the original creation. God intends to flood the whole cosmos, heaven and earth together, with his presence and grace, and when that happens the new world that results, in which Jesus himself will be the central figure, is to be the “inheritance” for which Jesus is people are longing.
At the moment, therefore, the people who in this life have come to know and trust God in Jesus are to be the signs to the rest of the world that this glorious future is on the way.
And from v14. “But what is the inheritance? Here centuries of Western Christian tradition have given the emphatic, though often implicit, reply “heaven”. Heaven is our home, our inheritance. We have re-read the story of the Exodus in those terms, with the crossing of the Jordan symbolizing the bodily death that will bring us to heaven itself, the Canaan for which we long. But this is precisely NOT what Paul says. What he says would have been clear had not the whole Western tradition been determined to look the other way at the crucial point. The inheritance is NOT heaven. Nor is it Palestine. The inheritance is the whole renewed, restored creation. I will Say it again: the whole world is now God’s holy land. That is how Paul’s retold Exodus narrative makes full and complete sense. And that, I suggest, is the ground plan for a fully biblical, fully Christians view of creation and of our responsibility toward it.”
Sealed with the Spirit (v13)
Equally, the sign that they themselves have received which guarantees them their future is the Holy Spirit. The spirit is to the Christians and the church what the cloud and fire were in the wilderness: the powerful, personal presence of the living God, holy and not to be taken lightly, leading and guiding the often muddled and rebellious people to their inheritance.
But the spirit is more than just a leader and guide. The spirit is actually part of the promised inheritance, because the spirit is God’s own presence, which in the New World will be fully and personally with us for ever.
Nowhere is the future triumph of God conveyed so clearly as with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians will later develop several aspects of a theology of the Spirit, but 1:13-14 focuses on the Spirit as the verification that we belong to God and that God will complete his promise to us. Texts like this show that the gift of the Spirit is not some second blessing or higher stage of the Christian faith and life — something for the spiritually elite. Rather, the Spirit is the possession — the necessary possession — of all Christians. He is God’s gift to us showing that we are his, and he bestows on us a sense of God’s presence and involvement in our lives. The obvious benefit of having the Spirit is a sense of peace and security that comes with belonging to God. How does a person know he or she has the Spirit? Primarily in the change that is brought into life, especially love.