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In this message we will begin to consider the aspects of the experience and enjoyment of Christ unveiled in Ephesians. Although the New Testament reveals many aspects of Christ for our experience and enjoyment, the aspects of Christ in Ephesians are much deeper than those in other books of the New Testament. This is because the aspects of Christ revealed in Ephesians are for the producing of the church and the building up of the Body of Christ.
In Ephesians 1:3-14 we see that Christ is the sphere and the means of the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. Ephesians 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.” The expression in Christ, which is mentioned numerous times in this Epistle, indicates that Christ is the sphere and the means of all the divine, spiritual, and heavenly blessings (1:1, 10, 12, 20; 2:6-7, 10, 13; 3:6, 11, 21; 4:32). Christ is the virtue, the instrument, and the sphere in which God has blessed us. Outside of Christ, apart from Christ, God has nothing to do with us; but in Christ He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. Moreover, Christ is the element of the divine blessing; that is, Christ Himself is the divine blessing.
All the blessings with which God has blessed us, being spiritual, are related to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is not only the channel but also the reality of God’s blessings. The Spirit is the nature and essence of the divine blessing we have received. In verse 3 God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are all related to the blessings bestowed on us; God’s blessing us is actually His dispensing Himself into us. The Father is the source of the divine blessing, Christ the Son is the element of the blessing, and the Spirit is the nature and essence of the blessing.
The blessings are not only spiritual but also in the heavenlies. The word heavenlies here indicates not only the heavenly place but also the heavenly nature, state, characteristic, and atmosphere of the spiritual blessings with which God has blessed us. These blessings are from the heavens, having a heavenly nature, heavenly state, heavenly characteristic, heavenly taste, and heavenly atmosphere. The believers in Christ are enjoying on earth these heavenly blessings, which are spiritual as well as heavenly. They are different from the blessings with which God blessed Israel. Those blessings were physical and earthly. The blessings bestowed on us are of God the Father, in God the Son, through God the Spirit, and in the heavenlies. They are the spiritual blessings bestowed by the Triune God on us, the believers in Christ. They are the blessings in the heavenlies, having a heavenly nature, state, character, and atmosphere.
The word blessing in 1:3 literally means “good speech, or, utterance, well speaking, or fair speech; implying bounty and benefit.” God has blessed us with His good, fine, and fair speakings. Every such speaking is a blessing to us. Verses 4 through 14 are an account of such speakings, such blessings. All these blessings are spiritual, in the heavenlies, and in Christ.
The first among all God’s blessings is His choosing us, His selecting us, in eternity past. In eternity past, He chose us; we were His choice. In 1:4 Paul says, “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love.” From among numberless people God, according to His infinite foresight, selected us, and this He did in Christ. Christ was the sphere in which we were selected by God. Outside of Christ we are not God’s choice.
Our being chosen does not depend on what we are or what we do. It depends on what Christ is, what He has done, and what He will do for us. None of us is worthy of God’s selection. However, God selected us, not in ourselves, in our situation, or in our sphere but in Christ as the means, the sphere, the condition, and the circumstance. Christ is everything for God’s selection of us.
God chose us that we should be holy. Here holy means not only sanctified, separated unto God, but also different, distinct, from everything that is common. Only God is different, distinct, from all things. Hence, He is holy; holiness is His nature. He chose us that we should be holy. He makes us holy by imparting Himself, the Holy One, into our being, that our whole being may be permeated and saturated with His holy nature. For us, God’s chosen ones, to be holy is to partake of God’s divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and to have our whole being permeated with God Himself. This is different from mere sinless perfection or sinless purity. This makes our being holy in God’s nature and character, just like God Himself.
God chose us that we should be not only holy but also without blemish. A blemish is like a foreign particle in a precious gem. God’s chosen ones should be saturated with only God Himself, having no foreign particles, such as the fallen natural human element, the flesh, the self, or worldly things. This is to be without blemish, without any mixture, without any element other than God’s holy nature. The church, after being thoroughly washed by the water in the word, will be sanctified in such a way (Eph. 5:26-27).
In ourselves we are unholy and imperfect, but in Christ we are holy and perfect. We should not look at ourselves but at Him. Moreover, we all need to consider one another according to Christ, not according to ourselves; we need to regard all the believers as holy brothers and sisters in Christ. Because there is nothing unholy or imperfect in Christ, we are all holy and perfect in Him. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish.
Following God’s choosing us to be holy is His predestinating us to be His sons. In eternity past, before the foundation of the world, we were predestinated, marked out, by God. Ephesians 1:5 says, “Predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” Through Jesus Christ means through the Redeemer who is the Son of God. Through Him we were redeemed to be the sons of God with the life and position of God’s sons.
The Greek words translated “predestinating us” can also be rendered “marking us out beforehand.” Marking out beforehand is the process, whereas predestination is the purpose, which is to determine a destiny beforehand. God selected us before the foundation of the world, marking us out beforehand unto a certain destiny.
God’s marking us out beforehand was to destine us unto sonship. We were predestinated to be sons of God even before we were created. Hence, as God’s creatures we need to be regenerated by Him that we may participate in His life to be His sons. Sonship implies having not only the life but also the position of a son. God’s marked-out ones have the life to be His sons and the position to inherit Him. To be made holy — to be sanctified by God by His putting Himself into us and then mingling His nature with us — is the process, the procedure, whereas to be sons of God is the aim, the goal, and is a matter of our being joined to the Son of God and conformed to a particular form or shape, the very image of the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15), that our whole being, including our body (Rom. 8:23), may be “sonized” by God.
God’s choosing and predestination are related to the grace of God. In Ephesians 1:6 Paul says, “To the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in the Beloved.” What is revealed in this verse is the issue of predestination unto sonship mentioned in the preceding verse. This means that the praise of the glory of God’s grace is the result, the issue, of the sonship (v. 5). God’s predestinating us unto sonship is for the praise of His expression in His grace, that is, for the praise of the glory of His grace. Eventually, every positive thing in the universe will praise God for sonship (Rom. 8:19), thus fulfilling what is spoken in this verse.
The grace of God is God coming to be everything to us and to do everything for us. Whatever God came to be to us and to do for us is God Himself as grace coming to us in His incarnation. This is clearly revealed in John 1, which tells us that God as the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and reality, and that grace and reality came through Jesus Christ (vv. 14, 16-17).
Grace is what God is to us for our enjoyment, whereas glory is God expressed (Exo. 40:34). The glory of His grace indicates that God’s grace, which is God Himself as our enjoyment, expresses Him. God is expressed in His grace, and His predestination is for the praise of this expression. As we receive grace and enjoy God, we have the sense of glory. Grace is God Himself as our enjoyment, glory is God manifested, and the glory of God’s grace is God expressed in our enjoyment of Him.
Ephesians 1:6 says that God has graced us in the Beloved. For God to grace us means that He has put us into the position of grace that we may be the object of God’s grace and favor, that is, that we may enjoy all that God is. Because we are in the position of grace and are the object of grace, God is pleased with us, His delight is in us, and we are enjoying Him and becoming His enjoyment. Hence, there is a mutual enjoyment: we enjoy Him, and He enjoys us. Here, in grace, He is our joy and satisfaction, and we are His joy and satisfaction.
The Beloved in verse 6 is Christ, God’s beloved Son, in whom He delights (Matt. 3:17; 17:5). Hence, in gracing us God makes us an object in whom He delights. This is altogether a pleasure to God. In Christ we have been blessed by God with every blessing. In the Beloved we were graced, made the object of God’s favor and pleasure. As such an object we enjoy God, and God enjoys us in His grace in His Beloved, who is His delight. In His Beloved we, too, become His delight.
The phrase in the Beloved conveys the full delight, satisfaction, and enjoyment God the Father has in us because we have been made the object of His grace and delight. In this sense we should all appreciate ourselves and even esteem ourselves highly because we have been positioned in grace and made the object of God’s delight. We should have such a view about ourselves, not according to our natural state, but according to the fact that we have been chosen, predestinated, regenerated, and graced. God delights in us, not in ourselves, but in His Beloved. Having become the object of God’s grace, we have been favored in Christ.
Moreover, God’s rich grace has accomplished redemption for us and has applied forgiveness to us (Eph. 1:7). God’s grace is not only rich (v. 7) but also abounding (v. 8). The riches of God’s grace have been caused to abound to us, on the one hand, in all wisdom for God’s plan in eternity and, on the other hand, in all prudence for God’s execution of His plan in time. God’s abounding grace, as we will see in this message, accomplishes the heading up of all things in Christ (v. 10), makes us an inheritance to God (v. 11), and qualifies us to inherit all that God is (v. 14).
In Ephesians 1:7 Paul goes on to say, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace.” Verse 7 is the continuation of verse 6. As previously mentioned, verse 6 reveals that we have become the object of God’s favor, for we have been graced in the Beloved. The phrase in whom in verse 7 refers to the Beloved in verse 6. This means that we have been redeemed in the Beloved, in the One in whom God delights. Thus, in the eyes of God, redemption is not a pitiful matter; it is a thing to be delighted in. The expression in the Beloved means in God’s delight. In God’s delight, the Beloved, we have redemption. We have been redeemed through the blood shed for us by God’s Beloved on the cross.
We were chosen and predestinated in eternity past, but after being created, we became fallen. For Him to work out His plan with us, God needed to accomplish redemption in Christ through His blood in order to solve all the problems between us and God. This is another item of God’s blessings that He has bestowed on us.
The forgiveness of our offenses is the redemption through the blood of Christ. Apart from the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22). Because Christ’s death in the flesh on the cross has fulfilled God’s righteous requirements, His blood becomes the instrument for our redemption. Redemption is what Christ accomplished for our offenses; forgiveness is the application of Christ’s accomplishment to our offenses. Redemption was accomplished on the cross when Christ shed His blood, whereas forgiveness is applied by the Spirit of God when we believe in Christ and make confession to the righteous God.
In Ephesians 1:10 Paul says, “Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.” We need to note that it is in Christ that God intends to head up all things. The word Christ here literally means “the Christ”; it refers to the One mentioned in verse 1 and verse 3, the One in whom are the spiritual blessings of God and in whom are the faithful saints, who participate in the blessings. He is a particular One; hence, He is called “the Christ.”
The Greek word rendered economy in verse 10 is oikonomia, which means “house law, household management or administration, and derivatively, administrative dispensation, plan, or economy.” The economy that God, according to His desire, planned and purposed in Himself is to head up all things in Christ at the fullness of the times. This is accomplished through the dispensing of the abundant life supply of the Triune God as the life factor into all the members of the church that they may rise up from the death situation and be attached to the Body.
The expression the times in verse 10 refers to the ages. The fullness of the times will be when the new heaven and new earth appear after all the dispensations of God in all the ages have been completed. Altogether there are four ages: the age of sin (Adam), the age of the law (Moses), the age of grace (Christ), and the age of the kingdom (the millennium).
God’s eternal intention is to head up all things in Christ, who has been appointed to be the universal Head. Through all the dispensations of God in all the ages, all things will be headed up in Christ in the new heaven and new earth. That will be God’s eternal administration and economy. Thus, the heading up of all things is the issue of all the items covered in verses 3 through 9. God chose us to be holy, predestinated us unto sonship, accomplished redemption for us through the blood of Christ, graced us in the Beloved, and caused grace to abound to us in all wisdom and prudence in order that He may head up all things in Christ.
Ephesians 1:22 says that God gave Christ to be Head over all things. This reveals that the heading up of all things is to the church so that the Body of Christ may share in all that is of Christ as the Head, having been rescued from the heap of the universal collapse in death and darkness, which was caused by the rebellion of the angels and the rebellion of man. In Christ God is in the process of heading up all things in heaven and on earth. However, without the church as the Body to match Christ as the Head, it will not be possible for God to head up all things in Christ. The heading up of all things is accomplished by the Head, but it cannot be accomplished without a Body for the Head. Whether Christ can be the Head over all things, whether all things can be subjected to the authority of Christ, and whether all things can be headed up in Christ completely depend upon whether or not the church has been produced and has grown up (4:14-16; Col. 2:19). When the church is fully grown, God is able to subject all things to the authority of Christ. By means of the church, Christ is able to be the Head over all things. Eventually, the Body with Christ as the Head will be the universal Head over all things. When everything is headed up in Christ, there will be absolute peace and harmony (Isa. 2:4; 11:6; 55:12; Psa. 96:12-13), a full rescue out of the collapse. This will begin from the time of the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).
When God created the universe, everything of the universe was in oneness; all things in it were in harmony, not in chaos. God and the universe were in harmony. This harmony is the great oneness of the universe. All things related to the universe depend on God, who is one, as the factor of their oneness. The center of the universe is God Himself; hence, the oneness of the universe is God Himself. There was oneness in the creation of the universe, and in this oneness there was no confusion. Yet because of Satan’s rebellion, which was followed by man’s fall, this original oneness in creation was ruined so that the entire universe was brought into confusion. Satan damaged the oneness of the universe in creation by introducing death into all creation, which death severed the Creator’s relationship with creation. In other words, when Satan brought death into the universe, the universe was separated from God and the oneness of the universe was lost. Thus, there is not the full harmony in the universe.
Yet God had an eternal plan to head up all things in Christ, that is, to make Christ the Head of all things and the Head above all things. God’s way to recover the oneness among His creation is to impart Himself in Christ into us as life (Rom. 8:6, 10-11, 19-21). The Triune God as life brings in light, and light issues in harmony and brings all things into oneness. Hence, the believers participate in this heading up by growing in life, by being headed up in the proper church life, and by living under Christ’s light (John 1:4; Rev. 21:23-25). The more we grow in life, the more we will be headed up and the more we will be rescued from the universal collapse (Eph. 4:15; Col. 2:19). This process of heading up all things in Christ is still continuing, and the heading up of all things will be fully accomplished and manifested when Christ finishes His work to bring forth the new creation out of the old creation through all the dispensations of God. It is through this new creation that Christ will head up all creation and bring it into the universal oneness; this will issue in the new heaven and the new earth. In the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem as the center, all things will be headed up in Christ; this will be the complete fulfillment of the heading up of all things spoken of in Ephesians 1:10. In Revelation 21 we see the Head, the Body surrounding the Head, and all the nations walking in the light of the city. The whole universe will be headed up in the light shown through the transparent city (v. 18).
After presenting the revelation of the heading up of all things in Christ, Paul speaks of our being made an inheritance in Christ in order that we may inherit God as our inheritance. In Ephesians 1:11 Paul says, “In whom also we were designated as an inheritance.” The phrase in whom refers to the heading-up Christ revealed in verse 10, indicating that we have been placed into the heading-up Christ. In ourselves, that is, according to our natural being, we are not worthy to be God’s inheritance, but in the heading-up Christ we were made God’s inheritance.
The expression in whom in verse 11 implies a sphere and an element. Christ is not only our sphere but also our element with which we are being transformed into a treasure to become God’s inheritance, His private and personal possession. We are not only God’s redeemed ones in Christ but also God’s precious inheritance produced in Christ as the sphere and with Christ as the element of life. To be in Christ is to be in Him as the divine element. Day by day Christ Himself is being wrought into us so that He can become our element. Although we ourselves are pieces of clay unworthy for God to inherit, the divine element has made us an excellent treasure to become God’s inheritance. If we live in Christ day by day, we will experience and enjoy Christ not only as the sphere in which we enjoy the dispensing of God Himself into us, but also as the divine element, the producing ingredient, with which God will make us His inheritance.
We were fallen in Adam, but through His redemption Christ brought us out of Adam into Himself as the sphere and the element. Since Christ is now the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), this sphere and element are the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit. The Spirit is our sphere and our element. In this sphere and with this element, the Triune God in Christ as the life-giving Spirit is dispensing Himself into us to transform us metabolically and to make us a particular treasure, God’s heritage, God’s inheritance. In this universe God is the only One who is precious. Now this precious God of matchless worth is working Himself into us to make us His glorious inheritance.
The Greek words rendered “were designated as an inheritance” can also be translated “have obtained an inheritance.” The Greek verb means “to choose or assign by lot.” Hence, this clause literally means that in Christ we were designated as a chosen inheritance. We were designated as an inheritance so that we may inherit God as our inheritance. On the one hand, we were made an inheritance to God. On the other hand, we inherit God Himself as our inheritance. Here we have a marvelous mutual inheritance: we have become God’s inheritance (v. 18) for God’s enjoyment, and God will be our inheritance (v. 14) for our enjoyment. We are in Him to be His inheritance and enjoyment, and He is in us to be our inheritance and our enjoyment.
It is by having God in Christ wrought into us that we are being constituted into an inheritance. We have already been placed in the heading-up Christ, but we are still in the process of being made God’s inheritance in full. In this process the natural life must be eliminated, and the divine nature must increase by being wrought into more of our being. God is the treasure, and He is working Himself as the treasure into us that we may become a treasure to Him.
In Ephesians 1:12 Paul speaks of the all-inclusive hope in Christ: “We would be to the praise of His glory who have first hoped in Christ.” The hope we have in Christ is the hope of God’s calling mentioned in verse 18. This divine hope includes (1) Christ Himself and the salvation He will bring to us when He comes back (Col. 1:27; 1 Pet. 1:5, 9); (2) the rapturous transfer from the earthly and physical realm to the heavenly and spiritual sphere, plus glorification (Rom. 8:23-25, 30; Phil. 3:21); (3) the kingly enjoyment with Christ in the millennium (Rev. 5:10; 2 Tim. 4:18); and (4) the consummate enjoyment of Christ in the New Jerusalem, with the universal and eternal blessings in the new heaven and new earth (Rev. 21:1-7; 22:1-5).
We, the New Testament believers, are those who have first hoped in Christ, that is, in this age. The Jews will have their hope in Christ in the next age. We have hoped in Christ before He comes back to set up His Messianic kingdom.
In 1:13-14 Paul speaks of another spiritual blessing we have in Christ: the Holy Spirit’s sealing and pledging. “In whom you also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in Him also believing, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of the acquired possession, to the praise of His glory.” To be sealed with the Holy Spirit is to be marked with the Holy Spirit as a living seal. We have been designated as God’s inheritance (v. 11). At the time we were saved, God put His Holy Spirit into us as a seal to mark us out, indicating that we belong to God. The Holy Spirit, who is God Himself entering into us, causes us to bear God’s image, signified by the seal, thus making us like God.
The sealing of the Spirit is the moving of the Spirit within us, and it is spreading throughout our being, daily saturating our mind, emotion, and will. We have been sealed with the sealing Spirit who saturates us, permeates us, and is mingled with us, making Him and us one constitution. Moreover, the more we are sealed, the more we bear the image of God and look like God. Through the Spirit’s sealing, we express God.
The Greek word for pledge in verse 14 means “foretaste, guarantee, that is, token payment, a partial payment in advance, guaranteeing the full payment.” Since we are God’s inheritance, the Holy Spirit is a seal upon us. Since God is our inheritance, the Holy Spirit is a pledge to us of this inheritance. God gives His Holy Spirit to us not only as a guarantee of our inheritance, securing our heritage, but also as a foretaste of what we will inherit of God, affording us a taste beforehand of the full inheritance. In ancient times the Greek word for pledge was used in the purchasing of land. The seller gave the purchaser some soil as a sample from the land. Hence, a pledge, according to ancient Greek usage, is also a sample. The Holy Spirit is the sample of what we will inherit of God in full.
The pledging of the Spirit is given for our enjoyment. If the Spirit were only the sealing, we might become bored with the experience of the Spirit, but we are not tired or bored of the Spirit because the Spirit is also pledging within us. Some believers do not have a very large appetite for Christ, because they do not care for the pledging of the Spirit. If we say, “Lord Jesus, You are so sweet,” the sense of the Spirit’s pledging will increase within us. The more the Spirit pledges in us, the more enjoyment of Christ we have. This enjoyment enlarges our appetite for Christ. The more we taste of the Lord, the greater is our appetite for Him, and the more appetite we have, the more we taste Him. By means of this glorious cycle, we daily participate in God until in eternity God will become our full enjoyment, and we will have the full taste of Him.
We enjoy first the Holy Spirit’s sealing and then His pledging. The Holy Spirit’s sealing indicates that we are God’s inheritance, whereas His pledging in us indicates that God will be our inheritance. The Holy Spirit is the seal of God, a mark placed on us to indicate that we are God’s possession and God’s inheritance, belonging to God. At the same time, the Holy Spirit is the pledge in us to guarantee to us that God is our possession and our inheritance.
The Holy Spirit’s sealing and pledging are not once-for-all matters. The Holy Spirit’s sealing and pledging have begun, are continuing, and will continue to go on in us until the redemption of our body. Every day the Holy Spirit is sealing us, increasingly making us God’s inheritance; He is pledging in us, gradually making God our inheritance. The Spirit’s sealing and pledging will fully transform us.
On the day when we were saved, we hardly looked like God; hence, we hardly looked like God’s inheritance. Yet the intensified sealing work of the Holy Spirit within us will increasingly cause us to look like God; as a result, we will truly look like God’s inheritance. At the same time, the Holy Spirit is pledging in us, making God our inheritance and giving us the full assurance that God can never remove Himself from our being, for He as the Spirit has been pledged into our being. The Spirit’s sealing and pledging will fully transform us into a treasure to God and will ultimately make us God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
The Spirit’s dispensing in His sealing and pledging issues in the redemption of our body. In Ephesians 1:13-14 Paul tells us that in Christ we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise unto the redemption of the acquired possession. Here the expression unto the redemption of the acquired possession gives the purpose of the sealing in verse 13. The seal of the Holy Spirit is living, and it works within us to permeate and transform us with God’s divine element until we are mature in God’s life and eventually fully redeemed, even in our body.
Redemption in verse 14 refers to the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), that is, the transfiguration of our body of humiliation into a glorious body (Phil. 3:21). The Holy Spirit today is a guarantee, a foretaste, and a sample of our divine inheritance, until our body is transfigured in glory, at which time we will inherit God in full. The span of God’s blessings bestowed on us covers all the crucial points from God’s selection in eternity past (Eph. 1:4) to the redemption of our body for eternity future. All these blessings are not earthly but divine and heavenly. May we all learn to experience and enjoy Christ as the sphere and the means of all the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.
