The Church as The People of the Triune God: To the Praise of the Spirit
The Church as The People of the Triune God:
To the Praise of the Spirit
This article is now the fifth in this series. You can find the other articles linked in the introductory note on preceding article here. In addition to the articles, we will be including links to the sermons from which these articles have come. In the end, our hope is to be who we are in Christ, to the praise of his glory!
Have you ever stopped to think about how many songs we have about the Father and the Son and how few we have about the Spirit? As an illustration of this fact, I looked at the “Hymns of Grace” hymnbook. There I found nearly 100 hymns devoted to the person of God the Father, close to 200 devoted to the person of Jesus the Son, and 5 devoted to the person of the Holy Spirit… Why is that? Is this an oversight or an imbalance?
Though unseen, the Holy Spirit undergirds all we know about God. All of Scripture is a work of the Spirit, being “breathed out by God.” (2 Tim 3:16) The Scriptures begin with the “Spirit of God” in Genesis 1:2, “hovering over the face of the waters,” and end with the call of Rev. 22:17… “The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” Quite literally, everything in between Genesis and Revelation is a work of the Spirit.
Peter reminds us that “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20-21). So, too, the Spirit, though unseen, permeates the lives of believers, and HE empowers the church.
Picking up from our last article, we are moving through the text of Ephesians 1:3–14, looking now at verses 13-14. As we consider the ongoing ministry of the Spirit, we see that:
We are claimed and kept by the Spirit for the day of redemption.
Both our being claimed and our being kept are related to the assurance that comes by the Spirit, but we will explore each of those ideas as we move through the text. First, we will see that we were claimed by the Spirit for redemption through faith in Christ (13). Second, we will see that we are being kept for the day of redemption by the Spirit (14a). This, once again, ends in the application: that we might live to the praise of his glory. (14b)
We were claimed for redemption through faith in Christ (1:13)
In the case of the Ephesians, their hearing was joined with faith in the word they received, and their believing was evidence of the Spirit’s seal on their hearts. Paul explains that this seal of the Spirit means that these believers were claimed for redemption. No longer their own, they were purchased and redeemed by the blood and the Spirit now testifies to this change from death to life, and he testifies both in our hearts and in our lives and not always in ways that appeal to those crying for another Pentecost.
Isn’t interesting that we nowhere read “you will know them by their miraculous gifts.” In fact, there are many who apparently will have worked some miraculous things and they will point to these very things as a means of identifying with Jesus and he will reject them (see Matt 7:21-23), why? Because of their fruits. You will know them by their fruits.
Thomas Watson, in commenting on this passage in Ephesians, makes note that: “Some talk of the comforting Spirit, who never had the sanctifying Spirit; they boast of assurance — but never had grace. God's Spirit will never set seal to a blank. The heart must first be an epistle written with the finger of the Holy Spirit — and then it is sealed with the Spirit of promise.”
Friends, our knowledge of Christ is a work of the Spirit. The Spirit’s role in our salvation is to apply Christ's work to us intimately and ultimately. The same God that brings knowledge of Christ that we may abide in him also assures our hope of eternal life in him. We are being held by him, sealed for the day of redemption, if indeed we have received the Spirit through faith in the word of Christ.
The sealing of the Spirit gives assurance in the knowledge of Christ that we may abide in him, because it is by the Spirit that we have been claimed for redemption…
We are being kept for the day of redemption by the Spirit (1:14a)
Notice what he says next: the Holy Spirit “is the guarantee of our inheritance…” Until we mess things up? Until God changes his mind? Until further notice? No! No! and a million times No! … “until we acquire possession of it…”
As we saw a few weeks ago in verse 11, we have already obtained the inheritance, but we have yet to acquire it. But even now we have the downpayment or guarantee of the Spirit through his ongoing ministry in our hearts and lives and the future inheritance that is ours in Christ Jesus.
Think about that for a moment. What is the significance of what Paul is saying here? What Paul is communicating to us here is a truth beyond our wildest dreams. Our salvation is not ours to lose! We are being kept by the Spirit of God for the day of redemption!
We were predestined for the proclamation of God’s wisdom in Christ…
God, through Paul’s writing, is assuring us of the certainty of salvation by the seal of his Spirit, that we might live to the praise of his glory!!! What more could we ask? What greater motivation?
If we are to stop and contemplate this reality, and grasp even a drop of its weight, we would be humbled beyond our ability to bear up without praising our God for all his benefits in Christ, by his Spirit!
We were created for good works. That is in the text too. We will receive rewards. Also in the text… But when we enter into glory, we will not be cashing in the fruits of our earthly labors and claiming our crowns, we will be casting them at the feet of our Savior and King!!!
And all of this is a result of the ongoing ministry of the Spirit in applying the redeeming work of the Son, according to the Father’s plan. What better way to conclude a series on who we are as a church than to acknowledge the fact that the Spirit of God himself testifies with our hearts and through our lives that we are children of God the Father and members of Christ the Son.
Conclusion: we are claimed and kept, that we might live to the praise of his glory (14b).
While there may not be many songs or hymns that we sing devoted to the Spirit, there are beautiful hymns that have been written in the past. One such hymn is by Isaac Watts, “The Witnessing and Sealing Spirit”:
Why should the children of a King
Go mourning all their days?
Great Comforter, descend, and bring
Some tokens of thy grace.
Dost thou not dwell in all the saints,
And seal the heirs of heaven?
When wilt thou banish my complaints,
And show my sins forgiven?
Assure my conscience of her part
In the Redeemer's blood;
And bear thy witness with my heart,
That I am born of God.
Thou art the earnest of his love,
The pledge of joys to come;
And thy soft wings, celestial Dove,
Will safe convey me home.
We are who we are because of who our Triune God is and what He has done.
Nothing more, nothing less.
To the praise of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Coram Deo.
**For a more detailed consideration of this article and the next, you can listen to the sermon here.
