Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Ephesians 1:3-14 | Date: April 6, 2014 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Something to Sing About

Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1. We have read this chapter. We have sung a good part of this chapter now. Now we come to begin our series on this epistle to the Ephesians from the Apostle Paul. The title of the message today is Something to Sing About. Something to Sing About. Let’s begin with verse one, and we’ll read through verse six.

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and 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 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 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 bow for prayer. Our Father, we are grateful for the great blessings with which you have blessed us. And with the Apostle Paul, we bless you for your blessings to us. We ask that this morning you will give us enlightenment in our minds to see all that you have done for us in the Lord Jesus, that we may be better worshipers, that we may praise you more in the way that you deserve for the great things you’ve done for us in him. In his name we pray, amen.

I know it’s hard when a preacher begins with a rhetorical question because I’m going to ask you for an answer and you’re going to wonder, “What’s he getting at? How do I give the right answer?” But here’s the question: If you were to write a hymn, what would it be about? Your minds are scrambling—what’s the answer he’s looking for? You don’t have to raise your hand unless you want to take a stab at it, that’s fine too. If you were to write a hymn, what would that hymn be about?

Well, you’re in church; you know the answer’s gotta be something about Jesus. I suspect while there are a lot of answers we could have, high on the list of most all of us would be the topic of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. At the very heart and soul of biblical theology, at the very heart of Protestant theology—what we trumpet at the heart of Reformed theology—and at the heart of this passage is, and the heart of the Christian gospel is, this matter of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

The gospel revolves around these two issues of sin and grace. We are ruined. We’re fallen. We’ve rebelled against God. We’ve fallen under a curse. We deserve his condemnation, and in fact, unless we are in Christ, we are already under his condemnation. We’re ruined. We have no ability to fix the problem. And in fact, sin has so ruined us that if we were able, we wouldn’t because we like it just the way it is, thank you. Ruined and fallen in sin. The Apostle Paul will expound that theme through this epistle as we’ll see as well.

But the gospel revolves around two issues, not just sin, but the twin issue of grace. Sin and grace, sin and grace, sin and grace. Around those issues, the whole gospel revolves. And it’s because of grace that more than matches sin, we love to speak of this big word in the Bible: salvation. And what you’ve heard me say many times that we’ve lost too often, and so I like to say it this way: rescue! At the heart of the Christian gospel is this notion of rescue, that despite our fallenness and our lostness and our ruin in Adam, despite our rebellion and our will to stay that way—despite all of that—God has stepped in in grace and rescued us from the plight that was ours in our sin.

And so rescue is a dominant theme throughout the whole Bible, and it gets to the heart of what the Bible is all about. It gets to the heart of why Christianity is here in the first place: to rescue us from our sins. But what we’re going to find in this passage is that as important as that word rescue is, it doesn’t quite go far enough. In one level, it says it all. But because rescue can have the connotations too easily of only rescue from sin, and doesn’t generally speak of rescue unto what?

What Paul expounds for us here is that God in grace, through Christ, has done much more—if we can say it this way amazingly—much more than just rescue us from our sins. And you’ll see that right at the outset in verse 3 when he begins this passage following his greeting to the saints at Ephesus. He starts out from the get-go: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.” The point of it is to say from the outset that God in grace through Christ has rescued us from our sin, all right, but just look at what he’s rescued us to. He has blessed us. He has favored us with exactly every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.

And notice the expression: He’s blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Not just an irrelevant detail, but a point that is intended to stress for us the richness of God’s lavish provision of grace, intended to stress for us the abundance of favor that God has given us in Christ. And in fact, I think it’s intended to say a little bit more than just the abundance of favor that God has given us in Christ. It’s intended to say something of the completeness of blessing that God has given us in Christ. He has not left one step of our salvation to our doing, but He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. All of it comes from His side, in His grace.

But in fact, the Apostle Paul is not content with merely saying that God has blessed us or that he’s blessed us with every spiritual blessing. He’s very careful to remind us of another significant factor, an enormously significant factor in this whole thing. Notice the text: “He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.” And there’s that signature remark of the Apostle Paul. You find it everywhere in his teaching; it refers to our union with Jesus Christ, that by faith we are joined to Jesus Christ and joined to him we have God’s favor.

This is the whole hub of Paul’s teaching of salvation. Whatever it is we have before God, we have only because we are joined to Jesus Christ who has secured that for us. I have forgiveness of sins. I have it because and only because I’m in Jesus Christ. Joined to him by faith. Joined to the one who has secured that forgiveness for me. I have redemption in Christ. I have sanctification in Christ, perseverance in Christ, glorification in Christ. Every blessing we enjoy we have because, and only because, we are in Christ.

And so Paul starts out here at the get-go to tell us we are blessed fully, abundantly, in every way, from God’s side in Jesus Christ. Through Him we have everything that we could ever need before God. A completeness of provision found in Jesus Christ. And in fact, Paul makes the point here to stress that this is not just for some elite of the elect. This is not for the super saints. This is for every one of us. He has blessed us, and he means by that very clearly to include every believer.

Now, on another level, we will see at other points where God sovereignly distributes his gifts of service to his people, and so some have greater abilities in one respect than others, and some can do this, and some can do the other. Some are marvelously gifted at teaching or preaching. Some are marvelously gifted in helps and service. Some are marvelously gifted in children’s ministry. Some are marvelously gifted in music. And nobody’s got all of that. But when it comes to his saving blessings, He gives that to all of his people in Christ. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Jesus Christ.

Three Stanzas Of The Hymn

But what you’ll see as we go through this passage is that verse 3 is just the introduction. That’s just the broad, general statement of what he wants to say. He is a good preacher, and every good preacher has to take a while to unpack what he says at the beginning, and so he states in a broad, general statement the theme of what he’s going to expound through this passage, through the entire epistle, virtually. He states in a broad, general statement in verse three: we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. All of us have.

But there’s more here that he will unpack. Someone has remarked that this passage, Ephesians 1:3-14, should not be read in the church; it should be sung. Well, of course, they’re overstating the case to make a point, but the point is a good one. And in fact, New Testament scholars have surmised that verses 3 through 14 here, which, by the way, in the original are just one long sentence—for ease of reading in English, it’s been broken up into, I think, three sentences—we have it in the original as one long continuous sentence. New Testament scholars have surmised that this long sentence comprises at least the remains of an ancient hymn.

Now, they’re not unanimous in that opinion, as you can imagine. And in fact, we don’t know, and there’s some speculation involved in that. But it does seem that there is something here of the remains of an ancient Christian hymn. We don’t have, other than the psalter itself, which of course was the early church’s hymnal, we don’t have very many remains of what they might have sung outside the psalter. There’s here, there’s Philippians chapter 2, there are a couple of other places in the New Testament where we think we have at least the remains of an ancient Christian hymn. It’s generally thought that this is one of those passages.

So we have in verse 3 an introduction to this great hymn of praise, and then we’ll take just a minute here to look through the whole passage in broad outline to see where he is going with it. We have, you’ll notice, three what we’ll call stanzas to the hymn.

First of all, verses four through six: “Even as he,” notice that verse three, he’s blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, and now he begins to enumerate those blessings. Verse four: “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 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.”

Now stanza two, verses seven through 12: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace in which he lavished upon us in 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 then the third stanza, or at least what is left of it, verses 13 and 14: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

We also have, and one of the reasons they think this may be an ancient hymn, is the repeated refrain you’ll see in verses 6, 12, and 14. Verse 6: “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Verse 12: “so that we who are first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.” And then again, the end of verse 14: “to the praise of his glory.”

And you’ll notice also in this passage, while we’re just running through it here quickly, there’s a natural progression of thought developed through the passage. This is not just a lot of miscellany thrown out in any order, but it seems that there is a definite progression of thought. In the first stanza, verses four through six, we have blessings that come to us from God the Father. In the second stanza, verses seven through 12, we have blessings from God the Son. And then the third stanza, verses 13 and 14, blessings from or that are attached to the work of the Holy Spirit. So there’s a Trinitarian progression.

Now, let’s go back through it one more time. You’ll see that there’s a progression of thought in another respect. In this first stanza, verses four through six, we have blessings that are past. He’s chosen us. He’s predestined us. In the second stanza, verses seven through 12, we have blessings that we enjoy in the present. With, of course, fullness to come in the future, but blessings we enjoy in the present. We have forgiveness of sins and redemption. God has revealed to us this great purpose of his saving plan. And then in the third stanza, verses 13 and 14, we have, well, present blessings, but present blessings with an eye to specifically the future; been sealed to this day of promised inheritance.

So this hymn traces the blessings of God—verse 3, the completeness, the lavishness of blessings that God has given us in Christ—first of all from God the Father, from God the Son, from God the Holy Spirit; from the past to the present to the future; from the preparation of our salvation to the execution of that salvation in the work of Jesus Christ, to the application of that salvation in our present experience, until finally the great consummation of that salvation in the age to come.

And so this great hymn, this great passage lays out for us this fullness of blessing with which we have been blessed in Christ from God. So this hymn is a broad sweep then of God’s entire program of grace that runs from eternity past to eternity future. From before time, when God first set his love upon us from eternity past until eternity future, when we forever will enjoy the final consummation of our salvation that in time was accomplished for us by Christ and brought into our experience in time.

It struck me this week as I was thinking through this passage that what we have here is really what was captured by those famous slogans of the Reformation. We have the Soli Christo, or by Christ alone. That’s what Paul is emphasizing all through this. These blessings, you’ll see as we go through again and again, we’re reminded, come to us in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. By Christ alone, we have these blessings. Because it is by Christ alone, there’s that second slogan: by grace alone. Because Christ did it all, it can only come to us by free grace. And so it is by Christ alone, and because it is by Christ alone, it comes to us by grace alone.

And because it comes to us by grace alone, it comes to us also through faith alone, apart from works. And the apostle emphasizes that. And once you’ve said all of that—that this salvation is accomplished by Christ alone, comes to us by grace alone, received through faith alone—you’re left to say, all of the glory is to God alone. To God alone be the glory. And this is exactly what this hymn is intended to emphasize throughout.

And it’s fascinating to me to see this, that if this is indeed the remnants of an ancient first-century Christian hymn, it is fascinating to me to see what it is they sang about when they lifted their voices and their hearts to God in praise. The fullness of blessing that has been achieved for us in Jesus Christ. And what they reveled in—we’ll see this three times over in this passage, the three refrains—what they reveled in was not only that God has secured these blessings for us in Christ, but specifically God has secured these blessings for us in Christ to the praise of His glorious grace.

He has set out in this to save in such a way that only He receives all of the praise for it. In this whole program of redemption that He outlines for us here, God is very intentional about it: “That I will save in such a way that only I receive the praise for it.” So that when we are saved now and for eternity, when we enjoy the fullness of that salvation, not one of us will be patting ourselves on the back and saying, “Well, I’m glad I had the sense to do this or to say that.” But every one of us will be saying and singing together, “God has done it all in Christ for his glory.”

Well, that’s a lot, but that’s just the introduction. And as you can imagine, I don’t think I’m going to finish through verse 14 today. But I did want to take this time to give this broad overview of this wonderful, wonderfully rich passage. Today what we’re going to do is just begin to trace out with the Apostle just how the salvation of ours reflects the glory of God’s grace. What is important for us—what is important for us to know in order to sing adequately in a way that praises God for the salvation that he’s given to us? What are the items or what are the stanzas? What are the points of praise that we should include?

Well, if we’re tracing this from the bottom up, or if we’re tracing this from the back forward, from eternity past to eternity future, well, you won’t be surprised at Reformed Baptist Church to hear this: we have to start with the doctrine of election. And that’s what he does.

Verse three again: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, 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 through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.”

Paul first, then, traces our salvation back to its source. The source of our salvation is found in the electing love of God. The fountain of blessing is not our choice of Him. The fountain of blessing is His choice of us. And what stood first in this early church, and when they sang praise to God for the salvation that He has given, what stood first in order? So let’s just go back to the beginning: God has chosen to save me. And here in one of the few remaining hymns from the early church, the first stanza—the first stanza—they’re singing about the doctrine of election. That’s fascinating to me.

Now, we have a good many hymns about election in our hymnal, but I promise you, you’re sheltered here. You go out to most churches and you could look for a long time in their hymnal before you find a hymn about election. Some churches you go 50 years without even hearing it. This idea that God chose whom he would save for some reason has been twisted to be a dangerous thought, an uncomfortable thought. And what’s striking to me—I’ve thought this for years—what’s striking to me is just the contrast between the way the doctrine of election is approached and thought of in the early church, as compared to the way it’s approached and thought of in the contemporary church.

In the early church, it was talked about all the time, all the time, all the time. And all the time, it was joyful. Never was it defensive. Never was it considered dangerous. Always was it the ground of praise. In the contemporary church, it’s almost never heard of. And if it is heard of, it’s guarded. It’s controversial. It’s difficult. And at some point, you’ve got to think, it seems to me, the contemporary church is missing something the early church enjoyed. In the New Testament, it’s all the time. And it’s with joy. It’s the ground of rejoicing. There’s no hint of controversy. There’s no attempt to hide it. It’s simply unguarded praise that God has chosen me to be saved.

All right then, let’s look through this, verses five and six.

Number One: What Is The Doctrine Of Election?

One of the best explanations of the doctrine of election that I have heard: a pastor said that he went home from church one Sunday morning, was walking down his driveway, and the neighbor lady, who was a believer from a different church, but a believer, asked the pastor—caught him at the fence there before he went in the house—”What is the doctrine of election?” Well, you know, you’re standing there with things in your hand, you’re going in to eat dinner, and you know, you got your five seconds. What do you say?

And so he asked her, I think very wisely, he said, “Who saved you?” She said, “Well, God saved me.” He said, “Well, did he do it on purpose or did he do it by accident?” “I guess he did it on purpose.” Well, that’s the doctrine of election. Pretty good, pretty good. All this doctrine is, is that God intended and chose to save. It is God’s purpose to save and that’s why the word is “He chose us.” He chose us.

God saves by grace and election is simply His purpose to save us by grace. He saved us by grace, and he did it on purpose. That’s the whole doctrine in a nutshell. The doctrine of election is the teaching in the scripture that reminds us that our salvation traces back, ultimately, not to a choice that we have made, but to a choice God made. The hinge, the critical moment, the critical decision is not ours. The critical decision goes back a lot further than that. It’s a decision God had made. He determined to save us.

And on this point, of course, the Bible is very realistic to go in great detail to tell us how this was necessary. This was a necessary determination on God’s part, because if He did not choose to save, no one would be saved. Paul will press this particularly in chapter three, where he identifies this “us” whom God chose. We were the ones who were running away. We were the ones walking in lockstep with the devil. We were the ones going with the course of this world and very happy to do it until God determined otherwise.

And this doctrine of election is intended to emphasize that very point, that left to our own choice, we would have perished. And if God had left all of humanity to its own choice, all of humanity would have perished. But God has taken the initiative in grace. And for the world full, unanimously full of rebels, rebelling against his law and running away from him, God says, “I won’t let it happen. I’m going to save this world to the praise of my glorious grace.” And he determines that he will save, and not just a few, but we are told in the last book, a great multitude which no man can number from every tribe and kindred and tongue and family under heaven.

So the Bible is very realistic at this point telling us that God meets us where we are, but in grace determines not to leave us in the insanity of our rebellion, but has chosen a people whom he will save. The Bible is not at all slow to tell us that if God had left us to our choice, and if we all had perished, then God would still be entirely just. The greatness of his grace is seen that He has come to us when we were rebelling against Him and has chosen whom He would save.

And this is the first stanza: the glory of God’s grace is that He did not leave us to our own choices, but He made a choice—a choice He did not need to make, a choice He did not owe to anyone, but freely of His grace He chose to save.

That day when I first came to Jesus Christ in faith, I had a heart that was just bursting with two things. Just bursting. One, with a sense of my lostness. And two, a sense of the glory and the attractiveness of Jesus Christ: “Here’s where I can find rescue.” And I went running to Christ in faith, and here I learned that all of that was just the outworking of God’s purpose; He had chosen to save. This choice is not grounded in anything about us. This is not—this is not to the praise of our glory. This is to the praise of His glorious grace.

At bottom, then, what is striking about our salvation is, as he says in verse 4, God chose us. That’s the amazing thing. God chose us. Or, as he says in verse 5, in love He predestined us. There are the words a little bit bigger: “chosen us” to salvation; “predestined” is the big word, having to do with the big plan. It’s one of those words that defines itself: pre-destined, predestined before; he’s established our destiny beforehand. And it looks in big sweeping terms and says the really amazing thing is that God, looking ahead at this rebel, didn’t let this rebel have his way, but established a destiny of glory in Christ for us.

Number Two: When Did God Make This Choice?

When did God make this choice? Verse four is very explicit: “even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”

I grew up in fundamental Baptist circles, and for all of the wonderful things that fundamentalism was, especially in its beginning and for all the wonderful cause that it had, by the time I got to college, at least, it had become very afraid of this doctrine of election. I remember one time sitting in a chapel service at the Christian university, and one of the administrators was preaching, and he came across a verse with this doctrine of election. And he slandered, first of all, the Calvinistic doctrine of election that God chose whom he would save. He says, “The doctrine of election is just this. This is how simple it is. The doctrine of election,” he said, “is just this: Satan casts a vote for you, God casts a vote for you, and you cast the deciding vote.”

Now, it seems to me there are at least three things—probably 300, at least three things—wrong with that approach.

Number one: The text says it is God who chose us, not that I chose him. That’s emphasized in verse 4. It’s emphasized in verse 5. And it’s emphasized again in verse 11: “We’ve been predestined according to the one, the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will.” It is very explicit. This is according to His purpose, His will, not ours. The first problem is, the text says God chose, not that we chose. This is His electing work. We’re praising Him now, not us, okay?

Number two, the second problem with this—and again, this just lies on the surface of the verse—this choice was made before the foundation of the world. Now what is the sense of including a phrase like that except to say this choice was made before you could have anything to do with it? To put it this way, when this election was held, I wasn’t old enough to vote yet. Even Pastor Boyd wasn’t old enough to vote back then. This goes way back. The whole point of including a statement like this—”chosen in him before the foundation of the world”—is to stress exactly that point: that you had nothing to do with it, that, just as he said, this is God’s choice. It came from him.

And third, which runs through all of this, runs through all the New Testament teaching in this regard, is it’s just not the case. We all know where we were going when we had our choice. And the whole glory of this thing, the whole purpose of it, is to sing the praise of His glorious grace that interrupted us in our sin. And contrary to our foolish, insane rebellion, God determined to save us for His glory.

And in fact, He says it in verse 4: He chose us before the foundation of the world not because of any goodness on our part, but “to be holy and blameless before him.” Chapter 2—we’ll get there someday—He’ll emphasize it again, that the whole need of God’s initiative was grounded in our instinctive rebellion against God, that had he not taken the initiative, we would have perished by our own choice.

Our only hope, in other words, is that God would stuff the ballot box, that he would overrule our choice. And this is Paul’s point here. As Jesus said in John 15, verse 16: “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” At least in a sober moment, aren’t you glad that God didn’t leave the choice to you? We remember where we were going. The choice was left to us. And it’s one of the most staggering, life-changing lessons that we learn. We learn that this salvation that we have is to the praise of His glorious grace.

Harry Ironside was not noted as a strong Calvinist or Reformed thinker of any kind, but at the same time, he had some very, I think, helpful comments on this passage. When he spoke about election, he said, “The door of salvation has printed over it: ‘Whoever will, let him come.’ And we walk through. And having walked through the door, we turn and look back over the mantle on the other side, and it says, ‘Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.'”

The Bible everywhere pictures God as completely open and gracious and willing to accept all who will come. He stands with arms outstretched to a stiff-necked people. That kind of language is used. God is willing. God will have you. God will have you. Whoever will, come; he’ll have you. In the face of a world full of rebels—to the last man a rebel—God chooses whom he’ll save, and they come.

And we go through that struggle at the moment of our conversion, and we struggle with our sin, and we struggle with our losses, and we struggle with this giving over to Christ, and finally our hearts just give over to Christ. And having experienced a struggle like that, we naturally think this is our doing. Until we begin to wonder, “What brought that change of mind? What brought that change of heart about?”

Answer: God saved me, and he saved me on purpose. He made a choice back before the foundation of the world. And so, the New Testament speaks all the time in this vein, that God has saved us. 2 Timothy 1:9: “God has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything that we have done, but according to His own purpose and grace.” Romans 8:28: “called according to His purpose.” We have that here in verse 5: “He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will,” or according to His own good pleasure. Or verse 11: “we’ve been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

The point here then is that this hymn is intended to stress this great contrast. We were sinners. We were ruined. We were lost. We were helpless. And apart from divine initiative, we were hopeless. Now we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, with a lavishness of God’s grace given to us. And the hinge, the turning point of it all, the critical moment, is one from God’s side. He chose to save.

Now this, of course, is shocking to learn for many. But God, again, verse 6, God is very intentional about this. He has done this to the praise of His glorious grace. Verse 4, He’s chosen according to the good pleasure of His own will. Verse 5. And verse 6, this was done—purpose clause—to the praise, in order to praise His glorious grace. God’s stated purpose is that He saves in such a way that only He will receive the praise and He will receive all of the praise for it. He won’t have anyone saved in such a way that they can share the credit. He’s not in this for your glory.

First of all, there’s a sense in which our salvation has nothing to do with us. First of all, this salvation is for His glory. And this was His intention. If we think that our salvation hinges on us, if we think—if we keep one little idea in the back of our head that the critical moment, the deciding factor was from my side—that’s going to affect the way I worship. I’m going to keep back just a little. And I’m going to say, “Well, at least I…” And God says, “I won’t have it.” This is to the praise of His glorious grace.

On the other hand, when I consider that I am blessed lavishly, and all of it turns on a determination that he made in love, that affects my worship too. And it’s a completely different kind of song. This doctrine of election then is intended—it’s specifically intended, verse 6 tells us—it is specifically intended to make us good worshipers. It’s to make us recognize that we are blessed as wards of divine charity. That what we have is completely contrary to what we deserve, and it’s completely contrary to what we would have chosen. But God in love has come and blessed us lavishly.

I wonder if in your devotional time, as you bow to pray, does this doctrine ever inform your worship? “God, thank you for choosing me. I know where I’d be today if you hadn’t chosen me. Thank you for your love.” Can you think of any doctrine better suited to promoting a deep sense of dependence upon God than this? Dependence upon God is the very heart of what saving faith is. And here I learned that from first to last, this is God’s doing. And that fosters in us a great, deep kind of trust and reliance upon God, that is to say, to the praise of His glorious grace.

And you think of any doctrine better suited to your assurance than this doctrine of election? What could give me more assurance, more confidence than this consideration that from first to last, this has been about him, not me. This whole thing rests in his hands, his initiative, his doing from beginning to end. Yes, I had to believe. It is necessary to believe. We are justified by faith. But here we find that our faith is just itself the outworking of God’s purpose—eternal purpose to save us. We are saved ultimately because of his choice, his will, not ours.

And so as we look back and see that God has chosen and God has undertaken this work from the beginning—from before the beginning—then as we look ahead, we don’t need to fear that this thing’s going to fall apart. This is a God who has planned this from eternity for eternity. We rest in His grace. This depends upon Him.

And then, finally, can you think of any doctrine more suited to your encouragement than this? I tell you, once you see this, you never get over it. It revolutionizes devotional life. God chose me. Ultimately, ultimately, what else could ever matter if God in love has chosen me? I love how the Apostle Peter brings this very point out when he writes to the saints: 1 Peter, right off the bat, verse 1—right off the bat, he’s writing to people who are exiled, people who have been suffering; he’s got to talk a lot about suffering; people who have been persecuted in all of these troubles and suffering—and right off the bat, “to those who are chosen.” Let’s start there and get perspective.

What else ultimately could matter if in love God has chosen me? For my faith, for my assurance, for my encouragement, I am reminded that God in love has chosen me. I am the object of God’s eternal love. And that is to the praise of His glorious grace.

Now there is one question that remains. And it might be—it might be—that someone here is asking, “How can I know if I am one of the elect?” Now again, there are long answers that can be given, but it doesn’t need to be complicated. The question really is an easy one. If there is any sure mark of God’s elect, it is that they come to Christ. And this is what the gospel offers you: Christ. No matter who you are, no matter where you’ve been, no matter what you’ve done, the gospel says, “If you will, God will have you. He will save you.”

And you come to Christ, and then you look back on the door, and you’ll say, “In love, long ago, he determined that this would happen.” And we all, for the rest of eternity, will be singing a song like this. We’ll be singing praises to God who took the initiative when we were rebelling against Him, lavished us in grace to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, these are high and wonderful truths. And what a glorious thing it is for us that you’ve revealed it to us, that you have seen fit not only to do all of this for us, but to reveal to us that you have done it so that we may revel in it. We thank you, Father, for your mercy, your electing grace. We frankly do not know why you would have chosen us and yet you have. We praise you for it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.