Good News!

Rev. Debbie Cato

Ephesians 1:3-14

Peace Presbyterian Church

July 12, 2015

“Good News!”

“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.”

What a way to begin a letter to a struggling congregation in Ephesus! Or in Eugene.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

WHO - “Who has blessed US in Christ with every spiritual blessing.”

This is good news! We; you and I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Let's just take that in for a moment. We have been blessed by God – the father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, with every spiritual blessing. Wow.

But there's more good news!!

God chose us in Christ [He chose US!) before the foundation of the world – (that's a long time ago friends). God chose us to be holy and blameless before him in love.

God destined us for adoption as his children!

God freely bestowed his grace upon us.

In Christ, we have redemption;

forgiveness of our trespasses, our sins, the wrong stuff we do.

God has made known to us the mystery of his will.

In Christ we have obtained an inheritance – we are called to live for his glory.

Through Christ we have heard the words of truth; the gospel of our salvation.

This is all very good news. Almost too much to take in. Take this passage home and see how many blessings you can circle in these 12 verses. When you struggle with your self-worth – read this passage! Look at who you are to God!

This is how Paul begins his letter to the church in Ephesus. He visited Ephesus twice. Once for a short time on his way back to Antioch from his second missionary journey and then again on this third missionary journey when he stayed for three years. Some scholars have said that Paul's letter to the Ephesians “sums up the leading themes of all Paul's letters. Paul knows these things! He was killing Jesus' followers when God struck him blind on that road to Damascus. Paul becomes a great apostle, suffering much persecution for his faith. Paul knows about God's love and God's mercy and God's grace.

These words speak with great power to our contemporary situation today. We need to hear about God's amazing graciousness. We need to hear about the comprehensive salvation we are given in Christ. These words speak real truth into our lives today. It is through the love that we receive from Christ, that we find unity.¹ These verses; this opening to Paul's letter tells us what the standards are for spiritual character traits.

To know how godly we are, we must know who God intends us to be. What are the marks of spirituality that God destined us to embody? How much like Christ do we look?

This passage helps us see a picture of what God himself wants his followers to look like; what God expects of us; who we were created to be. We are to be people whose lives reflect our God. So, let's break it down.

For one, we are a blessed people. We are a blessed people. God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3).

Now being a blessed people is not the same as when we say that “we are blessed with a wonderful family” or “blessed to get that job or blessed to be able to travel.  No! We are blessed by the blesser of all blessers. The God who created all the heavens and all the earth out of nothing, this is who blesses us. The God who rules over all the heavens and all the earth that he created, is our blesser. God himself created each one of us – in his image. It doesn't get any better! This is good news! We are given grace and mercy when we don't deserve it. God loves us unconditionally – no matter what we do, he does not stop loving us. God provides for our needs. He gives us the gift of salvation, not because we deserve it; not because we've earned it, but because he is God and he loves us. We are blessed by God. It doesn't get better than this! When we are seen as blessed people; when we let people see our blessedness, others recognize the connection between our God and our lives. We must reflect a God who blesses his people.

Here's another spiritual recognition point: God intends us to be holy people, “blameless before him in love” (v. 4). We are to be set apart by our lifestyle. Seen as different. Pure. Upstanding. Good. Our actions and attitudes, our thoughts and emotions — God wants us all to conform to an awfully high standard: perfection.

God will not settle for less, even when we are willing to. He designed us and he knows what is best for us. He knows what will satisfy us and what won’t. He knows what will hurt us and what won’t. We must reflect a God who has holy standards for his beloved children.

This sounds impossible doesn't it? But listen! A holy and blameless standard would be ludicrous if Paul didn’t also remind us that we are grace-gifted people. (v. 7-8) Grace means getting what we don’t deserve, and giving us what we don’t deserve is something God does really well. We receive faith through grace alone; we are saved through grace along. We have received so much God-given grace that we must give it away! We must be gracious toward others out of gratefulness for all God has given us.

Sometimes we try to maintain a perfect spiritual appearance. Sometimes we act like we have it all together. Like we're great. Our families are great. Our lives are great. Everything's great. But, it's not. And we know it's not.

While Christians should be marked by a godly lifestyle, our lives are really stories of God's grace. We cannot legalistically achieve holiness by stacking up good works. There aren't enough good works for us to do to earn what God gives us for free. We are lying if we think we achieve any sort of godly lifestyle on our own. We could never be good enough for that. After all, we are human, not God. God’s grace; his abundant grace, is our only way. The only way.

In his book, Transforming Grace, Jerry Bridges notes the way we miss this concept. “We declared temporary bankruptcy to get into his kingdom, so now we think we can and must pay our own way with God. We were saved by grace, but we are living by performance.” Let me say that again: We were saved by grace, but we are living by performance.

We reflect grace and not perfection. And that is why we have a story to share with others; a story about grace. Stories about how God saved us. Stories about how God stood by us. How he used us in spite of our sins. How he used our mistakes to transform us. God is a God who loves and not one who burdens. How can our thoughts and words and actions all stem from this lavished grace? How might we lavish grace on others — our families, friends, neighbors and coworkers — as it has been lavished upon us? Living the answer makes us good spiritual look-alikes with God’s hopes in Ephesians 1.

Paul sums up all of the spiritual look-alike qualities in this passage that God has destined for us to embody in verse 12: We are to “live for the praise of his glory.” Live for the praise of his glory. Notice what it doesn’t say. We don’t live for the praise of our good decisions. We don't live for the praise of our good deeds. We don’t live for the praise of our accomplishments. We don’t live for the praise of our discipline.

Someone who reflects Christ, will quickly deflect personal accolades. He will be humbly content to defer to a God of grace. She might simply ask herself , “Does how I live make more of Christ or more of me?” Does how I live make more of Christ or more of me?

Blaise (Bliss) Pascal was a theologian, philosopher, physicist, scientist and mathematician who lived in the 1600's. He is credited with a prayer that says it all: “I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory.”

Essentially, he is saying that his life belongs to God. Do with it as you may. “I ask

you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory.”

Christ is eternal. That is why as Christians we are to “set our hope on Christ” (v. 12). It is Christ we believe in. It is Christ we honor. It is Christ we emulate.

You are blessed! You are holy! You are grace-gifted! If that's what you look like, you are looking good. Really good!

Let us be people whose whole lives are disposed for the glory of our God. Amen.

1O'Brien, Peter T. The Letter to the Ephesians. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing. pg. 1-3.