Chosen Together: A New Calling

John Piper

I hope you will turn with me to Ephesians. Chapter One, we’re going to read verses three through 14. Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 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 to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He has blessed us With, which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his the good pleasure or the purpose with which which he set forth in Christ, has a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on the 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. In Him, you also when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. Now, before I pray again, let me say something from chapter one, encouraging and guiding to the way I want to pray for you and me. Ephesians one, three to 14, what we just read is the most concentrated, exalted, weighty description of God’s purpose in the universe. In the Bible from eternity to eternity, it’s the kind of writing that stretches the mind to the breaking point. It takes us back before creation, the creation of everything into the mind of God, absolute reality. And it beckons us wonder of wonders. It beckons us to understand the unfathomable good pleasure and will and purpose and counsel and plan of God. This is the sort of thing that if I were to do it, and not Paul, you would count it totally presumptuous. But he did it, and He beckons us in to the eternal mind of God, and then he takes us forward to the everlasting inheritance. And then he takes us to the center, the most beloved son bloodshed for redemption, that we might be the predestined, happy, praising children of God forever and ever. The realities in those verses three to 14 are 10,000 times more important, more significant, more amazing, more relevant than anything that happens in Washington DC or in the Vatican or on the News scroll that you look at every day, they are compared to this nothing. These are glorious realities beyond human description, and when he’s done. It with those verses. At verse 14, what does he do? He prays. Now this is not my assigned text, but it’s not anybody else’s either. Verses 15 to 23 is a prayer. The rest of the chapter is a prayer. What is he asking God to do? He’s going to pray a second time. Chapter Three, four, verses, 14 to 20, which may be the most beautiful prayer in the Bible. So in chapter one, this massive theology followed by a prayer. Chapter Two, this massive theology followed by a prayer. That’s important, right? Pastors, people, this is important theology, prayer theology, prayer doctrine, prayer doctrine. Prayer. That’s life for a pastor, that’s life for a Christian. That’s why I’m pointing it out. What does he pray? What does he pray? He doesn’t ask God to help you. Do anything doing comes later. That’s chapter four, five and six. Do you know there’s 41 imperatives in Ephesians? 40 of them are in chapters four, five and six. That’s significant. He’s not asking God to make us do anything. These prayers are upstream, way upstream from doing, from behaving. Verse 16, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord, Jesus, Christ, the Father of glory, may give you, this is what I’m praying for you, Paul’s praying for you may give you a spirit, the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of God. Now he just gave us a truckload of knowledge of God in verses three to 14 of chapter one, and now he’s praying, oh, God, grant that these Ephesians, grant that these folks at TGC would be able to grasp and receive and treasure and be formed by the knowledge that I’ve just given them in these verses, these mind boggling knowledge that I have poured out in verses three to 14. Oh, God, grant that the Holy Spirit would shape their spirit. So did it fit? Because if you have a round hole in your heart, and the truth of Ephesians is a square peg, and you try to fit it, it will hurt and you might get angry. So he’s pleading for us make it fit, give them a spirit of revelation. Verse 18, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. This is amazing. So there’s about 7000 of you, I’m told, did you know that every person in this room has eyes in your head and eyes in your heart? That’s what it says. I’m praying about the eyes of your heart. You can read with these eyes.

You have eyes that are darkened so that you can’t understand anything in chapter one, or you have eyes that are lightened by the Spirit. So that chapter one makes you just leap with amazement at the grace of God. That’s a gift. That’s why you pray. That’s why we pray. The only thing that matters at this conference is what you can’t do. I can’t do so we pray. And then he gets specific. He wants three things to happen through the eyes of the heart, verse 18 in the middle of the verse that you may know, what is the hope to which he called you? You. Two, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. Three, what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us when he raised you from the dead like he raised Jesus, most Christians don’t know the power that saved them. They have to be taught, and then they have to be prayed over, and the miracle has to happen so that, Oh, I get it by grace. I was saved by grace. I didn’t do this. You were born thinking you did, and you must be reborn to find out you didn’t the roots of this hopefulness, this riches, this power, are all back in verses three to 14 of chapter one, and We need to pray now that God would cut away the blinding cataracts of the heart. Father Paul has taught us now what to do when we have some theology to deal with. He prayed that is he asked you to do what humans can’t do. I can preach. I cannot open the eyes of the heart, but you can, and there are blind people in this room who cannot see the wonder of what we’re about to look at, unless you take this laser of yours and cut away the blindness of the eyes of the heart. So that’s what we’re asking for. Come open our eyes, give us light. I ask this in Jesus’ name, amen, what’s the main point of verses three through 14 of chapter one? That is, what is the point everything else is supporting? That’s what I mean by main point. What’s the point? Everything is clarifying, everything is defending, everything is guaranteeing. And that point is not hard to know. It’s not hard to see, because Paul states it three times. And not only does he state it three times, he states it in a way as to say it’s the main point that there’s a grammatical construction I’ll read. Let’s just look at them. You’ll see the beginning of verse six. I do hope you have your Bibles, or your phone Bible open, because we’re going to look at very specific words, because we’re talking about mega issues that are sometimes confuted. Verse six at the beginning, unto or to the praise of the glory. Now I notice this in ESV, glorious, glorious grace, but, but that’s fine, but I like the literal unto the praise of the glory of His grace unto means that’s the point. That’s where we’re going. That’s where the universe is going. Election is going there, predestination is going there, adoption is going there, redemption is going there. That’s where we’re going. We’re going to praise forever, glory of grace. Okay, that’s clear, especially because of verse 12. The end of verse 12, unto or to the praise of his glory. Again, verse 14, at the end to the praise of his glory. This is not hard, right? This. Thank you, Paul. These verses are to tell us that the universe exists, election exists, predestination exists, adoption exists, redemption exists, inheritance exists, sealing exists so that there will be a people praising glory of grace forever. That’s where it’s going, and I’ll tell you when I 22 something like me, 50, do the math. Quick, seven, no, 70, I don’t know I’m 7922 years old. When that hit home, everything changed. I hope that happens or has happened for you. Everything in this paragraph serves to show that the glory of God is worthy of your praise. That’s what this paragraph is for. Let’s look at two of them. I wish we had time for three. We don’t. So we look at two of those three instances. So I’m starting to read at verse four. He chose us. I know I’m jumping in the middle of sentence. If you start anywhere in the first 14 verses, you’re starting in the middle of a sentence, because it’s all one sentence. 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 to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, According to the good pleasure purpose of his will to the praise of the glory of His grace with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. Why does Paul trace your election, your choice, your predestination, your adoption. Why does he trace it back before creation? You don’t even need to go there, Paul, it just gets controversial when you do that. Why do you do that? I it. He did it to establish clarify the nature of grace. What is grace? Why is it so glorious? In Paul’s mind, and he wants to clarify that the grace of your being chosen, Your Holiness, your predestination, your adoption, that grace is free and unconditional because it happened and was made yours before you existed. That’s the point. You didn’t exist. You didn’t contribute to this. You before

you existed, He predestined you Christian. He assigned your destiny to be His child. And the point of stressing that you didn’t exist, is to say his grace was free, unconditional. You didn’t do it or contribute to it. You didn’t exist. Now he wants to make that clearer. It’s not just that it happened before you existed. He wants to make it clearer. So at the end of verse five, he adds two amazing words. He takes us. This is just mind boggling to me that he would dare to do this. He takes us, shall we say beneath? I don’t want to say before, because I know time in God. He takes us beneath election. He takes us beneath predestination, as if you could go there. And he speaks of their What shall we call them roots, the roots of choice, the roots of predestination. What moved him to choose you before you existed? What’s the root? How do you get to the bottom of this? Do see

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that

John Piper

little phrase, according to the purpose of His will, according to the another translation, perhaps a little more literal. Eureka, good pleasure, stressing freedom according to the good pleasure of His will. So where does his choice come from? That’s what Paul’s getting at, isn’t it? He’s going Benoit beneath predestination, beneath choice, and says it accords with this way down here, that choice accords with this. What will he willed, and then he chose, like Romans, 915, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human willing or running, but on God who has mercy. So he could have just said that, namely, predestination, choice will bottom line will of God. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop. He goes another level down, down to purpose or good pleasure. This is just almost unfathomable to me that he would talk this way. They would invite us in to the mind of the Eternal God before there’s any universe at all. And God is thinking, planning, willing, with a good pleasure, is mind boggling. So I predestined, I choose, I will. I have a good pleasure. What’s the point? What’s he trying to say? Why is he doing this? His point is that it is free. I you it comes from nowhere, but God, your choice comes from nowhere, but God, before you existed and deeper than choice, deeper than will all the way down to what ever this is called God’s good pleasure. Why was he talking this way? He was talking this way to keep you from believing that you were chosen on the basis of your foreknown faith, which is what a few 100 of you were thinking, that I overlooked. Millions upon millions of people have been taught that Christians were not chosen on the basis of God’s good pleasure or God’s will or God’s unconditional free grace, but on the basis of their foreknown ultimate human self determination. At the point of their conversion,

they became believers, and they were taught at that moment when you became a believer. You were decisive, not God. Now I want to ask you, when you look back on your conversion to Christ, and I know that hundreds of you like me can’t remember that because you were a child, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you know it happened because you’re alive, right? You don’t prove you’re alive by showing your birth certificate. You prove you’re alive by breathing, and you prove you’re a Christian by breathing, Christ. So you know you’re alive and you know, you were born again sometime. And so I want to ask you, as you look back on that, when you moved from death to life, when you moved from outside Christ to in Christ, where there’s no condemnation, when you moved from unsaved to saved, was your decisive self determination? The key was it decisive at that moment in. Or was the grace of God decisive? That’s the question that divides theologies. Sometimes it’s called free will, because that gets a lot of traction in America. Did my free will or my self determination become at that moment when I cross from death to life, from unbelief to belief. Was I decisive, or was God decisive? And I’m if you were to say that, that that’s what you believe to me right now, what I would respond is this, I would say Paul is laboring in the words that he has chosen to keep you from believing that. That’s what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to help you not believe that First Corinthians, 130 from God. Are you in Christ? Jesus? You didn’t graft yourself into Christ. God grafted you into Christ. Ephesians, two that we’ll hear more about this evening. God made me alive by grace. You’ve been saved. God gave me faith. Acts 1348, as many as were ordained to eternal life, believed not the other way around.

I love Reformed theology. I love sovereign grace, because I’m saved. If God were not triumphantly free and unconditionally sovereign in giving me life, I would be in total rebellion against God now, and you would too. What makes us sing? What makes us sing? I mean, who has conferences like this, except people who sing, I’m saved by sovereign grace. I didn’t do this. I was plucked out of that horrible, rebellious humanity for nothing in me that makes you sing. If you thought you were decisive, we’re going to go to have a conference, just think about that. They don’t happen. They don’t happen. You don’t celebrate human self determination at a conference. You really don’t just look around. You got to hide it seriously. He’s not done clarifying this. He knows that there’s some other objections. Let’s go down to verses 11 and 12 now. So here we we get that other phrase, to the praise of the glory of God. Verse 12, to the praise of the glory of God. Now he doesn’t say the praise of the glory of the grace of God like he did in verse six, he shortens it, and so I love to think of my being created for the praise of the glory of God. That’s my destiny. It’s your destiny, if you’re a Christian, and he knows, and you know, and I know, the capstone of that glory is the glory of grace. So let’s read this verse 11. In Him, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined. So now we’re back before creation again, 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 in it. So, what is it that leads to the praise of his glory? Here? What leads to the praise of his glory? He roots it. He roots it. Verse 11 and. He roots the certainty of my future inheritance in the fact that we were predestined for it. Right in Him, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined. That’s the root of it. That’s the confidence of it. So again, now he’s taken us back before creation to the mind of God, because of the predestination your inheritance is sure. It’s the ground of your hope. But now, just like in verse five, he does more. He does it in a very similar way with a couple of more amazing words. He says in verse 11, we’re predestined according to that same phrase, the purpose of him. Did you stop there? According to the purpose of him? There’s a plan, there’s a purpose, there’s a design, and that design causes him to destine his people for adoption. Then, to make it crystal clear, he doesn’t stop with purpose, but he says, According it’s a purpose. Let’s read it carefully, 11, last half of the verse, the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. So just like in verse five, he said, good pleasure of His will. So now here in verse 11, it’s the counsel, a different word, a counsel of his will. Now, what in the world isn’t that amazing? God’s got a will before the universe exists, and a counsel of his will? Oh, Paul, you would, you would break our brains, both phrases according to the purpose and the counsel of his will are shouting, your election, your predestination, Your adoption, your inheritance, are owing entirely to God, freely, gloriously, God, His purpose, His will, His good pleasure, his counsel, and not anything in you, What you and I brought to this was deadness. That’s why chapter two is so clarifying about the meaning of chapter one. You brought your deadness, you brought your rebellion, you brought your sin. That’s what you bring to this, which is why grace is grace and so so precious. So if you ask Paul, Well, should we even believe? Receive, trust, treasure, pray, obey. Paul would answer. He does answer. Indeed you will believe and you must believe. And when you have believed, tell me, Christian, when you have believed. Then you make it to the end like he will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. When you make it to the end, and you turn around and you look at that moment when you came alive, and that preservation, you are going to say, Grace, Grace, Grace. Do you remember First Corinthians, 1510, here’s what Paul says, I worked harder than any of them. Nevertheless, it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me. That’s the way Christians talk. Of course, we work. I’m an old man. All I’ve done is work. I love to work. I. And I love to give glory to God for my work. That’s what we do, every breath we take, every sight of the eyes, hearing with the ears, food in your mouth, faith in your heart. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That’s why we have conferences, that’s why we sing, that’s why we raise kids. That’s why we do church. That’s why we evangelize the world. And what a power we have. I mean, it is glorious, isn’t it? When the rich young man walks away and the disciples throw up their hands, who then can be saved? Jesus doesn’t bat an eye and says, with man, it is impossible, but with God, nothing is impossible. That’s why anybody in here is saved. You

now so we’ve seen in verses four and six, God chose us and predestined us for adoption, unconditionally unto the praise of the glory of His grace, not unto the praise of the glory of your free will, which does not exist.

You were dead. Free will is a slave. Then in verse 11 and 12, so that we may be confident that this predestination is going to get us home, he says He predestined according to a plan, and this plan is going to hold, because he works all things according to the counsel of his will. So he plans all things according to the counsel of his will, and then he works all things according to the counsel of his will, including my faith. He plans all things. He works all things according to the counsel of his will and the praise of the glory of His grace. And then between verses six and 11, he lifts up Jesus, Christ, crucified and risen. It’s amazing how he does this. Everything that he’s been aiming at, in choosing, in predestining, in obtaining an inheritance for us is accomplished through Jesus, Christ, Son of the Son of God, the beloved verse seven, in Him, in Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to The riches of his grace. You’re kind of like, whoa, trespasses, blood, forgiveness. Where’d that come from? That wasn’t in verses four to six, or was it? It was he did not choose holy people to be holy. He chose wicked people to be holy. He said his favor on wicked people and predestined them to be His children. This is just off the charts. Amazing. God looked out upon a sea of rebels, and he said, I’ll have a family here.

And it cost him his son’s life to do it justly, to do it beautifully. And so he put him forth the blood of the Beloved. Did you know? I’m sure many of you know that the book of life which exists before the foundation of the world, according to Revelation 13 eight, the book of life in which are written all of the chosen has a name. The book has a name.

This is Revelation 13, eight, the book of the life of the Lamb who was slain. That’s the name of the book. It’s on the cover. Your name is in there. My name is in there, if you’re a Christian. The lamb was slaughtered in the mind of God before the universe was created. The book of the life of the Lamb who was slain, she not only conceived and planned and chose and predestined according to the counsel of his will. It all folded into Christ, who would have his bride. It’s all to unite that verse 10 is just so beyond me and my capacities to know what he means by to unite or to sum up all things in Christ. So we were chosen in Him. Verse four, predestined through Him. Verse five, redeemed in Him. Verse seven, inherited, inheriting, an inheritance secured by Him. Verse 11, sealed in Him. Verse 13, so we hope in Him. Verse 12, from eternal election to eternal inheritance. It is all summed up in Christ, which means that when you state that the ultimate point of verses three to 14 is to the praise of the glory of His grace, you really mean to the praise of the glory of Jesus Christ, the embodiment and the price of the grace of God, we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from The Father, full of grace and truth. One more clarification for our closing application. I haven’t said anything about the word praise unto the praise of the glory of the grace the free and unconditional, lavish grace of God, we exist and will always exist to the praise. What? What is praise? It is not mere words. You

do you remember how Jesus said this? People honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain? Do they worship or praise me? So I asked chatgpt, I typed in, please compose a 32nd prayer to God in the Spirit and theology of Don Carson, in praise to the glory of God’s grace. Click. Three seconds later, this is what I was given, gracious Father. We bow before you the Sovereign Lord of history and redemption from eternity past you purposed to lavish grace upon undeserving sinners through the blood of your beloved son, we praise You for the glory of Your Mercy, unearned, unmeasured, made manifest in Christ, crucified and risen, may our lives redeemed and sanctified by your Spirit, be vessels of praise to the riches of Your grace to you be glory forever and ever. Amen. That’s a machine. I’m asking, Is that praise? No, this people, these machines, Honor me with their lips and their bites and their heart is far from me, so let’s clarify the purpose of the universe. Quick, I’m done. I got 19 seconds. Let’s clarify why were you made? Words? Computers do words bad? Better than you, seriously, better than me. Computers do words. They don’t feel anything. Therefore the universe is created to have people who feel this is amazing. Think of it. The universe exists to have people in God’s image who feel the worth of grace, who feel the glory of grace, who feel the beauty of grace, who feel the wonder of grace, and then everything in their life takes on a totally non AI meaning of action and praise to God. So in closing, if this is not your portion, that is, if your heart does not sing, it does not feel the beauty of the freedom of the grace of God in saving you give yourself no rest until that is your portion. You were made to praise, that is, you were made to feel the preciousness of grace and to speak it and to show it so, Father, I cannot make anybody feel an authentic Spirit given affection for the glory of Your grace, but you can, and I pray that as we move through Ephesians now, everything will flow from this heart, embrace of the Glory of grace. I ask this in Jesus name, amen.