Last week we covered verse 4,
this week we're going to cover probably all of verse 5. First we're going to read the
first 14 verses of this chapter, Ephesians 1. Paul, an apostle
of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in
Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in
Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even
as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined
us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the
purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which
he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of his grace which he lavished upon us, and all wisdom
and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according
to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness
of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and
things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works
all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were
the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory,
and in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed
with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance. till we acquire possession of
it to the praise of His glory. Before we jump into verse 5,
I want to briefly review what we talked about last time I was
here, here in verse 4. In verse 4, Paul tells us that
God, the Father, chose us, the church, in Him, the Christ, before
the foundation of the world. I spent most of my time Last
message emphasizing the correct understanding of this word chose
in verse four. This choice that God makes is
an active, a conscious, deliberate, free, and uncompelled choice
that he makes before the foundation of the world. And this choice
is unconditional, at least with respect to us. It's conditioned
only on the counsel of God's will, which Paul will repeat
several times. The longer I spend here in the
first 14 verses of Ephesians 1, the more repetitive my sermons
are going to sound because Paul repeats himself in many different
ways in order to really help us understand what's going on.
But what I want us to get out of verse four is that nothing
that man can do or has ever done has any bearing on God's sovereign
decree to save his people. The choice of Ephesians 1, 4
is God's free and sovereign power to save those he wants. The reason
he chooses to save any particular person has nothing to do with
anything God has foreseen concerning that person. does not depend
on anything found in the man because there's nothing to find.
It depends on his free and sovereign grace which he dispenses wherever
he wills to whomever he wills. And we're going to spend some
time today in John chapter 3 looking at Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus
where he tells Nicodemus exactly that, that the grace of God for
salvation is poured out on whomever he wishes. Now, jumping into verse 5, I'm
going to do something that I don't know that I've ever done before.
I'm going to begin my sermon with a joke. But the reason will be evident
as we move on. There's a comedian who was known
for his stand-up acts just being just one liner after one liner
after one liner. There was really no narrative. But it worked for him, he was
good at it. And he said, I saw a commercial on late night TV.
It said, forget everything you know about slipcovers. So I did,
and it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to
sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what they were. And believe it or not, this is
how we have to approach the attributes of God. When the attributes of
God have parallel expressions in human emotion and in human
philosophy, oftentimes it is necessary to forget everything
we know about that particular attribute and allow scripture
to teach us how God expresses these things, how God manifests
these things, and who God is when we talk about these things.
Just to give you a quick example, and we will see several of these
as we move forward, right? Scripture says that God hates
certain people, doesn't it? You tell people that God hates
the wicked and people will often object because they don't know
the scripture. Psalm 5, the boastful shall not
stand before your eyes, you hate all evildoers. You destroy those
who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty
and deceitful man." You say, well, God doesn't hate anyone.
OK, fine. He abhors them. That's better, right? Scripture
is clear that God has hatred for the wicked. God has hatred
for evildoers. And that's just one of many,
many places we could go to see this. And the reason I'm using
this as an example is because As we understand hate, we understand
that we're not allowed to do that, right? 1 John 3.15, everyone
who hates his brother is a murderer. You know that no murderer has
eternal life abiding in him. So what's the difference? Why
is God allowed to hate the wicked and we aren't? In our sinful nature, we love
to hate, don't we? Someone cuts you off in traffic,
you think evil thoughts. The difference is justice. John
tells us there in 1 John 3 that hatred is murder for us. But this tells us something,
that hatred is an expression of death, right? Hatred is a
pouring out of wrath. When we hate someone, when we
think hateful thoughts towards them, we are saying, I want to
express my wrath against this person. And when we do so, we
are unjust and unrighteous. Not only is our hatred unjust
and unrighteous, it comes from a place of injustice and unrighteousness
because we ourselves are unrighteous. We are deserving of that wrath,
which we wish to put upon others. This is not the case for God,
right? God is just and God is righteous. And so his hatred,
his wrath is just and righteous. So when we think of God's hatred,
we must not think of the way in which we hate, the way in
which we express hatred towards others. Think about how scripture
tells us that God is righteous and those whom God hates deserve
God's wrath. The two things in verse 5 that
we need to be careful not to get wrong are love and adoption. So we're going to spend some
time now talking about love. At the end of verse four, Paul
begins the next sentence with, in love. Now, it isn't actually
clear whether the phrase in love goes with the sentence before
or the sentence after. There's no punctuation in the
Greek. Apparently, punctuation and periods
and commas are a recent invention. If you go back and, you know,
you can look at the facsimiles of the manuscripts and it's just,
you're lucky if there's spaces in it, you know. And so it isn't
clear which sentence the phrase in love goes with, but it's okay
because both sentences are talking about the same thing. So either
choice you could make about where to stick in love as you read
it, work because it's talking about the same thing, right?
Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. This in love
is talking about the choice of God before the foundation of
the world, or if you put it with the next sentence, in love, he
predestined. So either way, it's talking about
the same thing. Now before we get to what this
love of verse 4 is, we're going to talk about what it is not. I spent a lot of time talking
about this last time I was in Ephesians on Wednesday nights,
and it made some people upset. So I'm not going to spend too
much time there, but what this love is not is that we understand
that God is love, right? Scripture tells us that God is
love, that God's nature is love. And so God's love as an expression
of his nature is manifest in all that he does. Because God
is love, he acts as love in all the things that he does, all
of his decrees, all of his dispositions, all of his actions. And so you
cannot separate God's nature as love from the things that
he does. And so in some sense, God's nature
as love is expressed in his acts and dispositions towards all
creatures, even in his justice and wrath towards the wicked.
But that is not the love of Ephesians 1.4. It's not what Ephesians
1.4 is talking about. Ephesians 1.4 is also not talking
about a love of emotional affection or infatuation or passion. Husbands and wives, you know
that love, right? That love that makes you look
at your spouse and say, ooh la la. It's not what Paul's talking
about here. And it's also not the love of
John 3.16. Remember, John 3.16 has the word
love in it. For God so loved the world. God loved the world so much. That's not correct, is it? We need to understand the context
of John 3 in order to understand the love of John 3, right? So Jesus is having this clandestine
meeting with Nicodemus. Nicodemus is the teacher of Israel,
the ruler of the Jews. And so you've got the team captain
of Team Israel meeting with the man claiming to be the promised
Messiah, right? This is the one who Israel has
been looking for. And so Nicodemus does well to
seek him out and double check. So Nicodemus is responsible for
teaching the Jews. He's chief Pharisee, right? And
so Jesus explains to Nicodemus that salvation is of the Lord.
It depends not on the will of man. Let's read some of this. John
3, now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a
ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night.
and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from
God. Now, whether or not he was telling the truth is a bit of
a mystery. No one can do the signs that
you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered, truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God. Right, Jesus deflects. Nicodemus,
I know that you are from God, for you do miracles. And there's
sort of an implied, what's up with that? And Jesus is just
like, you must be born again. Nicodemus said to him, how can
a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother's womb and be born? Now, why is that what he thought
of? Jesus answered, truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot
enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to
you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes. You hear it sound, but you do
not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with
everyone who is born of the spirit. Nicodemus said to him, how can
these things be? Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel?
And yet you do not understand these things. Truly, truly, I
say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what
we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have
told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe
if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven
except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son
of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal
life. So that's everything leading
up to John 3.16. So Jesus has explained to Nicodemus
that the Spirit of God blows when and where it wishes for
salvation. To understand John 3.16, we need
to understand where Nicodemus is coming from. Nicodemus, knowing
well the whole Torah, the whole of the Old Testament, knows very
well that there is a Messiah coming. There is a Savior that
has been promised to Israel. And we know from Jesus' many
conversations with the Pharisees with the Jews, that they are
expecting a conquering king. They are expecting a king to
come and conquer Rome, right, because Rome was ruling over
Israel at the time and oppressing the Jews with their rule. And
then we also know that in Judaism, these Jews, the Pharisees in
particular, were very proud of who they were. They believed
that this Messiah was coming to save them, because they were
born of Israel. And this Messiah was coming to
crush the Gentiles. Nicodemus thinks that salvation
is for the Jews, that it depends on the works of the law, and
that the spirit of God is blown over Israel and no one else.
So Jesus refutes this when he says, God loved the world in
this way. He's refuting this elitist Jewish
theology that Israel was the sole inheritors of God's favor.
God's saving love is not reserved uniquely for Israel by blood, but rather it is reserved uniquely
for Israel by faith, the true Israel, the elect of God, who
consists of both Jews and Gentiles. So when Jesus said God loved
the world, He's refuting Nicodemus who thinks God loves me. God loves Israel and my people
and not those filthy Gentiles. Jesus says, no, God loves the
Greeks too. My people, Jesus, my people come
from the world. My people come from every nation. And this is what we see in Revelation
7. when John receives the vision of the people of God worshiping
in heaven. After this, I looked and behold
a great multitude that no one could number from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the
throne and before the lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches
in their hands. So not to sound woke, but Jesus
in John 3.16 is talking about the diversity of the people of
God. And then we see this in verse
17 because people who abuse John 3.16 really don't like to read
John 17. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life. For God did not send his son
into the world to condemn the world like you think he did,
Nicodemus. Nicodemus thinks Jesus, the Savior,
the Messiah, the King is coming to crush the Gentiles. And Jesus
said, God did not send me into the world to do that. But in
order that those Gentiles might be saved through me. Whoever
believes in him is not condemned. So the way in which Jesus is
talking about love here is a bit different from what we're seeing
here in Ephesians 1, 4. It is general in a sense, and
it does apply to the elect specifically in a sense, but the point is
that God's love is not reserved uniquely for Israel. The point
is that the people of God come from all nations, tribes, and
tongues. So what are we talking about
here in the end of Ephesians 1-4 and the beginning of Ephesians
1-5? What Paul is telling us is about
the unique and salvific love with which God relates to his
people alone. God's love is set as the purpose,
the reason, the foundation of all the other actions that we're
going to talk about and that we have talked about. Election,
adoption, sanctification, justification, God's love for his people and
his people alone is the foundation for all of these things. And so there are Three points,
if you're taking notes, here's your structure for the sermon.
Three points that I want you to understand about in love of
Ephesians 1-4. It is unique to the elect. It is unconditional with respect
to the elect, and it is effectual for the salvation of the elect.
Three things that in love means. Okay, why? We know that this
love is unique, first because it's describing the recipients
of the letter, right? The letter to the Ephesians is
written to the Ephesian church, and we understand that this is
written to the saints, to the saints who are in Ephesus and
are faithful in Christ Jesus. Now, obviously, it doesn't apply
only to the ones in Ephesus and the ones in Galatia are out of
luck. Right? But the New Testament, the whole
New Testament, and Ephesians in particular, are written to
the elect, to the saints of God. So we know that this love is
unique because it's talking about those people. The object of the love is defined. In love He predestined us. The love is unique because Paul
tells us who it is for. It is the ones that have been
predestined. In love, he predestined us. We know that it is unique
because its results and effects are defined for us. Predestined
for adoption. In love, he predestined us for
adoption. So by exclusion, it can't be
referring to those who are not the addressees of the letter.
It cannot be describing those who are not defined in its object.
And it cannot be describing those who are not predestined for adoption. This love of Ephesians 1-4 is
for the elect of God and no one else. Second point, we know that it
is unconditional because of the last sermon. It is the cause
of the choosing of verse 4. Remember when we said it could
apply to both sentences because we're talking about the same
thing? It does. He chose us in him before the foundation of
the world. It is unconditional because this
choosing in love happened before the foundation of the world,
before you had a chance to earn it, not that you could. We know that it's unconditional
because God is free. God's decree to save, God's decree
to elect is free and uncompelled. God did not check to see he was
making the right choice. God did not look down the corridors
of time to see how well you would do. And if it were conditional, we
would fail to meet its conditions, wouldn't we? There's no good to be found in
us. Remember Romans 3, none is good, no, not one. Point three,
we know that this love is effectual for the salvation of the elect
because Job 42.2, God's purposes cannot be thwarted. You're not strong enough to fight
with God. God has told us his purpose in
doing this, and God's promises are true. His purpose in this
love, in this choosing, is that we should be holy and blameless
before him, and that purpose can't be thwarted. So if God
loves us in this way described in Ephesians 1-4, we will be
holy and blameless. And we know that God is just. That those who have been given
to the Son have been washed clean by the Son in the justice that
occurred on the cross. God is just and he has judged
the sins of his people on the cross of Christ. To execute his
wrath on Christ for the sin of a person and then to further
execute his wrath once again against the person themselves
is distinctively unjust. This cannot be. God is a God
of justice and his wrath is satisfied in Christ. Those are the three things we
need to understand about this love. It's unique, it is unconditional,
and it is effectual. So that's the end of verse four. Let's actually get to verse five.
In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus
Christ according to the purpose of his will. I'm not going to
spend too much time laboring over he predestined
because that was most of the stuff that we talked about last
time, right? He chose us in him before the
foundation of the world is the definition of he predestined.
So we're going to focus now on adoption. And I titled this sermon,
All God's Children, because that's what adoption is about, right?
The objects of this adoption tell us who God's children are.
But in order to see the contrast between those who are adopted
and those who are not, those who are God's children and those
who are not, and in order to refute the popular heresy that
we are just all God's children reaching out for a father, we're
going to go to John chapter 8. John chapter 8, Jesus dunks on
the Pharisees, as he was known to do. So what I'm going to do
is read this passage, and then I'm going to make several observations
from a couple of verses there that are sort of commentary on
adoption in Ephesians 1-5. So I'm going to start in verse
37. I know that you are the offspring
of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place
in you. I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you
do what you have heard from your father. They answered him, Abraham
is our father. Jesus said to them, if you were
Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me,
a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is
not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your
father did. They said to him, we are not
born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.
Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me.
For I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord,
but he sent me. Why do you not understand what
I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You're
of your father, the devil. Your will is to do your father's
desires. He was a murderer from the beginning
and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth
in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for
he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the
truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me
of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you
not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words
of God. The reason why you do not hear
them is that you are not of God. Now, let's make some observations. Verse 39. Jesus says, if you
were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham
did. So to understand this, we need
to understand the works of Abraham. What are these works of Abraham? Rather than give you a list,
Paul summarizes it for us in Romans chapter 4, starting in
verse 1. What then, shall we say, was gained by Abraham, our
forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified
by works, he has something to boast about. but not before God. For what does the scripture say?
Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift,
but as is due. To the one who does not work,
but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted
as righteousness. So here you have the Pharisees
echoing everything I said about Nicodemus. Remember what I said
Nicodemus was the place he was coming from when he talked to
Jesus? The Pharisees said, I'm saved because I'm a child of
Abraham. God loves me because I'm a child
of Abraham. And even better, I do the works
of Abraham, so I'm worthy of that love. And when they understand
the works of Abraham, they're talking about the works of the
law. Paul here in Romans 4 rejects
this idea completely. Even though Abraham observed
the law, except when he didn't, right? Abraham obeyed God except
when he didn't, right? James tells us that to transgress
the law in one place, one letter, is to transgress the whole thing. So if you have failed to obey
the law one time, you're guilty. The law convicts you and the
penalty is death. One time. Pharisees didn't understand
that. Although, probably wouldn't have
mattered because they probably thought they were perfect. To transgress the law is to transgress
the whole thing. So what was the work of Abraham?
It was a work of faith perfected by God and counted to him as
righteousness. In the minds of the Pharisees,
Abraham was perfect like they were. That's what they mean when
they say, we do the works of Abraham. We're perfect like him.
Abraham was a wicked sinner, just like the Pharisees and just
like us. But unlike Abraham, the Pharisees had no faith in
the promise of the Messiah. They had faith in their works
of the law. They had faith in their blood. Abraham had faith in the promise
and his faith was perfected by God. Verse 42, Jesus said to them,
if God were your father, you would love me. Now there's a
mistake that's really easy to make here. What I want you to
understand is We shouldn't make the mistake of understanding
verse 42 here in John 8 to mean that we have to prove that we
love God. We have to prove that we love
God. We have to prove that God is
our Father by proving how much we love Him. It's not what Jesus
is saying. Jesus is making an observation
about the Pharisees. He's making an observation about
His people. He's making a claim about the
nature of God's adoption and what it does for his children.
The Pharisees claim that God was their father. Jesus says,
no. If God was your father, you would
love me. We, the elect of God, are adopted by God. And because of that, because
God is our father, he is faithful to work in us that love for him. Jesus is saying the same thing
as John says in 1 John 4. Verse 17, by this is love perfected
with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment.
Because as he is also, are we in this world. There's no fear
in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Fear has to do with
punishment. Whoever fears has not been perfected
in love. We love because he first loved
us. Right, the Pharisees lived a
life of fear. That's why they had all those made up laws. that
they claim to be extensions of what was written in the Torah.
Because they were afraid that they would misunderstand something
from the Torah and then they would accidentally violate the
law. They were afraid. But we do not
live a life of fear. When we sin, we do not fear that
we will suffer the wrath to come. because we have an advocate with
the Father. We don't have to prove that we are children of
God. Rather, God proves that we are his children and that
we are the objects of his grace because he stirs up love in us. He stirs up that love that is
part and parcel to the faith that we have been given through
the work of the Spirit. We love God because he first
loved us. God is our Father. And he loves
us, and so we love him. The Pharisees, they didn't love
God. They didn't love the Father, because he didn't love them. Instead, they did the works of
their father, the devil. These Jews that he speaks to
did the work of the devil because they were not adopted by God. They were adopted by Satan. Verse 43, why do you not understand
what I say? It is because you cannot bear
to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will
is to do your father's desires. They couldn't understand Jesus'
words because God did not ordain for them to be able to hear and
understand the gospel of Christ. Just as the elect of God were
predestined for adoption as sons, so it is that the reprobate were
predestined for destruction. That's not fair. Remember, forget
everything you know about slipcovers. Let go of your human understanding
of what justice and fairness are. It isn't fair that the wicked
are predestined for destruction. Our human understanding of justice
is that the wicked should be given a fair chance, a chance
to prove themselves worthy. But why? It's not what salvation
is based on, right? Salvation is based on the grace
of God given to whomever he wills. It is based on God's righteous
decree to save. And so in the same way, justice
and judgment are based on God's righteous decree to judge. Allow scripture to shape your
understanding of divine justice rather than applying your flawed
human understanding of justice to God's divine economy. Turn to Romans 9. Remember when
I said, but that's not fair. Paul addresses that exact objection. Verse 19, you will say to me,
why does he still find fault? Who can resist his will? That's
not fair. Who are you, oh man, to answer
back to God? What does molded say to its molder? Why have you made me like this?
Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same
lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable
use? What if God desiring to show
his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience? Vessels of wrath prepared for
destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory
for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory. And because there were Jews in
Rome listening to this, we get verse 24, even us whom he has
called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. It isn't fair. This is what God's
justice is. Those God has adopted, he has
poured out his grace and his mercy on them, even though they
didn't deserve it. And to the wicked, he has ordained
for them to receive the justice due to them. We also see that the Word of
God never returns void. We'll go back to John 8. I'm
going to be there a little while longer. Verse 45, because I tell the
truth, you do not believe me. What I want you to see here is
that the Word of God never returns void. It has a purpose to everyone
who hears it, for something. Isaiah 55, verse 10. For as the
rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there,
but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving
seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be
that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty,
but it will accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in
the things for which I sent it. There's this flawed understanding
that I've seen people come to about the gospel, or at least
when they first come to recognize that the doctrines of grace might
actually be the entire point of the New Testament. And I say,
why do we preach the gospel to the reprobate as though we could
know who they were? Wouldn't it be cool if we had
an electro-detector? You had like a metal wand, you go up. Wicked sinner, reprobate. Anyone who can tell you, James
said this last week, anyone who can tell you they know who the
reprobate are is a wicked fool. We can hear and judge a profession
of faith. You can tell me what you believe.
You can tell me where your hope is. You can tell me who your
savior is. We can judge that profession as being consistent
or inconsistent with the truth of Christ. But to claim that
we know that someone is reprobate is to claim to be God. Because of this, we preach the
gospel to all people without distinction, because you don't
know who the elect are. Not only that, it has a purpose
in the elect and it has a purpose in the reprobate. For the reprobate,
which you don't know who they are, the gospel of Christ has
a purpose. That's what Jesus is telling
us here in verse 45 of John 8. The purpose for the elect is
obvious, right? Romans 1, 16, 17, the gospel is the power of
God for salvation. It's the means, the mechanism,
the instrument that God uses, the teaching of the gospel, to
bring about the salvation of his people. Through the preaching
of the gospel, his spirit works in us life. And so that's the purpose of
the gospel for the elect. But it has a purpose in the reprobate
too. It's less obvious, but it's given
to us in verse 45. Because I tell you the truth,
you do not believe me. They don't believe Jesus because
he tells them the truth. God works the gospel in the hearts
of the reprobate to further harden their hearts against him. It's the gospel of Christ that
reveals in the heart of man their objection. Right? When you preach this free gospel
that salvation is of the Lord, it doesn't depend on you. How
many times do we hear, see people say things like, but what about,
what about my works? What about my father, Abraham? What about my church? What about
my prayer? What about my baptism? hearing the truth of the gospel,
that it is free and given to the people of God with no conditions,
for no reason except that God, according to the counsel of His
will, has chosen to love His people. It reveals the hearts of men. It reveals where their hope lies. And so we preach the gospel.
to the elect, to the reprobate, to all people without distinction,
because God's Word never returns void. So I titled this sermon, All
God's Children. It should be clear by now that
the children of God are only those who are adopted by God.
Not every single person is God's child, right? We see this all
the time in popular Christianity, in voodoo mysticism that you
see in California, and everywhere. We're all God's
children. You just have to accept him as
father. God's children who are those
who have been adopted by God. Those who before the foundation
of the world were loved by him to be holy and blameless before
him. In love he predestined his people for adoption as sons through
Jesus Christ. And here our sanctification is
in view again. Remember we talked about sanctification a little
bit last time. At the end of verse four, to
be holy, he predestined us to be holy in love. So in our adoption, our sanctification
is in view because our adoption is not arbitrary. God just doesn't
say, you're my child now, right? It's founded in justice, right? It is a legal declaration. That's
one of the things we should understand about adoption from our experience
of what we understand about adoption in this world. Adoption is a
legal process, right? God's adoption of his people is founded in his
justice, two different ways. First of all, God cannot suffer
the wicked to live, right? We know that God in his justice
must execute his wrath against the wicked. So God cannot adopt
wicked people unless they have been justified. So on the cross of Christ, remember
we talked about it in this covenant, and this is where the sanctification
comes in. Remember, the people of God, the church, the bride
of Christ are given to the son. And the work that he does, the
work that he talks about in John 17 is that he would wash them
clean. He would cleanse their sins. So on the cross of Christ, Jesus
receives the wrath for their sins, and in exchange, his righteousness
is counted toward them. They are justified. And that is the legal basis for
our adoption. And remember that sanctification,
that setting apart, the purpose for which we have been set apart
is that we would be the bride of Christ. So God doesn't say,
you're my children now. He says, you're married to my
son now. Our adoption is found in our
marriage to Christ. Christ, our bridegroom, we are
his bride and God, the father is Christ's father. And so God,
the father is our father. And so, to refute the error that
all people are God's children and that God is waiting for us
to reach out, those who are not married to Christ have no legal
claim on being a child of God. God is just. We are given to
Christ as a bride and so we have confidence in God's justice for
our salvation. We have legal claim to sonship. in Christ. In contrast, the Pharisees claim
to be sons of God because they think they obeyed the law, because
they were descended from Abraham. I'm a child of God because of
who I am and what I have done. We claim to be sons of God in
a way that is independent of who our family is. It's independent
of how good we are. Because we've been given years
to hear the promise of Christ, and we have been given faith
to believe in the work of Christ. And we have been given to Christ
as a bride. So we claim to be children of
God on account of Christ, our head, our bridegroom. As God
is his father, God is our father. And that brings us back to what
I said was the center of this entire passage. in Ephesians
1. Christ rests at the center. His work. His work in saving us, His work
in cleansing us. It is all of Christ. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose
us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined
us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the
purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which
he has blessed us in the beloved. Let's pray. God, we thank you that it doesn't
depend on us. We thank you that you have accounted for our failures,
because to require of us perfection is to require of us death. God,
we thank you that you saw fit, that you were pleased to instead
pour out your wrath on your own son, that in love we are made
free. God, we thank you for your word
that it is clearly explain to us here that we can taste and
see and understand the work that you have done and that we may
know our bridegroom, Jesus Christ. We pray these things in his name,
amen.