This morning, we will be back in Ephesians 1, as we continue to marvel at the great wonder of God’s covenant love. We saw, last week, that God is not trapped. He is not forced to love you. But, he is also not forced to hate you, either. God is free to love as he chooses. And so, Paul begins this beautiful hymn of praise to God by proclaiming his riches towards us from eternity past. Before you had ever taken a breath, before parents were ever born, and yes, even before the world was ever formed, God purposed your salvation. He chose you for the purpose of making you holy and blameless. He also predetermined that he would adopt you into the family of God. He did all this “in Christ”. God’s love for you is directed towards the ultimate good, and the ultimate good is found in his Son. So, he determined before the world began that he would unite you to his Son. You contributed absolutely nothing to this. You didn’t even exist when God made these plans.
Yet, God didn’t just come up with a plan to adopt you. He actually did what was necessary to accomplish it. This is where Paul leads us today, to the definite atonement of Jesus Christ for your redemption and union with him. This morning, I want you to understand that, in covenant love, God did not merely make salvation possible; through the blood of Jesus Christ, he accomplished our redemption and gathers his redeemed people. To see that, let’s read Eph. 1:7-10. From this passage, see two points: The atonement redeems us through the blood of Christ, and the atonement unites all things in Christ.
First, from verses 7 and 8, see that the atonement redeems us through the blood of Christ. Remember, this beautiful sentence of praise began back up in verse 3 with the blessings of God. All of the blessings of God are showered on us “in Christ.” This phrase, “in Christ” or “in Him” shows up throughout this passage. He blessed us “in Christ”. He chose us “in him”. He adopted us as sons “through Jesus Christ”. And now, in verse 7, “In him we have redemption.” Jesus Christ is the one and only source of our redemption. We cannot earn it by doing good works that outweigh our bad. We cannot find redemption in spiritual enlightenment. We will not find it in commitment to ritual or sacrifice. As Peter told the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:12, “There is no other name, given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
Oh, and do we need to be saved! We’ve already seen from Eph. 2, that we are dead in our trespasses, following after Satan, and acting on the desires of our flesh. Paul uses two words in this sentence that tell us how badly we need this salvation. The first word is “redemption”. Redemption comes from the Greek word, apolytrosis, which means to deliver from bondage for a price. You were in bondage to sin, a slave to Satan, and Christ ransomed you with his blood. Note, here, that Jesus did not redeem you with gold or silver. He redeemed you with blood. As Hebrews 9:22 says, “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Your sins can only be atoned for through blood. Abel recognized this, and so he offered a better sacrifice than Cain by offering a blood sacrifice. So, we are accepted before God through the blood of his son. Noah satisfied the wrath of God through the shedding of blood. We escape the wrath of God through Jesus shed blood. Abraham received back his son, Isaac, through the sacrifice of the ram that was caught in the thicket. We receive new life through the death of Christ. The people of Israel were delivered from bondage in Egypt through the blood of the Passover lamb. And we are redeemed from our bondage to sin through the blood of Christ.
The second word that shows us how badly we needed salvation is the word “forgiveness.” Paul says that this redemption led to our forgiveness. Forgiveness is the Greek word, aphesis, which means “to be set free”. In Christ, we have been set free from the bondage of our trespasses. This is so poetic. Remember, in chapter 2, verse 1, Paul says that we were “dead in our trespasses and sins.” But here, he says that we have been set free from those same trespasses through the shed blood of Jesus.
There are two ways that Jesus’ blood redeems us and secures our forgiveness. The first is through a big theological word called “propitiation”. Rom. 3:23-26 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” In propitiation, Jesus Christ satisfied the wrath of God for our sins. We all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. As we saw from Eph. 2:3, that makes us, by our very nature, children of wrath. But, on the cross, Christ satisfied God’s demand for justice by taking the spiritual and physical judgment meant for us. So, Paul says, God is now both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
The second way Jesus’s blood redeems us is through expiation. If the only thing Jesus did in his redemption is satisfy God’s wrath, that would be great, but it would not be enough. We would still be guilty, and we would carry that guilt with us into eternity. Jesus shed his blood to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He died so that we might be free from sin, purified in his righteousness. Heb. 9:26 says, “But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Before we move on to the next point, I don’t want you to miss the certainty of Christ’s work of redemption. There are three phrases that reveal the certainty of our redemption. The first is the phrase “we have” at the beginning of verse 7. Paul says, “in him we have redemption.” Notice, it doesn’t say we may have or we could have. It says, definitively, we have redemption. This is in keeping with the theme of the broader passage, which is the excellencies of God’s blessings in Jesus Christ. God chose you. God predestined you. And God redeemed you in Christ. You didn’t do it. God did it. So, redemption is not something you can have if you can keep it. It is something you do have because the Father purposed it and the Son accomplished it.
Second, notice the phrase “according to the riches of his grace.” This is such a wonderful phrase. God isn’t stingy with his grace. He doesn’t run out of it. He doesn’t need you to meet him halfway with his grace. God is RICH IN GRACE, and his redemption and forgiveness for you were out of the abundance of that wealth of grace.
Third, there is the phrase “which he lavished on us.” God doesn’t regret saving you. He doesn’t think that you are squandering the blood of his son with your struggles and temptations. God lavishes redemption on you from the riches of his grace.
Now, to our second point: The atonement unites all things in Christ, from verses 9 and 10. The work of Christ for our redemption goes beyond his sacrifice. It extends to his revelation of God’s purpose. In verse 9, Paul says that God has made known to us the mystery of his will. There is a great mystery that runs throughout the OT. It begins in Gen. 12:1-3, when God makes his covenant with Abram. He tells Abram that through him, all nations of the world will be blessed. Yet, we are never really told how this would come to pass. As we read through the story of Abraham’s descendants, we have a few moments of hope. Perhaps Joseph would be the fulfillment of this promise. After all, through his wisdom, Egypt and the surrounding countries were saved from famine. But the good will earned through Joseph soured in future generations, until the Egyptians enslaved his people. No doubt there was hope in Solomon. The whole world seemed to come to him for wisdom, and Israel grew to be one of the wealthiest of nations. Yet, Solomon married foreign women and allowed their pagan beliefs to influence him, leading the whole nation astray. Could Daniel fulfill this promise? Daniel was a faithful witness to foreign kings, even rising to third in command of all of Babylon. But the nations of the world continued to rebel and war against God.
It was not through a throne or a palace that this promise would be fulfilled. Instead, the fulfillment began in a stable, where a young peasant girl gave birth to her firstborn son. The fulfillment did not swell with the great military might of a rebel king or with the political maneuvers of a cunning statesman. It grew with preaching and miracles in the countryside, among the rabble. At the moment that it seemed the fulfillment would finally go mainstream, the Jewish and Roman authorities conspired to kill this Son of David through crucifixion, a punishment reserved for rebellious slaves. His followers fled and hid. The soldiers sealed and guarded his tomb. Yet, on Sunday, he rose on the dawn of a new creation. Jesus Christ had taken our bondage to the grave, and in his resurrection, he set us free from sin and death. This is the mystery that Paul speaks of; a mystery “set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.”
And, this plan was bigger than our own personal redemption. In verse 10, he says that the plan was to “unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” In the Greek, the word for unite gives the idea of bringing together that which is scattered. Because of sin, the earth was cursed, the family was divided, and the nations were handed over to Satan. But now, Christ is reconciling all things. So, Rom. 8:21 says, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” The family is reconciled as husbands and wives love each other as Christ and the church, and parents raise their children in the love of Christ. And, the nations are now ripe for the harvest. So, Jesus commissioned his followers, in Matt. 28:20, to go and make disciples of all nations because he now has all authority and will to the end of the age.
Friend, Jesus is the only way to be set free from your bondage to sin and ransomed from the curse of death. He has done all that is necessary for your salvation. Won’t you receive it in faith today?
Brothers and sisters, our atonement is not a possibility, it is a certainty. Jesus has paid it all. Certainly, we owe him everything, but not because we must work to keep it or improve upon it. We work out of gratitude for the riches of his grace that he has lavished on us.
