Who You are, according to God

Many things describe who you and I are. I work as a reference librarian. I’m a husband and father. I am an adjunct professor. For chit chat at a party, that’s fine, but who am I really? Most of us ask that question. It’s most important who God says that we are, not who we think we are or are not. Paul gives us the answer in Ephesians 1:3-14.

Paul offers praise to God in v. 3. It is a Berakhah, a Jewish-based praise and thanksgiving prayer to God for what He has done for believers. Paul was apparently very excited as he wrote this, so much so that in Greek, verses 3-14 is one long sentence. I once heard Marva Dawn call it, “stacky-uppy.” Paul blesses (praises) God because he has blessed every believer—no exceptions–with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ. This means union with Christ. What Paul says in vv. 4-14 are those blessing.

God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. I always marvel at this. I know what I am like. I wouldn’t choose me. Yet, God, with love beyond my comprehension, chose me to be his in spite of knowing what I would be like. It’s not because I have so much to offer God. As Point of Grace sings, “What can a poor man lay at the feet of the King?” The gift of being chosen is definitely a reason to give thanks and praise to God.

His plan is for us to become holy and blameless. I long to be able to come into God’s presence with nothing to apologize for or have guilt over. Paul does not say that God’s will is for our lives to go smoothly. His certainly didn’t. God’s plan for us is not that we have a comfortable life, no matter what health-and-wealth preachers say. It is God’s will that we will be pure and blameless in his sight. This is not per se a statement that we have to figure out what this looks like and make it happen all on our own. Yes, I should choose entertainment carefully, but this isn’t a rule. Rather, if we are in tune with the Holy Spirit, he will guide us into being more pure and blameless over time.

In or because of his love, God predestined us for adoption. I’m not going to get into a complicated digression about views on predestination, as that gets us nowhere. What matters is that God chose you. He could have made you a servant or slave, but didn’t. Instead, he made you one of his children. Paul says the adoption is “as sons.” It’s important to note that in Paul’s day, only boys got adopted. Paul is not demeaning females. He simply lived in a culture in which you would only adopt sons to carry on the family name. Therefore, females can assume that they have been adopted by God as well.

It is abundantly clear in Paul’s letters, and elsewhere in Scripture, that God opens wide his arms to daughters and sons. This applies to all those who turn to Jesus. There are no lesser or lower status children of God: all sinners are made into holy ones, saints, right here and now, as Ephesians 1:2 indicates. Paul wrote to the saints at Ephesus.

God did this according to his good pleasure. I’ve been a Christian a long time. You might, like me, feel like you should be farther along spiritually. For most of my Christian life, I knew that God forgave me but I never thought of him looking at me in love. As one friend put it, I can come to God but he has to hold his nose. I’d never really be pleasing to God unless I accomplished some ginormous thing. Yes, I know all the verses about being saved by grace and that God so loves the world. Looking hard at Ephesians 1, I came to see that the Father, far from looking at me sternly, looks at me in his love. That has changed everything for me.

My wife never had this problem because she knew she was secure in her father’s love. I didn’t feel that way. It took me a long time to embrace what Scripture says about all those who belong to Jesus. God did this for us according to his good pleasure. Pleasure? Yes, pleasure. It pleased God to choose you for his own. For any who like feel like they barely squeaked into God’s family, and might feel like you quite belong there, forget that. Paul’s prayer of thanks gives us great cause to embrace God’s love and let his love embrace us. God predestined us because he loves us, not because he wants humans he can dump on while they desperately struggle to deserve their status as his children. A few years ago, my spiritual director called me a “recovering legalist.” I know what I’m saying is true. It is too good to be true, but it is true. I often think of lines to a song,

          After all you’ve given

          And after all you’ve done

          After all it costs you to pay for my soul   

          How could I ever say, “No.” –Jaime Owens Collins

This would be more than enough for God to do, but he did not stop there.

God freely bestowed his grace upon by his beloved Son, Jesus.

Paul then tells us that God has redeemed us. In modern U.S. culture, one redeems coupons for discounts. That’s not what this is. Redemption was often used of slaves. They were bought, redeemed out of their slavery to be “free persons.” You could redeem a person or an animal by “purchasing” it with money or other valuable resource. God sent Jesus to die. His blood, his death, was the cost necessary to buy us back from eternal death. If you ever wonder about how much you matter to God, remember that he gave absolutely everything to buy you back. He became a human, lived a mostly ordinary life is a nowheresville town, and at the end, his disciples betrayed and deserted him. He was tortured, stripped naked (the paintings show modesty but Jesus would have been naked), and executed in the most painful way the Romans invented.

That’s what God paid for you to be his child. Redemption brings forgiveness of sins. If we are not willing to acknowledge that we have forsaken or rebelled against God, we might not see that we need forgiveness. God says that all of us do need forgiveness. He did this according to the riches of his grace. You cannot work your way up to God, but he bent low and freely provided a way for you to be forgiven. There aren’t sins so great that God can’t forgive. That applies even to sins that you or I might commit again and again and again. It’s worth taking a moment to let that sink in. God wanted us to be his that he suffered and died, gave to the uttermost, to buy us for himself.

In Eph 1:8, Paul asserts that God lavished his grace on us. He is not throwing out bread crumbs for us to see if we are lucky enough to catch some. He poured out his grace upon you. You can’t change it or earn it or improve on it. In Eph 2:4, Paul speaks of God’s lavish love for us. He is more generous than we can imagine.

The next few verses basically say that every individual believer has a place in God’s plan according to his will.  No child of God is a “extra” sitting in the bleachers.  As God’s child, he has given you an inheritance in Jesus, and you have a role in God’s plan.

As proof of this, God has sealed you with his Holy Spirit as a “down payment” or pledge to make it clear that what God has promised, will be completed because it does not depend upon us, but upon God who has chosen us.

When you or I look in the mirror, we might not see all of this, but this who you are in God’s eyes. It’s worth a moment of joyful thanksgiving to know that how I see myself with all my flaws is not how God sees me or you. You are his deliberately chosen, beloved child of God, made part of his family according to his will, with a part to play in God’s plan, purchased from bondage with Jesus’ blood. Who God says you are matters eternally far far more than how you or I might see ourselves.