So that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 

Ephesians 1:12

Today I am beginning a new sermon series on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which is going to be featured in the second reading of our lectionary for the next six weeks. I thought it would be interesting, and a little different for us, to spend our sermon time over these weeks simply going through one of Paul’s letters.

And I think that this particular letter is a great choice for us. This is a fairly short letter – you can read the whole thing in one sitting. It has some very important things to say about our Christian faith in general terms. But it also has very specific teachings on how to live out that faith. It is a practical letter in that way. It is also a letter that emphasizes our Christian unity, and how to live out this unity in a divided world, which I think makes it a very timely letter. So I look forward to digging into this letter with you over these next six weeks.

Blessed Be God

Today’s passage (Ephesians 1:3-14) is from the very beginning of this letter to the Ephesians. After Paul’s initial greeting, he offers a rather long prayer, or blessing, for all that God has done for us. It’s a blessing starts in verse 3, and doesn’t conclude until verse 14. 

Paul seems to be going on and on in this passage, as though he just cannot say enough to praise and bless and thank God. It kind of reminds me of one of my dad’s prayers at Thanksgiving when I was growing up. The meal was finally ready, we all sat down to eat, but first my dad would offer the blessing. And it would go on and on and on! The food would get cold, the rolls would be in the oven burning, and he’d still be blessing the food. Why? I am sure he would have said that it was because he had so much to be thankful for. 

That is Paul at the beginning of this letter. He has so much to be thankful for. And so, he is blessing God, thanking him, praising him, and going on and on and on about it. 

But what, exactly, is he going on about? What, exactly, is he thankful for? Well, the very first sentence in this reading gives us a pretty good n idea about that:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.

God Chose Us (Destined for Adoption, Redeemed, Forgiven)

Paul is blessing God because God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world. That is where this whole letter begins. And it is a really important place to begin. He begins by giving thanks to God for choosing us. 

Now Paul, remember, started out as a Pharisee, a Jewish leader, a proud member of God’s chosen people, “a Hebrew born of Hebrews,” as he describes it (Philippians 3:4-6). He spent his whole life believing that he was chosen by God. And, equally important, that other people were not chosen by God. 

But then Paul had a dramatic conversion experience on the road to Damascus, and realized at that moment that Jesus had begun something radically new. God’s chosen people were no longer the Jews, but instead were everyone and anyone who believed in Jesus. 

And that is what he is saying at the beginning of this Letter to the Ephesians: We all have been chosen in Christ. And that makes us all the same. 

“There is no longer Jew or Greek,” as Paul tells us elsewhere (Galatians 3:28-29), “there is no longer male and female.” Why? Because we are all “one in Christ Jesus.” 

That is the great truth that changed Paul’s life, that we see in all of his letters. We are all one, because we have all been chosen by God in Christ. We have been chosen, adopted, redeemed, and forgiven, as Paul describes it in this passage. And all according to the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. 

No matter who you are, what you have done (or not done), where you live, your wealth or your status, your nationality, no matter what teams you root for, or what candidates you vote for, you have been chosen by God in Christ. You have been adopted, redeemed, and forgiven. By the Creator of the universe. 

He has known you from before you were born, has formed you in the womb, has called you and named you and chosen you. What an amazing thing to consider! It is no wonder that Paul goes on and on about it!

God’s Chosen People

But let’s think a little more about what Paul means by this, because it is critical to understanding this letter, and because Paul has something very specific in mind. 

Paul grew up reading the Old Testament. That was his Bible. And a very prominent theme in the Old Testament is that Israel is God’s chosen people.  

It begins with Abraham, whom God chose to be the father of many nations. And through whom all nations would be blessed. Abraham was chosen and blessed in order to be a blessing to others. That theme continues when Abraham’s descendants are rescued from Egypt. In Deuteronomy 7, for example, God’s people are told: 

“You are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” 

The Israelites were God’s chosen people. And they were chosen for a purpose. They were chosen to be a light to the nations, and to bless all nations of the world. 

Sometimes we think of being chosen as simply meaning we have a first-class ticket to Heaven, and we get to be at the front of the line. More often, I suspect, we worry about those people that God has not chosen. Surely God won’t send them to Hell simply because they have never heard about Jesus? 

But none of that is what Paul is talking about here. Paul is simply telling us that we are the new Israel. We have been chosen by God to bless the world. The church, all who follow Jesus, you and me, have been chosen to be a light to the nations. 

We are now the chosen people, chosen to do God’s work on this earth – to care for the poor and the sick, to feed the hungry, to bring hope to the hopeless, and to do all of this in the name of Jesus. That is what we have been chosen for. 

Or, as Paul puts it in this passage, we have been chosen by God “so that we might live for the praise of God’s glory.” Our chief end, in other words, our main purpose in life, is to glorify God. With all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. To live for the praise of God’s glory by loving God and loving our neighbor. That is what we have been chosen for. 

What Is That Purpose?

But all that sounds kind of vague, doesn’t it? Chosen to live for the praise of God’s glory? How, exactly, do we do that? 

Most of us won’t have a dramatic experience like Paul did. We won’t receive a vision from heaven telling us what to do with our life. For most of us, it happens in a much quieter way. We figure out what God has chosen us for simply by listening to our life, by paying attention. I really like how the Christian writer Frederick Buechner describes this:

God speaks to us … much more often than we realize or than we choose to realize. Before the sun sets every evening, he speaks to each of us in an intensely personal and unmistakable way.  His message is not written out in starlight, which in the long run would make no difference; rather it is written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter events of each day; it is a message that in the long run might just make all the difference.

God speaks to us through our life, in other words, and when we listen to our life, we begin to see God’s purpose unfold. We are all here for a purpose. God has a plan for us all. It is a plan that can be hard to see at times. But it reveals itself to us simply by our paying attention. 

God has a plan, and that is to save the world through his son, Jesus, and to bless the world through those who follow him. Through those he has chosen. Through you and me. As we devote our lives to glorifying God. Paying attention to our lives, and living faithfully. Not perfectly, of course. That’s why we need a Savior! But by living faithfully, we live out the purpose of our lives. 

God Revealed to Us the Mystery of His Will 

Okay. We have been chosen by God, Paul is saying. For a purpose, which is to glorify God as we live faithfully in this world. As we do this, God’s purpose begins to reveal itself in our life. 

But there is another obvious way that God’s purpose is revealed to us, and that is through God’s Word. God still speaks to us through God’s Word. 

As Paul puts it in this passage today, God has “revealed to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him.” 

God has revealed that to us through God’s Word. And Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is a great example of that. 

Over the next several weeks we will be looking at what this great letter teaches us about the mystery of God’s will. We will be looking at specific ways that we can glorify God through our lives. 

So, for example, next week we will begin looking at what it means to live as a united community in a divided world. Again, a very timely and important topic. 

After that, Paul will offer specific teachings on communicating with one another, like always speaking the truth in love, and never letting the sun go down on our anger. 

This letter is filled with very specific teachings on what it means to live as God’s chosen people in Christ; and how we are to live for the praise of God’s glory. And we will look at all of that. 

Closing

But first, Paul wants to make sure that we really understand and believe that God has chosen us in Christ. It is no longer just the Israelites who have been chosen by God. It is all of us who set our hope on Christ. It is you and me. Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

It is this congregation, First Lutheran Church of Albemarle. Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. It is every Christian. The whole catholic, or universal, church.

In Christ, we are God’s treasured possession. A light to the nations. Chosen in Christ, before the foundation of the world, to live for the praise of God’s glory. 

May we live for God’s glory, this day and always. To the glory of God. Amen.