Well this morning we come back to our study of the book of Ephesians, and I'm glad to be in this great epistle studying together with you. I think it's perhaps the most important letter that we could study as a church in order to understand the church of God and the truth of who we are in Christ. 

We'll see in the first three chapters that Paul lays down the theology of the church, the truth doctrines concerning who we are, what we have as a member of the body of Christ. And in the last three chapters he exhorts us to live in light of these truths, to apply them in our lives. 

In verses 3 to 14 of chapter 1, Paul raises us right off the bat to great heights, explaining to us all that we have, who we are in Jesus. He speaks of the past aspect of our salvation in Christ in verses 3 to 6, which we are going to study this morning. Then he tells us about the present aspect of our salvation, redemption, which we will study next week, Lord willing. And finally, the future aspect of our salvation, glorification, as we see in the last part of this great section. 

These verses are one sentence in the Greek, as I've told you before, 202 words. It's as if Paul gets going singing the praises, speaking well of God our Father and what He has done in Christ, and he just can't stop. These are profound and amazing truths and they will tell us the truth of our salvation, truly all that we have and specifically who we are in Christ. 

We talk often about how the truth, the indicatives, always form a foundation for the imperatives or the commands. And Ephesians is the quintessential example of this, as we see the indicative truths in the first three chapters, the imperative commands built on these truths in the last three chapters. If we're going to apply the truths, we must first know the truths. 

In chapter 4, verse 1, Paul exhorts us to walk worthy of our calling. These words literally speak of equal weight. The ideas that are outward walking, how we live, how we conduct ourselves, would be in equality with who we are on the inside. This is the biblical definition of sanctification as we see in passages like Romans 12, 1-2. Sanctification is a process of an outward conforming to an inward reality. 

But if we're going to be outwardly conformed to who we are inwardly, then we must first know and understand and believe who God says we are in Christ because of the salvation work that He has done in us in our union with Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection. If we have a wrong understanding, false information about who we are, or if we have an erroneous understanding of what we have in Christ, for example, if we believe that we are still sinners with wicked hearts on the inside, or if we believe that we lack something, we need something more, must strive to obtain or gain something that is missing in what we have in Christ, then living in equal weight with who we are on the inside or trusting in and depending on what we have in Christ, living by His grace through faith alone, walking by faith, makes no sense. 

For we lack in who we are, in regeneration, in our spirit, and we do not have what we need. Unfortunately, this type of teaching and thinking is rampant in the Christian world, but it's not what the Bible teaches, and we'll see that this morning. This is Paul's intent here in these first three chapters, to truly expound all that we have, who we are in Christ, to show the magnitude of what God has done in us and what is available to us in our salvation. 

The first verse of our text this morning at verse 3 says that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. Every spiritual blessing, much like Peter's words, that God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. God wants me to live a holy life, He wants me to live in consistency with who I am in Christ and the fact, the truth, the foundation for this living, the why I can live a new life is found in the truth that He has given to me all things necessary to live this life. 

I have it all in Christ, I lack nothing. He has blessed me with every spiritual blessing. Or we could look down to verse 19 of chapter 1, what does it say? The very power that raised Jesus from the dead works in you to produce holiness. I lack no resource, I lack no power, the very life of God, the power of the Holy Spirit is wholly available to each one of us in Christ. 

I want for you to see Paul's intent in these first three chapters, then I want you to dare to believe what he is saying about you, about the church, about those who believe Jesus. These are wonderful and profound truths. The question is, will we believe them? Will we study them, memorize them, take them for ourselves, reckon them to be so, remind ourselves often, lay them as a foundation for our Christian life? 

And will we believe them, take them for ourselves, so that we might live in light of who we are by His grace and power? Listen and follow along in your Bibles and see the amazing truths that are ours in Christ. 

Ephesians 1, 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. 

Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself. 

That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. 

In Him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory.

Well, I've given you five points on your outline this morning, first, in Christ, second, every spiritual blessing, third, He chose us in Him, fourth, according to the good pleasure of His will, and fifth, accepted in the Beloved. 

Well, first in our text, I just want to emphasize again the main theme, the primary truth here is Paul uses these words, in Christ, or in Him, at least nine times in these first fourteen verses. We who believe Jesus, who have placed our faith in Christ alone in what He accomplished at the cross, we are in Christ. There is no more profound truth than this. Eighty-seven times in the New Testament we see the phrase, in Christ, and Paul uses the term, in Him, another twenty-seven times in his letters. 

This is the most important truth we can understand if we are to rightly understand the Christian life. When we believe Jesus, the Holy Spirit placed us into Christ, united us to Him in His death, burial, and resurrection. Our old man died, we were buried with Christ, and raised to newness of life with Him, wholly united to Him. 

It's hard to imagine, it's hard to believe what Paul's saying here, but the language it indicates, along with so many other teachings in the New Testament, that we are in Christ, we are co-heirs with Jesus. What is true of Him is true of us, we have all that Christ has in the way of resources that He has made available to us for the purposes of God in our lives, to make us like Jesus, to conform us to His likeness. 

We are in Christ. Turn over to Romans 6.1, I want to read that familiar passage again because Paul explains it in more depth in 6.1 to 11. He says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 

That word baptized there just means placed into. You can be baptized into anything, placed into. Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. 

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin, the body controlled by sin, might be done away with or rendered powerless so that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 

For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Romans 5, 12-21, which we looked at last time we were in Ephesians, we see Paul lay the foundation for the truths we're studying and the doctrine of sanctification. 

We were born in Adam, we lived under law, dominated and controlled by sin, and destined for eternal death. But when we believed Jesus, that old man in Adam was crucified, died, and was raised a new man in Christ, now living under grace and righteousness unto eternal life. We are new creations, entirely new in our spirit. And we now have the Holy Spirit, the very life of Christ living in us, as He empowers us to live in holiness, to bring Him glory and as a witness to men in this world. 

We are new men, and Paul says, therefore we must live like new men. We are in Christ. This is the theme of our salvation and of the New Testament, the new covenant life by grace through faith. 

I was reading an amazing sermon this week by Charles Spurgeon called The Warrant of Faith. And I just want to share with you his introduction to that great message. Spurgeon begins his sermon, and I quote, the old law shines in terrible glory with its ten commandments. There are some who love that law so much that they cannot pass over a Sabbath without its being read in their hearing, accompanied by the mournful petition, Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. 

Nay, some are so foolish as to enter into a covenant for their children that they shall keep all God's holy commandments and walk in the same all the days of their life. Thus they early wear a yoke which neither they nor their fathers can bear, and daily groaning under its awful weight, they labor after righteousness where it can never be found. Over the tables of the law in every church, I would have conspicuously printed these gospel words, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified. 

The true believer has learned to look away from the killing ordinances of the old law. He understands that as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. He therefore turns with loathing from all trust in his own obedience to the ten commandments and lays hold with joy upon the hope set before him in the one commandment contained in my text, this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ." 

A truth that so many Christians are unwilling to receive. We now live under grace and we walk by faith, we abide in Christ, we look to Jesus as we run this race, and the command of the new covenant is this, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and love one another. 

My brothers and sisters, think on these things, study what it means to be in Christ, take it for yourself, believe it, reckon it to be so, and knowing these truths, believing these truths, you may then apply them in your lives each day. 

So we see that we are in Christ. Next we see that we have every spiritual blessing in Christ. Blessed be the God, verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. 

Notice it does not promise to us any physical blessing. Now God does bless us in many ways, in the carnal, the temporal, earthly, physical ways, no doubt, but there is no promise of such blessings. Paul does not say I have every carnal blessing on earth, he says blessed be God. 

This is the word to speak well of, Paul is eulogizing God, speaking well of Him. When we bless God, we do it by speaking of Him, by singing His praises, telling of His goodness, His excellent greatness, but when God blesses us, He does it by deed, by imparting to us, sometimes physical gifts, but certainly by giving to us every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. 

We have every spiritual gift, all the resources of God, Jesus Himself, living in and through us. We lack nothing. God has given to us all things that we need, all things that pertain to life and godliness, the very purpose for which He saved us. He has not called us to holiness and left us lacking in some way to obtain it. 

We have every spiritual blessing in Christ. Paul uses the term spiritual here to note the source of blessing as well as the kind of blessing. These blessings are through the Spirit. They come to us from the Holy Spirit, and they are by grace, and they are inherently spiritual in their kind, but also in their source. The phrase in the heavenly speaks of the locale or sphere of these blessings. 

They are in the heavenlies. Alford comments that we, now those still in these bodies, still on this earth, experience some of the blessings, the spiritual blessings that exist in heaven. We are now children of God. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are ambassadors in a foreign land. We experience the blessings that are ours because of who we are in Christ, and Christ is seated at the right hand of God in the heavenlies. 

This idea of all spiritual blessings speaks of fullness, of completeness. In Colossians, Paul writes, he is the fullness, the pleroma, and in him we are complete. We have the fullness of Christ, every spiritual blessing in him. 

So we see in our text, in Christ, we are in Christ. We see that we have in Christ every spiritual blessing, and next we see that he chose us in him. Y'all can wake up now and get interested. We're going to speak about election here, okay? 

He chose us in him, Ephesians 1, 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. 

Paul is expounding the great truths of our salvation in Christ, and in these verses, with this vital doctrine, he means to assure us. He means to encourage the believer. Paul is speaking of the past aspect of this salvation, its source. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. This is the doctrine of election. 

The doctrine of election speaks of God's sovereign choice. We see the election of Israel in the Old Testament as the people of God. He chose them as his own special people, not based on anything about them or because they possessed some redeeming quality, but he chose to set his love upon them, to choose them out, to make them his people and bless them and accomplish his purposes through them. 

In Deuteronomy 7, 6 it says, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples, but because the Lord loves you and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. 

God elected, he chose Israel from among all the nations to be his people, and this had nothing to do with personal salvation. Just because you were part of the nation, born an Israelite, did not mean you were personally saved. This electing purpose was to set aside a people in this world to be a witness to the world. 

Similarly, in Romans we see that God chose Isaac and Jacob, not Ishmael and Esau, through which to bring the promise of a blessing to all nations. God also elected certain people for certain purposes in history, chose them out. We could say this of Moses or Abraham or David, but we could also say it of Nebuchadnezzar or Pharaoh. God chose or elected certain people for certain jobs. 

For example, the Levites were chosen to be the priests of Israel. This was a choosing out for a certain purpose, but again, nothing to do with personal salvation. The election or choosing that Paul speaks of in our text is a choosing to set his love upon us to make us his in Christ, to make us like Jesus. 

And it's clear in our passage that God chose us not based on anything to do with us, not looking forward to see what we might do, but according to the good pleasure of his will. Verse 5 of our text, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. 

Verse 9, having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself. Verse 11, in him also we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, and verse 14, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory. 

God chose us because of his love, his desire, his plan, his purpose, his good pleasure for his glory. He chose us for salvation before the world began. Turn over to 2 Thessalonians 2.13 with me, please, 2 Thessalonians 2.13. Paul writing it to the Thessalonians, again, this topic is always written to believers meant to encourage them. 

2 Thessalonians 2.13, Paul says, but we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. Seems like a clear statement, doesn't it? 

In Acts 13.48 it says, now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. Romans 8.29, you're familiar with that passage, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 

Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. Whom he called, he also justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified. Encouragement. God works all things together for our good, he says in the verse before that. He goes on to tell us how nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

The point of God writing, of Paul writing to us about the doctrine of election and how God chose us and the source of our salvation was God's eternal plan, is to encourage us and to give us security and assurance about our salvation. He's writing about the past aspect of this salvation, is election. God's plan to save us, to make us like Christ, to bring us to glory. 

And he did this, it says, before the world began. Your name was written in the Lamb's book of life before the world began. This is peace, this is assurance, this is security. Jesus told his disciples, don't rejoice that you can cast out demons, rejoice that your name is written in the book of life. And that is the point. 

We never see this in the negative. We never see this addressed concerning unbelievers in the negative sense. What we do see over and over and over, along with the doctrine of election, along with the doctrine of predestination, along with God's sovereign choice in salvation, is that salvation is available to every man. 

That God desires that every man be saved. That God is patient and long-suffering, not willing that any should perish. Jesus died not for our sins only, but the sins of the whole world. We are called to preach the gospel to every creature. We are called to persuade men, we are called to beg men to come to Christ, to reason from the Scriptures with them in order to persuade them to believe Jesus. 

It's clear that the reason that men are not saved is because of their unwillingness. Not God's. God is willing, whosoever will may come. My brothers and sisters, there's a tension in the Scriptures, in our minds, between the sovereignty of God in salvation and the will of man. 

Why do we struggle with this so much? Why has there been forests of trees killed to make paper to write books arguing this subject? I found a quote in J.I. Packer's book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, he's a Calvinist, but I think it's quite enlightening. He said, the cause of this despair over these doctrines is the intrusion of rationalistic speculation, the passion for systematic consistency, a reluctance to recognize the existence of mystery and let God be wiser than men, and the consequent subjecting of Scripture to the supposed demands of human logic. 

This is a tremendous quote, a wonderful thought. Unfortunately, Packer applies it only to those who struggle with the doctrine of election and the sovereignty of God in salvation. In my opinion, he lacks self-awareness that this error is equally applied on the other end of the spectrum. 

I wholly reject Arminianism, I don't have any room for any of the points of Arminianism, and I wholly reject Calvinism. I have no room for any of the points of Calvinism, and I'll explain that a little bit. If there's one group that has ever dotted every I and crossed every T, it's the system of theology called Reformed theology. 

Whether it's the Westminster Confession or the 1689 Baptist Confession or the volumes of systems of theology written by academics of all ages, the Reformed doctrine is solidly founded and meticulously laid out. But I believe whether you undermine God's sovereignty by designing a system such as Arminianism that satisfies the logic and rationale of the human mind, or you design a system that undermines the will of man, such as in Calvinism, you have done equal violence to the Scriptures. 

This is a very difficult thing for us, my friends, as evidenced by the centuries of debate and toil and labor to explain the paradox. I always find it fascinating that we don't do this with the deity and humanity of Christ. Those who are Orthodox in their beliefs accept this antinomy, this paradox, that Jesus is fully man and fully God. 

He's not half man and half God, He's fully man and fully God. When people say amen, but when they say God chose us for salvation before the world began and every man has a choice to believe things that the Scriptures clearly teach, we all have a hernia. 

Why can't we accept it? Likewise, we accept and believe the revelation of the Word of God that tells us that God is one, that He is the one true God, and yet He exists in three persons. I can't explain this, I would never endeavor to try. I am perfectly content with the mystery, the wisdom, the thoughts of God that are far above my own, but when it comes to salvation and particularly the sovereignty of God and the free agency of man, oh how we struggle. 

We feel that we must have an answer, we must explain, we run to logical conclusions that lead us out of the revelation of the Scriptures. And the truth is that the Scriptures have no difficulty with the tension, God knows, and the Scriptures clearly and abundantly teach both of these truths. 

What I find in the five points of Calvinism which deals solely with soteriology is that the doctrine of salvation is precisely what Packer describes, a system of theology meant to explain this paradox, this mystery, to relieve the tension for the sake of the comfort of our human minds. 

And this system has an answer for every question, and those who hold this system are not above pounding square pegs of Scripture into the round holes of their theology. Let me just take a moment to illustrate, because I think this is important because we're exposed to it so much, I just want to give you a little illustration, kind of lay the foundation for understanding this side of it. 

You've heard of the doctrine of total depravity of man. This is the first of the five points of TULIP and the basis for all of them. What you need to understand is that the way that the Augustinian Calvinist defines this term is truly a total inability of man. They teach that when Adam sinned and brought the curse on mankind, man became so totally depraved and this depravity has so infected every particle of his being that his spiritual death is co-equal with physical death and he is unable to respond in any way even to believe the gospel. 

You hear preachers saying things like this very often, that the spiritually dead man and Adam is like a corpse, and you can kick a corpse and you can yell at it and you can argue with it and you can do anything you like, it cannot respond because he's dead. So they say is the case with the carnal man and Adam. He is spiritually dead and thus he cannot respond to the gospel, he cannot believe, listen, he must first be saved, regenerated, born again, in order to exercise faith in Jesus. 

This is the key doctrine that underlies the whole system out of which everything flows. But the problem is this is not what the scriptures teach. Do you find the Bible say that a man is saved and then he believes? Rather, you see a hundred times just in the Gospel of John, which we're studying, and according to Haddon Robinson, some 57 additional times in the New Testament, that a man believes unto salvation. He believes and then he is saved. 

In fact, more accurately, in many scriptures we see that he hears a message about Jesus by which faith comes and he believes and is saved. Even in our text in verse 13, after you heard the word of the gospel, you believed and were saved or sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit. 

Spurgeon said this on this topic, if you tell me that a sinner has any good thing in him before he believes, I reply, impossible, for without faith it is impossible to please God. That's just a line out of the whole sermon. He says, why should I go and preach the gospel to saints? Because on a whole, you should really listen to the warrant of faith sermon as he explains this. 

The Geneva Study Bible, now called the Reformation Study Bible, states on page 1664 that an infant can be regenerated. When asked about this, R.C. Sproul said that in Reformed theology, regeneration always precedes faith. And he said, with an infant, God can regenerate them and they may not come to faith until years later. 

When we begin to follow the logic of systems in men, we can end up in very strange places. When asked what a sinner must do to be regenerated, because this is a question, right? I sat in a Reformed Baptist Church in Indiana one time and this young girl, probably 16, 17 years old, part of a youth group, she stood up giving some kind of testimony and she said, I want to be saved, I've longed to be saved, I prayed to be saved, I prayed that God would give me the gift of faith, I've prayed and prayed and prayed that he would regenerate me, and I don't know what to do. 

When asked what a sinner must do to be regenerated, since he cannot believe, the common response is this, this from a man named Shedd, because the sinner cannot believe, he is instructed to perform the following duties. Read and hear the divine word, give serious application of the mind to the truth, and pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit for regeneration. 

Roy Aldrich's response to this is penetrating, he writes, a doctrine of total depravity that excludes the possibility of faith must also exclude the possibility of hearing the word, giving serious application to divine truth, and praying for the Holy Spirit for regeneration. He says the Calvinist deals with a rather lively spiritual corpse, after all. I don't want to spend a lot of time here because this really isn't what our text is about, but what I would recommend to you is to listen to Spurgeon's sermon on the warrant of faith. 

What is the warrant of faith? What is your title to believe? What grounds do you have that you could believe? And Spurgeon's sermon is all about the fact that it is the gospel itself, it is God's command to you to believe, and anything else is a false gospel. 

My brothers and sisters, it's vital that we uphold the two truths of the scriptures concerning salvation, divine sovereignty and human responsibility, and for one reason, because it teaches them both. If we try to design a system to explain these things to the satisfaction of our finite minds, our human reason or logic, then we will necessarily undermine one or the other, as we find in the equal errors of Arminianism and Calvinism. 

But it takes discipline to do this. We so easily fall into one error or the other. We say, well, if God chose us before the world began, what does that mean? Or we say, if I have some part in my salvation, then can I do something to lose it? And we get all in a tizzy and get all worried and get all upset instead of just taking God's revelation and believing what He says. 

We must be clear and purposeful to teach the sovereignty of God when we come to passages like Ephesians 1, and with equal faith and fervor teach the will of man, the choice of man, when we come to the abundant whosoever passages. 

I wonder sometimes why we worry so much about God's part, as if He may not do it right or keep His promises, especially when His instruction to us for our part is so abundantly clear. We'd do well to focus on what God has told us to do and let God be God and trust Him. 

God's told us to go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He's told us to reason with them, to persuade them, to beg them to come to faith in Jesus. I don't really need to worry about Him doing His part in saving them. I find it to be this quote that I found from Spurgeon, because I wrestled with this for years, I've told you this before, but when I was a young believer I was friends with a pastor down in Lake Geneva, Wayne Rohde, and we had written back and forth on email, and you know how email was in those days, and the file I had just on the emails I sent him was over 600 emails. 

We spent a long time and a lot of labor and a lot of toil trying to figure this out, and I found this quote by Spurgeon that I thought was very helpful to me. He says, I know men who are wise in their own eyes and very well assured of their own intellects, who while palpably ignorant of everything that is rational are conscious that they know everything that is spiritual. Their acquaintance with theology is thoroughly exhaustive. They have learned long ago to count to five, to reckon them at their fingers' ends. 

One, two, three, four, five. These mystic figures comprise all the doctrines of the gospel, they know them, and they're ready to fight anybody about them. They are men of a great deal of wisdom, seeing men, but I think a man that gets a little nearer to God discovers that he does not know everything, and he is quite clear that he can no more compass the whole of divine truth than he can hold the ocean in the hollow of his hand. 

I have long felt that I shall never understand where the two great truths of free agency and predestination meet. I believe them both, I believe them with equal faith, but how to reconcile them I no longer wish to know because I do not think that God intends we should know. 

We see in our text in Christ every spiritual blessing, He chose us in Him according to the good pleasure of His will, and finally we see accepted in the Beloved, verse 5, having predestined us to adoption by sons. Let me just ask you, doesn't that give you encouragement? If you believe Jesus, it says that before the world began, God predestined you to be conformed to the image of Christ, along with Romans 8, to bring us to glory. 

You are secure in Him. The salvation that He provides is comprehensive and complete. He's given to you all things that pertain to life and godliness today, for life today to be a holy man or woman, an example, a witness to bring glory to Him in all that you do, and you don't need to worry about living up to a standard in the sense of keeping your salvation. 

You need to worry about looking to Jesus, trusting Him, believing Him, and you need to have that hope that Mark talked about this morning. In Romans 8, the passage he read, it says that hope saves us. What does it save us from? Saves us from fear and doubt and discouragement. We know that those whom He justifies, He glorifies, and He determined that before the world began. 

There's no chance that He'll lose us or not accomplish His purposes. Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. 

The word accepted is the same root word as grace, charas. Wiest comments, one could render the clause, which grace He graced us with in the Beloved. The word Beloved, referring to the Lord Jesus, is a translation of a Greek word to love, agapeo, which here is a participle in the perfect tense. This Greek word for love is the same one found in John 3.16. In Romans 5.5, Romans 5.8, Galatians 5.22, 1st John 4.8. 

It speaks of the love that God is, and that love with which He loves the lost, the love which is the product of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer. The perfect tense speaks of an action completed in past time having present, and in a context like this one, permanent results. 

It speaks of the fact that God the Father has always loved God the Son with an absolute love which is a permanent attitude on His part. The phrase, in the Beloved, speaks of the sphere. That is, God the Father freely bestowed on us the grace which saved us, and He did so in the sphere of the Lord Jesus, His person, His work on the cross. 

Again, it is in Christ that we are accepted. But let me ask you, are you in Christ? I get weary of Christians saying, wow, that's in Christ. Yeah, but that's in Christ. As if you're somewhere else. You can't be in Christ and in Adam. When you believe Jesus, that old man that was in Adam died, and you were raised a new man, a new creation, in Christ. 

So you are in Christ. That's who you are. We are accepted. This speaks of justification. It's a positional truth. It is because of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross in His death, burial, and resurrection, and because of the imputation of His righteousness to us and our sins to Him through faith that we are made right with God, that we are accepted. 

It is in the Beloved, it is in Him, it is in Christ. Now next week we're going to explore the present aspect of this great salvation, which is redemption. He has redeemed us, He's made us accepted, we are in Him, and because we are in Him, all these things are true of us. 

So I want you to think on these things, my brothers and sisters, I want you to ponder them. You know, it's easy just to speak these words, to read this text, to, you know, everybody's tired, they were shoveling snow yesterday, but do you hear what God is saying? You are in Christ. You have every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. You are secure forever. You have eternal life. 

Think on these things, ponder them, see the greatness of the salvation God provides, see who you are, and then live in light of who you are by His grace and power. Through faith, one day at a time, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. 

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we thank You. Thank You for salvation, salvation that You determined, that You created in Your mind in eternity past and determined to bring to pass, and we thank You that You have chosen us to be in Christ and all that that means. 

We thank You for the great purpose that You have for us in this time here and now, the assurance and security we can have to know that we are children of God, that we can come to You, that You're our Father. We don't have to worry about where we stand with You. We don't have to be constantly fixed on ourselves, but can look to others and love others and look to glorify You. 

Thank You that Jesus lives in us and that by faith, one day at a time, the very power that raised Him from the dead works in us to accomplish Your purpose. Help us to live, to live out who we are, Lord. Help us to glorify You in all that we do and help us to lead men to faith in Christ according to Your will. 

In Jesus' name, amen. 

Okay, we'll sing number 239 for our closing hymn. 239, In Christ Alone, if you'd stand with me. 239, In Christ Alone. 

In Christ alone, my hope is found.