In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His graceIn him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his graceIn whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
23 sermons cite this verse
… In accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him... We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. This is our focal point today. In him, in Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he has lavished on us. So let's just see if I can get a label out. Dear Lord, help us all. The label for today. I don't know what labels you're carrying around today. I don't know what's been spoken over you. I don't know what's been said about you. I don't know if you just quickly go, who am I? These few things come to mind. Maybe it's your profession. Maybe it's your name. Maybe it's your thing. I don't know what label the enemy's tried to put on you. …
… And the price, over and over in the New Testament, we are told that the price is the blood, and we'll come to the word blood next week in verse 25. Ephesians 1.7, we have redemption through His blood. Acts 20.28, God purchased the church with His blood. 1 Peter 1, we have been redeemed, not through perishable things, but through the precious blood of Christ. So, this is part of Paul's argument, why God is just to justify the ungodly. Because there was a purchase paid for this deliverance. That's what a redemption is. You pay the ransom price. It's paying the bail, posting the bond, so that the captive can be set free. We'll say this over and over again. You need to understand. God's justification of sinners does not take place by the setting aside of justice, but by the fulfilling of justice. God did not say there is a just claim against you, but I'm God and I like you and it's not a big deal. …
… Okay? This is saying Paul who in Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 14, it's a single run-on sentence in Greek. 12 verses are single run-on sentence in Greek. This is the sort of man Paul is. But here, fascinatingly, he confines himself to only 25 verses and less than 400 words total. But what is interesting is that these 25 verses force us to confront three excuses that I think Christians often have when it comes to remaining in unforgiveness. Three excuses that we will often use to justify why we will not forgive someone. And I want to say this too, I'm speaking primarily tonight to those who have been hurt, those who have been wronged. I'm not directing this message towards the wrongdoer. If that is you, you need to repent, you need to turn to Christ, and you need to seek forgiveness from the person you've wronged. But to be honest, I love you. God bless you. You're not really the focus of what I think we need to talk about. I'm speaking to those who have been wronged. You have been sinned against, and you are struggling to figure out how do I forgive in light of that sin. …
… 1.13, he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. The word conveyed means moved out of the jurisdiction of. Isn't that awesome? So though my physical body still dwells in this physical realm, spiritually, I have been conveyed. I have been moved out of the jurisdiction of this world, and I have been placed into his kingdom. That's radical. That means that whatever's going on in this world, I don't have to worry about it. This world has no power over me. This world has no power over you. Satan has no power over you. The world has no power over you, and that's what John wants you to know. Look at what Jesus prayed in John chapter 17, verse 15. He says, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world. That's why when you become born again, you don't just instantly die and go to heaven. …
… into the kingdom of the son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ just as he chose us in him, that's foreknowledge, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, which are on earth, in him. …
… Ephesians 1, 7. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself. Which he purposed in himself. That he's decided before time has begun that he loves you. That he has a plan for your life. So when we take that view that God has already decided and we kind of put it on the second shelf and we take what people say about us and we take what we can attain and what we can maximize and how much is in our bank account. We were telling God ultimately that his view of us is secondary. This is the lie of image and influence management. And in a sense, we are rejecting God's approval of us. This is what Saul's doing. In this passage, here's more symptoms if you find yourself wondering if this is you. …
… with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him, we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he has set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven, things on earth in him. Let's pray. Father, we come to you not even that we can do so, addressing you as father is only because we do so in your only eternal son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask you, Father, again tonight, that you would bless your word, that you would bless the preaching of your word. Spirit, would you hold up Christ to us again tonight through your word and bless our hearts. We need you. We need your help. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. I wonder if, as a child, you had something that really comforted you, Something that was a source of comfort. …
… is not yours. Come on, clap if you believe that God already paid the price for me. I've been purchased and ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ. If you don't believe it, look at Ephesians chapter 1 verse 7, in him, in Jesus, we have redemption. Through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Look at 1 Peter chapter 1. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold or Venmo that you were redeemed with from the empty way of life handed down to you from all of your ancestors, but it was with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. What did God pay for you with? In this story, Hosea, he finds his wife. She is a prostitute, and he says, so I paid for her to come home. Did you know that God paid for you to be returned back into the right standing in front of the Father? And he paid the high price of the gift of his son. And Jesus paid the price of shedding his innocent blood on the cross at Calvary so that you would not have to pay the penalty or the debt of your sin, but you would not have to owe anything because of the greatness and the love of Jesus Christ. …
… In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he has blessed us, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according to his the good pleasure or the purpose with which which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him things in heaven and things on the earth in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory in him you also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. …
… Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can be forgiven. Listen to Ephesians 1-7, in Him that is in Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. In Ephesians chapter 4, verse 32, God in Christ has forgiven you. First John 1-9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When you go into the Old Testament, you find the same thing. Here are the words of Exodus 34, the Lord God Himself said, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin." God is introducing Himself there, as you remember in the mountain, to Moses, and He wants Moses to know His character. And He describes Himself as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. …
… We have redemption through the blood of Christ. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. And then this, in all wisdom and insight. This is talking about what happened to you at your salvation. You were introduced into the world of wisdom. In verse 18, Paul says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you will know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. How would you know that? Verse 17, I pray that God will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Well, you have the Holy Spirit. Paul is saying, I'm hoping, I'm praying that you will respond to the work of the Holy Spirit on your human spirit so that you can literally live in the wisdom that is yours by the work of Christ, the presence of Christ, the presence of the Spirit, and through the Word of God. …
… put into your account everything you will ever need for all of eternity. Jump down to verse seven. It says, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of grace. Now, most often we define grace as unmerited favor. It's a great definition. It's just, it's just the beginning of the definition of the word grace. Why? Because grace in its nature is the empowering presence of God to enable us to become, not just to perform. It actually changes who we are and it changes what we're capable of doing. So grace would be like the hands of a potter shaping clay. So our skill set, our ability to represent him well, all those things are according to the hands of that potter. In this case, according to the shaping that takes place in our experience with grace. Now go to chapter two. Ephesians, I don't know of a more pregnant chapter in the Bible than Ephesians one. My goodness, I think you could study the rest of your life and still have your head hurt by the end. …
… to the praise of his glory. Now, we've been looking at this chapter. We're looking at Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3 to 14. And we've said that it's all about, the whole chapter is the gospel of your salvation. That's a term that's found in verse 13, see? It says, when you were included in Christ, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you heard that and you believed it, you were marked with a seal and you, the promised Holy Spirit. So the point is, the gospel of salvation, the word gospel means good news. This chapter is a kind of inventory of all of the great things that when you become a Christian, you have. It's a little bit like buying a house and going through it to see what you bought, buying a car and driving it to see what you really have there. You bought something, what's really under the hood? and therefore we've been looking at this chapter and we saw in the first four verses, verses four to eight, the first thing God tells us that we have in Christ is adoption. We're brought into the family of God and he becomes no longer our boss or our supervisor or our task master but our father. And then secondly, we looked at verses nine to twelve and we see we not only get adoption but we get a kingdom. We get a God who's in charge of our lives and all of history. He's sovereign, and we looked at that. Now, thirdly, this is what we're looking at now …
For teaching time, we're going to look again at Ephesians chapter 1. I'd like to call your attention to the entire section that we've been looking at, Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 14. But tonight we're going to look again, in particular, at verses 9 to 12. It's all one thought, and yet there's divisions in the thought. And I'm going to read from verse 3 to 14, but tonight we're in particular going to look at verse 9 to 12. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. …
at least when I was here we were, I'd like to take a look again at this huge sentence that we started looking at in the late spring and early summer. It's Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3 to 14, and I'm going to show you tonight that there is a second major division in it, and I'd like to give you an overview of it. We've been looking for weeks at the beauty of the first part of that sentence and what it means that we were chosen to be adopted as his children, to be his sons. And we spent a number of weeks on what it means to be adopted. And I want you to know that I don't know if it helped you, but I wrote most of those sermons sitting in a convent on the shores of the Hudson River back in late May, and it changed my life. Just to think about the first part of the sentence. But starting at verse 9, we have a second part, and I'd like to introduce you to that tonight. Let me read you the whole sentence again. Chapter 1, verse 3 through 14. In the Greek, it was all one sentence, even though the English translators have had to break it up just to make it comprehensible. Praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be …
… which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. But the key here is he predestined us to be adopted as his sons. For the last two weeks we've been looking at this. We've talked about the importance of the doctrine, the cruciality of it. We've talked about the fact that everything God in all of eternity has planned, you see, all of his plan, he predestined us, everything came down to this, the pinnacle of everything he wanted to do, the capstone and the climax of all of his plans of history, the whole point of Jesus' death on the cross and his redemption, all the things we've been looking at for a number of weeks, this is the apex. This is what it all comes down to. This is the highest thing that any religion even offers its people, to be adopted as his sons. We saw, for example, that this happens because of Jesus' death and his redemption. You know, the subtle beauty, I think, in the structure that's very subtle underneath the parable of the prodigal son that's so easy to miss is that the only way the prodigal son is able to come back after his sin and rebellion into the welcome of the father is at the expense of the elder brother. The father cannot exactly freely bring back the younger brother, the prodigal son. He can't do it freely because you …
… which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we receive redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. This is God's word. But we're looking here. He destined us to be adopted as his sons. This is Father's Day. And I noticed that yesterday in the religion, one of the religion writers of the New York Times, Peter Steinfeld, had an interesting statement to make. He said, with all the flap about family values, people don't seem to notice that it's not really the question of why there's so many single mothers. He said, the real question is why there's so many absent fathers. and he comes right out in that little article. It's on page 11, no, page 9 of yesterday's paper and he says, we need to ask a question. Now, I'm not going to answer this question. It's just a good question. This isn't our basic purpose tonight. He says, in 1960, one out of every 20 births was to a mother without a father living at home and today it's one out of four. …
… which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Now, let's remember what this is about. The word saved. This is all about what it means to be saved. Kathy and I remember when we first became Christians back in our 20s, we were so afraid of how we might look, we often would say, I'm a Christian. But, you know, not one of those kinds that goes around saying everybody's saved. Kathy used to introduce herself, say, I'm a Christian, but not like Billy Graham, you know, that kind of Christian. And then, you know, as time went on, it started to dawn on us, we really are like that kind of Christian. It took us a while to see that the word saved, are you saved? Though many people find that offensive, and many people identify that word with shallow and narrow-minded religion. …
We're going to look at verse 7 for the last time. So when I get to verse 7, I'll read it slowly, but look at the sentence, look at the unit. Ephesians 1, verses 4 through 8. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight, In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Let's look for the last time at verse 7. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. Let's just look at the word forgiveness and redemption for one last time. Last week, well, no, last time, we looked at the first aspect of redemption. Tonight, I'd like to look at the second aspect. Redemption, the word redemption is in Greek, it's the word apolutron, which means a ransom. And a ransom means, has two sides to it. A ransom means, first of all, that the parties that are being paid for are in some sort of bondage. …
… because I'm going to do this week and later two studies to make sure we understand the verse. the verse goes this way in him we have redemption through his blood for the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of his grace now it's such a it's such a great verse and you know that uh especially if you got the newsletter recently, you know that I promised myself I was going to move a little more quickly through Ephesians 1 than I am, and I will. But this verse, it's too rich. It's too rich and beautiful to look at once. Last week, we basically preached on the first two words, in Him. And we saw that Christianity says that all the atonement, all of the saving is in Him, not in us. Now, today, I just, tonight, pardon me, I'd like to look just for a moment to prepare us to go to the Lord's table at the word redemption. The word redemption is a pretty general word. …
… We said last week that Ephesians 1, which we're beginning to look at, is Ephesians 1, verse 3 to 14. In the Greek original was one long sentence. boy now what am I doing wrong uh it was one long sentence and uh therefore it's a it's a massive build-up it's a statement in which Paul is trying to give us the entire scheme of how God saves us and I'd like to read just verses uh three to fourteen but we're only going to look at verse three four and five here tonight for a minute Paul says praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. In him we also were …
… really not that old. I mean, if he'd only been able to get with Martin Luther, who would have taken him to Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7 and said, in him, you have forgiveness of sins through the redemption of his blood according to the riches of his grace. Just take this entire week and live out of those two words. You'll take criticism well this week. You'll look at things from God's perspective and not be that upset when things go wrong. Just live off those two words every day this week and watch what happens. I dare you because I love you enough to dare you. in him. Let's pray. Our Father, help us to live out of that. Help us to live off of that. Help us to see just what we have in you, oh Lord Jesus Christ. And we ask that you would help us to see the places where we have forgotten that. The places where we're guilty. The places where we're proud. The places where we're licentious and disobedient. The places where we are not seeing our completeness in you. Show us that, enable us.
… it's broken into several sentences. Ephesians 1, verse 3 to 14 is one long sentence in Greek. And I'll give you some reasons why I think that happened. It's not good grammar. It's not, even in Greek, to have a sentence that long is not good grammar. It's not good form or style. But Paul was caught up. Let's take a look at this. Ephesians 1, verses 1 to 14. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, weigh every word. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Christ Jesus in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will have …