Eph1,5-6 Higher then Adam

‘We ... Ye also' ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.’ Ephesians 1:11-14 Clearly one cannot deal with the entire statement in these verses on one occasion; but before we consider the separate statements it is good to deal with the statement as a whole. It is only as we are clear about the general theme, and grasp it, that we can truly appreciate and enjoy the particulars. Here we are looking at the end of the great sentence which, as we have seen, starts at the beginning of verse 3 and runs on to the end of verse 14. That sentence is surely one of the greatest sentences in the entire Bible. Obviously, it does not finish at verse 10, because the Apostle goes on to say Tn whom also’. The ‘whom’ refers to someone already mentioned and the ‘also’ tells us of something additional. It is important that we should be carrying in our minds the whole sentence as we consider any part of it. The Apostle is unfolding, let us remember, God’s great and eternal purpose. That is stated, in its essence, in the tenth verse. The world is interested in politics and in the headlines in the newspapers; but here we are looking at something beyond all that, something that is unfolding and will continue to unfold, whatever may be happening on the worldly level. We are not saying that what happens on the lower level has no importance whatsoever, but the plan of God is altogether bigger and grander. God’s plan and its out-working is also certain, while the world’s arrangements are very uncertain. The Apostle has told us that God by the Holy Spirit has given us the ‘wisdom’ and ‘prudence’ without which these things remain dark to us and seem utterly remote from life. But once we become enlightened everything becomes clear to us, for we see that God is working out His plan and that we and our whole eternal destiny are involved in it. Having told us that the plan is the restoration of harmony, the Apostle goes on to tell us something of the way in which God is working it out. That is the theme which he now takes up in verse 11. We have looked at the plan in general; and now he brings us on to the details. The very fact that Paul was writing this letter to the Ephesian Christians was a proof in itself of the carrying out of the plan. It was an amazing fact that such a man as Saul of Tarsus, a ‘Hebrew of the Hebrews’, should be writing a letter to Gentile Ephesians. He is doing so because it is a part of the unfolding, the carrying out, of this great plan of God. The great illustration that the world has seen so far of the carrying out of God’s plan to re-make all things is what is to be seen in the Christian Church, and that is the great theme of this particular Epistle. It is one of the so-called ‘Church Epistles’, and in it the Apostle gives us his richest teaching with regard to the nature and the character of the Christian Church. The Church is an illustration, the supreme illustration in many ways in time, of God’s gigantic, cosmic plan to restore harmony in every realm and sphere. We cannot but notice in passing the interesting way in which Paul states his themes. Nothing is so absorbingly interesting as to observe his mind in operation. Every writer has his own particular characteristics, his own particular style of writing. Any one at all familiar with the New Testament can tell at once whether a particular paragraph comes from Paul or Peter or John. And the characteristics of the Apostle Paul as a writer are seen very clearly in the verses we are examining. They are seen in the very terms he introduces. Paul is never content with saying anything once, he has to add to it. Here, we find him saying, ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance’. But he is not content with saying that we have obtained an inheritance, he tells us how this has happened - ‘being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will’. He has already used similar expressions but is prepared to continue using them. I advert to this matter, and emphasize it, for this good reason, that this elaboration is a very good test of our appreciation of the Christian faith. Paul cannot say these things without being astonished and amazed at them. He was not merely interested in these things intellectually; he was not a mere lecturer; he was a preacher, an evangelist, a pastor. He cannot regard these things in a merely detached objective manner. So, when he says ‘We have obtained an inheritance’ he is so amazed at the fact that he seems to wonder how it has happened to us, and he gives us the only possible explanation, which is, that it is ‘according to the counsel of God’s own will’. A word seems to fire him, and he sees the whole panorama of salvation in it. The pedants, of course, regard this as bad style. The Apostle, we are told, was not a good literary stylist; he lacked a chaste, pruned style; he is ornate, he multiplies his adjectives, he repeats himself, he crowds epithet upon epithet. He is guilty, say the authorities, of ‘anacolutha’, which means that, having started a line of argument, he allows a word to set him off, and he becomes so carried away and fired by it that he interposes praises to God. He seems to forget what he set out to say and then returns to it. Sometimes, however, he fails to do so and leaves a sentence unfinished. What 1 am suggesting is that the ‘anacoluthia’ is an indication of his spirituality. He was not a mere litterateur, not a hack writer; he was not a man who wrote to make his living. He was an evangelist, an Apostle of Christ, and he enjoys writing about Christ and the things of Christ. To him syntax and sentences are not his chief concern. He was interested in the truth; and in these verses he pours it forth upon us. These fourteen verses, as I have reminded you earlier are the introduction to the whole Epistle and can be compared to a kind of overture which in an opera or symphony introduces the various themes. The Apostle reminds us of the fact that God is working out this great plan to re-unite, to head up again in Christ the whole cosmos, and now he begins to tell us how God is doing so. Take note, first, of two phrases, one at the beginning of verse n and the other at the beginning of verse i;. Tn whom also we have obtained an inheritance’, and Tn whom ye also’. In these two phrases Paul shows us the beginning of the carrying out of this great plan. We must be quite clear, of course, about the exact reference of the ‘We’ to whom he refers in verse n, and the ‘Ye’ in verse 13. There are those who say that the ‘We’ is just a kind of editorial ‘we’; that the Apostle is referring to himself, but that instead of saying T he says ‘We’. There are others who say that the ‘We’ includes Jews and Gentiles, all Christians, irrespective of their origins. But surely both ideas are quite untenable. In my view the ‘We’ is in contrast to the ‘Ye also’ - We and You. It is quite clear that the ‘You’ in verse 13 is a reference to the Gentiles as represented here by the Ephesians and the various other churches to whom this letter was probably sent. So, we must insist upon saying that the ‘We’ here is a reference to the Jews. There is a further argument which clinches this exposition. We note that he says concerning this ‘We’ in verse 12: ‘That we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ.’ The English Revised Version reads: ‘We who had before hoped in Christ’. This supplies proof that the ‘We’ here is a reference to the Jews. If you take it as we find it in the Authorized Version, where we have ‘Who first trusted in Christ’, it emphasizes the fact that chronologically Jews believed in Christ before Gentiles began to do so. They believed first, then the others followed. Our Lord told His apostles that they were to be His witnesses ‘both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). Historically it is the case that the Jews were the first Christians. Or taking the Revised Version, which says, ‘Who had before hoped in Christ’, it is a reference to the fact that throughout the Old Testament dispensation the Jews were looking forward to the coming of Messiah. In any case it is still a reference to the Jews. The Apostle emphasizes the ‘We’ and the ‘You’ - We Jews, You Gentiles - because of the astounding fact that they have been brought together, they have ‘been made one’ in Christ. Tn whom also we have obtained an inheritance . . . and Ye also’ - we are together in it. This, as I have already suggested, is not only the great theme of this particular Epistle, but also the theme of the whole of the New Testament and particularly of the New Testament Epistles. In this particular Epistle it is pre-eminently the theme. This is seen most explicitly in the second chapter. Paul repeats it many times and is never tired of doing so. In the third chapter he says that the dispensation had been committed to him to reveal the truth ‘which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed’. God had now revealed ‘unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body’ (vv. 2-6). The Apostle never ceased to be amazed at this, and to be thrilled by it. So, in his fourth chapter he says the same thing again. We recall also the interesting phrase he uses in writing to the Romans, where he tells them that what he was proud of above everything else was that he was ‘the Apostle of the Gentiles’. He says T magnify my office’ (Romans 11: i z). This had produced a revolution in his life. We know what a narrow, bigoted Jewish nationalist he had been, and how he prided himself on his nationality. It made him intolerant, and the Gentiles were to him but dogs, outsiders. But now he is ‘the Apostle of the Gentiles’. And in this Epistle to the Ephesian Gentiles, he must emphasize this marvelous thing God has brought to pass. God’s great plan is already in operation; he is a part of it, and they are a part of it! Paul begins his Epistle to the Romans on the same note: ‘by Christ we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations’ (1Again, ‘The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him’ (Romans 10:12), wherever they may happen to have come from. Again, in the Epistle to the Galatians, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female’ (3 :28). The old divisions have gone, and to perpetuate such distinctions is a denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Such is his teaching, and such is the glory of it. This is the astounding thing that has happened. In the same Epistle to the Galatians he says, ‘If ye be Christ’s [whether Jew or Gentile], then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (3 129). We must get rid of all carnal, materialistic, national ideas. All that is finished; it is the spiritual seed in Abraham and Christ that counts in God’s sight. There is a new nation consisting of God’s people; we Christians are God’s people. This is the new way, the great theme of the New Testament, the new dispensation; all else has been abolished. God’s purpose was to use the Jews temporarily; but now He has something bigger and greater, including both Jews and Gentiles. Such is the Apostle’s argument. If we turn to his Epistle to the Colossians, we find it there; we find it everywhere. Perhaps it is true to say that in that bit of autobiography in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians the Apostle expresses the matter most clearly (vv. 4-14). He condemns himself for what he had been and ridicules all his former foolish pride and boasting. However, the really important matter is to be clear as to how all this has been done, how God has brought it all to pass. The Apostle tells us in a particularly interesting and entrancing manner; and it becomes the more interesting to us as we remind ourselves of the world as it is, with all its clashes and conflicts and divisions and tensions. In the light of biblical truth and against a world background, how wonderful it is to look at this plan of God as it is unfolded by the Apostle! At the same time, it is particularly interesting to observe that God’s way in Christ is so very different from that which frequently passes as Christianity at the present time, with all its emphasis on the political and social application of the gospel. God’s way of restoring harmony and unity is to produce Christians, and therefore Paul tells us certain things about the Christian. He gives us a perfect picture of Christianity and, as I understand it, he tells us five things concerning it. The first thing we are told is that what makes us Christians is that we are ‘in Christ’. There is no hope of unity apart from Christianity. There will never be true unity amongst men until men are Christians. There is no conceivable lasting unity and harmony, no hope of restoration to that which God originally made, except as men are made Christians. And we are Christians only as we are ‘in Christ’. Secondly, there are certain things that are true of us as Christians because we are ‘in Christ’. Paul tells us what they are. Thirdly, in a statement which shows both God’s side and man’s side, Paul gives us an explanation of the way in which we enter into these blessings. Fourthly, he shows us the guarantee of the fact that we have these blessings, and, still more important, the guarantee of the fact that we shall never lose them. The Holy Spirit is the Seal ‘until the redemption of the purchased possession’. At one and the same time He seals it to us and tells us that we are already in the plan. Fifthly and finally, the Apostle stresses that the ultimate object of all things is the glory of God - ‘to the praise of his glory’ - ‘unto the praise of his glory’ (vv. 12, 14). The first thing, then, is that what reconciles Jew and Gentile - and the only thing that reconciles them - is that they should become Christians, ‘in Christ’. To be a Christian means to be in a new relationship to Christ, it means to be ‘in Christ’. It does not mean that you have been born in a particular country, or that your parents or grandparents were Christians. Christianity means being ‘in Christ’. In other words, God reconciles men by bringing them into a new relationship; and it is purely a question of relationships. All troubles in the world, between nations, between individuals, stem from a failure at some point in the realm of relationships. There never will be a more perfect illustration of all this than this extraordinary picture of Jew and Gentile. Between them was this middle wall of partition; the Jew looked at himself in a certain way and so did the Gentile. But their relationships were all wrong because each made a god of himself and his position, and there was a clash between these respective gods. The Jew prided himself on being one of God’s people, and that he had the law. The divine law had been given to his nation. They did not stop to ask whether they kept the law, whether they honored it; that did not matter, the important thing was to possess the law. The Gentiles had never had the law; they were not given the law. The Jews despised all others as dogs who were outside the commonwealth of Israel, ‘without God in the world’. But this kind of attitude was not confined to the Jews. It was equally true of Gentiles, for example, the Greeks. The Greeks had a great heritage of learning and of intellectual ability; and there had been an astounding flowering period in the history of the mind of man when the outstanding Greek philosophers - Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle and others - had looked into the problems of life and elaborated their theories and drawn up their plans for Utopia. No one else had done that; they were a race apart, they were unique. The Jews and all others were to them Barbarians. So, the Greek prided himself on his superiority. Thus, Jews and Greeks clashed and fought, as they must always do, and as they are doing in the modern world. Such then was the position; there was this division of mankind, this ‘middle wall of partition’ between them. Today we talk about ‘curtains’ - iron curtain and bamboo curtain - but they are in reality walls which have been built carefully by both sides. Each one is repairing the wall on his side. This is true of the life of the world today with all its clashes and divisions and unhappiness. The Christian way is only one way of dealing with such a situation. But this does not mean, as so many teach, that what is needed is the application of the teaching of Christ to modern problems, and that the Church’s business is to tell people how to behave in a Christian manner and to apply Christian principles. That is not the teaching of Paul. There is no greater heresy, in a sense, than to expect Christian conduct from people who are not Christians. Why should they behave in a Christian manner? They do not agree with Christian teaching and do not accept it. No one can live the Christian life without first becoming a Christian. The Apostle makes that quite clear in the second chapter of our Epistle where he says ‘. . . not of works, lest any man should boast; for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works’ (vv. 9-10). We have to be ‘created in Christ’ before we can do good works; we have to be alive before we can act. A dead man cannot act, and all who are not in Christ are ‘dead in trespasses and sins. They cannot carry out Christian teaching and have never done so. I emphasize this because it is sometimes a stumbling block to Christians of weak faith and is certainly a stumbling-block to many outside the Church. The difficulty presents itself in the following way. A man says to us, I cannot possibly believe in your Christianity; it has been preached and taught for nearly two thousand years yet look at the world! They say, ‘If your message is right, well then, why is not the world better than it is?’ The answer is that true Christianity has never claimed that the world would become better and better in that way, for it is not a teaching to be applied by men as they are. It only works when men are together ‘in Christ’, in a new relationship. Let us see how this has happened. What was it that brought Paul and the Ephesians together? What was it that made Jew and Gentile bow together on their knees to God and pray in one spirit? Christ is the answer. Christ came and lived and taught and died, and rose again for Jew and Gentile alike, for the Jew had not kept the law any more than the Gentile and was condemned by the very law of which he boasted. When Paul, the Jew, saw the true meaning of the law and its spiritual character, and especially the meaning of the Cross, he saw that ‘the whole world was lying guilty before God’, that ‘there is none righteous, no, not one’. The Jew was no better than the Gentile. ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans; :y-rz). The Jew is not superior to the Greek, the Greek is not superior to the Jew. They are all together groveling in the dust in utter failure, and sinners in the sight of a holy God. They are made one even in condemnation and in sin. The pride is taken out of both, they are crushed to the ground. There is nothing that one can boast of as against the other; they are all equally hopeless. But then the Gospel goes on to tell them that both can be redeemed and reconciled to God and to one another by the blood of Christ. It is only because Christ has made Himself responsible for their guilt and failure, and has died for them, that they can have this reconciliation; and they both receive it in exactly the same way. It is not the law that brings anyone into it; it is not philosophy that does so; it is Christ who brings both in. They are equal at every point. Both alike also need strength and power to lead this new life into which they have been brought; so, they are given the same Holy Spirit, they are given the same new nature. Christ is in them, and they are in Christ. It is all ‘in him’, and it all comes out of Him, and they all enjoy it together. They are created a new, born again, ‘in Christ’. Tn whom we. ... in whom ye . . .’ (Ephesians 1: 11, i z). The Church is largely wasting her time in talking politics, and in imagining that, if you give people the Christian ethic and urge them to practice it, the problems of the world will be solved. It cannot be done regeneration is essential. God produces this final harmony again by regeneration, a new creation, new men in a new world — ‘new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness’. That is God’s method. It is only as we are all ‘in Christ’ that we can be reconciled. We become members severally of His body. ‘Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular’ and so the eye does not say to the foot ‘I have no need of thee’, nor does the hand speak thus to any other part. All the parts are essential (i Corinthians 12:14-27). That is the picture. All one - not in Christ as a teacher, but vitally, spiritually, mystically, members of His body and united in Him by the Holy Spirit. The second matter we have to consider is what becomes true of us as Christians because we are ‘in Christ’. Paul states this in a most interesting manner by saying, ‘in whom also we have obtained an inheritance’. That is how it is expressed in the Authorized Version, but the English Revised Version reads, ‘in whom also we were made a heritage’. So, the two versions differ at this point. The Revised Standard Version is pitifully weak and simply has the word ‘appointed’ and so misses the rich meaning of the word the Apostle used. He actually used a very interesting and old word, and this is the only place where it is used in the New Testament. It is a word that carries the meaning and conveys the idea of an inheritance obtained by casting a lot, or the drawing of lots. The difference in the translations found in the Authorized and the Revised Versions is due to the fact that the word is used in the passive tense; and it was because they were impressed by this that the revisers used the word ‘heritage’ instead of ‘inheritance’. Because the blessing described is not the result of something we have done - indeed we are passive - they translated it as ‘made a heritage’. But surely, they were quite wrong. If they had remembered the context instead of concentrating on the word only, they would never have fallen into that error. A better translation would be, ‘We have been made, possessors, or inheritors, by lot’; or ‘We have been endowed with an inheritance by lot’. I insist upon this and say that the Authorized Version is very much nearer the truth. And for the following reason: in the fourteenth verse the Apostle definitely and explicitly speaks about an inheritance - ‘Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession’. It is true, of course, to say that Christians are God’s heritage. Paul himself says so in verse 18 of this first chapter, but here he is not emphasizing that truth, but rather our inheritance. What he says here is that the Jew and the Gentile are made one, not only because they have their sins forgiven in the same way, but also because they are inheritors together of the same heritage. ‘We’ have obtained a stake in it, says Paul, and ‘you’ have obtained a stake in it: we are in it together, we are ‘fellow heirs. It seems quite clear that this is what the Apostle is saying here. As I have already reminded you, in the third chapter he says that the special message committed to him was that the Gentiles should be ‘fellow-heirs and of the same body’. Indeed, he says the same in the second chapter in verses 12 and 13 - ‘That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ’ and have become members of ‘the household of God’ (v. 19). They are now in the same family. In Christ Jew and Gentile are not only fellow-heirs together; still more wonderful, they are joint-heirs with Christ. That is the statement of the Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans in chapter 8, verse 17 - ‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and (therefore) joint-heirs with Christ’. We are ‘in him’, we belong to Him, and therefore we are joint-heirs with Him - joint-heirs with one another and joint-heirs with Him. Everything is in Christ. Were we to grasp this as we should not only be the happiest people on the face of the earth, we would also ‘rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory’. We would do so because with Paul we would realize that we have an interest in all this, we have a stake in it; we belong to the people who are going to share it. The great day is coming when sin and evil will be destroyed, and the devil will be cast into the lake of perdition. This perfect harmony will then be restored in the entire cosmos. Such is the blessing that comes to one who is ‘in Christ’, a Christian. He is an heir of all blessing; he is going to be an inheritor of it. And so are all his fellow Christians. So, we look forward together. Ultimately it means seeing God. It means being with Christ and enjoying His glory. It means reigning with Christ: if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. The kingdom of God and of His Christ is coming; and nothing can stop it. And we who are ‘in Christ’ are certain to be there. We shall be on this new earth and under the new heavens, and we shall enjoy Paradise, and eat of its celestial fruits. We shall spend our eternity doing so. We shall ‘judge men’, we shall ‘judge angels’, because we are ‘in Christ’. With Him we shall enjoy that eternally blessed state which shall never end. Men and women who believe this truth, and who know that it is true of themselves, are not over-interested in this world and what happens in it. The nations fight because they want to spread their empires, or to take a piece of land. The same is true of individuals. It is so because of their sense of values. People fight over money, over position, over popularity, over anything. It results from their possessiveness, selfishness, greed. Those are the only things they care about and value; and as long as they look at things in that way they will continue to fight and quarrel about them, no matter how educated and ‘advanced’ they may be. If it will suit their purposes to adopt Christian principles, they will do so; nations have often used Christianity to spread empires! But that is not Christianity. The essence of the Christian’s position is that he has seen the inheritance ‘incorruptible and undefiled and that faded not away, reserved in heaven’ by God, for them who are in Christ Jesus. A man who has had no more than a glimpse of such things rides very lightly to this life and its affairs. He has ‘set his affection on things above, not on things on the earth’, and he knows that all others who have done so are fellow heirs with him. So, the fight and the quarrel and the middle wall have gone. We are all one, we are looking for the same things. The only harmony that this world will ever know is the harmony that is produced in and through men and women who in Christ have set their affection on the things above. ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance; in whom also ...’. As John Newton says - Fading is the worldling’s pleasure, All his boasted pomp and show. Solid joys and lasting treasure None but Zion's children know. Oh, the joy of being among the redeemed, the joy of knowing that though we may be stripped of everything here, our final inheritance is guaranteed and safe and sure! Have you got a stake in it? Has a ‘lot’ been given to you? It has, says Paul, to all who are ‘in Christ’, who have hope in Him. T9 The Counsel of His own Will ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.’ Ephesians 1:11-14 We continue our discussion of the Apostle’s great statement. He has announced that the great secret which God has revealed concerning His purpose is that in this present age, and in Christ, He has reunited the discordant parts, the separate parts, into which sin has divided the world and the whole cosmos. God is restoring the original harmony, in heaven and on earth, and He is doing so in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. In the dispensation of the fulness of times it is His purpose that He might ‘gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him’. In these verses we are considering the ways in which God is doing this, and have already given attention to the first, and indeed in many senses the chief way, namely, the formation and the growth of the Christian Church. The Church is the new Israel, the spiritual Israel, the true seed of Abraham, and she consists of Jews and Gentiles. But the unity is established, as we have seen, by making these different people Christians, and the Apostle incidentally tells us a number of things about the Christian. We have already considered two of them. Now we come to consider, in the third place, the way in which all this has happened to us, how this has ever become true of us, knowing ourselves as we do. How does anyone become a Christian? How does anyone enter into this position in which he is ‘in Christ’ and a ‘joint heir’ with Christ? Fortunately, the Apostle deals with that subject also. He is not content with saying that this is true of us, he tells us how it has become true. And he does so, of course, because this was something at which he never ceased to wonder. As we proceed, we find Paid using a number of terms which we have already encountered. We met them in verses 4 and 5. They include certain great terms and phrases which are to be found throughout the New Testament, terms which are absolutely essential to a true and ultimate understanding of the Gospel: Tn whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.’ In verses 4 and 5 we find: ‘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: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.’ Such are the terms. We are here face to face with high doctrine, with some of the great profundities of the Christian faith and the Christian message. Someone may ask: Why does the Apostle repeat these terms here, having already used them in verses 4 and 5? The explanation is not only simple but very important. In verses 4 and 5 the Apostle was taking a general view of God’s purpose, he was looking at it, as it were, from that eternal standpoint. Now he is not merely looking at it in general, but also in its particular application to us. There, it was the great scheme itself; here, it is the scheme as applied to us. But he still uses the same terms as he used there. They apply not only to the thought but also to the application. Many Christian people never study these terms, never dwell on them, never turn them over in their minds. Let me prove that contention by asking a question. How often have you heard anyone going slowly, and term by term, through this great chapter? Or how often have you read them yourself in this way? Are we not in danger of avoiding these great terms because of certain associations which they have? This is something of which we, as Christian people, need to be very wary at this present hour, for certain aspects of New Testament truth are just not being considered at all because of an element of controversy attached to them. Large numbers of Christian people are totally ignorant of prophetic truth, for instance, because their attitude to it is determined by the fact that it leads to argument and wrangling about various theories. They imagine that that is a wise and sound position to take up. But what they are actually doing is deliberately to ignore God’s Word; they are deliberately by-passing certain aspects and elements of God’s revealed Truth. God means us to study and to face everything in His word whether it is difficult or simple, whether involved in controversy or otherwise. To say ‘peace at any price’ at the expense of God’s revealed truth is surely an insult to God. These matters have to be faced, whether it is the truth concerning prophecy or whether it be the truth concerning these high matters of doctrine which the Apostle puts before us in these verses, as he has already done in verses 4 and 5. How, then, do we approach the truth? First of all, without prejudice. We all start with prejudices; we take up positions, and having taken them up, we argue for them, and we defend them. We say T have always said this; my parents said it before me; I have always been taught to believe this; therefore, I stand . . .’ So, it often happens that we have never really considered the Scripture teaching concerning these matters. We may never have read a book on the subject or considered what those whom God has called and appointed as leaders in the Church throughout the centuries have said and taught concerning it. We start with a prejudice, and we hold on to it, and feel that it is a part of our personality. We must defend it! Our minds are so shut and closed that we do not even consider the question. It is surely unnecessary to point out that that is a totally un-Christian attitude. Nothing is further removed from the Christian position. This was the attitude of the Pharisees, and it was the reason why they hated our Lord and His teaching. It was the same attitude that opposed the Apostles wherever they went to preach. This new theory, this new idea and teaching offended people’s prejudices. May God give us grace to rid ourselves of the prejudices to which we are all liable, and to which we are subject as the result of sin. The second matter which I would emphasize is that we must submit ourselves and our minds entirely to the Scripture. We must make a positive effort to ensure that we come to the Scripture as if we knew nothing, and that we allow the Scripture to speak to us, instead of reading our thoughts into the Scripture. This is an extremely difficult matter for all of us, because we all have preconceived notions which tend to become spectacles through which we look at Scripture. But we must submit ourselves to the Scripture. I emphasize this negatively by saying that we must not come to these matters in terms of philosophy. We all tend to start with original or inherited ideas as to what God should do, and what it is right for God to do, and if God does not behave in that way, then we may even impute unfairness to Him. This is philosophy; this is an example of a philosopher pitting his mind against God’s revelation. Nothing is more dangerous. Because they behave in such a manner many people show themselves to be most unchristian. They say, T cannot understand this idea of the Incarnation - two natures in one person’ - and so they reject it. The insistence on understanding is a part of philosophy. They do not understand the Atonement, they say, and therefore do not believe it. Most people who reject the gospel of salvation do so simply because they say they cannot understand it. Technically they are not philosophers; nevertheless, they are speaking philosophically. I emphasize therefore that it is of vital importance that we submit our minds to the Scriptures and their revelation and that we cease to think philosophically. In other words, we must realize that we are face to face with something which we cannot understand. I will go further; it is something that we are not meant to understand before we believe. We recall how the Apostle deals with the position of a man who puts up his objection in this way. The Apostle simply replies by saying, ‘Nay but, O man, who art thou that replies against God?’ (Romans 9:20). This truth is not to be understood, says Paul in effect, it is to be received. This is what God Himself has told us, and if you imagine that you can understand and span the mind of the Lord you are simply betraying the fact that your whole idea of God is wrong. That is ultimately the real trouble with all unbelievers; their thinking about God is all wrong. ‘Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?' This is the question asked by Isaiah (40:13) and quoted in the New Testament (Romans 11134). We are face to face here with the mystery of God’s eternal mind; and it is so high above us that we should not even begin to try to understand it. We must come humbly to it and look at it and receive it. If you try to have a final understanding of these matters or hope to be able to reconcile certain things intellectually, you are not only doomed to failure, but you are guilty of trying to do something which the Apostle rebukes in the strongest and clearest manner in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Further rebukes are found in the second chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, for example: ‘The natural man received not the things of the Spirit of God.’ We are now able to approach these great matters in the right manner. The words of our text convey a truth meant for Christian people only; it is not a truth to be preached in an evangelistic service. It is a truth for the children, it is a truth for those who have been let into the secret; for those who have been given the Holy Spirit, who enlightens the mind and who gives understanding. It is not for the natural man who does not understand any part of salvation, and least of all this. But it is a truth which the children of God throughout the centuries have always found to be most consoling, most encouraging and most reassuring. The right way to approach it is by remembering that the controlling element in these matters is always the glory of God. ‘That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ’; again, ‘which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory’. The paragraph started with the words, ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. You must start there and end there. We found it again in verse 6: ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.’ In every view of salvation, the place given in it to the glory of God provides the ultimate test. The proof that it is truly scriptural is that it gives all the glory to God. None must be reserved for us or for anyone else. The Apostle keeps on repeating it - ‘to the glory of God’, ‘the glory of his grace’, ‘to his glory’. Elsewhere he writes, ‘But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that gloried, let him glory in the Lord’ (i Corinthians i :;v-;i). My view of the way in which I have become a Christian must satisfy the test that it promotes and ministers to the glory of God. Salvation comes to us in spite of ourselves; we are nothing. We are not Christians because of our particular character or because of anything that we have done. It is all of God. The Apostle emphasizes this in the second chapter of this Epistle when he writes: ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast’ (v. 8). There is to be no self-glorying; no man must glory in himself. This teaching is not confined to the Epistle to the Ephesians; it is to be found everywhere in Scripture. It runs as a great theme throughout the New Testament, perhaps most clearly of all in the Gospel of John. This particular aspect of truth is found most clearly on the lips of our blessed Lord and Savior Himself as seen in the sixth chapter and the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel. It is found likewise in the high priestly prayer in the seventeenth chapter. But it is equally true to say that it is the outstanding doctrine of the Old Testament also. It alone explains why Israel was the chosen race, why the Jews were the chosen people. It was not because of anything in them. Indeed, someone has said - and I believe there is a great deal of justification for so saying - that God chose them in order to show that if He could make something of such people, He could do so with anyone. Consider their story as found in the Old Testament; nothing could be more miserable or hopeless. Their salvation was of God, and God says so, and says so specifically to them. He tells them plainly and repeatedly that He had not chosen them because there was anything meritorious in them, but for His own Name’s sake, and that His glory might be manifested. The entire story in the Old Testament from the call of Abraham onwards is of God. ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth,’ He says through the prophet Amos (Amos 5:2). That is the over-all aspect of the truth, but Paul breaks it up into its component parts. The first thing he tells us is that God has ‘purposed’ all this. ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him . . This word ‘purpose’ emphasizes the fact that the original idea, the thought in its very inception, was something that had God for its author. The eternal God devised the purpose of restoring this unity, this harmony, and of doing so in terms of certain people ‘before the foundation of the world’. But then the Apostle adds to that by saying, ‘. . . according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will’. This most important phrase, ‘the counsel of his own will’, is added, it seems to me, to safeguard the previous idea that the purpose is entirely and only God’s; for which reason the Apostle has already said the same thing before. He did so in verse 5: ‘Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.’ Again, in verse 9: ‘Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself.’ The repetition is the Apostle’s way of saying that this purpose which God has conceived was not suggested to God by anyone else. I quote again the question of the fortieth chapter of Isaiah: ‘Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him?’ (v. 1;). All is ‘according to the counsel of God’s own will’. No-one suggested to God that it might be good to do this or that. It was not only not suggested to Him by anyone else, but it was also not even suggested to God, as some have supposed, by reason of His foreknowledge whereby He saw that certain people were going to think and do certain things, in consequence of which His own thoughts were determined. Such an idea is a complete denial of what the Apostle teaches here. Everything is according to the counsel of His own will. He thought with Himself, He deliberated and meditated with Himself. The whole plan of salvation from beginning to end is exclusively of God, with nothing at all from the outside. Everything originates in God; everything comes out from God. I said at the beginning that we were considering high doctrine. There is nothing more glorious than this, that God should have been pleased to reveal these things to us. That is why we should constantly thank God for the Bible and its teachings, which emphasize the application of God’s grand design to you and me. We are not considering some abstract truth. Before time, before the creation of the world, God purposed, according to the counsel of His own will, to restore harmony to the whole of the cosmos; and in particular He has purposed that you and I should have a part and place in it - ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance’. We have this part and place because God predestinated us to it according to the purpose which He purposed according to the counsel of His own will. The result is that you and I are sharing in this and have tasted of the heavenly gift. You and I know something about the ‘first fruits’ of everlasting bliss and glory. You and I are what we are for the reason that God purposed according to the counsel of His own will that we should be in it and should be sharers of it. ‘Predestinated’ means ‘pre-determined’. What can be greater or more staggering than this, that God thought of me, thought of you there in the counsel of His own will! He not only conceived the plan, He saw us in it. ‘We,’ says Paul - ‘we Jews, who first trusted in Christ were predestinated, and you Gentiles also have a part in this inheritance. God has pre-determined that we should both be in it, Jews and Gentiles. We are not only in the mind and the heart of God; we were always there. We are there now because we were there before the foundation of the world.’ It is God also who works out this purpose. This is the most amazing and the most consoling and comforting truth we can ever know. It is the whole basis of my assurance at this present moment; it is also the guarantee of my future. It is God Himself who put me where I am, and ‘He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ’ (Philippians i :6). I am in this plan of God, and I am what I am in spite of my sin, in spite of all that is so true of me, in spite of the fact that I was, with others, ‘dead in trespasses and sins’. ‘Being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will.’ But we must not only think of it in a personal sense. This purpose conceived in the eternal mind of God, beyond the particular reference to you and to me, has in mind also the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ and the ‘fulness of the Jews’. That will constitute the great kingdom, the people, the family of God, gathered in that way, and being gathered throughout the centuries. Such is God’s plan. In describing how this plan actually finds fulfilment, how it actually comes to us, how it begins to operate, the Apostle uses the word ‘worketh’ - ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will’. This is the Apostle’s way of saying that God is not only entirely responsible for the initiation and the conception of the purpose, but He is also equally responsible for carrying it out. This, again, is of the very essence of the teaching of the Bible. It is indeed, in many ways, the whole story of the Bible. When man fell God immediately revealed His purpose. Man had listened to the devil, had sinned, had fallen; and in doing so had dragged the whole of humanity down with him. The earth itself had been cursed, and the harmony of God’s cosmos had given place to strife and trouble. God announced His plan, His purpose, by saying that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head. As we read through the Old Testament, we see God working out that plan. He is the worker, the one who does all. ‘We are his workmanship.’ Nothing is of us — ‘Not of works, lest any man should boast’ (Ephesians 2:9). As we read the history, we see God bringing about the Flood yet saving a remnant, just one family - eight souls, Noah and his family. It was He who told them what to do to save themselves; He put them into the ark. We come later to the call of Abraham. This is all a part of the working out of God’s great purpose. He was preparing for the coming of His Son, the Messiah, in whom the plan centered. But the preparation was necessary; and the preparation was entirely the work of God. He looked at Abraham in his pagan surroundings and He called him out from them. That was another vital step in the working out of the plan. He turned that man into a nation. Then come the patriarchs and their descendants, the children of Israel. We soon see them as slaves in Egypt and in an apparently hopeless situation. But God delivers them out of Egypt and leads them into Canaan. Constantly they sin and go astray, and He sends them prophets to warn them. Eventually they are carried away into captivity in Babylon; but He brings a remnant back into Canaan. Had the plan of God been dependent upon the Jews it would have foundered. But it was God Himself who was working it out. Then, ‘when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons’ (Galatians 4:4-5). God is now working out His plan through His Son. The Son came to work out our salvation. He obeyed the law, gave manifestations of His glory, and bore the sins of His own people in His own body on the tree, thereby making an atonement for our sins. Then He rose from the grave and ascended to heaven and sent down the Holy Spirit. It is all God’s work; it is God working out His own purpose in all things ‘according to the counsel of his own will’. And it is being worked out in us as well. Were it not so, not one of us would be a Christian. He quickens us, He convicts us, He regenerates us and gives us His Spirit to dwell within us. But someone may ask, what of the injunction, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’? The answer is: ‘It is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure’ (Philippians 2:13). It is God who has given us ‘the Spirit that searched all things, yea the deep things of God’, otherwise we would never understand these things at all. From beginning to end God is working out His great scheme and purpose. In the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans the Apostle says in verse 28: ‘We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose.’ We note there the same terms - ‘purpose’, ‘called’, ‘work’. Then Paul continues: ‘For whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.’ It is God who works it all, from the beginning to the very end - ‘He’! ‘He’! ‘He’! But that is not the end of the story: it is only the beginning. It explains to us why and how we have become Christians. It explains why we are interested in these things, and enjoy public worship, and why we are not still living a worldly life as so many others do. It is nothing special or exceptional in us; it is not that we are different from or better than others by nature. We are no better than the world, any more than Jacob was better than Esau. Indeed, it might well be that the reverse was the case. As a natural man Esau seems to have been a much better and finer and nicer type than Jacob. Salvation is based upon nothing in us. It is the fruit of God’s purpose, ‘according to the counsel of his own will’. It is the outworking by Himself of what He has predestinated, pre-determined. We shall go on to consider the means God uses in order to do this, the way in which God works it out, and what He asks of us in the working out of His own great and glorious purpose. But we have started, as we must, where the Apostle begins, because what must ever be most prominent is the glory of God. ‘That we might be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.’ 20 'Heard, Relieved, Trusted’ ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.’ Ephesians 1:11-14 We have seen that we are Christians because God works out His own plan, and that in doing so He uses means. Here, we are told exactly what those means are which God uses in order to place us ‘in Christ’, in order to make us inheritors of the inheritance which God has prepared for us in our blessed Lord and Savior. In verse 13 Paul says: ‘In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation’. These words describe the means which God always uses in order to make Christians. In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we see it clearly in practice. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, to whom this work has been entrusted left but a handful of people on earth when He ascended to heaven. It seemed quite impossible that this great scheme of God could be carried out by a mere handful of people - and such people! But it happened! The Apostles were told to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Ghost should come upon them, and then they were to go out and to be witnesses to Christ. They were to preach the Word. And they went, as recorded in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. This is God’s way of making Christians out of us. It is by means of, and through the instrumentality of the ‘word of truth, the gospel of our salvation’.  The Apostle calls it ‘the word of truth’. But that does not simply mean that it is a true word. It is a true word, of course, but Paul does not mean truth indiscriminately. He means a particular truth through which, and by means of which, we all receive our salvation - ‘the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation’. It is a word that conveys a given truth which, when we see it, comes to us as the greatest good news we have ever known. It is the good news concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, the news concerning His Person, and the news concerning His work - who He is and what He has done. That, and nothing else, is the good news; and no one can become a Christian apart from this ‘word of truth’. Stated negatively it means that you do not become a Christian simply by having an experience or by having a different feeling within you from what you had formerly. Many think that that is what makes us Christians. Because they are now living a new kind of life, they think they are necessarily Christians. But that may not be so. You cannot be a Christian apart from the truth, ‘the gospel of your salvation’. This is fundamental. We are constantly reading in the newspapers of people who are praised and acclaimed as ‘the greatest Christians of the century’, but who sometimes believe in nothing except what they call ‘reverence for life’. They do not believe ‘the word of truth’, they do not believe the Word of God: their position is not dependent on the Person of Christ and His work. There are many who think of Christians as those who are ‘living a good life’, making a great sacrifice to help others and to do good works. But such thinking is mistaken; there is no such thing as being a Christian apart from this ‘word of truth’. This is God’s way of making Christians; it is through ‘the word of truth’, the gospel of our salvation. There are many agencies in the world which can give us experiences and a good feeling, and make us feel happy, and lead us to do much good. There are many cults which can produce such results. Our Christian argument against the cults is not that they do not lead to results but that they are not based on truth, for they do not present the word of truth. They certainly produce results. It would be ridiculous to deny that many cults have done good. There are people who testify that since they have become followers of a certain cult their whole life has been changed. They are now happy whereas formerly they were miserable; they have lost their worries; they have got rid of certain pains; they are feeling altogether better in every way, and life is full of joy and happiness. Hence, we have to insist that it is ‘the word of truth’ which God uses. It is through the gospel of our salvation; it is through the message that was delivered to the Apostles and which they were empowered to deliver to us. It is that alone which makes us Christian. We can and must state this matter dogmatically. Consider a person who hitherto has been quite godless and irreligious, utterly heedless about all religious matters, and living a life of sin. This person suddenly finds a new interest, he begins to feel that after all there is something in religion. He begins to think that religion will help him, and someone tells him that all he has to do is to believe in God. He takes this up, and begins to read the Bible and to pray, and to worship God as he thinks best. He feels better as the result of so doing. He is now a religious person, and he has this high intent of worshipping God and pleasing Him and living to the glory of God. Now I do not hesitate to assert that if that man’s experience stops at that point, he is not a Christian in the true sense of the term. The Christian is one who realizes that his entire position depends alone upon the Person and work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. ‘The word of truth’, ‘the gospel of our salvation’ is essential. The man whom I have just been describing is in exactly the same position as Old Testament Jews. They believed in God, they tried to please God and to keep His commandments, and to worship Him. They often sacrificed much in order to do so. That was the position of the Pharisees. They fasted twice in the week and gave a tenth of their goods to the poor; they worshipped and lived for God according to their own way of thought. But they were not Christians, and they were great opponents of the Lord Jesus Christ. What differentiates us from those who are not Christian is that we depend entirely upon this ‘word of truth’, this ‘gospel of our salvation’. It is not good news to be told that you should worship God and please God. The good news is to be told of what God has done for us in Christ. That is gospel; it is this salvation which is available as the result of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. Hence, we read of the Apostle Paul exhorting young Timothy to ‘preach the Word’. He does not tell him simply to exhort people to worship God or to live better lives, or to seek a certain experience. His exhortation is ‘Preach the word’, do the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4: 2,5). We read of ordinary Christians in Acts who ‘went everywhere preaching the word’ (814). But we must be careful to give the full content of this word ‘truth’, for Christianity can be mis-used as a psychological agency. Furthermore, there are many who have never known certain aspects of this word of truth who seem to think that they are Christian. But it is quite clear in the New Testament that there was an irreducible minimum which was deemed to be essential. In the first chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians we are given a striking synopsis of this ‘word of truth’. The Apostle Paul did not stay long at Thessalonica, but he stayed long enough to give them the essential truth, and he reminded them of this saying: ‘They themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come’ (vv. 9, 10). Before we begin to talk about living a happier and a better life, we must be aware of the need of being delivered from ‘the wrath to come’. We cannot be Christians without having a conviction of sin. To be a Christian means that we realize that we are guilty before God and under the wrath of God. The Apostle had preached this same message to the learned philosophers in Athens and had told them that God had ‘appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness’ by Jesus Christ (Acts 17:51). By nature, we are all under the wrath of God, we are all sinners; so before we begin to ask for a happy feeling or an ‘experience’ we have to realize our dangerous position. We are condemned by God’s law, we are under His wrath, we are in danger of eternal perdition. We need to be delivered from ‘the wrath to come’. The good news of salvation is that we can be delivered from the wrath to come because the Lord Jesus Christ has borne the wrath Himself on our behalf. The Apostle Paul in writing to the Corinthians makes it clear that his work as a preacher was to proclaim that ‘All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself’. But let there be any misunderstanding he works it out in detail for his readers and adds, ‘not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us [the preachers] the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Corinthians 5: 18-21). The good news of salvation is that God has done all in Christ, He has delivered us from the wrath to come, He has reconciled us to Himself. He has prepared for us this inheritance and has made us His children. It is all the result of the fact that God has taken our sins and put them on His own Son and punished and dealt with them there. Thus, He forgives us and gives us all these benefits. That is the message of salvation. That is ‘the word of truth’. It is not sufficient that we should ask ourselves whether we believe in God and try to worship God and to please God and to live a good life. Do we realize what God has done for us in Christ? Has this ‘word of truth’ come to us? Do I realize that my whole position is based upon this word of truth, the gospel, the good news of salvation? There is another statement of this truth by this same Apostle in his First Epistle to Timothy where he says that God ‘will have all men to be saved’ (2:4). But note that he is very careful to add immediately that that means ‘to come to a knowledge of the truth’. It is not sufficient to be able to say, T am living a changed life, I am a different man, I am a better man than I was. The vital question is, have you a knowledge of the truth? do you know what you believe? can you give a ‘reason for the hope that is in you?’ The Apostle Peter says that we must be ready at all times to give a reason for the hope that is in us ‘with meekness and fear’ (1 Peter 3:15). So, the Christian is one who has a knowledge of the truth, and the Word of truth, and he knows that all has come to him through that Word. God does this work in us by means of and through the Word. Yet even the proclamation of the Word alone is not enough. We cannot read the Book of the Acts of the Apostles without finding evidence of this. We see the Apostles, preaching the gospel to a crowd of people. It may be Peter, or it may be Paul who is preaching this ‘word of truth’, ‘the gospel of salvation’. But the result varies; some believe and some do not believe. Some not only believe but begin to rejoice; others are furious and begin to persecute and say, ‘These men who have turned the world upside down come hither also’ (17:6). The Apostles were sometimes stoned; and men tried to kill them. Both parties, believers and unbelievers, had listened to the same word; so obviously it is not just a question of presenting the message. That has to be done because the word of truth is essential; but the mere presentation of the word of truth does not in and of itself accomplish the work. The additional essential factor is the work of the Holy Spirit. The application of the truth of the Word is made by the Spirit. This is seen clearly in a statement by the Apostle in the first chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The Apostle says in verse 5: ‘Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance’. Obviously, this is a vital statement, and he emphasizes it in all his writings. Tn the second chapter of this Epistle to the Ephesians he states it thus, ‘And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins’ (v. 1). He repeats it in verse 4, ‘But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ’. That is the work of the Spirit. The work of the Spirit is an essential part of Christian doctrine. The message, the gospel of salvation, is preached to all and sundry, and a general offer of salvation is made to all men, but all men do not receive it. What determines the difference is the work of the Holy Spirit who brings the Word with ‘power’ and with ‘much assurance’ to those who become believers. We have another classical statement of this vital truth in the second chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul talks about the ‘mystery’ committed to him which he has to preach. He then says: ‘Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’ (v. 8). The princes of this world did not recognize the truth, did not recognize Christ. How then can anyone become Christian; how had these Corinthians become Christians? The answer is: ‘God hath revealed them [his truths] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searched all things, yea, the deep things of God’. ‘We have received,’ he goes on to say, ‘not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God’ (v. 12). No man can believe on the Lord Jesus Christ apart from the action of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians Paul states it categorically thus: ‘No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost’ (12:3). Without the operation of the Holy Ghost no man can do so. To the natural man these things are foolishness. ‘The natural man received not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned’ (1 Corinthians 2:14). No man as he is by nature, and as the result of sin, can possibly believe the gospel. The work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. In this connection our Lord Himself uttered words which are recorded in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew: T thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes.’ And He proceeds to say that there is but one explanation of this action, namely, ‘Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight’ (vv. 25-26). There is no explanation save this, that the Father has purposed it ‘according to the counsel of his own will’. We cannot understand this, but we know that it is the truth. We have not made ourselves Christians; it is not anything in us - T am what I am by the grace of God’ - and this is true of all Christians. This is not to be understood, but to be believed, to be accepted, to be wondered at. There is a particularly interesting illustration of this matter in the account given in the Book of Acts, chapter 16, of how the gospel first came to the Continent of Europe in a city called Philippi. The Apostle heard that a number of women were accustomed to meet in a prayer-meeting on Sabbath afternoons by the side of a river outside the city wall. So he and his companions went out, joined the little prayer-meeting, sat down among the women, and spoke to them. They spoke this ‘word of truth’; and we are told that a woman called Lydia was converted. She believed the truth and became the first Christian convert in Europe. But how did Lydia come to believe the truth? The answer is given in the fourteenth verse in that chapter in the words, ‘whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things that were spoken of Paul’ (v. 14). The hearts of all of us by nature are shut and closed to the truth, to this message of the gospel. The Word alone cannot open them or soften them. For that to happen the operation of the Holy Spirit is absolutely vital and essential. William Cowper reminds us of this in a hymn: The Spirit breathes upon the Word, And brings the truth to sight. This is a dual operation. The Spirit is in the Word, but the Spirit must be in my heart also, and open it, before I can receive the Word. It is the Spirit who quickens us; it is the Spirit who enlivens us from the death of sin in which we all are by nature; it is the Spirit who gives us the faculty of belief; it is the Spirit who gives us a new principle of life which makes all these things possible. It is all summed up in the second chapter of this Epistle to the Ephesians in verse 8: ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.’ Faith is the gift of God. God enables us to believe by the Spirit. Apart from this operation of the Spirit we remain dead to the Word, and we do not ‘see’ it. But when the Spirit breathes upon the Word, He brings the truth to sight. We see it and so we believe it. That brings us to the third and last step in regard to what you and I have to do. Without our knowing it, the Spirit has been working, and as the result of that three things happen. We hear it, we believe it, and we trust it or hope in it. The three words which the Apostle uses here in this Epistle are, Tn whom ye also trusted (or hoped) after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise’. We must understand clearly that God through the Holy Spirit does not work or act upon us mechanically. God does not force our wills; God does not compel anyone against his will to believe the Gospel. That is not His way of working. We are not treated as automata. What happens is that God persuades the will; He makes the truth attractive to us. So, no man has ever believed the gospel against his will; he has been given to see it in such a way that he desires it, he admires it, he likes it. This is true to our experience. There was a time when we saw nothing in these things, but now they have become everything to us. The difference is explained by the fact that there is a change in us as the result of God’s operation by the Holy Spirit upon us. A truth which had appeared to us to be boring, uninteresting and unattractive suddenly becomes the most wonderful thing we have ever heard of. It is the same truth, and we may have heard it from the same preacher. The fact is that we are different, we now have a new principle or disposition in us which enables us to exercise faith and gives us the ability to comprehend and to understand. We have been given the ability to comprehend and to understand. We have been given an ‘anointing’, an ‘unction’ by the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle John says (i John 2: 20, 27). This working of God upon us and in us must never be thought of as if God bludgeoned our wills, forcing us or compelling us. He leads us to repentance, He leads us to belief by the operation of the Holy Spirit in revealing the Word and opening our hearts to receive it; and the result is that, as new-born babes, there is nothing we so much desire as ‘the sincere milk of the word’. This new faculty, this new principle of life, makes all the difference. Having made it possible for us to act, God calls upon us to act. The word is preached, and we hear it. But hearing is not enough. We must not only hear this Word; we must believe it. And the man who truly hears it believes it. He has come to see himself as a sinner, he has come to see the law of God condemning him; he has some conception now of the holiness of God; and he realizes that he has to stand before God in the Judgment. So, he is concerned, he is alarmed at his whole position. What can he do? He hears this message about Christ dying for sins and he says: ‘That is the very thing I need; I want it; I believe it; although I do not understand it fully.’ So having heard he believes; and he realizes that it is his duty to believe, because all are called upon to repent and to believe. The last term used by the Apostle is translated in the Authorized Version as ‘trusted’. In the Revised Version and certain other Versions, it is translated as ‘hoped’. That is equally good because the two words mean the same thing very much, namely, that we place our hope, our confidence, our trust, in every respect in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what makes us Christians. So, the Apostle says here about the Jews, ‘that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first hoped in Christ’; or in other words, Jews who first realized that Christ is our only hope and our only source of confidence, our only ground of assurance. The Apostle proceeds to say: Tn whom ye also trusted'. The word trusted is added, and neither it nor the word hoped is in the original. Tn whom ye also [have obtained an inheritance] after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation’. They likewise had reposed their trust, their confidence and their hope in the Lord Jesus Christ alone. This is the best definition of a Christian that we can ever encounter. The Christian is one who centers his every hope on the Lord Jesus Christ. When he thinks about his past, and looks back at it, he is given peace with respect to it, not simply because he believes that God is a God of love who is ready to forgive; no, he is given peace about his past because he knows that his past sins were laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ dying upon the Cross on Calvary’s hill. He knows that Christ has borne them and carried them away. It is this alone which gives him confidence and hope and trust as he reviews his past; nothing less. Without that he has no sure hope and is not a Christian. As regards the present, he is aware of his weakness, he is aware of his unworthiness, he is aware of the terrible power of sin and temptation within him; but he still has this hope and confidence and trust. And it is ever based on the truth, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ and His work - I need Thee every hour, stay Thou nearby, Temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh. and ‘With Thee at hand to bless, I fear no foe’. Such are the expressions of his confidence in the present. And as he looks to the future that confidence remains unshaken. He does not know what is going to happen, he is in the same world as everyone else; wars may come, pestilences may come, the devil will certainly be there, temptation and sin will not change, the world will not change, nothing will change, and he is still weak; so how can he face it and meet it ? He knows that the One who is with him ‘will never leave him nor forsake him’. And then beyond all - death! It is bound to come, it has to be faced. But still, he is happy, he is full of hope and confidence and assurance. The One who has been with him in life will be with him in death. T will never leave thee, nor forsake thee’ (Hebrews 15:5). So, he can say with Paul, ‘I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:38-39). Is Christ the basis of all your hope and confidence and faith? If it is not so, you have no right to call yourself a Christian. But if you can say: My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness, I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ Name: On Christ the solid Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand, in that case you are a Christian indeed, and God will bless you.