Ephesians 1:1-14 [NLTse]
1 This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.
I am writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus, who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus.
2 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 4 Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into His Own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. 6 So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belong to His dear Son. 7 He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. 8 He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
9 God has now revealed to us His mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill His Own good pleasure. 10 And this is the plan: At the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in Heaven and on Earth. 11 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.
12 God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. 13 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. 14 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.
[From behind the Lord’s Table] One of the reasons we have come here today is to celebrate Communion. Today is “World Communion Sunday”. Many Christians around the world, whether because they celebrate the Lord’s Supper on the first Sunday of each month (as many churches do) or because of this special day – “World Communion Sunday” – are celebrating the Lord’s Supper; more Christians celebrating the Lord’s Supper today than on any other single day of the year except, perhaps, Easter – Resurrection Sunday.
And yet we’re not celebrating “World Lord’s Supper Sunday” but “World Communion Sunday”. And “Communion” has come to be another title for the Lord’s Supper, but the word “communion” does have a meaning all its own that gives us a special focus for our celebration today.
The word “communion” is derived from the Latin word communio (which means “to share in common”). It translates the Greek term ????????, which is most often translated by the English word, “fellowship”. In Ancient Greek, ???????? could apply to a business partnership, to the fellowship of life in marriage, to a spiritual relationship with a divinity, to comradely fellowship between friends, as well as to the relationships enjoyed within a community or society.
In the New Testament and Christianity, ???????? – communion – describes and celebrates the especially close relationship that Christians, as individuals and as a Church, have with God and with other Christians. The Lord Jesus describes this close relationship we have with Him and each other as abiding in Him. The apostle Paul speaks of it saying, we are “in Christ”.
In our reading from Ephesians this morning the apostle Paul wrote that “Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into His Own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ.” (1:4-5)
To Timothy Paul wrote of it this way, “For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was His plan from before the beginning of time—to show us His grace through Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 1:9)
Think about that with me: Even before God began Creation He had chosen you to belong to Him. With all the wonders He had on the drawing board He wasn’t thinking about universal marvels the Bible makes clear He was thinking about you.
With all the wonders God had planned for the world He wasn’t thinking about what He was going to make He was thinking about uniting you with Himself, establishing you in Christ. So even before He spoke Light into being and before He made the land and the atmosphere and the stars, Almighty God was planning for you and me to share in the blessings of Jesus Christ!
Across Jesus’ life on Earth, too, God thought of you and me as being in Christ: Whatever Christ did God counted it as being something we did, too. The Bible makes this especially clear when speaking about Jesus’ death, because when Christ died God thought of us as having died, too. Romans 6 says our old self was “crucified with Him”. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul writes in Galatians 2. And this being in Christ in the past overflows to Christ being in us here and now in the present as Paul goes on to say, so “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
This dying and rising with Christ occurs in this present life when we become Christians. Paul sees this present death and resurrection with Christ as a way of describing and explaining the change the Holy Spirit brings about in our character and personality when we become Christians. In Christ and with Christ in us we become so unresponsive to the pressures, demands, and attractions of our previous, sinful way of life that Paul can say we are “dead” to these influences, because we have died with Christ (Romans 7:6; Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14; Colossians 2:20). We find ourselves wanting to serve God much more, and able to serve Him with greater power and success, so much so that Paul says we are “alive” to God because we have been raised up with Christ!
We are not on our own! Christ is in us because we have trusted in Him! And every spiritual blessing earned by Christ because of His sinless life and perfect sacrifice is ours if we are in Him! “Eternal life” (1 John 5:11), “faith and love” (1 Timothy 1:14; 2 Timothy 1:13), “grace” (2 Timothy 2:1), “salvation” (2Timothy 2:10), “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3) and God’s “riches in glory” (Philippians 4:19).
Because Jesus has inseparably connected us to Himself, the Holy Spirit gives us all the blessings that Christ has earned! And as Christ lives in us He calls us to live in Him: Everything we say to say for His sake; everything we do doing it for His sake. Keeping our minds set on Him so that people will see us and get to know Jesus because He’s in us.
Pastor and Christian author John Murray writes about it this way, “Union with Christ has its source in the election of God the Father before the foundation of the world and has its fruition in the glorification of the sons of God. The perspective of God’s people is not narrow; it is broad and long. It is not confined to space and time; it has the expanse of eternity. Its orbit has two foci, one the electing love of God the Father in the counsels of eternity; the other glorification with Christ in the manifestation of His glory. The former has no beginning, the latter has not end… Why does the believer entertain the thought of God’s determinate counsel with such joy? Why can he have confident assurance with reference to the future and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God? It is because he cannot think of past, present, or future apart from union with Christ.” (John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, p. 164.)
[Back to behind the Lord’s Table] The devil would have us forget that Jesus dwells in us, but Jesus tells us, “Do this to remember…”
And that is what we celebrate this World Communion Sunday: Our communion, fellowship, and sharing in the lives of each other. Our communion, fellowship, and sharing in the life of God!