A Sealed Inheritance (Ephesians 1:11-14)
Introduction
People in our culture voraciously pursue security. We attempt to secure our money through diversifying portfolios, emergency funds, insurance, trusts, legal protection, and long-term financial planning. We attempt to secure our lives through stringent diet and exercise, health insurance, regular checkups, vitamins and supplements, and prescription medications. We secure our personal image through the constant swiping and uploading of our meticulously manicured and carefully culled thoughts and images on social media. And yet in other areas and ways we claw after security through relationships, marriage, communication, cybersecurity, data encryption, psychotherapy, mindfulness, civil activism, education, concealed carry permits, and on and on. We greatly prize the security of our lives.
We want to know that all will be well in the future. It is a shameful thing that so many Christians relentlessly pursue so many of these things when they already have all they need in Jesus Christ. And that’s the point of today’s passage: all that God has promised is absolutely secure. We have been given a great inheritance which the Father planned and the Son has purchased. And what the Father has planned, and what the Son has accomplished, the Spirit seals.
There is perhaps no blessing greater in the Christian life than that of security. God can be as generous as he wants, but if he is not able to guarantee that we will in fact inherit those blessings in full one day, then what good do they do us? An insecure salvation is more of a curse than a blessing. Only a secure salvation is a sweet salvation—a salvation that cannot be lost, a salvation that cannot be taken away, a salvation that cannot be forfeit.
There are many reasons to lack a sense of security in the things of God. Sometimes, we lack a sense of security because we have no reason to be secure in God’s promises! We have no share in them. And if that’s the case, the invitation is wide open. Repent, believe, and come to Christ. Other times, we lack a sense of security because we are acting in unrepentant sin. We are saved, but we are acting in a contradictory way. The evidence of the life disputes the claim of the lips, and we lose that sense of safety. In which case we need to repent and come back to the way of holiness. But other times, we lack a sense of security because we fail to understand all that has been done to make us secure. We don’t know what we don’t know. And these verses are designed to put deep foundations under the immeasurably lofty blessing of security.
This is all the more necessary when we consider the many things that threaten our salvation. Historically they have been summed up in three categories: the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The Devil hates us and desires our demise. 1 Pet 5:8 says, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” And if he desires our demise, so do his children. John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” Thus, John 15:18–19, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Thus, what is remaining of the world in us conspires against us. Romans 7:18, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” In light of these many “dangers, toils, and snares” we need a great comfort that we will in fact persevere through them.
And the need is heightened precisely because of how much there is to lose! The many great blessings enumerated in this paragraph are unmatched in their heights! We have comprehensive blessing (v3), we are chosen by God (v4), we are predestined for sonship (v5), we have been redeemed and forgiven (v7), we have lavishly received wisdom and insight (v8), we understand the mystery of God (v9), and we have been promised a share in a glorious future in which Christ is the head of a renewed universe (v10). The stakes a very high, because in light of the obstacles that lie in between here and there, we are forced to ask the question, “Can we lose that?”
I believe that the answer to that question from this morning’s passage is an unconfused, clear, definitive, no. We cannot lose that. Our salvation has been completely, exhaustively, thoroughly, absolutely secured through God’s work. Not only does God plan our salvation, not only does Christ accomplish our salvation, but then the Spirit secures our salvation and gives us great hope.
Paul encourages us with two truths that afford us great security: We have been made God’s inheritance, and we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
I. We Have Been Made God’s Inheritance (vv11–12)
The first truth that should encourage us to security is that we have been made God’s inheritance. That is to say, we belong to him.
Translational difference. ESV: “obtain an inheritance” vs LSB: “been made an inheritance.” Difference between a middle and a passive verb. But the right idea seems to be the passive: we have become God’s inheritance.
What in the world does that mean!? It simply means we are God’s chosen possession. When God chooses his people and redeems them through sacrifice, they become his unique and treasured possession.
Exodus 19:5–6 – “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Deuteronomy 32:8–9 – “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”
Psalm 78:71 – “From the nursing ewes he brought him [David] to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance.”
Jeremiah 10:16 – “Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the Lord of hosts is his name.”
So also we in the church now belong to him. He has chosen us out of all the peoples of the earth to become his own possession and inheritance. Therefore, We wholly belong to God. We are his possession. And if that is true, then it is not our place to determine what we do with our lives, for we belong wholly to another. John Calvin famously wrote in his Institutes:
“We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.
“Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal. O how much has that man profited who, having been taught that he is not his own, has taken away dominion and rule from his own reason that it may be yielded up to God!”
We belong to him! And God is not careless with his possessions. God does not treat possessions the way a 2-year-old treats their toys.
But the specific word is “inheritance.” And an inheritance is, by definition, something that you don’t have yet. So, what does it mean that we have become God’s inheritance, a chosen people he has yet to inherit? We will have to look at it more in verse 14, but there it says that the Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, literally “until the redemption of the possession.” That is, we have been made into an inheritance now which God will one day fully redeem when he raises us from the dead. We are his inheritance in that we belong to him, and we are yet to fully be redeemed in our practical experience. We belong to him, but we often feel like we belong to sin, or to the world. But when he raises us from the dead, we will finally realize in our experience what he has purchased for himself in Christ’s blood—our holiness and blamelessness in his presence, totally and complete and undivided devotion to God.
And all of this has happened according to the predestining purposes of God. We’ve already encountered the word “predestined” before in 1:5 where his predestining work is to adopt us into his family according to the good pleasure of his will. In other words, we are a family he formed before he made the world, a family he formed through the redeeming blood of his son, and a family formed as part of his redeeming purposes for everything.
Predestination is nothing to be afraid of. It’s not something to figure out. It’s not a code you can crack. It isn’t given for your curiosity or for your distaste. The Bible doesn’t tell us about the doctrine of predestination so that we can try to figure out who’s in or who’s out or so that we can beat each other up with old dusty books. It doesn’t tell us this so that we can convulse in paroxisms of lapsarianisms among a pile of systematic theologies! How does this fit together with our choices? What about evil? What about this and that? Who knows! Because it tells us this for our comfort. It does not tell us the who, but it does tell us the why—that you would be comforted and motivated toward holiness. God planned for you! He predestined you! He included you in his plan! And that’s enough reason to be thankful.
We are thankful because our security flows from his plan and purpose. God does not misplace is possessions. We are his inheritance. This was his plan from before the foundation of the world, for which he has given his own Son to secure it, all as part of the broader plan to unite all things in Christ. Surely he will not allow that plan to fail.
And therefore your salvation cannot fail. Tucked inside God’s plan to exalt Christ above heaven and earth and unite all things in his is his plan to make you his treasured possession. We are a constituent part of God’s plan to renew the universe! While we wouldn’t say that the church is the totality of what God is going to do in the future, we would certainly say that the church is necessary to what God is going to do in the future. We are part of his purpose.
Look back up at verse 9: “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in him.” God’s purpose is to unite all things in Christ, to repair the universe. And your inheritance is bound up with that.
But wait, there’s more! Not only does he make you his own possession, and not only does he predestine us as part of the accomplishing of his purposes for the world in Christ, but he also guarantees that those purposes will happen through his meticulous providence—an old and good theological term which refers to God’s exhaustive oversight of all things. There are no random happenings, no rogue molecules, no unintended consequences. And therefore, there is no chance that God will not inherit you. We have been predestined “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”
God is able to guarantee that all things work together for our good because he is at work in all things. There is not a single event that has happened in this history of this world that is outside his control. And because of that, we can trust him. He is at work in our aches and pains, our strife and difficulty. He is at work in our joys and sorrows, our health and illness, our light and darkness. He is at work in the rise and fall of nations and churning of the machinery of countries. He is at work through democratic republics and tyrannical regimes. He is at work through wayward children and marital conflict. He is at work in the person you married (or didn’t), the children you have (or don’t), the money you earned (or couldn’t), and the holiness you performed (or wouldn’t). He works in the weather, the galaxies, civil lawsuits, agriculture, technology, the animal kingdom, science, romance, home ownership, church planting, military movements, the economy, the judiciary, evangelism, book publishing, church membership, doctrinal controversy, natural disasters, and medical systems. God is at work in all things.
Don’t ask me how! I don’t know! But what I do know is that as he shapes the history of the world according to his purpose, as he works in all these things, he guides history to its proper path—that Jesus Christ would be exalted above all to reunite all things in him.
And all this he does so that we might praise his glory. We may not understand it all now, but there will come a day when he will make everything perfect and it will all make sense. John Flavel, in his book The Mystery of Providence contemplated what it will be like to arrive in eternity and look back upon God’s masterful plan: “O how ravishing and delectable a sight will it be to behold at one view the whole design of Providence, and the proper place and use of every single act, which we could not understand in this world.” You may not understand it now, but one day you will, and it will all accrue to his glory.
II. We Have Been Sealed by the Holy Spirit (vv13–14)
The second truth that should encourage us to trust in God’s saving power is that he has sealed us with his Holy Spirit. The main verb is toward the end of v13: “sealed.”
The sealing of the Spirit comes through hearing the gospel with faith. When God ordains the salvation of his people, he ordains that it would happen through hearing and believing. And here is the other side of predestination: God predestines and chooses and we must hear and believe. It is both, and you can’t choose between them without destroying one or the other. One of the most tempting things we can do is to draw a stark division between God’s work and our work. God does ABC and we do XYZ, he does 50% and we do 50%, or he does 99% and we do 1%. But if we do that, we can’t make any sense out of the New Testament, because the Apostles always talk about these things as a both/and. In Philippians 2, Paul says “work out your own salvation” but then he says that the reason you can and do is because God is in you causing you to “will and to work for his good pleasure.” As one man put it, God and man are both at work in the same field of activity—we don’t believe and hear apart from his work, we believe and hear because of his work.
We hear the word of truth. This reaffirms that great truth we already know: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). You cannot believe that gospel message if you do not hear the gospel message. So, as Paul had just said in that context: “How then will they call on him whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” This is why we hope to put money into missions. But it’s also why we place such emphasis on preaching in our church.
But we don’t just preach any old thing, we preach (Eph 1:13) “the word of truth.” That is, the message which consists in truth. There is no other infallibly reliable source of truth other than the Bible. That should be very comforting in a world that is basically starved of truth, starved of any reliable tether to reality.
Which is in turn “the gospel of your salvation.” That is, the substance of that truth in the Bible revolves around the gospel—the good news that Jesus has died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that on the third day he rose again, and that all those who repent and believe may be saved. It is the good news that Jesus has died to free sinners from bondage to their sin and be made alive together with Jesus in order to walk in holiness.
But it is not just that we must hear the word. We also must believe in him. It is very possible to hear the word yet to reject it. Anything short of acceptance is rejection. Some hear it but reject it as foolishness or nonsense. Some hear it and it seems reasonable, but they are too concerned with the approval of their friends or their reputation at work or what they might lose if they believe it. So, they give a polite nod of acknowledgement to it but shrug off the pangs of conscience as a nuisance. Others hear it and receive it willingly and joyfully. But they fail to count the cost. And so when the demands of discipleship grow, they feel like a burdensome weight rather than the freeing bondage to righteousness that they are. Or, when they begin to change and must suffer the consequences from the world, the flesh, and the devil, they find they are unwilling to pay the price.
It is only those who hear and believe who are saved. That has three parts: they must understand what the claims of the gospel are, they must agree that they are true, and they must cast all their soul upon it as their only hope. It is not believing simply to say that you think the gospel is true, or useful, or nice, or helpful. It is only believing if you wholly and only throw yourself on Jesus Christ.
When we do that, Paul says, we are “sealed with the [lit.] Holy Spirit of promise.” A seal was something put on a letter which identified the letter, indicated who wrote it, and therefore protected it against tampering. Thus, a letter sent from a king would bear his seal—which would verify that it came from the king and protect it from people who would tamper under penalty of law. The idea is very much the same here: the Spirit is the seal and we are the letter. The Spirit is the mark of God on us which identifies us as the children of God, indicates that we belong to God, and protects us against any tampering along the way.
I think the Holy Spirit is one of the most mistreated persons of the trinity today, and perhaps in all of history. Many people see the Holy Spirit as a magical genie who is supposed to appear whenever I rub the bottle to give me what I want or make me feel what I want. But that is not at all the job of the Holy Spirit. He is here to set us apart. In many other context, he sets us apart from sin. But here he sets us apart from the rest of the world for God by sealing us and identifying us as belonging to God with all the rights and privileges that belong to us through that.
So, The Spirit guarantees that we will be inherited by God. The word “guarantee” is a beautiful word. It isn’t just a down payment. It is the possession of part of the very thing you are to receive. The sense is almost “foretaste.”
I remember buying a house for the first time. It’s kind of false advertising. They say it’s going to cost X amount. But it doesn’t really cost that amount. There’s all these other steps. Inspections and realtor fees and loan processing and closing costs and all the rest. But one of the things we learned when we first bought the house is what an earnest payment was. It’s that chunk of money you give to the seller before you buy the house to show that you really are in earnest to buy it. That earnest money is part of the cost of the house, but it itself is not yet the full possession of the house.
That’s the idea here. In the same way, the Spirit is the guarantee of that future world. He is the earnest payment of the future inheritance. Which both means that he makes it certain that we will get that future inheritance. But it also means that he himself is part of that future inheritance. The idea of a foretaste is appropriate. In fact, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the beginning of the incursion of the future world into the present one.
And it is walking in fellowship with the Holy Spirit that connects us to all the sanctifying blessings of life in God’s future kingdom. It is in knowing the Holy Spirit that we understand what heaven is like. Which gives us the deep encouragement—your inheritance is secured because you already experience it, at least in some small way. That’s what it means by the “promised Holy Spirit.” Literally, it’s the “Holy Spirit of promise,” the Holy Spirit who is pointing forward to the promised inheritance.
Now, the Holy Spirit is going to play a huge role in the chapters to come when it comes to forming the body. But I’ll give you a little preview now. That Spirit makes us one in Christ, transforms us into a new humanity. And that new humanity ought to possess unity in the Spirit within the body of Christ. Think about it like this: if God’s goal is to bring unity to all things under Christ, and we because we have the Spirit are a little sampling of that future unity, then what do you think that means about how we should act towards each other?
When God gives you the Spirit individually, he gives you a foretaste of what the coming world is like. But when he gives a whole bunch of people the Spirit and brings them together into a new society called “the church,” he gives the world a foretaste of what that coming world is like. And that’s why we’re here. That’s why we have to be holy. That’s why we need wisdom and insight. That’s why we need to sing and give and pray and meditate and preach. That’s why husbands need to love their wives and wives need to submit to their husbands. That’s why parents and children must be who they are.
And all this has two purposes. First: “for the redemption of the possession.” It means that we have been made an inheritance in Christ, and that there is a coming day when the inheritance will be completed. What is that inheritance? Romans 8:23, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits [guarantee] of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption [Eph 1:5] as sons, the redemption [1:7] of our bodies.” That is the “redemption of the possession.” Our adoption is not complete until we are fully redeemed. God has paid the redemption price in Christ’s blood and poured out all spiritual blessings on us now. And, in a coming day, he will fully redeem us by raising these bodies from the dead. In that day, we enter into the fullness of our inheritance as these earthly bodies are redeemed and made new. And in that day, God will gain his full inheritance of a completely renovated people who are perfected in the image of his Son.
And the second purpose: unto the praise of his glory. He does this so that his glory might be praised. The Westminster divines were absolutely right when they said that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
· Isaiah 43:6–7 – “Bring My sons from afar And My daughters from the ends of the earth, Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”
· Isaiah 43:25 – “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake.”
· 1 John 2:12 – “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.”
· 1Peter 4:10-11- “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Conclusion
Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were Dutch Christians who were sent to the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbrük, notorious for its brutality. When they arrived, they found that their barracks was infested with fleas. In those horrifying conditions, they resolved to thank God and trust him. They faithfully and obediently shared the word of truth with those around them by holding secret bible studies in their barracks. And the Nazis never found them…because of the fleas!
Even in that dark place, God was at work in all things, working all things according to the counsel of his will so that his people would bring the gospel to others, and that he might make an inheritance of his people. Nothing was outside his control. Even in the most unsafe environment, they were safe in God’s care and sealed by his Spirit.
You have no reason to fear. God has done far more to secure your future than you IRA or health insurance ever could. You should feel safer in him than in the love of a spouse or the advice of a friend. You are more secure in his love than the most layered encryption process ever devised.
You are safe. All shall be well. You are his inheritance, secured with the presence of his own Spirit. We have no reason to feel unsafe in this world of dangers. God has done all to ensure that you are kept safe through the end.