The Spirit’s Work in All Believers (Eph. 1:13-14)

Paul begins his letter to the Ephesians with a long statement of grateful praise to God that includes references to each of the three persons of the Trinity and what they did, are doing, and will do in providing salvation for lost sinners unable to save themselves. His focus is mainly on God the Father and his great contribution to the provision of salvation. Yet he also refers in an adoring manner to the work of the Son and to the work of the Spirit. In the accomplishing of the salvation of sinners we can speak about the partnership of the Trinity in bringing it about.

The phrase that Paul uses to describe salvation is ‘every spiritual blessing’. He does not mean by that phrase what we sometimes mean when we use it – for example, he does not include in the statement the blessing of answered prayer or the blessing of special guidance or the possession of great spiritual gifts because they are not guaranteed always to every believer. Instead he means by the phrase spiritual blessings that every believer will receive – he means the ones that are essential for salvation. We can ask why he calls them spiritual, and I would suggest that he does so because we come to know them by the work of the Spirit.

In describing the particular involvement of the Spirit in the application of salvation, Paul at the close of the statement describes what happens at each conversion and subsequently (Eph. 1:13-14). At conversion, all believers are sealed with the Spirit and then throughout life they all experience him as the earnest and guarantee of a future inheritance that all of them will yet have. Yet focusing on what happened at conversion and later does not mean that the Holy Spirit was not involved in the lives of believers before then.

Before conversion

The work of the Spirit in an individual before conversion can be understood in two ways and we can think about them briefly. First, there is the work of the Holy Spirit as the Creator. We can see in Genesis 1 that he participated in the work of creation at beginning. And he is involved in the formation of each human being and gives to each of them their particular gifts and features of their personalities. Yet we know that each of them is born a sinner and reveal a bias toward sin throughout life, including a dislike for their Creator. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the fact that every human displays details that reveal he or she is a creation of God. As Elihu says in Job 33:3: ‘The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.’ Whatever else can be said about the words of Elihu, he understood that the Holy Spirit was involved in his existence.

The reality that each person is a sinner informs us that we need another activity of the Spirit. We are spiritually dead and we need to become spiritually alive. The Holy Spirit brings this about through the act of regeneration which was mentioned by Jesus to Nicodemus as told in John 3. This action by the Spirit is a secret work and is only discerned by subsequent actions by the sinner. By subsequent is meant immediately subsequent and continually subsequent.

While there are individuals who do not follow the common pattern, such as those who are regenerated before birth or as infants, it is usual for regeneration to occur in a person who is being convicted of his sins by the Holy Spirit in the context of having been informed of the gospel, or as Paul puts it here, ‘the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.’ This is an important point that we should remember, and it is one reason why we should tell people about the gospel.

Not all conviction of sin comes from the Holy Spirit in connection with the gospel. Some conviction comes from a guilty conscience – most people will admit that they have flaws, but that is not a sign in itself that the Spirit is at work in their hearts. The conviction that the Spirit gives includes the realisation that we have sinned against God (we have broken his laws) and that we can be forgiven because of what Jesus did on the cross when he suffered instead of sinners. This conviction may happen over a longer period of time or it may be only for a short time before the sinner trusts in Jesus. The sinner does not believe in Jesus until he has been regenerated, and all that the sinner senses is that he repented of his sins and asked Jesus for mercy.

The promised Holy Spirit

Paul describes the Spirit as ‘promised’, and we need to ask to whom he was promised and when was he promised. One way of explaining the connection to a promise is to note that Jesus refers to the coming of the Spirit as ‘the promise of the Father’, which points to an agreement between the Father and the Son concerning the Spirit. The agreement was that the Father would give the Spirit to the Son as a reward for his work on the cross, and the reason why the Spirit was given in this way was because he would bless the spreading of the gospel. It is also stated that this agreement was made in connection with God’s eternal counsel.

A second way of explaining what the promised Spirit would mean is to observe that in the context Paul distinguishes between Jewish and Gentile believers. The Jewish believers are described as those ‘who were the first to hope in Christ’ (v. 12) and then Gentile believers are described in verse 13 (we can see this from the change of pronouns) as having also received the Spirit of promise when they believed in Jesus. The word ‘also’ could indicate that the reception of this blessing was an addition to what had been expected. In the Old Testament, there are several passages in which the Holy Spirit is described as coming on Jews in the future, such as in the books of Isaiah and Joel, but Paul here says that the Old Testament promises are extended to include Gentiles who believe in Jesus.

Obviously both options are true, but that does not always mean that a truth may be the truth intended. Sometimes we can read other truths into a passage that is only speaking about a particular aspect of truth, and the outcome is confusion rather than clarification. I think the context points to the latter option, that Paul has in mind a fulfilment of the promises made in the Old Testament about the coming of the Holy Spirit. Some, correctly, will say that the Old Testament promises were based on the arrangement between the Father and the Son. So it is probable that we can hold to both suggested meanings of the promised Holy Spirit.

Union with Jesus

One of the common themes of Ephesians is the union that believers have with Jesus. It is a huge subject and we have to divide it into different aspects in order to try and grasp it. There is an aspect that is eternal because we were chosen in Christ before time; there is an aspect that is representative because we were united to Jesus when he suffered on the cross and paid our penalty; there is an aspect that is positional because we are said to be united with Jesus in heaven; and there is an aspect that we can call practical because it changes us. The practical began when we believed in Jesus and the first consequence of that aspect of our union with Jesus is that, at the moment of faith in him, we were sealed with the Spirit.

The sealing of the Spirit

It is important to note that Paul does not say that the Spirit seals us. Instead, he says that the Father seals us with the Spirit. One reason why it is important is that we are meant to praise the Father for doing this because we are sealed ‘to the praise of his glory’. Inaccurate praise is not commendable, especially by those who should know better.

The reference to sealing is taken from the world of commerce and indicates ownership of an item. If someone purchased an item, the deal would be confirmed by the owner putting his seal on the document. An owner’s seal was also put on an item that had to be taken somewhere else – it was a means of identifying to whom the item belonged. The proof that we belong to God is that he gives us the Holy Spirit.

It is inevitable that some, if not most, of the Ephesian believers were slaves who had been branded by their owners, and perhaps rebranded when sold on. That sealing was a very painful event. The sealing they received from God was very different. In fact, there was no pain because all the pain had been borne by Jesus when on the cross. He bore the pain so that they could have the promised seal of the Spirit.

Unlike the seal that was put on an item, the Holy Spirit is permanent. The human seal could fade or get lost, but such a thing cannot happen to the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is personal and that means that he brings the presence of God to his people. This happens at the moment of conversion. And we can say that giving of the Spirit in this manner is the evidence that the faith exercised by the individual in response to the gospel offer is genuine and not spurious.

The seal of the Holy Spirit is given to all Christians whatever their age, their understanding, their talents, their status in life. No Christian has a bigger seal than other Christians – they all have the Spirit. Therefore, it is important that we grasp this reality and not regard some Christians as having a bigger seal than others merely because they excel at some aspects of Christian living. This does not mean that believers are at the same stage of growth in grace, but it does mean that they all have the same divine mark of ownership.

Since the seal of the Spirit is permanent, it means that Christians don’t lose the seal when they fall into sin. We will see in a later study that falling into sin will grieve the Spirit, but that does not mean that he will remove himself from them. Instead he will act in different ways, but he is always the seal of a true believer, whatever his or her state of devoutness is. When Barnabas fell out with Paul, they both had the seal of the Spirit. When Peter wrongly sided with those who insisted on keeping the ceremonial law, the mark that he was a genuine believer was not taken from him.

The Spirit is the earnest or guarantee

If the Spirit as the seal marks the beginning of the Christian life, then having him as the earnest or guarantee points to the end of a Christian’s life in the world or we could say that in this way he points us to the fullness of life that believers will have when they receive their inheritance. The idea behind the word ‘earnest’ or ‘guarantee’ is that of a deposit that a person makes when he buys a house – the deposit is the sample that he will give the remainder, with the remainder being composed of the same substance as was the deposit. We could say that if the deposit was gold then so would be the remainder. In a far bigger way, the degree of the presence of the Spirit that all believers have is that they will receive him in a far fuller way when they enter their inheritance – the eternal state will an intensely Spiritual experience.

The ‘inheritance’ is literally the ‘purchased possession’, which refers to something that Jesus has purchased by his death. It could mean the entire creation, which elsewhere is said to be the Christian’s inheritance, and which Jesus as our kinsman redeemer purchased for us. Or it could be a reference to our bodies, because Paul in Romans 8 mentions that they will be redeemed when Jesus returns and they are conformed to his likeness. And it could be a reference to the totality of God’s people because Jesus purchased them as his own. Personally, I think it probably includes all three suggestions because it is impossible to have one without the other two.

So the presence of the Spirit within us anticipates the life of the age to come and brings into our souls now various aspects of what we will have in fullness then. I suppose we could consider the features mentioned by Paul as making up the fruit of the Spirit and think what it would be like to have them perfectly. Full of love, full of joy, full of peace, full of patience (as they move through the eternal ages), full of kindness, full of goodness, full of faithfulness, full of gentleness, and full of self-control – in other words, we would be like Jesus.

The consequence of having the Spirit in these two ways – of being the seal and the earnest – is praise of God the Father who planned salvation and brought it to his chosen people. This is what Paul is actually doing here as he composes this sentence at the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians. He does not distinguish between individual and corporate praise; instead he says that praise is the outcome of God’s grace coming to saved sinners.

Let us think of two personal applications connected to having the Spirit as the seal and and as the earnest. First, the presence of the Spirit will enable us to understand our security in Christ – we have the Spirit as the seal that we belong to God. Second, the work of the Spirit is to make us heavenly minded – this can be deduced from the fact that he gives to the believers several foretastes or samples of what it will be like to be there.