At the beginning of any new year, the most important question is always going to be “will we go for God this year?“. Do we want to grow in our faith? Change? Mature? Bear fruit?
If you do, you need to fix your eyes/gaze/focus on Jesus – the author and perfecter of faith. One of the ways we do this is to read the Scriptures and allow them to inspire and inform us, to bring revelation and transformation to us.
For me personally, Ephesians 1:3-14 is a key passage on which to meditate at the start of a new year. Paul opens this letter to Ephesians with a breathtaking vista of Jesus – who He is and what God is doing through Him. It’s a great place to start if we want to see Jesus work in our lives.
Paul says God is at work in Jesus bringing us three things. Three things we all need, and need afresh in 2011: blessing, redemption and restoration.
1. BLESSING
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Paul launches into this amazing letter with praise to God for the blessings we receive as a result of His eternal plan being worked. And it’s an amazing passage isn’t it ? Full of praise and worship for who God is and what He’s done.
In the original Greek, vv.3-14 are one complex sentence of praise… it’s as if praise bursts out of Paul’s mouth. He neither pauses for breath or punctuates his words with full stops. And in his praise, we discover what Paul is so excited about !
Paul’s intention is to have us focus on who Jesus is and what He is doing in the cosmos. To take the attention of ourselves and our fears, worries and anxieties, and get lost in the wonder and majesty and love of God revealed in his unfolding plan, and the amazing invitation to be part of that plan.
Paul says a number of mind-blowing things here that he wants the church to grasp hold of. And notice, as we go through this section the focus is on God’s actions, through and in Jesus.
The rest of Ephesians is about what we – i.e. all Christians – have in Jesus, or what we have begun to experience through the Spirit. What Paul wants us to grasp is that because of what God has done through Jesus, salvation has been inaugurated and assured in Christ. Note that Paul does not say we have received every spiritual blessing now. He qualifies his statement, saying that we have been blessed in the heavenly realms…. with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In other words, because the story we find ourselves in is still unfolding – the plan is not complete – it is not until the final chapter is completed that we will receive every spiritual blessing.
Paul is saying to us the blessings of the age to come – cf. 1:21 – often called the kingdom of God – have been released to us in part because they have already been decisively bestowed upon Jesus who now reigns at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms, and so are therefore assured to us, through him. This is what Paul means when he says we are in Christ.
Furthermore, we read in v.14 that…
Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
Whilst we do not take hold of all that Jesus has achieved for us yet – we can know we will receive our full inheritance when the work is finally completed. We are given a seal – literally, a signet ring seal – one that would have been used to imprint into a hot wax seal on a contract, the image of the person… in the form of the Holy Spirit.
2. REDEMPTION
7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
In short, God’s plan is the redemption of humanity in Jesus – v.7, 14. Paul wants us to see that our salvation in Christ allows us to be restored to our true identity, our true reason for existing – to be God’s holy people in His creation. Paul tells us that we have been redeemed by the work of Jesus – our sins have been forgiven…. Jesus came to redeem mankind – to make us fully human again – so that we might once again love, worship and glorify God and expand the garden – the kingdom of God.
Note here that Paul singles out that through the blood of Jesus we have received the forgiveness of sins. Blood is a Biblical metaphor for sacrificial atoning death – originally it was the blood of the substitutionary animal sacrifices that atoned for our sins.
In the same way, Jesus is the Lamb – just as He is the lamb at Abraham’s altar, the Passover lamb in Exodus… John the Baptist exclaims “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”…. in Revelation, the great multitudes cry out “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb”.
Paul doesn’t single this out because this is the only part of the future blessing we already experience now, but because it is at the root of the others. Until sins are dealt with, humankind is alienated from God.
So the redemption plan of God, designed before we were even created, was set in motion with the coming of Jesus. And now we find ourselves in the story of God, beneficiaries of the outworking of that plan: cosmic reconciliation.
Paul’s purpose in writing Ephesians is to explain to the church that this longed for cosmic reconciliation has been begun by Jesus and will be completed by Jesus.
3. RESTORATION
9And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
What is His will? His will is to bring all things together again under Christ:
22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Paul is saying that through Jesus, God has begun the process of bringing restoration to His creation. These are the things that the prophets said would happen. Note as well, that this ultimately is for the glory of God – v.12. We exist to glorify God. God created us to bring Him glory. He is restoring His creation, and in that, ensuring that once again, all His creation will glorify Him.
11In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
CONCLUSION
Paul prays therefore:
I pray for you constantly, 17asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. 18I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called. I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people,
19I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of his power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power 20that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. 21Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else in this world or in the world to come. 22And God has put all things under the authority of Christ, and he gave him this authority for the benefit of the church. 23And the church is his body; it is filled by Christ, who fills everything everywhere with his presence.
