“Life Story” on Ephesians 1:11-14 by Joe Ellis – Sept. 22, 2024

Our stories define us. The way we tell our own personal story declares, “This is who I am.” Remember a time when you told someone a significant part of your life story? Doing so forces you to make a lot of decisions. What do you want them to think of you? What will you disclose? What will you keep secret?

A few years ago I was part of a small group where we were telling our life stories — as my turn approached, I realized that for years I had been telling the same life story. I wondered how I could tell my life story differently — so I told my life story framed around my relationship with anxiety, which was a surprisingly vulnerable experience. If you were to tell your life story to a group of trusted friends right now, how would you shape your life story? Are there one or two themes that you would want to trace in your life? Now consider this: Is there anyone who knows you well enough to tell your life story? What themes do you think they might trace in your life? If our stories define us, if our stories say, “This is who I am” — who would you trust enough to tell your story for you? Who knows you well enough to tell your story? Usually, the only time we risk telling another person’s life story is at their funeral — yet in those moments telling our loved one’s life story is a matter of urgency. We’re saying, “This is who they were! This is what made them so precious!” At a Christian memorial service, we want people to not only walk away with a sense of how beautiful was the life we are remembering — we want something more. We want to convey how their life reflects the goodness and faithfulness of God.  

Paul has this same sort of urgency in the passage we just read from Ephesians 1. Paul is telling a life’s story. He wants us to consider the preciousness of the life he is describing… And the story he’s telling is to make clear the unsurpassable glory of God through this life. Paul is telling your life story. He is telling the life story of every follower of Jesus that ever walked on this earth. I wonder if you recognized your story in those verses?  Would you tell your story in the same way? 

If you were to tell your story right now, where would you start? Midway through your life, or would you describe where you were born? Would you describe your hometown, your parents, your siblings? A while back a friend who is Wet’suwet’en told me his life story — his life story began long before he was born. He began by naming his clan, his ancestors, his place.  

When Paul tells your life story, he also reaches quite far back. He begins long before you were born, in a time that is outside time. In that mysterious place where God chose you before the creation of the world. Remember back in verse 4, Paul says, “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 and daughters through Jesus Christ in accordance with His pleasure and will.” —  In today’s passage, Paul circles back to this theme in verse 11, Paul says, “In Christ we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in comfort with the purpose of His will…” Long before we learned how to say the words, “I love Jesus,” God was saying, “I love you. You are my child. I choose you.”  Just let that sink in for a moment.  Before you could do anything to serve God, to impress God, to say the right thing to God, your Father in heaven held you in His presence, and declared over your life, “I choose you, you are my child.” We try and capture this mystery when we baptize even a baby, we reframe their life as already in some way having been present before God, before time began. 

Paul then moves you forward in your life story — he begins to tell your life story in a way that you and I are more used to — He speaks about your being “Included in Christ when you heard the Word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation.”  You or I might be more likely to include that moment in our life story, because you might remember those moments when it seemed the Gospel first began taking hold of you — when you found yourself somehow included in Christ’s story. This is not some mysterious version of your self that existed before the foundation of the world — rather, we’re talking about moments in time when you heard the Word of Truth in a way that you could understand, relate to, and respond. At some point, you recognized the Word of Truth as having found its home in you. A moment ago I mentioned infant baptism as affirming the mystery of our presence with God before the foundation of the world — here, we are more in the realm of adult baptism, or believer’s baptism — which underscores the believers response to Word which has made its home in them. In traditions that baptize infants, we call this second event a Profession of Faith or Confirmation.  Do you remember when you believed that Jesus paid for your sins with His blood, and because of that, nothing could ever prevent you from having intimacy with God!  How do you tell that part of your story? Was it a realization that hit you like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, or did this gradually dawn on you? Who did God send into your life to share with you the Word of Truth? Was it a spouse, parent, grandparent, teacher, friend, maybe a stranger?

So, you believed the Gospel of your salvation.  Do you know what happened next in your story? Paul does — and he keeps telling your life story. You were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.  You were sealed with the Holy Spirit. Do you remember that moment?  For some, you may be able to point to a particular moment when you were sealed by the Holy Spirit. 

For me, I don’t think I can point to any one particular moment where it was like, “Boom, I now have the Holy Spirit.”  There are a lot of different ways a person could grow in awareness of having the Holy Spirit within them. For me, the most consistent way that the Spirit works in my life is as a constant companion who continues to keep drawing me back to God. I start wandering away, drifting away, and the Spirit continually draws me back. “Come, Joe, come closer to your Father.” When the Spirit makes a home in you, He won’t let you go. That’s why Paul talks about having the Seal of the Spirit.

Paul says, “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.”  We don’t use seals much anymore, but in Paul’s day a seal carried a lot of weight.  Occasionally, we might see a seal of the sort that Paul’s talking about if you get a letter sealed with wax, and there is a stamp on that wax. In Paul’s day, if something was yours and it was important to you — you’d pour wax on it and stamp it with your seal. Whatever had the stamp of your seal declared to others that this was your precious possession — so don’t mess with it!  You are sealed by God with His Holy Spirit. If you have the seal of the Holy Spirit, that means you are claimed by God, He looks at you as His precious child.  And if anyone or anything tries to tamper with that seal, that means they will be answering to God Himself.  When you tell your life story, do you tell about a life sealed with the Holy Spirit?  When you live your life, do you do so with the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is in you and that you are His precious possession, bought with the blood of Jesus?  

But the metaphor of the Holy Spirit as a seal eventually breaks down, because the Spirit is not simply a dormant hunk of wax. No, the Spirit moves you into your future. The Spirit gives your life directionality that it never had before.  For Paul, the Spirit points fundamentally to the future, to the last days.  To the day when Jesus will return, and make everything perfect in heaven and on earth. On that day, we will learn what it means to be sons and daughters of the living God when we receive our inheritance in full. 

Of course, it is absolutely true that we have the Spirit today, here and now.  The Spirit is working and active in our lives, but right now the Spirit is only present in our lives as a down payment, as the first deposit of our future life in the Spirit.  As I mentioned last Sunday, a helpful way of referring to this is “Already but not yet.”  We already have the Holy Spirit in our lives, but we do not yet have the Spirit in all of its fullness.  We live our lives in the tension of the ‘already but not yet.’ 

Because we do not yet have the Spirit in full, that means our lives here today will not be perfect.  The fact that we experience pain in our lives, have conflict with our family or co-workers, the fact that we do not follow God perfectly, the fact that we get sick, that we get depressed or sad, the fact that we have broken relationships in our life, the fact that we will die, is because you and I do not yet have the Spirit in full.  We have a deposit of the Spirit, but we’re still waiting for our full inheritance.

So, when we tell our life story, when we give our testimony, our story might not sound much like this: “Then I became a Christian and my life became perfect, now my spouse and I get along perfectly.”  Or “When I became a Christian, now my parents and I always see eye to eye.”  Or “I haven’t become depressed once since I became a Christian.” There may be elements of that in your story, after all the Spirit is a helper, a counsellor, a support in time of trouble. Yet our present life story won’t be a story of perfection because we are still waiting for that day when we will receive our inheritance in full — the fullness of the Spirit.  So as we wait for that day, our life story will be marked with tragedy, disappointment, and failure. Yes, but the Spirit will give directionality to your life — somehow, mysteriously, through those very difficult experiences, the Holy Spirit will continue to lead you into your future, into your inheritance. The Holy Spirit will guide and support you in these difficult moments as well as beautiful moments — after all, you have the Holy Spirit’s seal, and that is forever. He won’t ever let you go.

Our life story will never be picture perfect, and it won’t be until Jesus comes again. Paul tells our life story in a way that captures that tension that exists between our present and our future. Just as we don’t often begin telling our life story before we were born, similarly, we don’t tell our life story about who we will be after we die. Yet Paul does. He names that we have the Spirit now, and this is a glimpse of who we will be when we receive the fullness of our inheritance in Christ. 

As I mentioned, when we tell a loved one’s life story at a funeral, we want to do two things: first, we want to not only say, “this is how precious they are,” but also, “this is all to the glory of God.” Over the past few weeks, we’ve worked through the first fourteen verses in Ephesians. And there is one phrase Paul says over and over and over again, and that is “to the praise of His glory.”  Paul doesn’t want us to miss the point.  The reason why God chose us before the foundation of the world to be His children is because He receives glory while loving us really well.  The reason why Jesus is the head of heaven and earth, the reason why God gave us the Word of Truth through Jesus, the reason why God sealed us with the Holy Spirit, the reason why God will one day give us the full inheritance in the Spirit, the reason why God has done all of this, is for His glory. When we see with our eyes how deeply we are loved by God, we give praise to His glory. So when our present life story comes to an end, when we gather around the throne of God in heaven, and tell one another our life stories, somehow or other, all of the events in our life will point towards how God has faithfully loved us our whole life through.  We will sing of his loving faithfulness to the praise of His glory.