Christ Church

What Joseph Knew

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

Before discussing what Joseph knew, we should perhaps begin by considering what we know about Joseph. Despite the fact that we tend to assume we know very little, we may be surprised to discover how much in fact we do know. This is even more surprising when we consider that in the entire scriptural narrative, Joseph never says a word.

The Text

“And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matt. 1:16).

Summary of the Text

Matthew gives us an account of the genealogy of Joseph, descended from David, meaning that Christ’s covenantal lineage was Davidic, as well as His physical lineage (through Mary) being also, as is likely, Davidic. The fact that genealogies are given the place they have in Scripture should indicate to us that they are important, and not given to us so that we might have occasion to roll our eyes at all the begats.

What We Know

We know that Joseph’s father was a man named Jacob (Matt. 1:16). We know that Joseph was of the royal Davidic line (Matt. 1:6). Luke makes a point of telling us this (Luke 1:27), just as the angel had called Joseph a son of the house of David. We know that Joseph was a good man, both righteous and merciful (Matt. 1:19). We know that he was a prophet—an angel appeared to him in a dream and gave him a word from God (Matt. 1:20). We know that Joseph was an obedient man—when he woke from sleep, he did just what the angel had commanded him in that dream (Matt. 1:24). When the Lord’s life was in danger, God entrusted the protection of the Messiah to Joseph, sending an angelic warning in a second dream (Matt. 2:13). God led that family through the head of the family. After Herod died, God gave Joseph a third dream (Matt. 2:19). We know that the legal and covenantal lineage of Jesus was reckoned through Joseph, because that is how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem (Luke 2:4), and the prophet had insisted that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

When the shepherds came, they found Joseph together with Mary and Jesus (Luke 2:16). We know that Joseph was diligent to keep the law (Luke 2:27). When Simeon blessed Jesus, Mary and Joseph together marveled at what was said (Luke 2:33). Given what they heard from Simeon and Anna (and from Elizabeth, and from Mary herself), they knew a great deal. And don’t forget the shepherds and the wise men. They knew something huge was up. Remember that Joseph was the second person on earth to believe in the virgin birth, Mary being the first and she almost doesn’t count.

We think we know that Joseph was a carpenter, which he might have been (Matt. 13:55). In the parallel account in Mark (Mark 6:3), Jesus Himself is called a carpenter. The word in both occasions is tekton. The word can refer to a swinger of hammers, but it could also mean builder (as in, contractor), or even architect. In fact, our word architect comes from this word—archon + tekton. We know that whatever business he had, it wasn’t off the ground yet when Jesus was born. The offering they presented at the Temple for Jesus was two turtledoves, the offering available for poor people (Luke 2:24). This also may have had something to do with the “newlywed” adventure they had in Bethlehem, when they couldn’t get a room in an inn.

Joseph lived long enough to be present when Jesus was twelve (Luke 2:43), and we know that he is absent from the narrative after that. At the same time, we may infer from the number of Christ’s siblings that Joseph lived well past the Lord’s twelfth birthday. Jesus was the eldest of at least seven, which normally wouldn’t fit within twelve years (Mark 6:13).

The Namesake

The name Joseph means God will increase, like the Puritan name Increase Mather. It is a name that denotes blessing and abundance. Joseph of the Old Testament sheds some light on Joseph, the husband of Mary. For example, both men shared a name, and both of their fathers shared the name of Jacob (Gen. 30:23-24; Matt. 1:16). Rachel named Joseph Increase because that is what she was looking for—and received in the birth of Benjamin. The one through whom all God’s promises would come to fruition and increase, Mary, was protected and cared for by a man named Increase. Both Josephs had prophetic dreams. Both Josephs were righteous men. Both were connected in some way to a sexual scandal involving false accusation. Both of them were a wonderful combination of integrity and compassion. Both went down into Egypt and were thereby means of saving their respective families. Both were used by God to provide for a starving world.

Just and Merciful

In the Scriptures, justice and mercy are not at odds with each other. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps. 85:10).

In Deuteronomy 22:23-24, we are given the death penalty for a betrothed woman who committed adultery. Such commandments were never meant to be applied woodenly, but rather with a firm grasp of the principles involved. For example, consider what the law says about the city limits. Now, under the rule of the Romans, it would not be possible for the Jews to apply such a law. One of the things we see in the New Testament is the use of the ultimate penalty from another government in lieu of the one excluded by an unbelieving government. And thus it is we see Paul requiring excommunication at Corinth, while citing this and four other places that required execution. In the same way, a family could apply disinheritance or divorce. This is something that Joseph is resolved to do.

But we are told something else. We are told that Joseph had a tender heart (Matt. 1:19), and that this was an example of his commitment to justice. Joseph, we are told was a just and righteous man, and because of this, he was resolved to do the right thing, but without humiliating Mary publicly. We know that Jesus grew up in a home that could not have seen Joseph as one of the men with stones in the famous incident of the woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8:7).

What Joseph Knew

We may presume that what Joseph marveled at was part of what he knew. At a bare minimum, Joseph knew that the salvation of Jews and Gentiles both was growing up in his home. “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32).

And here we find our gospel conclusion.

Read Full Article

Why Children Matter #4

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Q&A

Introduction

Biblical parenting is much more than a bag of tips and techniques. Techniques are helpful if you are learning to paint-by-numbers, but that is not the kind of thing we are doing when we are bringing up little children. Godly parenting is a function of becoming more like Jesus in the presence of little ones, who are also in the process of becoming more like Jesus.

The Text

“For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church” (1 Cor. 4:15-17).

“Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).

Summary of the Text

The word translated as follower in both texts is mimetes—imitator. In this passage, we learn that real Christian discipleship is driven by a paradigm that is much more familial than it is like a lecture hall. One father is worth ten thousand instructors (v. 15). For that reason, Paul pleads (because he knows the example is good) for the Corinthians to be his imitators (v. 16). This is why he sent Timothy to be with them—he was a beloved son, which meant that they could imitate the grandfather, Paul, through the son. The son would help bring them into remembrance (v. 17). In our second text, we learn that we are imitating an imitator (1 Cor. 11:1). The pattern was not set by Paul, but rather by the Lord Jesus. He imitated Christ, and we are to imitate him. One of the central things we must imitate is the pattern of imitation itself.

Two Kinds of Imitation

Last week I said that true progress in godliness is something that occurs through imitation. But because human beings are necessarily imitators, the same thing is true of ungodliness. We make progress in that by imitation also. We learn by imitation, but we envy that way too. We have to learn how to copy without ego-comparing. If the whole process is occurring “in Christ,” then we are safe. Outside Him, everything is deadly.

Another tell is this. When we are imitating biblically, the more we do it, the more we become like ourselves— naturally, easily, and as a heavenly grace. The more we ego-copy, the more tangled up we get, the more envious we become, and the more like to lash out we are. The first are last, and the last are first (Mark 9:35).

The Authority of Imitation

We are all familiar with the jibe embedded in the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” But we sometimes think that hypocrisy in an authority simply provides the one under authority with an argument to use when he is caught doing something. “Well, you do it too.” It does provide this argument, but something much deeper is going on. The example is the true catechism; the example is what has the true shaping authority.

This means that when parents are confronted with a challenge, their first reaction should not be to “put a stop to this,” but rather to prayerfully ask if the Lord is revealing something to them about their behavior and pattern of life. Is it possible that God is using this occasion to hold up a mirror so that parents would begin their correction with repentance?

Some Examples

Suppose a child is guilty of bad manners at the dinner table, and his father snaps at him. The child has bad manners, sure enough, and his father said not to have them. But . . . it is plainly authorized to have bad manners at the table here—snapping at children is far worse than playing with your potatoes with your knife.

Suppose a child ignores a mother’s pleading, even though she has repeatedly asked, “How do you think this makes me feel?” The child is not learning to give to his mother. Rather, the child is imitating his mother, and it making all his calculations based on how things make him feel.

Take a positive example. Suppose instead of a father saying, “Go help your mother clear the table,” he says instead, “Come, let’s help your mother clear the table.”

Parents have a tendency to mislabel the lesson. Say that a toddler is standing at the coffee table, and repeatedly wants to mess with the vase. Too often parents think the lesson is entitled “How Not to Mess with Vases,” when the actual lesson is called “How Not to Get Exasperated with Other People.”

Deep Imitation

There are many occasions when imitation is right on the surface. It is harder to keep your kids from smoking if you smoke. It is harder to keep them from anger if you are constantly angry yourself. But there is another way of opening the way to ungodly imitation, even if your kids never see you doing whatever it is. God is present, remember, and God sees what doors you are opening in your household, what locks you are leaving unlocked. For example, a father with a secret porn habit can’t be shocked to discover that his son develops the same problem—even if his son didn’t know of the father’s sin. This is because the father is granting “covenantal permission”—he is saying, before God, that this kind of behavior in his household is all right with him. In other words, secret sin can be imitated also.

All You Need is Love

This truism is quite true, but not really the way the Beatles meant it. Love is at the center of the way God is, and God is Lord over all things, and so His way of loving is connected, wonderfully, and authoritatively, to absolutely everything. God is love (1 John 4:8). This is why, if we detach love from whatever it is we are doing, the result is spiritual bankruptcy. If I have mastered all the parenting techniques, if I lead a bunch of seminars, if I keep my kids from squirming in church, but have not love, I am nothing.

Godly teaching, godly character formation, godly discipleship is simply this: loving God and loving the thing you are currently, in the presence of another, whom you also love. Imagine a father and a son in the presence of an unsplit cord of wood. What is the father’s duty here? It is to take two axes, hand one to his son, and to love God, and to love a morning of splitting wood, and to do so alongside his son, whom he also loves. That is it. Love God, love what you are doing, and love the people God gave you to do it with.

 

Read Full Article

Why Children Matter #3

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Q&A

Introduction

Last week we distinguished discipline from punishment. That initial distinction was that discipline is corrective and punishment is concerned with retribution. But once we have accepted the duty of administering parental discipline, we discover that discipline falls naturally into two categories—corrective and formative.

The Text

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

Summary of the Text

The charge here is given to fathers. Taking all of Scripture together, we know that both father and mother are engaged in this crucial task, but it is worth noting that the central charge is here delivered to the father. The father is responsible. He is responsible in the first instance not to be a provocation to his children. If he stumbles them into wrath, his sin is prior to theirs, and is much more grievous (Luke 17:2). Instead of this kind of provocation, he is required to provide them with a Christian education and upbringing. The words underneath nurture and admonition are paideia and nouthesia. Taken together they encompass and necessarily require a Christian education. What we mean by education is not as big as this charge, but is necessarily a critical component of it.

Raw requirement without instruction is a form of provocation. Don’t allow requests for explanation to displace obedience, but if your child routinely hears nothing more than “because I said so,” something is wrong. The two phrases in this verse are connected.

Two Kinds of Discipline

So what is the difference between the kinds of discipline I mentioned above? When something has gone actively wrong, corrective discipline puts things back on track, restoring the fellowship between parent and child. This kind of discipline fixes something that has gone wrong. The second kind of discipline prevents things from going wrong in the future. The second kind of discipline instills character, against the challenges of a future day. It is corrective in anticipation.

The first kind of discipline would occur if mom told her son that she wanted him to get his math homework done before playing any video games, and she then discovered that he had done nothing of the kind. When the consequences fall on him that would be a sample of the first kind of discipline, a corrective discipline concerning an incident in the past. The second kind of discipline is the exercise of having to do the math homework in the first place. That is equipping him for a future day, it is hard in the meantime, and that is formative discipline. It is corrective also, but it is preventative correction.

Character Formation

One writer has helpfully noted that education is not about information, but rather formation. Education, done right, is a character-building process. One of the grand mistakes that parents often make is that of opposing academics to character issues. They are not in opposition. Learning to do the kind of work that children have learned to do for millennia is not opposed to character formation, it is character formation.

If a group of boys were working with shovels to dig a big ditch, and the father of one of the boys came out and pulled his boy aside to spend the morning doing anything other than digging, this would not be an example of “focusing on character instead.” It would be an example of declining to do so.

Culture Formation

The word that Paul uses here—paideia—is an enormous word. Every language has common nouns, like chair or shoelace, and every culture has large, all-encompassing words. In our culture, an example of one of the large words would be democracy. You wouldn’t be astonished to find a three-volume study of that word in a used bookstore. But if you found someone had done the same thing with a common noun, studying shoelaces through history, you would begin to suspect deep personal problems. I say this because the word paideia was one of the ancient world’s “all- encompassing” words, and what it meant was this. It referred to the process of enculturation. It was the education of the citizen, preparing him to take his responsible place in the polis. The apostle Paul saw our participation in the commonwealth of Israel as an exercise in the glorious citizenship of the heavenly city.

Now Paul requires fathers to provide a Christian paideia, and he required this before there was such a thing as a Christian culture for the children to be “enculterated” into. In order to fulfill his requirement here, the early Christians had to build such a culture—which they went out and did. We are privileged to have significant aspects of what they built still functioning as part of our heritage. We don’t have to start from scratch, but we still have a lot of rebuilding to do.

Stop Experimenting on Children

When children are little, parents can fall prey to the “grip of an idea.” They may have all kinds of fantastical notions about education stratagems, health weirdness, child discipline, food phobias, and so on. For much of this stuff, we can (and should) say with Paul, “Let every man be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom. 14:5). But we should also make a point to note that those who compare themselves with themselves are not wise (2 Cor. 10:12).

If you have never seen this kind of example, spend some time seeking it out. But be careful. We learn by imitation, but we also envy that way. You have to learn to copy without comparing.

This is important because one of the great truths I discovered while building my house concerned the nature of concrete work. The one bright spot was that a couple hours after the pour, no matter what, you were all done. Now your children are that wet concrete.

This does not obligate you to a particular course of action, but it does obligate you to a certain demeanor. Your people surrounding you have taken a vow before God to help you in the Christian nurture of your children. You are not obligated to do “whatever” anybody says, but you are obligated to be willing to hear about it without getting your back up (Ps. 141:5). This is because certain sins and blunders run out ahead of you, but others trail behind (1 Tim. 5:24). Parental folly is the kind of thing that has a long fuse. “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid” (Prov. 12:1, ESV).

Preparation of Launch

So fathers are given the charge to educate here, but the charge flows out (necessarily) past the boundaries of the family. There is a feedback loop here. The children are being prepared to take their place among their people, and their people are preparing to receive them.

In bringing up children, success is found in them going away. In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis comments on a kind of “need love” that doesn’t want to let go. That is not what we are after.

And what happens in the Christian school family or homeschool family is not supposed to be happening in isolation. Part of the reason this is such a challenge is that “our people” are often sinful and unreasonable. That is precisely why they need us, and why we need them. Hiding from the sin out there won’t protect us from the sin in here. And this brings us back to the touchstone of grace. The only place to hide from sin is in Jesus Christ.

Read Full Article

Why Children Matter #1

Christ Church on

Q&A

Introduction

A family is a divinely-ordained community. It is a set of defined relationships, with obligations and privileges assigned by God accordingly. It is not an arbitrary collection of individuals, and it is not something that we get to define. God created the family—it was not invented by us in the first place, and so we do not get to reinvent it. For this reason, parents must beware of treating the family as an “assemblage” that results from “techniques” developed by “experts.”

Young parents should therefore come to the Scriptures with a true hunger and openness. This is particularly true of those young parents who didn’t see a good model growing up—God is the God of new beginnings. He breaks the cycle, blessing to a thousand generations, and cutting off disasters after three or four. Be encouraged.

The Text

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Eph. 5:1, ESV).

“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with singing” (Zeph. 3:17).

Summary of the Text

The juxtaposition of these two passages is intended to make the foundational point that, as God treats us as His children, so also we, in imitating Him, must seek to be like Him in our treatment of our own children. As He deals with us, so also must we deal with our own children.

God has created us as reflective and imitative creatures. We become like what we worship. Idolaters do this (Ps. 115:4-8), and worshipers of the true God do it (2 Cor. 3:18). This is the way human beings are. There are few places where the ramifications of this are as important as they are in child-rearing.

In the Zephaniah passage, consider first that the Lord our God is mighty. You are much stronger than your children. But His might is deployed for the good of His people, for their salvation, and not for their suffocation. Your purpose is to be used as the instrument of your children’s salvation. You are not the ground of that salvation, but you are an appointed instrument. You obviously cannot be saving grace, but you are commanded to imitate it, and to facilitate it.

When the mighty God intervened to save, He did so at great cost to Himself. Jesus, when He took the loaf of bread that represented His broken body, He began by giving thanks. When Jesus went to the cross, He did so for the joy that was set before Him (Heb. 12:2). The sacrifices that you will make for your children should therefore be something you sing over. You are not just to sing when they are being adorable, asleep in the crib. Life is messier than that, and the whole thing should be met with a song. The delight we are imitating here is not “unrealistic.” It takes account of the world as it is, and rejoices still.

A Garden of Grace

When God created us, He placed us in a garden full of delights, and with just one prohibition in the middle of the garden. Nothing was prohibited out in the world, and only one thing was prohibited in the garden. A severe penalty was attached to that one prohibition, but then God saw to it that when the restriction was disobeyed by our first parents, the severest blow of retaliation would fall upon Himself. What kind of God is this?

So the environment of your home is grace. All that you have is theirs. There are standards within this—grace is not an amorphous, gelatinous mass. Grace has a backbone. Grace is a vertebrate. And yet when the standards are broken, the heaviest sacrifices in the work of restoration are made by the guardians of grace—not the enforcers of law, not the pointers of fingers, not the parental accusers, and not the quiver in the voice of parental self-pity.

A garden of grace can contain a tree of law. A garden of law cannot contain a tree of grace. Whatever you do, an attempted tree of grace there will turn into a tree of reward, a tree of merit, a tree of earnings.

Discipline as Structured Delight

We have a tendency—when in the grip of our own unguided wisdom—to get everything exactly backwards. We think that the gold sanctifies the temple (Matt. 23:17). We think that man was created so that there would be somebody around to keep the sabbath (Mark 2:27). We think that goat milk was created so that we would have something to cook the young goats in (Dt. 14:21).

But discipline is directed toward an end; it is teleological. And no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but the glory of discipline is found in the harvest (Heb. 12:11). Discipline and fruition occupy time, just like your children do. Bringing children up is not abstract bookkeeping, but is rather a story—from planting to harvest. Hardship in a story is grace. Hardship without a story is just pain.

Three L’s

When it comes to Christian living, there are three l’s to choose from. There is legalism, there is license, and there is liberty. In the home, legalism occurs when parents try to establish “traditional values” or a “disciplined atmosphere” on their own authority, or in their own name. Strictness becomes the central standard, and parental law is central. License happens when it turns out that legalism involves a lot of work, and there is not a very good return on it. And so parenting turns into a long stream of excuses and lame theories about the ineffectualness of spanking. If you have told 28 people this week that “he didn’t get his nap today,” then perhaps you should reevaluate.

Liberty is not some middle position between these two—it is another thing entirely. Liberty is stricter than legalism, and liberty is freer than license. Liberty—purchased for us by Christ on the cross—lines us up with how God made the world. None of our shifts or evasions can do that for us. The righteousness of liberty outdoes the Pharisees (Matt. 5:20), and the joy of liberty outdoes the libertine.

Why Children Matter

We will address this in much greater detail in the conclusion to this series, but it will be helpful for us to take a look at where we are going. Children matter because as creatures they bear the image of God, as sinners that image is defaced in them, and as saints that image is being restored in them.

By creating the human race in one fertile man and woman, God was declaring that His image was going to grow and mature over the course of generations. When we fell into sin, the curse of our loss was extended over generations. And now that the promised seed of the woman has come, we are given the opportunity to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). This is part of what it means to put off the old man, and to put on the new (Eph. 4:20-24). God is after a lineage.

Read Full Article

Blessed with Every Blessing (Reformation Sunday 2013)

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

Ephesians is Paul’s greatest work on the church, the body and bride of Christ. It was John Calvin’s favorite and F.F. Bruce regarded it as ‘the quintessence of Paulinism’ because it ‘in large measure sums up the leading themes of the Pauline letters, and sets forth the cosmic implications of Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles.’ Ephesians bears strong resemblance to Colossians and was likely written at the same time while Paul was in prison in Rome (Acts 28:30) and sent by the hand of Tychicus (Eph. 6:21-22; Col. 4:7-9). While the sufficiency of Christ’s work is central to Colossians, Ephesians is dedicated to Paul’s message that God’s new society, the Church, is a manifestation of the cosmic reconciliation and unity of Christ’s work proclaimed in the gospel. This is why Paul always moves from the indicative to the imperative, rooting what we are called to do in the firm ground of what Christ has already done. The very structure of Ephesians proclaims the God-centeredness of Paul’s theology

The Gift of the Father (vs.1-6)

The Father gives every blessing that belongs to the Spirit in the person of His beloved Son. To speak of the Father as the source of every blessing is to immediately draw attention to the procession and work of the Son and the Spirit. They are the glory of the Father ( John 17:6-10, 20-24). The Father gives every blessing that belongs to the Spirit in the person of His beloved Son. To speak of the Father as the source of every blessing is to immediately draw attention to the procession and work of the Son and the Spirit. They are the glory of the Father ( John 17:6-10, 20-24). The Father’s gift of Himself to His Son and to those who are “in Him” through the gift of the Spirit is His glory. This brings Jesus’ words to his disciples into sharp focus: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Why is it glorious to give our lives away? Because we bear the image of the One whose glory is to be perfectly generous with His life. Notice how election and predestination are grounded in the Father’s generosity: (vs. 4) He chose us to be holy and blameless, (vs. 5) He predestined us for adoption as sons, and both are to the praise of his glorious grace (vs. 6).

Reconciled by the Son (vs. 7-12)

The purpose of the Father’s gift of every blessing is headed toward an ultimate goal: The summing up of all things in Christ. Not only are redemption and the forgiveness of sins given to us in Christ, but He is the revelation and fulfillment of the Father’s plan to sum up/reconcile all things in Him whether on earth or in heaven. Since our first parents sin in Genesis, death has meant that everything falls apart: Our relationships, our loves, our bodies, our work, and our world. This is what the exile of death means. Yeats captures this futility well: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The mystery of his will (vs. 9), which has now been made known to us, is the Father’s kind intention to “sum up” and put right all of the separation, alienation, and exile of our sin. But in order for that to take place, Jesus had to be pulled apart that we might be healed (Is. 53:5). Colossians 1:19-22 brings all of these elements together: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”

Sealed by the Spirit (vs. 13-14)

The first sign of this cosmic reconciliation is the gift of the Spirit who comes as a seal and a pledge of Christ’s work. In the Greco-Roman world a seal was a mark of ownership that implied a promise of protection. A master would brand his possessions with his seal to protect them from theft. In the OT, God places a sign on his people to distinguish them as His possession and protect them from destruction (Ezek. 9:4-6). In the same way, the Spirit is given to mark us as God’s inheritance (vs. 11) and to give us confidence that nothing can separate us from him (Rom. 8:31-39). At the same time, the Spirit is also a pledge or guarantee of our inheritance. He is the “down payment” who gives us a foretaste of the New Creation (2 Cor. 5:17) and who is the promise that we will obtain full possession of it.

Freedom and the Reformation

The mind-blowing truth of this opening section of Ephesians is that God has chosen us as His inheritance and He has given Himself to us as our inheritance. The freeness of God’s gift by which we are chosen, called, justified, sanctified and glorified (Rom. 8:28-30) is the gift of God Himself. All of it is found in Christ and all of it is a gift of free grace (Eph. 2:8-10). That’s the good news of the Gospel and the heart of the Reformation. Martin Luther beautifully expresses in The Freedom of the Christian Man:

“Christ, that rich and pious husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils, and supplying her with all his good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying: “If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine;” as it is written, “My beloved is mine, and I am his. (Cant. ii. 16.) This is what Paul says: “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ;” victory over sin and death.”

The free and generous work of the three persons of the Trinity is the sole basis for our justification, our sanctification and the certainty of our glorification. It is the ground of our confidence (Heb. 10:19) and our boasting (1 Cor. 1:31), and as Luther noted, our freedom (Gal. 5:13). We must cherish it and defend it against all attacks (Gal. 5:1).

Read Full Article