Marked with a Seal

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Holy Spirit from Ephesians 1:3-14.

---

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glorious grace.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

What is it today that calls forth our most heartfelt and spontaneous praise? The arrival of a third grandchild, just passed a trigonometry exam, promotion at work, survived cancer treatment, just managed to secure a mortgage, just paid mortgage off. There’s nothing wrong with this list, of course, which could be multiplied many times.

After all, James reminds us that every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights. Similarly, when it comes to asking God for things, there’s nothing wrong with asking for such things, either. Peter himself exhorts us in his first letter to remember that we may cast all our cares on God since he cares for us.

Still, if we are to ask what is characteristic of biblical praise or characteristic of New Testament praise, then the only way we’re going to find out is by systematically working through all of the doxologies, all of the words of praise, to find out what themes dominate, what things the apostles pray for and give special thanks for.

There can be few passages in Holy Scripture to compare with Ephesians 1:3–14 for setting forth the most fundamental reasons why Christians should praise God. Or if you don’t mind me ending a sentence with a preposition, what Christians should most characteristically praise God for. Every seminary student soon learns that these verses, chapter 1, verses 3–14, constitute one long sentence.

In our modern translations, they’re not preserved that way because we don’t use sentences like that in English, so we chop it up a bit. It’s worth remembering that it is one sentence because there is here one sustained unit of thought. For our purposes, if we are to understand what verses 13 and 14 are about (that is, what it is to be marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit), we will least likely go astray if we first try to follow the flow of the argument in the entire passage understanding that it constitutes a unit of thought that is climaxed by this reference to the Holy Spirit.

1. The sweep of praise

Verse 3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” The form of this expression comes from the Old Testament. It was not uncommon in Jewish circles in Jesus’ day. “Praise be to God who …” and then you filled it in after that.

At mealtimes, for example, first-century Jews could say things like, “Praise be to God who gives us the bread from heaven,” or the like. Here immediately, Paul gives us a distinctively Christian element. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who …” does such and such. Moreover, the ground for this blessing of God is that he has blessed us in certain dimensions.

If I were rendering this very literally, you hear the repetition of the word blessing. It’s literally “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.” That means that in one sense, the blessing is going both ways. “Blessed be God who has blessed us with every blessing.”

When we bless God and he blesses us, clearly there are some distinctions between the two uses. Yet there is a commonality as well. In both instances, there is a note of approval. When we bless God, we are saying we approve who he is, what he is doing. This is not because we stand in judgment over him but precisely because we are offering him our praise.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his Holy Name.” We are approving him in adoring worship. When he blesses us, it is certainly not because he is coming to us with adoring worship. When he blesses us, it is always a mark of humility and condescension, of pouring out his benefit upon us, and he is approving us in so doing.

No doubt he sees the work of his own grace operating in our lives. He approves us. He blesses us with blessings. What, specifically, is mentioned? This phrase, every spiritual blessing. What does it mean? The adjective spiritual does not here find itself cast against the material, as if God blesses us with immaterial blessings as opposed to material blessings.

The idea, rather, is every blessing pertaining to or belonging to the Spirit, every blessing mediated by the Spirit. Over against that is not the material but everything that does not derive from God, does not derive from this blessed Holy Spirit, that which belongs to the domain of evil, to the domain of the accursed.

The specific spiritual blessings that Paul has in mind here are then worked out in the following verses. They include things like: Election to holiness. When was the last time you praised God for that? Adoption as the children of God. When was the last time you praised God for that? Redemption and forgiveness. When was the last time you blessed God for those things? Knowledge of God’s gracious plan, to sum up all things in Christ. When was the last time you praised God for that?

The gift of the Holy Spirit, the hope of glory. When was the last time you praised God for that? All of these things then are unpacked in the following verses. All are mediated to us by the Holy Spirit, who is then finally explicitly introduced at the end of the passage. We thus find at the beginning of the passage a reference to spiritual blessings; that is, blessings that derive from the Spirit. Now at the end of the passage specific mention of the Holy Spirit tying the whole thing together. We read, beginning with verse 13:

“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” Now we must observe three more details in verse 3 before we abandon the verse.

A) Those who receive these spiritual blessings in verse 3 are simply designated “us.”

In the context it means Christians. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms.” It’s worth pointing that out because a little farther on we’ll see us refers to a smaller group, but here, it certainly refers to all Christians. Then we must ask …

B) What is the sphere in which these blessings are enjoyed?

The text says the heavenly realms. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms.” What does that mean? That precise expression is found only five times in the New Testament, and always in this letter. There is no other New Testament document that has exactly this expression. Let me read to you the other passages in Ephesians where the expression is found. It’s found, first of all, here in 1:3 and then in 1:20.

In the context, we are learning of God’s incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of God’s mighty strength (verse 20), which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. It’s bound up with Christ’s ascension where Christ went upon his resurrection from the dead, ascension and session at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Then in chapter 2, verse 6 we are told “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” In other words, not only has Christ been seated at the right hand of the majesty on high in the heavenly realms, but there is some sense in which we have been seated with him. We are so identified with him that when he ascended on high we, as it were, were united with him and went too. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

We should not think that this was uncontested. Chapter 3, verse 10: “God’s intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That expression, authorities, and so forth, refers to angelic beings, both good and evil. God’s plan of redemption is to be made known to them. The evil side of it is unambiguous in the last reference. Chapter 6, verse 12, which we often cite in another connection. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood …” Flesh and blood simply means human beings. “… but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

In other words, God’s purpose is not only to save his people here but also to placard his goodness, his plan, his wisdom even to the realms of evil that contest God’s plan in the heavenlies. Now what this means, therefore, is that when Christ ascended to the right hand of the majesty on high, the one through whom all of God’s sovereignty is mediated to the very end of the age (as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15), there is a sense in which we are so identified with him, God sees us through him, that we are seated with Christ himself already in the heavenlies.

This is a kind of spatial equivalent of another tension with which most of us are more familiar. Those who have read their Bibles a great deal eventually come to the place where they know there is a kind of running tension in the New Testament between the already and the not yet. Already Christ’s reign has begun. Already we have eternal life. Already our sins are forgiven. Already we are justified.

Yet, we do not yet have our resurrected bodies. We have not yet seen the consummation in the new heaven and the new earth, which can also be referred to as the redemption of sons. In that sense, we’re caught between the already and the not yet. There is a kind of tension in time. This is a kind of spatial equivalent of that tension.

Just as there is a tension in time, we have already begun to live under the reign of Christ this side of Christ’s ascension and yet we have not seen evil so silenced that there is no longer any contesting of it. We wait for Christ’s return. So, also, in the spatial dimension, already we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies because we are so identified with him, yet we have not yet seen the full spatial reordering of everything in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

There is a kind of tension in that way, as well. That’s why the text says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us [already] in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” Notice this phrase, in Christ. In Christ, or with the pronoun “in whom” or “in him,” occurs no fewer than 11 times in this long sentence. It’s a way of saying …

C) All of the blessings that we receive are secured in Christ.

We’re identified with him, without exception. They are secured in Christ. Thus, these blessings are secured by Christ, they are mediated by the Spirit, and they are granted by God the Father. Hence, we begin the praise that way. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ …” In other words, this prayer is profoundly Trinitarian. In case we missed it, the same themes return a few verses beyond this passage in verse 17.

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so you may know him better.” Again, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son, may give you the Spirit so that you may know him better. Do you see? Paul’s thought in this prayer business is profoundly Trinitarian. He’s teaching us how to pray. The sweep of praise.

2. The reasons for praise

Verses 4 to 14. What we are to praise God for. In other words, this is an unpacking of some of the content of what Paul has specifically in mind when he speaks of every spiritual blessing in verse 3. What does he have in mind? Four things.

A) We have been chosen and adopted.

Verses 4 to 6: “For …” There’s this explanatory for. “For he chose us in him [in Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” The notion of God choosing people is not at all strange to those who read their Bibles regularly. Begin with Abraham.

We do not find the patriarch Abraham on the backside of the desert in Ur of the Chaldeans having his devotions and approaching God one day with a nice suggestion. “God, I’ve been thinking. Granted the mess this race is in.… We’ve been through the flood and now Babel shows that we’re pretty unregenerate all over again, but I’ve been thinking.

You could begin a whole new race. I’m prepared to volunteer to be the progenitor of this new race. Then you could work out your way in me. I’ll trust you and become known as the father of the faithful. Then eventually from my line you could bring along whatever kind of rescuer you want. What do you think, God? Will that work?”

Is that what you read? No, God lays his hand on Abraham and chooses him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to a place that Abraham doesn’t even know about yet. Then when he’s 80 years old, Moses, again on the backside of yet another desert, does not say, “Ooh, it’s finally come to me. I’ve got a great idea for the emancipation of my people.” He goes to God and offers a suggestion of two, which God, poor chap, hadn’t yet thought up. That’s not what happens at all!

In fact, the last time that Moses tried that he landed up on the backside of the desert. Now he really doesn’t want to go. It’s God who chooses Moses and thrusts him out. So God is always prior. Especially in the great turning points of redemptive history, again and again and again this point is made. God chooses us.

Sometimes his election is corporate. Thus God chooses Israel. When you read Deuteronomy 7 or Deuteronomy 10 we’re told that God set his affection on Israel. Why? Not because Israel is wiser or brighter or more militarily astute or bigger or stronger. Not for any of these reasons. Why? Because God loved her. He set his affection on her because he loved her.

He loved her because he loved her. This is a corporate election. Sometimes God chooses people even to judgment, as in the case of Pharaoh. So God here chose us in Christ, we’re told. When? Before the creation of the world. That guarantees that I didn’t have anything to contribute to this choice, because I wasn’t there before the creation of the world.

I’m getting old enough that some people are beginning to wonder, but the truth of the matter is that I wasn’t there before the creation of the world. “But God chose us in him before the creation of the world …” To what end? “… to be holy and blameless in his sight.” Isn’t that wonderful? The expressions return again and again.

Colossians 1:22: “To be holy and blameless and irreproachable in his presence.” Then the whole matter is put just a little bit differently in the next verse. That’s why I have linked chosen and adopted. You can read the phrase in love at the end of verse 4 either with verse 4 or with verse 5.

When the Bible was originally written, in the New Testament it was written all in caps with no spaces and no punctuation. It was all ran together. Every once in a while you can debate whether or not a proper comma or period belongs here or here. It’s possible to read verse 4 this way: “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love.”

That makes perfectly good sense. Or you can read it: “In love he predestined us.” That also makes perfectly good sense. Both themes are taught in Scripture, so I won’t argue with you about the point. In any case, here we’re told, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons.” What’s the point?

We may lose something of the point because of our more restricted view of sonship. For us today, sonship is achieved by natural birth or by legal adoption. But sonship was bound up with a lot of functional categories in the ancient world. That’s because in a pre-industrial society, a society that was agrarian and handcraft, almost all sons ended up doing vocationally what their fathers did, and almost all daughters ended up doing vocationally what their mothers did.

If your father, thus, is a baker, you become a baker. If your father is a farmer, you become a farmer. If your father’s name is Stradivarius, you make violins. That’s the way it is. Now I know that in Tenth Presbyterian you normally don’t have people asking you to raise your hand. Cheer up, I’m not going to ask you to come forward.

You men for the moment, how many of you are doing vocationally what your father did? Put up your hand. Look around, folks, 10 or 15? Which means in a crowd this size around 3 or 4 percent? Do you see? A tiny, tiny percentage. In the ancient world, the overwhelming majority of boys ended up doing what their dads did and girls ended up doing what their mums did.

Out of this then come a whole lot of idioms in Scripture that have to do with functionality. That’s why Jesus can say in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” The point is that God is the supreme peacemaker. So if we’re in the business of making peace, then we’re acting like God and can be seen to be duplicating him. Thus functionally, living as God’s sons.

Then a little farther along in the same chapter, he says that we should love our enemies because he himself is the God who sends his Son and his rain upon the just and upon the unjust. If we act like God in that respect, then we’re showing ourselves to be sons of God. It’s not telling you how you become a Christian. That misunderstands the nature of the metaphor.

It’s showing you how you can mirror something of the attributes of God and, thus, show yourself so far at least to be a son of God. It can also work with respect to evil, can’t it? That’s why Jesus in John 8, for example, can say to certain opponents at the time, “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.”

He’s not denying that his opponents actually descended from Abraham genetically. He’s saying functionally, however, they’re acting like the Devil himself. He was a liar from the beginning, and they’re telling lies about Jesus. He was a murderer from the beginning, and they want to kill him. This proves that that far, at least, they’re children of the Devil.

It’s also why Paul can ask the question, “Who are the real children of Abraham? The ones who merely happen to have his genes or the ones who show the same kind of faith?” Again this functional view of sonship comes through in expression after expression after expression in Scripture. It sometimes is even applied to Jesus himself, most tellingly in John, chapter 5.

There we’re told that Jesus is the Son, par excellence, because he does everything the Father does. Isn’t that remarkable? You or I might be sons of God as we go about making peace or loving enemies, but we don’t do everything that God does. I haven’t made a universe recently, have you? We’re told of this Son that everything the Father does, he also does. Without him, there’s not anything made that was made.

Whatever the Father does, he also does. He is the Son, par excellence. He is the unique Son. Behind this functionality, there is a deep ontology, a deep mystery that is bound up with his very being in the Godhead, but this can be described in profoundly functional terms. If we are to be adopted as the sons of God, the point is not merely the legalities but that we should act like God. That’s the whole point.

So on the one hand, “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons …” For exactly the same purpose. That’s what sonship means. If we are to be sons of the living God, then we must act like him.

Thus Scripture pulsates with the theme, “Be holy for I am holy.” And all of this “… in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” I would love to spend a lot of time with this little phrase, in the one he loves, referring to Jesus.

We sometimes think of God’s love for us or Christ’s love for us primarily in terms of a direction that is toward us without any reflection whatsoever on the love within the Godhead. John’s gospel, for example, makes it very clear that the Father so loves the Son that he determines that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. The Father loves the Son.

We’re told twice in John’s gospel. The Son loves the Father and, therefore, determines that all should know (in John 14) that because he loves the Father he always does those things that please him. Why does Jesus go to the cross? Oh, there is a sense, no doubt, in which he goes to the cross because he loves the sinners like me.

There is a more driving reason, a more immediate reason, a Trinitarian reason. We find him in the garden of Gethsemane crying, “Not my will, but yours be done.” That is to say, his desire is to please his Father, to do his will. His love for the Father guarantees that he performs the Father’s will. In other words, his love for us is, as it were, the outpouring of love within the Godhead itself.

Now we are reminded of this point right here, are we not? “All of this to the praise of God’s glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” In Christ Jesus. We are in him. All of this is worked out in terms of God’s love, first and foremost, for his own dear Son. Overflowing, as it were, to us who are the heirs of redemption. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because we have been chosen and adopted.

B) We have been redeemed and forgiven.

Verses 7 and 8: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” Redemption and the corresponding verb to redeem are not widely used in our parlance today, are they?

You walk down the streets of Philadelphia and confront somebody and ask, “What does redemption mean?” they’re likely to look at you as if you’re slightly cracked. On the other hand, we may still use redemption and redeem occasionally in connection with pawn shops. Then we have at least some idea of what’s at stake. We buy something back. It’s been hocked, and now we buy it back.

In the first century, redemption language was pretty common. It was used in a half a dozen different fronts, but I’ll mention just one. It was used in particular in connection with slavery. People became slaves in the ancient world for quite a lot of different reasons, sometimes because of a military takeover. A superpower takes over a lesser power and some of the people go into slavery.

But sometimes it was simply because they did not have chapter 11 and chapter 13. That is, they had no protection in bankruptcy law. Therefore, when they got into financial difficulty, what they did was to sell themselves or their family or some part thereof into slavery. It was the honorable thing to do. They didn’t have any choice.

So you sell yourself or your family into slavery because you are in hock, but now you have a cousin 20 or 30 kilometers down the road who hears about it and would like to redeem you, to buy you back and set you free. The way it was done in the ancient world was this: you went and paid the redemption cost, the cost of the slave or the slaves to a local temple plus an additional cut.

The temple then kept the cut and paid the price back to the new slave owner. In theory, thus, you weren’t freed from your slavery absolutely. You now became a slave to that god. Although on the street, what that meant was that you were now free from your slavery. That language is then picked up likewise in the New Testament. We were slaves to sin.

Now what is given to us is not absolute freedom so that we are autonomous beings, but slavery now to God. After all, the very nature of sin is that it is defiance of God. We were slaves in that direction, now we are freed from this slavery and redeemed from it, and now, in consequence, we’re slaves to God.

That’s why this business of being a slave to Christ or to God in the New Testament is one of the strongest themes for articulating what Christian discipleship looks like. What do we read here, then? “In him [in Christ] we have redemption through his blood …” What was the price paid to free us? His blood.

In the New Testament, when blood is not referring to the actual liquid, it always stands for life violently and sacrificially ended. In other words, the same passages in Paul that speak of what the blood achieves can also speak of what the cross achieves. Have we been justified by the blood of Christ? We have been justified by the death of Christ or by the cross of Christ.

We have thus been freed, redeemed, bought back because Christ paid for our debt. He paid our sin. We are out of hock because of Christ’s death on our behalf. That’s the wonderful thing. In case we haven’t got it, then it is explained, “… the forgiveness of sins …” That is what has enslaved us: sin itself.

Now with the forgiveness of sins we are redeemed, purchased by the blood of Christ. All this “… in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us …” He poured it out upon us. “… with all wisdom and understanding.” If I understand that last phrase aright, it means that in addition to the actual wonderful gift itself, he also lavished upon us wisdom and understanding. We should read, “along with wisdom and understanding.”

That is, he not only freed us from our sins, he gave us to understand what he was doing. He enabled us to take it in. He spelled it all out. We receive it by faith and act upon us as he gives us wisdom and understanding into the very plan of God so lavishly rich in grace. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because we have been redeemed and forgiven.

C) We have been shown God’s high mystery.

Verses 9 and 10: “And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment …” The word mystery occurs 27 or 28 times in the New Testament and does not refer to something secretive, still less to whodunits.

It means something hidden in time past but now disclosed. I’m sure that most of us are aware that in broad-stream evangelicalism you can track the history of the last 100 years in a variety of ways, but one of the ways you can track it is in terms of this division. On the one hand, there are those who keep emphasizing what is new in the New Testament.

It’s been hidden in times past and now it’s new. They wrote books on mystery language in the New Testament. Most of them belonged to the so-called dispensational camp. Thus, the gospel comes across as something so brand new that it’s been hidden in the past and now in some measure disclosed.

On the other hand, those of us in the Reformed camp keep stressing how much the gospel has been predicted in times past. It’s been promised in times past. Now it’s fulfilled. Sooner or later one asks the question, “How can the very same gospel, which apparently in some texts is said to be hidden in time past and now disclosed, can in other texts be said to be predicted in time past and now fulfilled? How can you have both of these at the same time?”

In fact, of course, you can. That does not mean that dispensationalism and covenant theology are alike in every respect. But in this particular respect, they have an overlapping edge that is very important to understand. Nowhere does it come out more clearly than in the last three verses of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans, chapter 16, verses 25–27. This is the concluding word of praise, the doxology of Paul’s writing to the Romans. The apostle says:

“Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel …” That’s what we’re talking about, the gospel. “… and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past …” And all the dispensationalists will say, “Amen.” “… but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings …” And all the rest of us ought to say, “Amen.”

Do you see? The same thing has in some measure been hidden, but was in fact truly there. It was there. It was also hidden in certain ways. You can prove that pretty easily. For example, how many of the disciples of Jesus himself well and truly understood that the promised messianic King would also be the suffering servant? Did the Twelve understand that?

Thus when Jesus is hanging on the cross and the disciples are now hidden in an upper room, are they saying, “Yes, I can hardly wait ‘til Sunday!” It’s still hidden before their eyes. Even though Jesus has portrayed himself as the one who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many and has said five times in Matthew’s gospel alone that he must go to the cross and be crucified and the third day rise again, they didn’t have the categories.

The categories in their heads were so narrow that they hadn’t put together the great messianic Davidic prophecies with the suffering servant prophecies or Psalm 69, the Davidic prophecies that picture a man betrayed even by his close, familiar friends. They hadn’t got it together. It was there! It was being predicted!

They did not see the significance of all the blood of bulls and goats shed year after year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. They hadn’t got it together. It was there, but it was hidden. It was all so hidden. So obtuse were we. There were other reasons why it was hidden too. I wish I had time to unpack them, but I don’t. This is not because the Jews were dumber than the rest, of course, but simply because they were typical.

“But now he has made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ.” That has come to us. Read the opening chapter of 1 Peter to find the same theme in different words. Not only is it the plan that brings Jesus to the cross but the plan that brings Jesus to the cross and all that flows from it, including the ultimate consummation to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

The same theme is expounded, for example, in the great Christ hymn of Colossians 1:15–20. I know that there is a hell and there is an evil that must finally be pushed to the very periphery of things, but ultimately there will be a renovated universe, a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, with resurrection body and death dying, and then death, and Christ the head of all.

The plan now can be seen unambiguously, clearly. The mystery. That is something for which Christians ought to give great thanks. Do you find Christians now and then who say, “Boy, I wish I could’ve been alive in Abraham’s day. If only God had spoken to me the way he spoke to Abraham once every 14 years or so. My faith would be a lot stronger.”

That’s not the way the New Testament sees it. The New Testament sees it as an immutable privilege that to us at the end of the ages has come this revelation of the mystery. We get our Bibles put together. We see what the plan of God is. I’m sure God could’ve saved us without telling us nearly as much. He shows us what these things are about. He no longer calls us servants, but he calls us friends and tells us what his intentions are. So now we find this great word of praise: Praise be to God because we have been shown God’s high mystery.

D) We have been claimed as God’s portion for God’s glory.

Verses 11 to 14. The verb rendered chosen in verse 11 is not the usual one. “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined …” I think that what this means can be got across with the paraphrase, “We have been chosen as God’s portion.” It means chosen by lot. It was used for the allotment of various portions.

We have been chosen as God’s portion. The background is in the song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32. There we read, “For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob, his allotted inheritance.” God has called out a people for himself. We are God’s portion. We belong to him. We have been allotted to him. According to what principle? Because we were nicer? Had good smiles or something? The right race, perhaps?

No, according to God’s predestination. Once again, “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” So God works out all things throughout all of the ages so that his portion, his allotment will truly be his.

The us here, the we here, is now referring, first of all, to the Jews, as is made clear in verse 12. This all occurs “… in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ …” That is the first Christian believers, who were all Jews. “… who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.” On the other hand, it wasn’t just for Jews. Hence, verses 13 and 14.

“And you also …” Now you see the apostle for the first time is making the distinction between the we and the you. We who were the first to believe were made God’s portion. “But, do you know what?” he says. “So also were you.” “You also were included in Christ when you heard the gospel, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” So what do we learn then from this passage? We learn again: Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because we have been claimed from God’s portion for God’s glory.

That brings us then finally to what is said about the Holy Spirit in verses 13 and 14. You knew I’d get there, didn’t you? But now the meaning of verses 13 and 14 just about falls off the page. Because you see it in its flow. When this took place in the lives of Gentile believers was when they heard the gospel, when they believed this Word of Truth. What are we told about that event? Well it’s possible to read the text as if we first believe and then we’re marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.

But in the original language, there’s nothing that requires that. It seems to me that it runs right against the whole flow of the passage. Rather, this business of believing this Word of Truth, being included in Christ, believing and being marked in him with a seal, all of these are part of the same transaction that we call conversion.

What is at stake here? What is this seal? What’s the point? We don’t normally go around with little identification seals the way they sometimes did in the ancient world, seals that could be stamped in wax, for example, on a document to mark out to whom it belonged, or in slightly earlier times, the roll seal that you would roll something.

The closest that we have to this perhaps today is branding on cattle. You put on a seal, as it were. You brand the cattle. What that indicates is ownership and, therefore, protection. That cow is mine. It’s sealed. That is, it’s branded. It belongs to me and I will protect it. There is a sense thus in which we Christians are sealed. We are owned. We belong to God.

Isn’t that the point of verses 11 and following? We belong to God’s lot. God then seals his own people. He marks them out. He stamps them with ownership and then protects them. This language is drawn from the Old Testament in the first instance from the vision of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 8, 9, 10, and 11 constitute one long vision.

The prophet Ezekiel is with the first round of exiles in the Tigris-Euphrates river system 700 miles from Jerusalem. By the Spirit, he is transported in a vision to Jerusalem. There we’re told he sees the horrible idolatry of the day, wretched stuff. In this vision, he sees the glory of God departing from the temple and abandoning the city, crossing the Kidron Valley, rising to the Mount of Olives.

It is a way of saying that God is abandoning the city and the city will fall under judgment. Part of this vision, even when there are destroying executioners about to destroy the population of the city, is a man, we’re told, dressed in a linen cloth with writing apparatus at his waist. He is told in this vision to go and mark a sign on the forehead of all of God’s people.

In the vision it’s a way of saying, “God’s people, namely those who grieve over the sins of Jerusalem, will be spared from ultimate destruction. They are God’s people. They are owned by him and they are protected. They grieve over the sins of the city.” The same symbolism crops up in the book of Revelation in chapters 13 and 14.

There everybody’s got a mark on the forehead, but it depends on which mark. You either have the mark of the Beast or the mark of the Lamb. If you have the mark of the Beast, then you’re protected by the Beast and you can do whatever the Beast allows you to do. You can go and buy and sell in a secular city or in a perverse society or in a corrupt world.

You can do whatever you want and you don’t face the wrath of the Beast, but you will face the wrath of the Lamb. Alternatively, if you have the mark of the Lamb on your forehead in chapter 14 of Revelation, then you’re spared the wrath of the Lamb. You are finally saved on the last day, but you may well face in this world the wrath of the Beast.

The question becomes when you read chapters 13 and 14 of the Apocalypse, “Whose wrath do you want to face?” You’re going to face somebody’s. Then we recall the words of the Lord Jesus. “Do not be afraid of him who can destroy the body and afterward can do no more, but be afraid of him rather who after destroying the body can cast body and soul into hell.”

Whose wrath do you finally want to face? This passage, verses 11–14, tells us that God has his allotted people, his own portion. Then he marks them with a seal. They’re his. He owns them. He protects them. These are his. What is that seal? We’re told the promised Spirit, the promised Holy Spirit. God seals us. That is, he puts his mark of ownership on us and protects us, marks us out as his in this broken world by giving us his Holy Spirit.

Moreover, that same Holy Spirit is also the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession. That is, what has been secured by Christ’s triumph on the cross is now not only the forgiveness of sins, as wonderful and climactic as that is, but all that flows from this, all the way to a new heaven and a new earth, the redemption of our bodies, Paul says, the whole renovated new heaven and new earth. That’s why Christians cry in every generation, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

The Holy Spirit thus is not only the seal that marks us as Christ’s but also the down payment, the first step, the first part of this great inheritance. We buy a house and somebody says, “Oh, you’re a homeowner now?” “Yes, I am,” we say with tongue firmly planted in cheek, since we now own the front door and a couple of rusty pipes and maybe part of the roof and that’s about it. On the other hand, it is ours legally and if the payments are made then point of fact that house eventually becomes all ours.

But Christ has paid for the whole thing. He has already paid for it. He’s given us the down payment, the Holy Spirit, now who then seals us as his. Then one day, the consummation will arrive and there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind anymore or ever again by the blood of the Lamb, and this for the praise of God’s glory. This Holy Spirit is the seal, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory. Let us pray.

Merciful God, we offer our adoring thanks for so grand a salvation and providing in the fullness of time the gift of your dear Son, who shed his blood that we might be redeemed. We thank you for the gift of the Spirit of God, the mark of your ownership, for in truth, we are yours. We are yours not only by creation but now purchased also by redemption, doubly yours.

The gift of the Spirit not only marking us out but transforming us and empowering us, the down payment of the promised inheritance, the anticipation of the time when all things will be made new. So we pray for those gathered here for whom these things are still strange. The language is strange. The experience is strange.

O Lord God, by that self-same Spirit, work in their lives even now so something of the ugliness of sin and rebellion and cry out to you from their inmost being, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” For all of us, Lord God, grant that we may live our lives here with joy and holy fear, full of praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and so sweeping a salvation as an immeasurable gift. We offer our worship. In Jesus’ name, amen.