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God’s Plan for All Creation — and for Your Life
Ephesians 1: 3 – 14 |
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Summary
God’s Plan for All Creation — and for Your Life There’s a good chance that you’ve been told by a Christian at some point in the past that “God has a plan for your life.” (It’s a popular phrase — Google will give you over 2,000 hits for it.) It can be reassuring to hear that because it means that God is in charge of things and that there’s some purpose behind the things that happen to you. But what is God’s plan for you? Is it a matter of choosing the school you attend, the job you get, the car you drive, where you live and so on? What choice do you have in all of that? And how does God’s plan for your life mesh with God’s plans for all those other people? After all, you’re not the only person who’s told that God has a plan for his or her life. God Almighty, the one who creates and sustains the universe, is not too busy to be concerned about the lives of each one of us. But God is also not just a mid-level personnel manager for members of the Christian church on earth. The plan that the writer of Ephesians speaks of is far grander than that. This letter of Paul’s — or it may have been by a disciple of Paul setting down his teacher’s thoughts — has the greatest cosmic sweep of any book in the Bible. In these opening words, the letter speaks of God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (emphasis added). It is a plan for all things, visible and invisible. And this plan of God is not some tactic that he recently came up with to deal with an emergency. Part of that plan is that “he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love” and “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” Chosen in Christ So don’t sell yourself short. Your life is no last-minute accident but is part of that grand scope of cosmic history that God foresaw before time was — before there could be a before. On the other hand, none of us is the central figure in the divine plan. One reason why talk about God’s “choice” or “election” or “predestination” of people often provokes confusion and debate is because it’s thought of as a matter of God making arbitrary choices among people. We picture God back before creation peering into the future and saying “I’ll choose Mary and Bill but not Cathy or James or Susan or John,” and so on. And then we immediately think, “Why should I imagine that I’m among the favored few — the elect?” Our text doesn’t just say that God “chose us” but that “he chose us in Christ.” It is Jesus Christ who is first of all God’s elect one and there is nothing arbitrary about that. Since we’re told that God’s plan is to gather up all things in him, it sounds as if Jesus Christ is the fundamental purpose of creation. God made the universe so that there would be a world in whose history the eternal Son of God could become a participant. God brought humanity into being so that there would be flesh of which the Creator could take flesh. The purpose of creation is Jesus Christ — but not just as an isolated individual. The letter to the Ephesians will go on to speak about Christ as the one who removes divisions between people to make a new humanity, as the cornerstone of the household of God and as the head of a community pictured as a living body. And our election, the plan for our lives, is to grow into maturity as members of that body. To be holy and blameless What does being chosen in Christ mean for our lives? First of all we’re chosen “to be holy and blameless before him in love.” To be “holy” is in a sense to be like God — “You shall be holy to me; for I the LORD am holy,” Israel was told. To be “blameless” — well, that means just what it sounds like. And we are to be blameless not just by avoiding doing the wrong thing but by going out of ourselves to do and to be the right thing, “in love.” It’s a major challenge and certainly there’s an imperative note here: Strive to be this way. But since God who does not err has chosen us for this, God also makes it possible. God makes it possible even though we are sinners and not blameless. But in Christ — again, always in him — “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” When we hear about the cosmic scope of God’s plan, we shouldn’t get so grandiose that we forget how God works out that plan, in the tears and sweat and blood of Gethsemane and Golgotha when the one in whom and for whom “all things in heaven and on earth were created” suffered and died for creation. We are “blameless” because our sins are forgiven and we are “in Christ,” clothed with the perfect righteousness and holiness of Christ. Since Christ is the beloved Son of God, being chosen in him is equivalent to saying that we are adopted as sons and daughters, children of God. And as children we are heirs, ones who will receive all that has been intended and prepared by God. But isn’t Christ the heir? Indeed — and so we’re told that “in Christ we have also obtained an inheritance.” It is in Christ that we are chosen, and in whom we live, and in whom is the goal of our living. It is from Christ that we receive the pattern for our lives. Living as God’s chosen ones, holy and blameless, means being conformed to that pattern that we learn from Christ. That means first that we live from God, as Jesus did. To say that he is the natural Son of God, “eternally begotten of the Father,” is to say that the Father is continually the source of his being. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me,” Jesus said. And so we are called “to the praise of [God’s] glorious grace” — for the greatest praise and worship we can offer is to receive God’s gifts and to acknowledge and trust in the one who promises to give us all things in Christ. The seal of the Holy Spirit We have not yet received everything but we have been “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” as “the pledge of our inheritance.” The word translated “pledge” — or in the older RSV, “guarantee” — is one that was used in business. It refers to a deposit made on a purchase, both to make a legal claim on the item and to commit the buyer to complete the transaction. Receiving the seal of the Holy Spirit — which probably refers to baptism — then means that God is saying “I’m serious about this. You are mine. You don’t have the full inheritance yet, but you can be sure that you will have it.” When we receive the assurance that we will have all these blessings, the pattern given to us in Christ reminds us that we’re not given them just for ourselves. Jesus, after all, “came not to be served but to serve.” The kind of love in which we are to be “holy and blameless” is the self-giving love, the concern for the welfare of the other person, that we see portrayed in the gospels. That concern for the other is to extend beyond the Christian community. Language about “the elect” or “chosen people” shouldn’t make us think that those who are outside are no concern of ours. Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors. And while our text speaks about those chosen by God, it doesn’t say anything about people finally being rejected. Jesus Christ is the elect one, and he died for all. Called to grow into maturity in Christ So we are redeemed and forgiven, adopted as God’s children, given assurance of our inheritance and called to be holy and blameless. What does that all mean for the decisions we have to make in life — job, family and so forth? We’re not given detailed instructions about that here — though there are some in the last chapters of Ephesians. But there is one other gift that is mentioned — “wisdom and insight.” We are given the ability to make wise decisions, sometimes by ourselves, sometimes with the help of others, because God has not chosen us to be puppets or slaves. We are called to be, and we are, children of God, children called to grow into maturity in Christ. |
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