Full Redemption (Ephesians 1:7-12)

Paul continues to bless the Father for his amazing plan of salvation. In a sense, he now focuses in particular on a spiritual blessing that come to believers specifically from the work of Christ, although we should not try and separate this particular blessing from the Father or from the Spirit. The particular blessing in this section is redemption. Redemption involves two features: first, there is the forgiveness of sins and, second, there is an inheritance. 

Both those features are illustrated in the Old Testament concept of the kinsman redeemer, so it is likely that Paul is using that practice to depict the role and activity of the Saviour. The kinsman redeemer was a relative who restored the family fortunes and took revenge on those who had wronged them. Jesus became our relative when he became a man and through his life and death restored us to the inheritance that we had lost through our sins.

Paul makes clear in the verses that we are considering that the provision of redemption, whether in connection to forgiveness of sins or to the gift of the inheritance, is according to the plan of the Father. And he will say in subsequent verses that part of the work of the Spirit is to give believers a foretaste of the inheritance that they will possess in its fullness in the future. So we are to keep in mind that each of the divine persons is involved in the provision of salvation. 

Redemption through his blood

Paul points out first the price of our redemption, which was the death of the Son of God. Obviously, here is a reminder of the reality of the incarnation, that the eternal Son of God became a man when he was conceived in the womb of Mary. He also states the purpose of the incarnation, that the Son of God came to be a liberator, to set free those who become captives, because that is what is meant by the concept of redemption. One who was redeemed was set free from a state of bondage to one who often was a hostile owner.

The particular state of bondage is the consequence of the sins or trespasses of those he intended to redeem. Since they are trespasses, there must be a standard that they disobeyed. That standard is the law of God. Our relationship to God as lawgiver exists because we are his creatures. In the garden of Eden, when our first parents were created, the relationship they had to the Creator was one of blessing dependent on their continued obedience. Adam not only had a personal relationship with the Creator, he also had a representative one in the sense that he was the agent acting on behalf of the human race. When he sinned, they as well as he became condemned and the only way of escape was by their sins being paid for. So when Paul mentions the blood of the Christ, he has in mind the penalty that he paid on the cross.

Revealed mystery

Paul then says that the provision of redemption is part of the riches of the Father’s grace. We might imagine that forgiveness is the height of divine grace, that the Lord reached as far he could go when he delivered us from the slavery of sin. Yet we have to remember that redemption is not only redemption from something, it is also redemption to something. So we need to ask not only how did the Father redeem us, but also why did the Father have this intention? 

The apostle draws the attention of his readers to the eternal plan of God. He mentions that this plan is a mystery, not in the sense of being beyond understanding (which it is), but in the sense that he has revealed details of it. We don’t know, and we cannot know, why God the Father chose to bless certain individuals. But we do know that he did. And we should be thankful that we have been given this information.

In the eternal plan of God, he decided that sinners would experience the riches of his grace. As we have observed, Paul mentions two aspects of those riches – present and full forgiveness and a future inheritance. The apostle says that the way that the Father chose to make known his riches was one marked by lavishness, wisdom and insight. We know what that way was and is – he makes it all known through the gospel. Of course, Paul here is not giving the assessment that sinners will make of the gospel. Many of them will think it is complete foolishness. Yet to those who are enlightened by the Spirit, the gospel about Jesus and his work is the wisdom of God, the most incredible information that a sinner could ever know.

The gospel is not just about the past. Those who have been forgiven all their sins are told about God’s incredible future intentions for the exaltation of his Son. Paul calls this future period ‘the fullness of time’, which implies that somehow time at the moment is not expressing what it should. Time, we could say, was brought into existence to express unity and harmony. That is the impression that we have when we read the first two chapters of Genesis. Everything worked together, and God affirmed that it was all very good.

Sadly, sin has brought disunity and disharmony into the created order. When we consider the state of humans after the Fall, we see that they are disunited from the lower creatures, they are disunited between themselves, and they are no longer in harmony with God. The Father’s plan is for there to be an incredible reunification, with his Son as the centre and guarantee of its endless reality.  

The harmony of the fullness of time was predicted in the Old Testament. Most people have heard of Isaiah’s prediction of the lion and the lamb lying down together. It occurs in a great prophecy that points to the cosmic renewal that would occur when God would create a new heavens and new earth (Isa. 65:17-25). Yet that description falls short of what will actually occur because it includes the prospect of death after a long life. We are not to take the prophecy literally. Instead it is informing God’s people that the eternal experience will be greater than what can be imagined in this life.

Royal heirs

Paul reminds the Ephesian Christians that they will have a place in the new order when it comes. He urges them to trace their future participation to the purpose and the providence of God. The Father has his eternal plan and Paul points out that all the Father does when he works all things is according to that purpose. Nothing occurs outside of his sovereign rule and he does not need to adjust his diary of events. We are not able to explain how this is the case, and Paul makes no attempt to do so. Instead, he says that it occurs.

Paul regarded his readers as being among the first to hope in Christ. No doubt, he is thinking of them timewise as far as the gospel is concerned. Yet since they were the first generation of believers, as it were, they could look forward to future converts. This is not the only time in this letter that Paul thinks of the church from this point of view. For example, later on he will describe the church as a building under construction, with believers depicted as living stones erected on top of one another.

The apostle describes the response to the gospel account in a way that is perhaps different from how we refer to it. He does not say here that they believed in Jesus, although he does say so in the next set of verses. Here he says that they hoped in Christ. In using ‘hope’, he is not suggesting a form of uncertainty in their outlook, which is how we can use the idea of someone having a hope. Rather he is affirming the confidence that marked their response to the gospel. They believed that Jesus would bring this new perfect world into existence. After all, since he had paid the penalty that brought forgiveness of all their sins, which was a far more difficult task than creating a perfect world, they could have a living hope that their great Saviour would being the perfect world into existence.

As he has expressed elsewhere in this statement of praise, Paul affirms the point of it all when he writes that the forgiven should be to the praise of his glory. What will it be like to stand with the millions of redeemed and hear them all expressing glory to the heavenly Father for his amazing grace! On that great day, none will be promoting themselves. Instead, one of the features of the glorious harmony of that day will be the joyful affirmation and acclamation by the redeemed of the God of matchless grace.

Application

It is clear from the apostle’s practice that it is good for believers to consider often the big picture of the great plans of God, to focus on what has been revealed about his purposes. Paul delights to go back as far as he can and consider the predestined purposes of God and then he delights to move ahead to the time when those great purposes will occur. In the middle of his life of suffering, he ascended above the mundane and thought of God and his intentions. The only way by which we can have great thoughts of God is to have frequent and accurate thoughts about his wonderful purposes.

A second response that we should have is to recognise that time has a purpose, that it is not out of control or meaningless. Of course, if we look at time from the point of view of what is happening today, we will wonder if there is any point in it all. We have to remind ourselves that the fullness of time has not come to pass, and that what is happening today is that the great God is bringing into his family those who will inherit the new heavens and new earth.

This leads to a third application, which is that we should cherish the gospel and its wonderful message about the forgiveness of sins. In the gospel, we see the greatest expression of wisdom, of divine wisdom, because it unfolds for us the activities of the Redeemer who paid the penalty for sin in order for us to be pardoned all our sins. Our sins are numerous and nauseous as far as God is concerned, yet out of his incredible love he devised a way whereby we could be forgiven all our sins and he could be glorified.

Connected to those previous applications is the fact that Christians should be future-orientated. We have a tendency in our day of small things to look back to supposed times of greater things when the world was Christian and the church was strong. No matter how good the past has been, it was never what it should have been. The day we want to happen is not a time that resembles the greatest of the past. Instead we long for the day of glory when the Redeemer will have centre-stage and when the harmony that he died to achieve will have arrived.

The final application that we can make is the importance of honouring the Saviour by having great confidence in him. Paul described the believers as those who hoped in Jesus for the future. They expected that what the Father had planned and what the Son died to arrange would yet happen. As they looked out on a sinful world descending into the lurid lifestyles and outlooks that controlled the Roman Empire, and which were practised in great cities such as Ephesus, they affirmed that truly Jesus was the answer and they looked forward with great anticipation to when the day of unification and harmony will arrive.