The Marks of a Christian

Ephesians 1: 1-2

www.crbcrockdale.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast for Crossroads Bible Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Bible Church is a Reformed Confessional Baptist Church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church and for directions, you can find us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the first time I will get to say this. Lord willing, this will not be the last time, not even close. But turn with me to the book of Ephesians. Chapter 1. Today we are beginning this long journey through the book of Ephesians. I hope you're ready. I do hope you're ready. I know I am. As always, when we begin a new book, I want to give us a little history of context of what's going on in Ephesus, both before and leading up to Paul giving this letter. Ephesus was a pagan city, a very pagan city. They worshipped a goddess called Artemis. Not the same Artemis that you might know from Greek mythology, but this Artemis was their local goddess. They built a massive temple for her in Ephesus, and that was the temple to the goddess Artemis in Ephesus, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. So you can imagine how magnificent this temple was. Massive amounts of commerce were centered around Artemis. Silversmiths made shrines and idols for her. Merchants sold charms and amulets. Priests and priestesses ran cult rituals weekly. There was magic scrolls and magic books that invoked her name and that had various spells in them. So Ephesus was a place that was steeped in dark magic, in the occult, and in pagan worship. And Paul visits Ephesus for the first time in Acts 18, that's recorded for us in Acts 18. He only stays there for a short while with promises to return again if the Lord wills, and he does return, and the Lord does will. Only a chapter later in Acts 19, we are recorded that he comes back. This is about a year later, and in Acts 19, he stays this time in Ephesus for a little over two years. And a lot happened during his second stay in Ephesus. He met some disciples there. These were disciples of John the Baptist, and these were likely Jews who had been reformed under the teaching of John the Baptist, but were still yet to receive the full revelation. They had not received the Holy Spirit. But Paul gave them the gospel, caught them up on what was happening. He baptized them into Christ, and they received the Spirit, and then they got to work, all of them preaching the gospel in Ephesus. And many came to know Christ in Ephesus at that time. Most notably, of those that came to know Christ were all of the, not all perhaps, but many, of the magicians, the sorcerers, and those occult practitioners came to know Christ as a result of the gospel. And they brought, this is recorded in Acts 19, they brought all of their spell books, all of those occult books and their scrolls, and they publicly burned them all in Ephesus. It also says, tells us in Acts 19 that the sum of all of those books totaled 50,000 pieces of silver, which was the equivalent at that time of about 130 years' wages. So equal to today's time, we're talking about millions, tens of millions of dollars. When the Spirit moves, they lay down their idols. And it became such a disturbance to the economy that one silversmith in particular, named Demetrius, gathered a coalition of tradesmen because they were going broke, because no one was buying their shrines and their amulets and their pagan junk anymore because they were turning to Christ. And they rushed to theater. They drug out Paul, a bunch of Paul's men, and they caused this really a violent protest and an extended protest against this Christian tide that was turning in Ephesus. People were coming to Christ. But despite even that, uprising, though it was short-lived, lived, the church continued to grow in Ephesus. Acts, again, at the end of Acts 19, it reports that, quote, the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. The church grew in Ephesus. So this letter that we're starting today, the letter to the Ephesians, was written likely to that church, to this church in Ephesus during Paul's house arrest in Rome, which is recorded for us in Acts 28, if you're taking notes. This is roughly six to eight years after all of that story I just gave you, after the founding of Ephesus Church. About six to eight years later, this is Paul writing back to that church. So it's still a new church, relatively speaking, still growing, still learning, which is likely why this letter isn't as harsh as some of Paul's other letters, right? He's very theological here, as we will see. He's trying to establish that theological foundation for this church and reinforcing that theological foundation for these people who have been so steeped in pagan practices. This letter is also likely circulated. Some of the manuscripts of this letter have to the Ephesians removed. And that makes sense because this is such a great letter with so much truth. That Paul and the early disciples, they wanted this to get to as many people as possible. So the intent was for it to be circulated. So that's pretty much all the context that I'll give you. We are going to now begin this long journey through this letter to the Ephesians. So would you stand with me, please, as we read? We're going to only read two verses. Ephesians 1, starting in verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus that are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, we thank you for your word. Lord, please now as we begin this journey through this letter to the Ephesians, Lord, would you bless this time? Would you speak in the all of these coming weeks? Lord, for the glory of Christ and for his sake alone. It's in his name that I pray. Amen. There is much emphasis in our day today, even among Christians, about man's free will. Isn't there? We've talked about that quite a bit. Whenever we do theology, especially in our modern context, we are so concerned about the protection of man's free will, aren't we? As though that is the important thing to protect, or perhaps the most important thing to protect. But what about God's will? What about God's free will? Why aren't we as willing to protect that? Paul speaks much more about the preservation of and submission to God's will than that of man's. Aside from the first words that we read in verse 1 of chapter 1 from our text this morning, I'm going to give you some other examples. If you're taking notes, you're going to have to write fast. Romans 1, again, Paul says that he is an apostle by the will of God. Romans 15, Paul says that it is by God's will that he may come to them in Rome with joy. By God's will, he says. 1 Corinthians, Paul again says he is called by the will of God. Galatians 1, Paul says that Christ offered himself according to the will of God. Ephesians talks, as we will see, many times about being predestined according to the purpose of his will, the mystery of his will. God working all things according to the counsel of his will. Colossians 1, Paul's prayer is that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. 2 Timothy, by the will of God, Paul says. Romans 8, or sorry, Romans 12, Paul is praying for discernment of the will of God. Ephesians 5, later we'll see. Paul says, Don't be foolish, understand or discern the will of God. Colossians 4, stand assured in the will of God, Paul says. Romans 8 teaches that the Spirit intercedes according to the will of God. Ephesians 3, God's eternal purposes are being realized in Christ. 2 Timothy, having been captured by him to do his will, Paul says, having been captured by him to do his will. And Philippians 2, finally, God works in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Okay, we contrast that against all the times in the Bible where it speaks of man's will, and we will see that it is heavenly, heavily bent towards the negative. Matthew 23, unwilling to come to God, man is. John 5, there is a refusal to come to God that you may have life. All throughout scriptures we see a what? A repentance, a turning from our willful sin. Hebrews 10 speaks of sinning deliberately. Acts 7 speaks of always resisting the Holy Spirit. Luke 7, the Pharisees, they rejected the purpose of God for themselves or for their own will. John 3, whoever does not believe is condemned already. And one positive in John 7, it says, if anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know that Christ is teaching from God. And I could have really spent hours, honestly, comparing all the places where God's will is spoken of and where man's will is spoken of in the positive and in the negative. I could have made a little pie chart to demonstrate to you all that it is so weighted to one side, God's will versus man's will in the negative. But you know the Bible well enough. Everyone in this room knows the Bible well enough that when the Bible characters act according to their own free will, there is fall, there is chaos, there is sin, there is death, there is unbelief, there is disobedience, there is rejection, and there is judgment. When the Bible speaks of God's will, the triune fullness of God's will, there is what? There's creation, there's life, there's goodness, there's redemption, there's salvation, and there's glory. So which will you passionately defend? Ours or God's. It is a strange and dangerous hill to die on, that of impassioned defense of man's will over God's. Especially since Christ teaches us to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So this is how Paul begins, his letter to the Ephesians. Not Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by my profession of faith. Not Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by my birth as a Jew. Not Paul as an apostle of Christ Jesus by asking Jesus into my heart. Not Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by my own intelligence and by my own hard work. Not Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by my own will, but Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God. So we must then, as we begin, because this is a topic that will come up inevitably many, many times, address the elephant in the room then from the beginning. If you think this morning that you are in Christ by some other means than by the same means that which brought Paul into Christ and in his apostleship, please see this morning that you are no better than Paul. You weren't seeking God because no one seeks God. You weren't righteous because no one is righteous. You, like Paul, had gone astray. You had wandered from the fold of God. You loved your sin. You loved the darkness. You chased after idols. You fell in love with the world. You fixed your heart on lusts and pride. You desired to build kingdoms for yourself. You desired to establish a lasting residence in the city of vainglory. But God. Or while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die. But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more will be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? Much more than that. We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received reconciliation. It was and is by the precious blood of Christ interposed on our behalf, as we sang this morning, that is put in place of our sin, by which we are now justified. And that blood was shed at the right time in our weakness for our sins according to the will of God. So now each of us can join with Paul this morning and insert your name. Cody, the servant of Christ Jesus. How? By the will of God. So then as we continue with the rest of our text, what does it mean to be a Christian? This is where our main emphasis, that was still all introduction, I suppose, but what does it mean to be a Christian? If we are a Christian, that is, in Christ by the will of God, what are those characteristics that make us distinctly Christian? And from our text, there are really three of those. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus. First is we're saints. What does it mean to be a Christian? Well, first we are called saints. I'll also address very quickly that when the New Testament, actually, all the New Testament books, without exception, are written to believers, to Christians. So you must never read anything in the New Testament as though it was intended for unbelievers, because it wasn't. It was all written to saints. Okay? So what is a saint then? There's really two views here of what is a saint. There is the Roman Catholic view of a saint, and that is a Christian among Christians. Okay, a particular person who has been set apart from the rest of the Christians because of their particular faith and obedience. The problem with that view is that the Apostle Paul calls all Christians saints, not just some. Unless, of course, we assume that Paul is writing to only a few of the Christians in Ephesus, given the context, and that this was meant to be circulated. A saint, by definition, means one who is set apart, one who is holy, one who is consecrated, who belongs to God. So the Roman Catholic view got the definition correct, but they applied it wrong. The set apartness is not amongst other Christians, but amongst all people. There is not all Christians and then saints above them. There is all mankind and then there are Christians. There has been and always will be a very distinct. Consecrated, set apart, people of God, who are called by his will to be holy and belonging to him. If we read the Old Testament, you will see that this concept of sainthood is not new at all. And this is not spiritual elitism. This is in humility, gladly receiving adoption and consecration as God's particular and peculiar people. That is sainthood. And in that way, you, dear Christian, are a saint, holy, consecrated, set apart, people of God for his will and his purpose. The next thing the text says is to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful. Faithful. So we are saints and we are faithful. Lord Jones, Martin Lloyd Jones notes here that there's really two kinds of interpretations for the word faithful. And what Paul is meaning here, we have to look at the context to understand what he means by faithful. And there is a dual meaning of this word faithful. And the first of those, as you would probably think first, is someone who is obedient and loyal to God. Okay? Think of a husband who is faithful to his wife. Okay? This is a more focus on our response or the fruit of sainthood as opposed to a description or some characteristic of the person, right? So faithful being an action or an act. That's the first definition. And that's certainly true of Christians, right? By the grace of God and the intercession of Christ, we are, in a general sense, or ultimately at the end, will be proven faithful in our actions and our deeds. But the emphasis here focuses, or that emphasis focuses on performance rather than some objective reality. And for that reason, I stand with many of the commentators who would emphasize that this faithful means the other definition of faithful, which is full of faith. Not an act of obedience, but an objective reality. The emphasis is belief, not performance. The emphasis is a relational reality that by the will of God as saints we have been given faith. We are full of faith to believe in Christ, to trust in him, to surrender to him. So in that sense, we are faithful, full of faith. And that distinction is clearly shown in John 20. It says Jesus' interaction with Thomas. Y'all know this. We've read this now many times, but after his resurrection, Thomas is doubting. They're in the room together. Jesus enters into that room, even though the doors are locked, and Jesus came and stood among them. And he says, Peace be with you. And then he says to Thomas, Put your fingers here. See my hands, put out your hand and place it at my side. And then Jesus says to him, Do not disbelieve, but believe. This is the same Greek that is used here as faithful. Do not believe, but disbelieve. Or do not disbelieve, but believe. So Christ is saying, do not lack faith, but believe. Be full of faith. Be a believer, he says to Thomas. Have faith. He says to Thomas. Of course we know Thomas answers, My Lord and my God, and Jesus said to him, Have you believed? Have you had faith? Because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. So then a Christian is characterized as a believer in Christ. In the same sense that Thomas showed here, yet without the benefit of having seen Christ physically. Without the benefit of having placed our hands in his side and seen his resurrected body, at least not yet. So a Christian is then full of faith. He believes. So a Christian is a saint. A Christian is faithful, full of faith. Finally, a Christian is in Christ Jesus. Third characteristic of a Christian is that they are in Christ, it says. Our sainthood. That is, our being set apart isn't in isolation. Neither is our belief, our faith, simply that we emotionally or cognitively possess something. But rather that we are in a very real way united to Christ. We are in Christ. And the Bible uses all kinds of imagery to help us understand the depths of this union that we have with Christ. I would venture to say that even these analogies that the Bible gives us don't really capture the full depth of what it means to be unified with or to be in Christ. But here's a few of them that the scriptures give us. We're told that he is the bridegroom, and that we as a church are his bride, right? So we see it as a covenant or a promise to one another, right? He is the bridegroom, we are the bride. We are members of the same body, right? All members of the same body. Christ is the head. This speaks of our individual uniqueness and our contribution while picturing our shared connection to the head, right? Who is willing the parts to move. We are a building, Scripture says, that God is putting together with the apostles as the foundation. The apostles are the foundation and Christ is the cornerstone. So we are a growing structure, all dependent upon and attached to the layers above us and dependent upon Christ and the foundation to hold us firm. Scripture says that He is the vine and we are the branches, right? He is our structure, He is our source of life. Without our connection to Him, we would wither and die. Okay? He is the bridegroom. We are the church. We are members of His body. He is our head. We are His building. He is the vine and we are the branches. So we're all connected to Him. We are connected through Him. And this connection is a connection in a very real way. And we can get glimpses of that in these things, but we perhaps will never fully grasp the mystery of what it means to be in Christ. There is one connection, though, that I think we can see. More of a theological connection. In Romans 5, Paul makes a very lengthy illustration. I would encourage you to write down Romans 5. I know you know it, but read it. Go read it again later today. He makes this lengthy illustration contrasting Adam and Christ, where he demonstrates that there is, that we were previously in Adam, right? We were previously had union in Adam. Our union was with Adam, and in that union we received what that union had to offer, which was sin and death. Our abiding in and our union with Adam brought us curse and brought us death. But thanks and praise be to God that He promised us and has delivered to us a better union that saves us from sin and death. Romans 5, verse 19, for as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. We have, by the grace of God, died to that old union that was in Adam, and we have been given a new union in Christ. To receive not the curse and the condemnation that our previous union offered to us, but to receive the righteousness and life that our new union blesses us with. Romans 6, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we had died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him, for the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. This is the mystery of the union that we have in Christ now. And this is the union in Christ. However, you want to try to picture that, be it those analogies that Scripture gives us, we can say that our union with Christ now brings with it eternal life, righteousness, freedom from sin, brings with it adoption, transformation, and everlasting glory. And we'll conclude this morning then looking at grace and peace. Grace and peace to you, or rather, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I won't spend a ton of time here. I did talk a lot about these two subjects during the Advent season, but simply put, grace and peace, these are the present and the eternal benefits of being a Christian and of being united to Christ. Grace and peace. Grace and peace are actually the bookends of the Christian life, if you think about it. Grace and peace, the bookends of the Christian life. Grace, the unmerited favor by which we begin our walk with Christ, right? This is how we begin with Christ, grace. The very thing by which we are saved. And when we say that we are saved by grace through faith, so we never minimize grace in favor of only talking about faith because it was grace first. How often do we think do we speak about a saving faith? Often, don't we? But such a faith would not be saving if not given by grace. So let us never forget grace, that which marks the beginning of the Christian life. And we have peace. This is the final bookend of the Christian life, everlasting peace. Not simply a peace that signals the end of some conflict, like a husband and wife who were peaceful after having argued or resolved the disagreement. That's not the kind of peace we're talking about. This is a reunion after a separation. This is a peace or the peace of coming home. This is the blood of Christ breaking down the dividing line of hostility and creating in himself one new man in the place of two, making peace. This is the peace of a stranger wandering and homeless all of his life, with no rest and no home, finally laying down in a warm bed, safe and secure. This is the outcast, the disregarded, finally being loved and accepted. This is the peace that dwells forever in the house of God. So grace has been our beginning, and peace shall be our end. Okay, so what does it mean then to sum everything up? What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? It means that we are called not by our will, not by our flesh, not by the will of man, but we are called and saved by the will of God. It means that you are a saint, holy, consecrated, and set apart for God's holy use and for his glory. It means that you are full of faith, believing that Christ is God in flesh, that Christ is our Messiah, our Savior, our Lord, and our God. It means that you are in Christ, having been united to him in death, and having been raised with him to new and everlasting life. United to him in a holy and mysterious union everlasting. It means that you have received his marvelous grace and will also surely receive his everlasting peace for the praise and honor and glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our God, our Lord, and our King. Are you proud then to be a Christian? Let us go then and live for Him. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for all that you bless us with, Lord. We thank you for the grace that you have shown us in Christ. We thank you for the peace that you have promised to us, Lord. We thank you that in your will you have called us, Lord. You have saved us. You have given us salvation and life. And by that same will, you have united us mysteriously to Christ, Lord. We thank you, Lord, for all of these great blessings that you give us. Lord, and now in gratitude, we pray and ask, Lord, would you by your spirit give us the strength to live for you? Give us the courage and the boldness and the zeal, Lord, to take that knowledge of who we are as Christians, Lord, as saints set apart for you. Lord, and help us now go and live for you. Help us to be holy, consecrated, and live for you. We love you, Lord. Ask all these things in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.