Ephesians 1:11-14
Inheritance and Indwelling
Illustration:
I remember an article I had read a year or so ago about a man named Paul Fischer. Mr. Fischer had checked his bank account that Friday night and had quite a surprise. His balance had exploded to almost $89 billion dollars.
Of course the balance was a technical error by his bank and they had it corrected after 5 hours.
Before the problem was fixed he asked one of the bank reps if he could move the money to an interest-bearing account until it was reclaimed and donate the interest to charity. After only 5 hours, the total interest would have been more than 7.3 million dollars.
The bank said no. The money was stripped out of his account by Saturday morning. Fischer said, "It's all gone. I'm poor again…I was a billionaire for five hours."
This kind of bank error happens frequently. But Mr. Fischer raised an interesting question: What if, for five hours, you truly did have $89 billion? $89Billion is a lot of money!
Just to give you perspective, that would fund our budget for 760,000 years! What would you do with the money?
I think you would see the world differently, and, you would see yourself differently with that kind of money. How you do things and make decisions would be radically different with such wealth.
We here will probably never be billionaires, probably not even for 5 hours. But if the letter of Ephesians should be teaching us anything it is that we are richer than that. The fact is that because of Jesus Christ we are rich.
We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus (v3). What has God held back from giving us? Nothing!
First Corinthians 3 says, “All things are yours…all are yours, and you are of Christ and Christ is of God.”
Even Romans 8:32 makes it more personal, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
We have the riches as those who are chosen (v4), who are holy and blameless (v4), who are adopted as sons (v5), who are redeemed and forgiven through the high payment of Christ’s blood (v7), who are slathered by God’s grace (v7), who are given “inside information” about God’s plans for the world (v9-10).
God has made us rich, not for 5 hours, but forever. If that is true and we know that is true than how do we see the world differently? If we would see life differently with $89 billion dollars, are we seeing life different with the riches of God’s grace lavished on us?
As Paul continues to unpack the spiritual blessings that are ours, today I want us to see 2 more aspects of our wealth. First is our Inheritance, and second is the Indwelling.
Our Inheritance (v11-12)
Paul says in verse 11, “In Him we were also chosen…” Now, that phrase in other translations reads, “We have obtained an inheritance”. If you have the NIV you could write in next to verse 11 the word, “inheritance”. Paul is saying that believers have taken possession of an inheritance.
This is interesting because when something in the future was so certain that it could not possibly fail to happen, the Greeks would often speak of it as if it had already occurred. In other words, what God has promises will be in the future is so sure that we can speak of it as having already happened now.
An illustration might be over in chapter 2. Paul says in verse 6, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”.
There is an interesting angle about this word in the Greek. It can also be translated as “We were made an inheritance.” Do you see how that is different from “We have obtained an inheritance”? With one translation it means that we are the inheritance that someone else will receive, and with the other translation it is we who will receive an inheritance.
Both of these translations are grammatically correct, and theologically. It would not be wrong to translate it either way. Both are consistent with what the Bible teaches.
On the one hand, we are an inheritance. We are what Jesus Christ is going to inherit and receive unto Himself. If you were to go back to the Gospel of John in chapter 6 and in chapter 17, you would see Jesus talking about “those whom the Father had given Him.” Over and over we see that the Father has given us as a gift to His Son. The Father has made us an inheritance for Jesus Christ; we are His possession.
Wow! If that does not just open your eyes up to the holy value of your life now as a Christian nothing will. When the most important, glorious, powerful, righteous and perfect Person in all existence is looking forward to you becoming His own possession and being with Him that ought to change you. Jesus even prayed this in John 17:24, “Father, I want [notice desire] those whom you have given me [notice inheritance] to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
I think when we grasp this we will see the great value of our life in Christ. Not because of us, but, because of Him. He should be the motivation for holiness and godliness and righteousness in our lives. I thought about this and the question came to my mind: What kind of inheritance will I be for Christ? If Christ is going to inherit me, what kind of inheritance will I be to Him?
On the other hand, this verse can mean, “we have obtained an inheritance”. In other words, rather than being the inheritance, we are the ones who receive an inheritance. This is true according to Biblical teaching. Romans 8:17 says “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
Will we be ready to inherit alongside of Christ all things? We should not be living here in this world as though this world is all there is. First John 2:15-17 says, “………..” I suggest that when we don’t know that our treasure is really in heaven, that we have every spiritual blessing given to us in heaven, and all things are ours as co-heirs with Christ, we will live for the things of this world. Do we live as if you are going to inherit all things with Christ? Does that ease your worries here and now?
I think that the kind of inheritance we will be for Christ is directly related to the kind of inheritance we believe we have coming. What I mean is that if we know the riches of our inheritance reserved for us in heaven (1 Peter 1:3-4), then we will begin to live looking forward in faith to what we have in and with Christ. It is THEN and only then, when we are looking forward to Him, that we are truly the inheritance to Him that we should be.
The Indwelling Holy Spirit (v13-14)
First we see the Inheritance, secondly we see the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Notice verses 13-14, “………..”
Paul is now talking about the great privilege we have as believers in Jesus Christ to have the 3rd Person of our Triune God dwelling within us. He says we were “marked” in this way by God.
I want us to notice that these two verses have a 4 step progression here for us to follow.
First, Paul says that they heard the gospel of salvation. “And you were also included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation…” This point cannot be emphasized enough. People must hear the Gospel. Romans 10:14, “How can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” People must hear the gospel in order to believe the gospel. The reason is because people cannot be saved by the Gospel apart from believing it. If they don’t hear it they cannot believe it. Missions are becoming by and large how to change a culture these days in a foreign country. Evangelism has less and less to do with telling people the way to be saved.
Second, Paul says that they received the Holy Spirit when they believed. Not before, not after. Notice the last sentence in verse 13, “Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” The point at which someone receives the Holy Spirit is the point at which they put their faith in Jesus Christ for their own salvation. The Holy Spirit does not indwell someone before that point. In other words just hearing the Gospel does not result in receiving the Holy Spirit. You must believe it - and at the moment that you do, all of the Holy Spirit indwells you.
This is important because there is a mistaken teaching out there called “subsequence”. The doctrine of subsequence simply means that someone can believe in Christ and be saved but not have the Holy Spirit until a time subsequent to their salvation. In other words, you can get saved but you still need to go get the Holy Spirit in you afterwards. This is not Biblical teaching. Paul says here that at the moment they believed they received Him as a seal.
Thirdly, after hearing and believing the Gospel, the Holy Spirit seals us by His indwelling presence. A seal was important because in the ancient world a seal marked something to indicate ownership and security. If someone’s seal was put on something it meant that that object was owned by the person whose seal was on it. We were bought with at a price – the blood of Christ and we are not our own, we are His possession (1 Cor 6:19-20).
And in purchasing us He marked us with a seal of ownership – His own Holy Spirit. Furthermore, if we have this seal, we have security. We cannot become His possession and then afterwards not be His possession later on. In other words, the Holy Spirit marks us out and seals us permanently. We cannot lose the Holy Spirit once He has come to live in us as believers. To lose the Holy Spirit is equivalent to losing salvation, and having all our sins returned to us, and being disjoined with Christ, and being returned to the domain of darkness, and all the other things that happened at salvation the Bible says being reversed. Nowhere does this occur. Once saved you are always saved.
Notice that’s what Paul says in verse 14, which brings us to our 4th part of this progression, the current deposit on future redemption , “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.” The Holy Spirit will be with us until God redeems those who are His own and His own are those with the Spirit.
Paul calls the Holy Spirit here, the deposit guaranteeing our redemption”. Deposit is the Greek word “arrabon”. Arrabon was a regular part of the Greek business world. It was part of the purchase price of anything. It was a deposit paid in advance as a guarantee that the rest would in due course be paid. There are still many Greek documents in existence today where this word occurs. Someone sells a cow and receives so much money as an arrabon, or deposit. Many homeowners put a downpayment on their house. Sometimes with layaway a long time ago we put money down with the idea we were going to come back and pay the rest later and pick up our item.
What Paul is saying is that the experience of the Holy Spirit which we have in this wworld is a foretaste of the blessedness of heaven; and it is the guarantee that some day we will enter into full possession of the blessedness of God. (Barclay 100).
Conclusion:
We have a rich inheritance in Christ. We have a high position as His inheritance. We have incredible privilege to have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as believers. In all these things we ought to pursue in this life the high and lofty things we have promised in the next life.
Inheritance and Indwelling
Illustration:
I remember an article I had read a year or so ago about a man named Paul Fischer. Mr. Fischer had checked his bank account that Friday night and had quite a surprise. His balance had exploded to almost $89 billion dollars.
Of course the balance was a technical error by his bank and they had it corrected after 5 hours.
Before the problem was fixed he asked one of the bank reps if he could move the money to an interest-bearing account until it was reclaimed and donate the interest to charity. After only 5 hours, the total interest would have been more than 7.3 million dollars.
The bank said no. The money was stripped out of his account by Saturday morning. Fischer said, "It's all gone. I'm poor again…I was a billionaire for five hours."
This kind of bank error happens frequently. But Mr. Fischer raised an interesting question: What if, for five hours, you truly did have $89 billion? $89Billion is a lot of money!
Just to give you perspective, that would fund our budget for 760,000 years! What would you do with the money?
I think you would see the world differently, and, you would see yourself differently with that kind of money. How you do things and make decisions would be radically different with such wealth.
We here will probably never be billionaires, probably not even for 5 hours. But if the letter of Ephesians should be teaching us anything it is that we are richer than that. The fact is that because of Jesus Christ we are rich.
We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus (v3). What has God held back from giving us? Nothing!
First Corinthians 3 says, “All things are yours…all are yours, and you are of Christ and Christ is of God.”
Even Romans 8:32 makes it more personal, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
We have the riches as those who are chosen (v4), who are holy and blameless (v4), who are adopted as sons (v5), who are redeemed and forgiven through the high payment of Christ’s blood (v7), who are slathered by God’s grace (v7), who are given “inside information” about God’s plans for the world (v9-10).
God has made us rich, not for 5 hours, but forever. If that is true and we know that is true than how do we see the world differently? If we would see life differently with $89 billion dollars, are we seeing life different with the riches of God’s grace lavished on us?
As Paul continues to unpack the spiritual blessings that are ours, today I want us to see 2 more aspects of our wealth. First is our Inheritance, and second is the Indwelling.
Our Inheritance (v11-12)
Paul says in verse 11, “In Him we were also chosen…” Now, that phrase in other translations reads, “We have obtained an inheritance”. If you have the NIV you could write in next to verse 11 the word, “inheritance”. Paul is saying that believers have taken possession of an inheritance.
This is interesting because when something in the future was so certain that it could not possibly fail to happen, the Greeks would often speak of it as if it had already occurred. In other words, what God has promises will be in the future is so sure that we can speak of it as having already happened now.
An illustration might be over in chapter 2. Paul says in verse 6, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”.
There is an interesting angle about this word in the Greek. It can also be translated as “We were made an inheritance.” Do you see how that is different from “We have obtained an inheritance”? With one translation it means that we are the inheritance that someone else will receive, and with the other translation it is we who will receive an inheritance.
Both of these translations are grammatically correct, and theologically. It would not be wrong to translate it either way. Both are consistent with what the Bible teaches.
On the one hand, we are an inheritance. We are what Jesus Christ is going to inherit and receive unto Himself. If you were to go back to the Gospel of John in chapter 6 and in chapter 17, you would see Jesus talking about “those whom the Father had given Him.” Over and over we see that the Father has given us as a gift to His Son. The Father has made us an inheritance for Jesus Christ; we are His possession.
Wow! If that does not just open your eyes up to the holy value of your life now as a Christian nothing will. When the most important, glorious, powerful, righteous and perfect Person in all existence is looking forward to you becoming His own possession and being with Him that ought to change you. Jesus even prayed this in John 17:24, “Father, I want [notice desire] those whom you have given me [notice inheritance] to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
I think when we grasp this we will see the great value of our life in Christ. Not because of us, but, because of Him. He should be the motivation for holiness and godliness and righteousness in our lives. I thought about this and the question came to my mind: What kind of inheritance will I be for Christ? If Christ is going to inherit me, what kind of inheritance will I be to Him?
On the other hand, this verse can mean, “we have obtained an inheritance”. In other words, rather than being the inheritance, we are the ones who receive an inheritance. This is true according to Biblical teaching. Romans 8:17 says “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
Will we be ready to inherit alongside of Christ all things? We should not be living here in this world as though this world is all there is. First John 2:15-17 says, “………..” I suggest that when we don’t know that our treasure is really in heaven, that we have every spiritual blessing given to us in heaven, and all things are ours as co-heirs with Christ, we will live for the things of this world. Do we live as if you are going to inherit all things with Christ? Does that ease your worries here and now?
I think that the kind of inheritance we will be for Christ is directly related to the kind of inheritance we believe we have coming. What I mean is that if we know the riches of our inheritance reserved for us in heaven (1 Peter 1:3-4), then we will begin to live looking forward in faith to what we have in and with Christ. It is THEN and only then, when we are looking forward to Him, that we are truly the inheritance to Him that we should be.
The Indwelling Holy Spirit (v13-14)
First we see the Inheritance, secondly we see the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Notice verses 13-14, “………..”
Paul is now talking about the great privilege we have as believers in Jesus Christ to have the 3rd Person of our Triune God dwelling within us. He says we were “marked” in this way by God.
I want us to notice that these two verses have a 4 step progression here for us to follow.
First, Paul says that they heard the gospel of salvation. “And you were also included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation…” This point cannot be emphasized enough. People must hear the Gospel. Romans 10:14, “How can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” People must hear the gospel in order to believe the gospel. The reason is because people cannot be saved by the Gospel apart from believing it. If they don’t hear it they cannot believe it. Missions are becoming by and large how to change a culture these days in a foreign country. Evangelism has less and less to do with telling people the way to be saved.
Second, Paul says that they received the Holy Spirit when they believed. Not before, not after. Notice the last sentence in verse 13, “Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” The point at which someone receives the Holy Spirit is the point at which they put their faith in Jesus Christ for their own salvation. The Holy Spirit does not indwell someone before that point. In other words just hearing the Gospel does not result in receiving the Holy Spirit. You must believe it - and at the moment that you do, all of the Holy Spirit indwells you.
This is important because there is a mistaken teaching out there called “subsequence”. The doctrine of subsequence simply means that someone can believe in Christ and be saved but not have the Holy Spirit until a time subsequent to their salvation. In other words, you can get saved but you still need to go get the Holy Spirit in you afterwards. This is not Biblical teaching. Paul says here that at the moment they believed they received Him as a seal.
Thirdly, after hearing and believing the Gospel, the Holy Spirit seals us by His indwelling presence. A seal was important because in the ancient world a seal marked something to indicate ownership and security. If someone’s seal was put on something it meant that that object was owned by the person whose seal was on it. We were bought with at a price – the blood of Christ and we are not our own, we are His possession (1 Cor 6:19-20).
And in purchasing us He marked us with a seal of ownership – His own Holy Spirit. Furthermore, if we have this seal, we have security. We cannot become His possession and then afterwards not be His possession later on. In other words, the Holy Spirit marks us out and seals us permanently. We cannot lose the Holy Spirit once He has come to live in us as believers. To lose the Holy Spirit is equivalent to losing salvation, and having all our sins returned to us, and being disjoined with Christ, and being returned to the domain of darkness, and all the other things that happened at salvation the Bible says being reversed. Nowhere does this occur. Once saved you are always saved.
Notice that’s what Paul says in verse 14, which brings us to our 4th part of this progression, the current deposit on future redemption , “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.” The Holy Spirit will be with us until God redeems those who are His own and His own are those with the Spirit.
Paul calls the Holy Spirit here, the deposit guaranteeing our redemption”. Deposit is the Greek word “arrabon”. Arrabon was a regular part of the Greek business world. It was part of the purchase price of anything. It was a deposit paid in advance as a guarantee that the rest would in due course be paid. There are still many Greek documents in existence today where this word occurs. Someone sells a cow and receives so much money as an arrabon, or deposit. Many homeowners put a downpayment on their house. Sometimes with layaway a long time ago we put money down with the idea we were going to come back and pay the rest later and pick up our item.
What Paul is saying is that the experience of the Holy Spirit which we have in this wworld is a foretaste of the blessedness of heaven; and it is the guarantee that some day we will enter into full possession of the blessedness of God. (Barclay 100).
Conclusion:
We have a rich inheritance in Christ. We have a high position as His inheritance. We have incredible privilege to have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as believers. In all these things we ought to pursue in this life the high and lofty things we have promised in the next life.
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