Ephesians | Your Identity in Christ (1)
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 9/28/2014
A few of weeks ago, Modesto Christian Church held their end-of-summer celebration for the kids who attended their summer children’s program. Ashley and I arrived early with our three kids and I helped pack a couple cases of water bottles into a cooler while Ashley and the kids played on the playground equipment. When I was finished I walked over toward the playground and spotted Ashley sitting on a bench with her back to me. Walking up behind her, I affectionately rubbed her shoulder and patted her on the back as I surveyed the playing children. Then, suddenly, I spotted something strange. Sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the playground was Ashley giving me the stink-eye. Total embarrassment washed over my face as I looked down to see that the woman whose back I was affectionately patting was not my wife! I apologized immediately and intentionally neglected to mention that I was the pastor at Blooming Grove. We ended up having a good laugh about it later, but that was one the most embarrassing experiences.
Has a case of mistaken identity ever gotten you in trouble? Or perhaps your trouble is with your own identity.
Friedrich Schleiermacher was an eminent German classicist, theologian, and philosopher. Much of his philosophical work was in the philosophy of religion. In his later years, Friedrich was often seen sitting alone on a park bench, lost in thought for hours at a time. One day, a policeman walked up to the old man assuming he was a vagrant, poked him, and asked, “Who are you?” Schleiermacher replied contemplatively, “I wish I knew.”
Do you know who you are? Who you are supposed to be? The New Testament book of Ephesians is all about identity—specifically, your identity in Christ. In fact, the phrase “in Christ” is used 14 times in the first four chapters of this brief book because it’s only in Christ that we discover our true identity. So this morning, and for the next three weeks, I’d like to explore what God says to us through the book of Ephesians about who we are and who we ought to be in Christ. I’d like to start in Ephesians 1:11-14:
Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him. (Ephesians 1:11-14)
This poignant paragraph pinpoints four identifying marks, forming a figurative fingerprint, by which we can discover our own identity in Christ. First, it assures us that we are predestined.
• PREDESTINED
The passage we just read says again, “God… chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan” (Ephesians 1:11 NLT). Another translation puts it this way: “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” (Ephesians 1:11 NIV).
What does that mean? It means, first of all, that you are not an accident. You’re not fluke of nature or a bi-product of astronomical random chance in the universe. God never does anything accidentally, and he never makes mistakes. He has a reason for everything he creates. Every plant and every animal was planned by God, and every person was designed with a purpose in mind. You were made by God and for God—until you understand that, your life will never make sense.
Being predestined also means that God has a plan for you. Now, sometimes when the Bible talks about predestination, people start thinking fatalistically, as if everything is pre-determined and we have no choice in the matter. But that’s not what the Bible means when it talks about predestination.
Let me see if I can illustrate this for you: Suppose your parents owned a family business, and their goal was for you to take over the family business when they retired or died. You, of course, have the choice to opt in or out. But if you decide to take over the family business, your parents wisely planned out how you would get to that point. They determined when you would be ready to start working in the family business, what on-the-job training you should have, what outside education you should receive, and when the business should be fully placed in your care and management. Years later, because of their wise preparation, you take each of the steps they had laid out for you ahead of time.
That is what God has done for you! Before the foundation of the earth, God pre-planned that all who “opt in” by believing in Christ would have certain goals, purposes and privileges to accomplish God’s predetermined plans. That’s what predestination is. It means that God loves you enough to create you and develop a plan for your life. But you only discover that plan in Christ.
So first, you are predestined. Further, you are purchased by God.
• PURCHASED
Going back to Ephesians, the Bible says, “when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own… he has purchased us to be his own people” (Ephesians 1:13-14 NLT). In other word’s we are “God’s possession” (NIV). You belong to God. You were bought and paid for by the blood of Christ. And that means you are valuable!
We sometimes confuse self-worth with net worth, but they are very different. Your value has nothing to do with your valuables. How much are you worth?
I read of an article in the Journal of Hospital Practice that calculates how much each of the enzymes and hormones and all the different things in your body are worth. The author added them up based on your weight, and if you are an average size person you are worth six million fifteen dollars and forty-four cents ($6,000,015.44). You are literally a six-million dollar man or a six-million dollar woman! The article's author also estimated that, if you calculate the cost of creating each cell in your body, it would be about six quadrillion dollars.
You are priceless.
Jesus thought this was so important that he took a whole chapter of the Bible to talk about it. In Luke 15 he tells three stories—the lost son, the lost coin, and the lost sheep. It's the same punch line in each story. Jesus says, “You are valuable to God.”
You are valuable because of the price Jesus paid for you. Your life and your salvation is a free gift from God. It cost you nothing. But it cost God everything. It cost Jesus His life on the cross; He purchased you with his own blood. Your true value has nothing to do with the enzymes or elements within your body; rather, it comes from knowing who you are in Jesus. You are valuable because you belong to God.
With his purchase, God also made a promise. You are predestined, you are God’s possession, and furthermore, you are the heir to God’s promise.
• PROMISE
The Bible says, “When you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised” (Ephesians 1:13-14 NLT).
Growing up in church, one of my favorite hymns was “This World is Not my Home.” It emphasizes the reality that Christians have a home prepared for us in heaven. That’s the inheritance God promises those who believe in Christ. Heaven! The end of the journey. The beginning of eternity. The home of happiness. Our highest hope. We don’t deserve it. We haven’t earned it. And some people may even be surprised to see us there.
A Sunday School teacher once asked her class, “If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?”
The children all answered, “NO!”
So the teacher asks, “If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?”
Again, the answer was, “NO!”
Again the teacher asked, “Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my husband, would that get me into Heaven?”
Again, they all answered, “NO!”
“Well then how can I get into Heaven?”
One five-year-old boy shouted out, “YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!”
Good insight for a five-year old! You’ve gotta be dead to get to heaven, so while we’re here on Earth God has given us his Holy Spirit as a foretaste of what heaven will be like. When you first believed in Jesus, God’s Spirit took up residence in your heart. I know someone is thinking, well I’ve never felt the Holy Spirit. Are you sure about that?
Elsewhere the Apostle Paul tells us that “The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). Are you saying you’ve never felt love? Or joy? You’ve never felt peace or patience when you wouldn’t expect to feel peace and patience? The Holy Spirit isn’t a physical entity. He doesn’t always move like rushing wind or leaping flames. Rather he manifests in our lives through these nine fruits.
That’s why God gave the Holy Spirit as the foretaste of heaven, because heaven will be overflowing with the fruit of the Spirit. Adjust the lens of your imagination until you have a clear picture a world engulfed in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and goodness, then snap the shutter and frame the picture. What you see is what God has promised you. Heaven is your inheritance in Christ Jesus. In Christ, you are the recipient of the promised Holy Spirit and the promise of a Heavenly home.
Finally, the last identifying mark mentioned here in Ephesians is that in Christ you exist to praise and glorify God.
• PRAISE
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “I am going to say something to you which will sound strange. It even sounds strange to me as I say it, because we are not used to hearing it within our Christian fellowships... We are saved to worship God! All that Christ has done for us in the past and all that He is doing now leads to this one end.” (Nelson 811)
That’s exactly what Paul tells us. Let me read that last verse for you one more time. The Bible says, “And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit… He did this so we would praise and glorify him” (Ephesians 1:13-14 NLT). You and I were created anew in Christ to praise and glorify God. Sadly many Christians don’t live their lives that way.
Adelaide Procter wrote a famous poem (later set to music by Gilbert and Sullivan) about a woman who sat down at the organ one autumn day just at twilight and struck a chord that swelled within the instrument with soft majesty. It flowed through the room and filled the whole house with melody. It also thrilled her heart with peace. It was the most beautiful chord in the world.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away in silence
As if it were loath to cease.
As the woman lifted her fingers from the keys the sounds faded away. Something broke the spell, and when she tried again, she couldn’t find that beautiful chord. She sought repeatedly to reproduce it, but always in vain. It was a lost chord.
For many Christians and most churches, worship is the missing chord in their experience. It is the one thing that quiets pain and sorrow like love overcoming strife. It the one thing that makes harmonious echoes of our discordant life. But for many it’s a lost experience.
A lot of people equate worship with attending church services! But friends, walking into a church building no more makes you a worshipper, than walking into a garage makes you a Chevrolet. The truth is—worship is far more than what happens here on Sunday morning. Worship doesn’t start and stop with a prayer. It cannot be contained by stained-glass windows.
The Bible says, “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1 NIV). In contrast to the dead animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant, followers of Jesus are called to give ourselves as living sacrifices! You don’t offer a sacrifice; you are the sacrifice. Your life is one long act of worship. But, you know the problem with living sacrifices, don’t you? They have a tendency to crawl down off the altar. It’s up to you and me to live lives that harmonize with who we are in Christ, to make sure our lives sing God’s praise.
Conclusion:
So let me ask you again: Do you know who you are? More importantly, do you know who you are in Christ? Does your spiritual fingerprint match the four points Paul identifies here in Ephesians 1? If you are in Christ, then you are predestined—chosen by God to live out the plan he crafted just for you, you are God’s possession—bought and paid for with the priceless blood of Christ, you are the heir to God’s promise—both the promise of the Holy Spirit and a home in heaven, and you are here to praise him—to glorify God with the life you live. That is who you are in Christ.
But there is more to your identity than just these four traits. Next week, we’ll hold the magnifying glass over Ephesians 2, and see what else we can discover.
Invitation:
In the meantime, I want those of you who are not yet “in Christ” to put your faith in him, be baptized into Christ Jesus and discover who you were meant to be. Those of you who are “in Christ”, I want to invite you to start living like it. Be the person God made you to be. If I can help with either of those things, please come forward while we stand and sing.
