OUR FREEDOM IS BASED ON THE FREEDOM THAT GOD GIVES US IF WE WANT TO BE FREE.
We are the ones that choose who we want to be. In newspaper items this week you could have read about Jose Delos Santos. When did he decide to kill those two people? A second item, “Gay Quest for Freedom take turn” Two men were reported to be fighting and instead the police found they were making love to each other. They were arrested, fined and jailed. Now because of a Supreme court ruling says the law invaded their rights to privacy. In 1960 every state had a law against sodomy. Now only 13 states do. When did we decide to have this freedom? Someone decided this was a freedom. So we have taken a step further away from the freedom that God wants us to have. I want us to look in the book of Ephesians and see what the freedom that God gives us if we choose to be free.
1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ: 1. Blessed from a Greek word that means speaking well of God. Are you listening? We bless God because He has blessed us. We choose to be in Christ. By doing so we share all the spiritual benefits of his resurrection, the union of his spiritual body and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We share all the blessings of the person of Christ. We are justified, sanctified and built up in the most holy faith. Our feet are still on this earth but our minds are on heavenly things. Moses had this when he came down from the mountain. Only those who accept their spiritual election can receive the spiritual blessings.
Eph. 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 1. God’s choice for us is that we should be transformed and purified from our status as servants to sin. That we be separated from fleshly desires and sin and consecrated to God having no spot or inward imperfection. Our love is proof of this. Holy deals with our inner spiritual being and blameless refers to our outward conduct of life as others see us. As you act it affects what others think of me and what they think of this church, so it is not just your reputation at stake.
Eph. 1:5 having predestined or foreordained us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 1. I do not believe in predestination as some do. I do believe that God knew what He wanted us to be and that is part of His predestination. Having marked out beforehand. I know that God has a fixed purpose for all to be saved. Yet we can not become a part of that until we choose to be free from sin through the New Birth. Confirmation, baptism, singing in choir, teaching Sunday School and even becoming a member of the church is not the New Birth. One must know Jesus as Savior and lord through confessing and repenting of sin and believing in Jesus to be Born Again. Then it is that we become adopted as his children in the pleasure of His will. E Stanley Jones was once chosen by his church to become bishop but he declined for he sensed God had called him to missions and thus disqualified for such an office. So God has chosen every person to be a child of God but not all have to accept that call. Moses could have been an heir to the Egyptian throne but chose to follow what God wanted. Our adoption is solely on the merit of God’s good pleasure. It is an overflow of God loving character that comes to us as we believe on his Son Jesus Christ. We were created to have fellowship with God. Sin has ruined that so God sent Jesus Christ that we might be restored to what we were meant for.
[6] To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 1. The purpose of our life is to praise God. IS 43:21, MT 5:16. God’s purpose is to redeem, restore and unify lost people into a spiritual family. Col. 1:13 Rev. 5:9. There is no way we can know the redeeming grace of God apart from Christ.
[7] In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 1. Redemption came only at the cost of Christ dying and shedding his blood on the cross. It is through the riches of His grace that we find forgiveness of sins. We are slaves to sin with no chance of being free except by Jesus Christ. We are prisoners to sin convicted and sentenced to everlasting death for our sins against God. Out of his mercy He gave us His Son who did for us what we could never do for ourselves. With no faith in Christ all of life is dismal and dark and without any hope. Christ sets us free. He and He alone does and will forgive us from our sin. It is in Christ our guilt is gone.
Eph. 2:1, “And you hath he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 1. What words to hear, “He is dead.” There is no coming back once the doctor says that over you. The Christ less life is living death. Outside of Christ death is ultimate, final and there can not be made any appeal from this verdict. I like what one person said, “Death is the result of the termination of communication.” Like when a plant ceases to take in water and sunshine.” Death is a hopeless state without Christ. The word sins here refer to sinning knowingly and daringly. In this verse it says we are dead, but He has made us alive. Trespasses refers to the open sins we commit and sins refers to what is in our minds that is wrong. That is why we are dead to God. Doctors can not do that but Jesus can if we choose to let him do so. Barclay wrote, “Sin kills innocence. No one is the same after he has sinned. Sin kills ideals. It is a progression. First we abhor sin. We are tempted. Third we give into it without bad feelings. Sin kills the will. A person engages in some forbidden pleasure because he wants to and in the end he can not help doing so.”
[5] Even when we were dead in sins, has made us alive in Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 1. Dead in our souls, dead to God, dead to the law and exposed to eternal death. In Christ we are made alive.
[8] For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 1. This is a free gift from God. Without grace no one has the power to believe.
[10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. 1. There are no good works that can save us but after we have come to Christ we become a people of good works because of what Christ is doing in us. These good works show that we are saved. In chapters 4-6 it is given to us what these good works are. We are saved to do good works to bring glory to God who enables us to do them. We are made partakers of God’s holiness.
Eph. 2:14 For he is our peace, 1. True peace cannot be in our lives if we are an enemy of God or his people He has made. He in his real meaning is peace to us.
Eph. 2:22 Through him you, also, are being built in the Spirit together with others into a place where God lives. 1. We are made through him to have His Spirit inhabit us. What a difference in our lives when his Spirit has possession of us. 1CO 3:16. God not only calls us His people He chooses to dwell in us.
Eph. 3:20 Glory belongs to God, whose power is at work in us. By this power he can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. 1. As Vincent put it, “Unto Him who is able to do beyond all, exceedingly above that which we ask or think.” IS 65:24 “And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” This verse cannot be put into the right words that we can express for God is omnipotent. Not only is God able to do this he is also willing to do it. This is only according to the power that is at work in us. It is not human power or might but God’s presence in one’s life. Obedience to Christ brings beyond all. God is not limited or deterred by any thing outside Himself. God is able to carry out purposes without the aid of the greatest of human powers. The “power that works with in us” is the gauge and resources of the great ability of God to do for us and in us far more that we ask or can imagine. What can stop Him?
Eph. 4:32 “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” 1. As Christ lived these virtues. We should treat others in the same way that God has treated us with forgiveness with gentleness and compassion. Forgiveness is big because that is what God did through Jesus Christ.
Eph. 5:25 Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. 1. How did Christ love the church? He gave himself for her. So we must give to him our all.
Eph. 5:26 “that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” 1. “That he might sanctify her having cleansed her.” Cleansing comes in the forgiveness of past sins in salvation. Sanctify is the purging of inherited sin that came through the rebellion of Adam against God that is in all who are born in this world. One has said, “We are pardoned and reconciled to God, in order that we may be made holy.” He gave himself to purify the church and make it morally right in this present world. It is by the Word of God that we are cleansed inwardly. He cleanses us by the cleansing of “the guilt and power of sin.” John Wesley.
Our freedom is based on the freedom that God gives us if we want to be free. The choice is yours on how free you want to be.
