Ephesians, In Christ - Identification Part 1
Ephesians · Roger Henderson · Oct 18, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 42
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926145504876

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, well, we're kind of in the part of Ephesians now. We've been through the entire book. I wasn't here for a good part of it. But we're in this section. We're looking at topics in Ephesians. And one of the major topics in Ephesians is our identification with Christ and the riches of blessing we have in the Savior.

So actually, Bob kind of created some different titles for these sections. So he titled this section In Christ Identification. So when I started thinking about that, I immediately came to mind of Schaeffer's work, His Riches of God's Grace. And I think we've been exposed to that quite a bit here at Holly Hills.

So actually, in his systematic theology, he goes through and delineates these riches of God's grace. And basically, what's interesting is, and I had wanted to do this for years, I wanted to map and see How many of those riches occurred in Ephesians? Well, this class provided the opportunity. And it's actually pretty amazing how many show up in Ephesians. Over half of his listing of his riches of God's grace show up in Ephesians.

And actually, the majority show up in the first two chapters. So I sent off Randy a copy of what my thoughts were. And he looked at it and he said, there's more stuff here than we could ever do. months. I think it's going to be more of a going through and looking at a good portion of these. I think in this class I want to go through and just kind of give you the big picture and I'm going to kind of jump into chapter one of Ephesians. But it's really kind of good to go back. I know that you've been through this before in the class if you started from the beginning back in January.

But it will be a great refresher and a great blessing. So let's just go ahead here and Schaeffer starts off in his systematic theology and he makes some statements about the Bible doctrine of salvation. It includes those things which are done for the individual at the instant he believes. The things that we're going to be talking about here are things that every believer in the Lord Jesus, whether he's a mature believer or a young believer, he has all these blessings. And part of the Christian life is, and the big part is learning about those blessings and being taught those blessings, understanding those blessings. But he's not waiting to receive some blessings. He already has these blessings.

So that's a key aspect of this. And the sum total of these is what Schaeffer calls the the riches of grace in God. Actually, I wasn't totally consistent here. You have to bear with me. I have riches of divine grace. I have riches of God. I kind of went around the mulberry bush a little bit. It's the same riches. The title varies a little bit. Bear with me. Okay, so basically he makes a statement here.

These things divinely accomplished at the instant of believing alone form the aspects of salvation, which is already accomplished in and for the one who believes. So we already have these wonderful blessings. So, you know, as believers in the Lord, we want to grow in grace and knowledge of Him. So we want to learn about these blessings, understand these blessings, count upon these blessings. So that's what, hopefully this class will help you maybe get a big picture of that, the immensity of these blessings. There's mind-boggling.

So the next chart kind of has five points. The first point is that they're not experienced. Could someone give me an example? I haven't even told you what the blessings are, but I'm just going to ask you. You've read it through Ephesians. Can you tell me one of the blessings And is that a true statement? It's not experience. Don't I experience God's love? Is that something you can think of?

One of the blessings that we have in Christ that you say, well, I really don't experience that, but I know that. I may have made this too... Exactly. We know we have redemption. Outside of Scripture, we would not know, we would come to understand that. I don't experience redemption, right? Another one might be justification. We're justified, declared righteous. We don't experience that. We are told that. We are justified.

This turns to Romans 5.1, for example, here.

In Romans 5.1, as in so much of Paul's epistle, it makes a statement about something that the believer has.

Romans 5.1, and it says, therefore, having been justified, it doesn't say, you know, pray to be justified, it says, having been justified, you know, past completed action, having been justified by faith, our part of it is faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So that's what I'm talking about, you know, these blessings, these divine riches are something that we have and we learn about them not by experience, but we learn about them by the Word of God. So that's point one. Point two is, they're not progressive. Now you might say, well, you just said that we're to grow in grace, so there is a growing aspect, but we don't justification being declared righteous, we don't start with a little justification, and then down the road we get a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more. No, we have all the justification we need. at the moment of salvation. So they're not progressive. We may progressively understand the immensity of that, but they're not progressive. Go ahead.

I kind of wonder if it's going out on a limb too far to ask if the foreknowledge of God doesn't tell us that was put in there for the knowledge or predestination was put in that way. God had known this and when he called it when we were called to be saved, he knew all these things existed and were in the package. And this is just the foreknowledge of the whole thing that would be coming upon you as a Christian when you accept the end. But he knew it all along anyway.

So it isn't something that's come up on the spur of the moment that you're going to work at. Exactly, exactly. Well I think that's somewhat, you know, it's not God's not gradually developing His plan. His plan was developed before the foundation of the world. He's not discovering, oh, my plan today is, let's see, what did Bud do today? Boy, I gotta watch out for that guy, you know what I mean? Or Roger. So anyway, and that's a wonderful part. We have these as a secure anchor and a secure testimony of what God has done. Okay, so that's number two. is they are in no way related to human effort, human merit rather, or human effort. We don't add anything, you know. Our faith doesn't add anything to it. Faith is not, you know, it's a non-meritorious act.

It's kind of a big word. You know, we don't get, go ahead, you had a question? Would you say that our faith, maybe it's not our faith, but our increased knowledge of Him. Okay, okay. it makes us more aware of it. It doesn't increase the benefit that we have in terms of our eternal position and our eternal condition, but in our earthly condition, that's part of the transformation process as we get to know Him more. Exactly.

Certainly our Christian walk can be tremendously influenced by knowing what we have. If you don't know what you have, it's sort of like, I'm going to go out today, and I'm not sure how much money I have in my pocket, but I'm going to go do things. Well, what if I don't have enough money? It's nice to know what you have and what you can depend upon.

That's exactly right. But we're not going to come along and say, oh, by the way, I have something I can add, Lord. Here's something I can add. I can increase my blessing by this act or that act. No. It's complete. We feel more blessed. And that's a good point. When we realize what we have, absolutely. But the blessing didn't all of a sudden show up on the scene. It was already there. That's number three. Number four is kind of obvious. We have an eternal God and the blessings we have are eternal in character. If you think about You know, there are so many different, you know, eternal life, eternal redemption, the eternal covenants.

Here's a verse, let's look in 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy 1.9, just kind of talks about 2 Timothy 1.9 says, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. Now there are so many different things that are along that line.

You look at that and you say, well God didn't just think of this along the way. He understood this. He knew it before he ever started. Before he ever started Before man was ever created, he knew and he planned for our salvation. And that's one of the verses we're going to see on the way here. These blessings started in the eternity past and we're just right now today, in 2009, we're going over them again and God had these in the eternity past. And lastly, Basically, they're known only through the Word of God.

Some aspects of God, we can look out at the creation and we can see there must be somebody behind this beautiful creation. There must be something there. But when we get to these truths, these truths are actually astounding. They're mind-boggling. Why would a God do these wonderful things for me by His grace? I have no merit to bring to the table for Him to do that. He did it out of His grace. So, only the Word of God can reveal these truths.

You had something else, Jack? I was looking at justification and sanctification. And when you start working through those, there's quite a bit there. I've got some notes written on it. Like you say, it kind of boggles the mind what he has done. Exactly, exactly.

Obviously, sanctification is an ongoing process that every believer is going through. We're being conformed to the image of God. We're learning about Christ. And that should affect our actions. That should affect what we're doing. You know, the note I've got is sanctification comes from God by union with Christ.

And then it's also to set apart for a heavenly purpose. And the same Greek word from which is unholy set apart to God is translated sanctified holy and sane to withdraw from fellowship with the world. There's a whole bunch of stuff tied up with those terms. One is sanctification, one is justification. Well, you know, usually you think about, you know, justification, sanctification, glorification. Just like the past aspect of our salvation, the present aspect, we're being saved, and the future aspect, we conform to his image totally. He says it is a state, not a condition to be. Right. Good, good. OK.

All right, so now, this is kind of the intro to the riches of God's grace. So now what I did, this is where, and actually I showed you part of this when we did the summary of Ephesians. OK, so in chapter one of Ephesians, I'm just going to kind of go through. I took the 33 riches of God's grace, and I looked, and I said, OK, where do they occur? And I just started, so I listed where they occur.

The first one is, and these are Schaeffer's titles. And we're going to go over, chapter one we're going to go over, and then Randy, hopefully, will pick up with two, and whatever else he can finish. Or maybe only half or two, or whatever he wants to do. I'll wear my running shorts. OK, that sounds good. You may need them.

OK, so in Ephesians 1, 3, possessing every spiritual blessing in verse 4 in the eternal plan of God and actually Schaeffer in some cases will combine some of these truths so in the eternal plan of God he has some subsets and chosen is one of those children of God and one of those aspects is sons of God in Ephesians 1 5 acceptable to God by Jesus Christ and this is we've been made accepted And that's actually the King James. We're going to kind of see that maybe the newer translations maybe capture a little bit more of what's going on there. Redeemed in 1.7. And also in 1.7, forgiven all trespasses.

And Ephesians 1.11, in the eternal plan of God, predestined. And then 1.14, blessed with the earnest or firstfruits of the Spirit. And 118, His inheritance. We're going to see an inheritance kind of in here quite a bit. We are His inheritance. That's a tremendous statement.

Within the much more care of God, His power being demonstrated in our lives. So there are 10 of those in Chapter 1. And then in Chapter 2, we've got 10 more. You'll see within the much more care of God, and this time it's going to talk about His love. Children of God, He made us alive, in 2.5.

Heavenly Association, partnership and position, 2.6. Again, within the much more care of God, His grace. Children of God, a new creation. Circumcised in Christ. Made near. having access to God in 2.18, of the family and household of God in 2.19, and on the rock Christ Jesus in 2.20. So that's ten more. And then what's interesting, you know, the first three chapters of Ephesians are kind of doctrinal, and you kind of expect the positional truths, but we have some that show up in after chapter three. So in 3.6, of the family and household of God.

In 4.6, vitally united to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In 4.6, blessed with the earnest or firstfruits of the Spirit.

In 4.30, and then in 4.32, again, another one, forgiven all trespasses. It's another verse that speaks about that. Within the much more care of God is love. Enlighten the Lord, 5-8. And that's it. So there's six more there.

So basically that's Schaeffer's riches kind of mapped into Ephesians. And then I thought to really focus in on our identification, we ought to look at the identification truths and just see how they kind of map into Ephesians as well. So I found a chart that Hal did back in 2004. and basically our baptism or our identification with Christ. And so the first aspect, we have been baptized or identified into the person of Christ. And you know, the first three aspects we're going to see kind of show up in Romans, which you kind of, Romans 6, which is kind of the key, key chapter on identification, into his death, into his burial.

And then what's interesting is when we start going into the heavenly associations with Christ, we start seeing Ephesians show up. And it's just what you'd think. You'd think that since Ephesians is what's been called a heavenly epistle, you'd expect those truths to show up in Ephesians. And they do.

Into his resurrection, some of these same verses appear again and again and again because they're just power-packed with truths about our identification and who we are in Christ. Into his resurrection, into his ascension, in the first part of Ephesians there, and also in 2.6 again, into his seating. And then lastly, into the body of Christ. So those are seven aspects of our identification with Christ. And three of those occur in the heavenly epistle of Ephesians.

So that's another aspect of all this. Okay, so now what I'd like to do for the remainder of the class here, I'd like to kind of start in chapter one and kind of go over, and you've been through this before, but I found it helpful to kind of go through maybe in a little more detail. So there are ten blessings we're going to talk about in chapter one. And I'm not sure we'll get through them all, but we'll just kind of start again and we'll just go through as many as we can do.

So the first one is, in Ephesians 1-3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I know it's like last week or when we did the Trinity, the same verses show up looking at different ways and I thought it was kind of interesting because we looked at this verse just last week or the week before I know. So in this case, I want to kind of focus on the blessing that the believer has. So first of all it starts off with the fact that we're to blessed be or actually it's eulogize, and the base word is to eulogize.

Blessed be the God and Father over Lord Jesus Christ. And then it's going to talk about something that he's done. Here's something that God has accomplished on behalf of the believer who has blessed, has blessed us, and actually literally it's having blessed us with every, and that's kind of an important word, every is this word pas in the Greek, And it really says it can mean all.

There's no exceptions. It's inclusive. So this is making the statement that God has given us the totality of spiritual blessings that is needed for the Christian life. And that's kind of a neat statement. This verse Schaeffer has said, he says, no text of scripture more perfectly accounts for all or every of the riches of God's grace. This is a summary statement, if you will. So he starts off in Ephesians with a summary statement saying, you have it all. There's no exceptions. There's not one I missed. I didn't miss any. And you're not going to get another one down the road. You've got it. You have them all.

And then the question is, well, what do I have? Ephesians is going to delineate half of those and then the rest of scripture will delineate many many more So I mean it's this this is a trend This is one that I think is very helpful in talking with people because some people are always Well, there's something else out there if I if I do this or do that or I do some Christian service, I'm gonna get another blessing well This one declares that you that it's been accomplished for you already, you know, and so we're to trust what it says and But there's some key aspects here.

Is this talking about that I have a Mercedes waiting outside here in the parking lot? Is that part of my spiritual blessing here? What kind of blessings are these? Do I get more money in my bank account? I think it's important to note that all your blessings do not need a makings plan. Amen.

That is good, because I get tired of those maintenance plans. I keep saying no, I don't want the maintenance plan. I'm thankful I didn't say that, or I regret it, one of the two. When it breaks down, I say, well, I should have gotten the maintenance plan. So I understand what you're saying, Randy. We're not expecting these here on the terra firma, right? As some have said.

These are, as it says, where are these blessings at? And actually, first of all, where is the believer? Where is the believer in his position in Christ? And if we turn over to Ephesians 2.6, we'll see where are we at. Where are we at in terms of Where does the Savior see us? Where are we at in terms of our... So where we're at is where we ought to see our blessings, right?

So if you look at Ephesians 2.6, it says, in the middle of the sentence, "...and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." So that's where we're at. So shouldn't we expect, if that's where God sees us, wouldn't He interact with us there? And wouldn't that be where our blessings are going to be? They're going to be with Him in heavenly places.

This earth is a different story. He tells us that in this life we're going to have trials and tribulations. As a believer, as knowing God, we're going to have trials and tribulations. But don't worry about that. But trust what you have in heavenly places with him. So he tells us that our spiritual blessings are with him in heavenly places. And the other important part is that is it in ourselves? I don't have some blessing hidden away in me. No, it's in Christ. All our blessings are in him. by no means a journalist, but I recall hearing for years and years that there are five questions that journalists ask.

Who? What? When? Where? And this verse answers every one of those questions. Good. Excellent. Excellent. That's a good point. That's good. Who? It's God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. That's good. Excellent, Nancy. I had not thought of that. That's excellent. having blessed us.

Now the question is, when? Is it at the cross? Is it at salvation? Or was it even back at the point of the eternal covenant? When did he bless us? Okay, and that's it. Maybe it's all of those. That's a good point. Well, we obviously can't, until we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can't tap into those blessings.

We can't access those blessings. But he says he knew us before the foundation of the world, so you could argue that, hey, I didn't know about it, but when I trusted him, it was already accomplished. It's part of him having a plan. He decreed that he would be blessed from eternity.

Right. And as we're going to go through, like the next one here we're going to see, some of these are hard to grasp because you, and we'll see in the, let me go ahead myself here, but some of the ones here, like predestination, foreknowledge, hurt our heads terribly, hurt my head terribly. I mean, oh boy. I mean, it seems like He's either stacked on the deck, or he's unfair. I mean, you get all these things, but God's not unfair, and he's not stacked on the deck, and he's not, you know. So we'll see some of those in just a second here. Let's see. OK, so let's go on to the next one.

And this one actually is intimately connected to the other one, because it says, just as. Verse 4 says, just as. So if you read through this verse here, it says, blessed be the God and Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then he makes a statement about that, and then the just as actually refers back to the blessed be the God, and he's going to tell us an additional fact about our blessings. So he told us the summary statement, right?

All, every blessing. Now he's going to start adding to the list, if you will. Item number one. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love. So right off the bat, he gets one that kind of hurts our head, because as soon as you say, you know, he chose us, or actually the word is select.

And actually I was, you know, I looked at it a little bit. So what do you think about this? Is God, is there some unfairness that kind of creeps into your mind about this? You know, what happens is, and I know, well what about those, who don't believe. Were they not chosen? Were they unchosen? Did God... The question is, what did He choose us? What did He choose? He chose that those who are in Him... He made this choice before the foundation of the earth, that those who are in Him would be only in blindness. Right, exactly. So this is one of our blessings. So this is something you get. It's a package deal. You can say, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm chosen. That does not mean, that doesn't imply, the problem is we want to take it too far. We say, well, if he chose me, then he must have not chosen somebody else.

Scripture never says that. What does he say about the unbeliever? He says, I'm not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance. He says he wants to choose everybody, basically. So he doesn't say there's a chosen and the unchosen.

So we kind of want to put that into the equation. I'm saying God makes choices, but his overarching love and grace for mankind is still in play. And I think that you have two statements, and I think you can get all balanced. God makes a statement that he chose us in him, and once again, it's speaking of believers. In him, I'm chosen.

It doesn't say, you took the in him out, have a better case for why he's, I chose him in him. So that's an important part of that picture. And then he also says, I'm not willing that any should perish. So how do you reconcile those two statements? And you have to accept both of them. Otherwise, if you diminish one, you make one higher than the other, I think you're out of balance.

Roger, in this verse four, is the choosing, is it not that he chose us, period, for salvation? But is it that He chose us that we would be holy? Those who are in Him will be holy and blameless. And that is the choosing. That those who are in Him, He chooses that He will make them holy and blameless. This is not talking about Him choosing one for salvation over another.

This is an aspect of what we have in Christ. And that's where we can get off When God makes statements about what he's accomplished, I think we're obliged to accept both statements, even though we may not be able to reconcile them in our minds. Otherwise, we're going to shortchange. We're going to jade one or the other. This is part of the disconnect in scripture. It's just like when we were looking at the Trinity. We said, this is about what we can get. We can kind of understand they're all three and all one. But that's so far beyond our limited ability to understand. So were we chosen? Were we elect? Were we protestant? Yes. Was it our choice? Was it our will? Was it our? Yes. Do we know how that fits? No. Can't do that. Can't fit. Can't fit that dichotomy.

But it's true, but it's biblical. Paul said to the Philippian soldier, right? He said, well first you pray that you'd be chosen, and then predestined, and then you'll be regenerated. Then after you're regenerated, then you might believe. No! He said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's man's need to make everything fit and everything. Oh, we can figure it all out because we're so smart and we're so this and we're so...

We're not! All we can do, all we can do is take what he's given us and say, boy, from our earthly human stupidity, that looks contradictory. I think that's what we're getting hung up on. Because whenever we get into this discussion, we wind up having to talk about, someone says, oh, well, we're elected, we're chosen. The other person says, no, we're not, we make the choice. No, no, no. Because then all of a sudden, we're back into a corner that we don't believe, right? We do believe that we are elected. We do believe that we are chosen. We also believe that there's an element of our will in it. The correct view is, The Bible hired his ways above our ways, hired his thoughts above our thoughts. We can't fit them together.

The next truth is that in verse 5, he predestined us, and here we have another mind-boggling one, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will. So the word predestined is the idea to mark out beforehand, determine beforehand. Foreordained is another synonym of that. And what's interesting is it's to the adoption as sons, or actually it's literally a sonship. Adoption as sons is the idea of son placing. He predestined, and this is part of the package that comes when we trust the Lord Jesus, He predestined us to adoption as sons, or sons, or son-placing. And, you know, there's just many, many verses that talk about this.

I have received a spirit of adoption, or sonship, in Romans 8.15, in Galatians 4.15, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And what's cool about this is that it signifies the placing and condition of a son given to one who does not naturally belong. We don't naturally belong as a son of God. That's not because we're from Adam. But when we trust Christ, we're now born again. And we are now a fully adult son in God's sight.

And that was his plan. That was his plan from eternity past. You know, from the Greek classes that were adoption as a son, That's exactly what you were talking about. Right. It's that sun placing, which is neat. Above your natural born son. Exactly. We're not a natural born, we're from Adam. So we're not a natural born son. So this is the wonderful blessings that the believer, this is number two in our list. Number three is that to the praise and glory of his grace, he freely bestowed upon us in the beloved.

So we actually have kind of two statements. The King James has made us accepted. I think they both kind of give a part of this picture, which I think is really neat. The idea that he has freely bestowed upon us is to endow us with grace, or with charis. So if you look at the non-King James version here, which is the New American Standard, he freely bestowed upon us. He graced us. He graced us. We're objects of His grace. And then the King James kind of has, it kind of takes a different tack, and it says, He has made us.

So it seems like there's a little bit of a disconnect there, but it's really, I think, saying the same thing, basically. He has made us accepted, and it's actually in the Beloved, and actually literally it's in the Beloved One, in the Lord Jesus. We've been made accepted in the Beloved One. And if you remember in Luke where Mary was greeted as a favored one among women, she was a favored one.

It's the same word here. It's a one that has been grace. He has graced us. We're object of his grace. And that's one thing you'll notice as you go through this list. Time after time, these are aspects of God's grace that's involved here. In fact, grace shows up just innumerable times. OK.

Number seven, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. Redemption here is the word apollutrosis, which is a releasing upon payment of ransom. So that's another wonderful aspect we have. We've been redeemed. We've been released upon payment of His blood through His blood. We have redemption through His blood, not through any other means. And that kind of clarifies that. Well, what does that mean? That means the forgiveness of our trespasses.

And if you look at 1 John, it says that 1 John 2.1.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for those of the whole world. So Christ has paid for the sins of the whole world. But when we trust him, we are then forgiven. So forgiveness of our trespasses are sins. Actually, the King James renders that forgiveness of our sins, New American Standard has forgiveness of our trespasses. Actually, there are some parallel verses here. Let's look at Colossians chapter 1, verses 13 and 14.

It says, For he delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. So that's actually, that's the sixth aspect in this section. Okay. So now we go on to the next part. In 11 and 12, it says, also we have obtained an inheritance. having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory." So this is going to talk about that, once again, we have being predestined in view here. And this is kind of interesting.

It says, we have obtained an inheritance. In verse 11, we have obtained an inheritance. And actually, literally, it's we were made an inheritance. And in this verse, most of all the verbs here, like we have obtained, that's in the passive voice. So God is the one that's doing the action, and we're receiving the action. So we were made an inheritance, and then having been, And that's also in the passive voice, having been predestined according to his purpose.

I think we talked about his plan or his purpose. So his purpose and plans show up in this aspect of our being an inheritance and having been predestined according to his purpose. And his purposes are eternal. They were planned and made before the foundation of the world. OK, let's go on to 13 and 14. And we're going to see inheritance show up again here.

In him, you also, after listening to the message of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, have also believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance. So this aspect of our inheritance is going to be the fact that First of all, it says you were sealed. And that's the idea of the sealing like they would have in the Roman Empire. They would put a seal on the thing and it was broken. So we've been sealed. We were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.

Verse 14 starts out, who, referring back to the Holy Spirit, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance. And the word pledge is, we need Mike Doyle here, because it talks about the earnest money, that's actually, literally, I was actually kind of surprised, I had not looked that up before, but in Vines it has there, it says, the earnest money given to secure something that you buy. That's exactly how we use it to the earnest money. So the Holy Spirit is the earnest money By God of our inheritance who is given as the earnest money of our inheritance how that was really kind of cool Okay And then 18 I Pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of his calling? What are the riches of his inheritance in the saints? So here we have inheritance again. We get inheritance multiple times here. And actually here it's, riches could be the wealth of his glory, of the inheritance in the saints. And then the last one in chapter one is, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe? These are in accordance with a working of his strength and might. So that's the list of...

And actually, let me just read again. I'll just read it in Schaeffer's words here. So we looked in chapter one. We have possessing every spiritual blessing in the eternal plan of God being chosen, children of God, sons of God, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, we were made accepted, or we were grace basically, redeemed, forgiven all trespasses, in the eternal plan of God, predestined, blessed with the earnest, or firstfruits of the Spirit, his inheritance, within the much more care of God, his power.

So I think that's about all we have time for today. So actually next week, I'm just going to go through. Randy's going to start with these and more. This is the first part of the chat. I don't know. As you can see, you can spend a lot of time. We're actually basically summarizing a lot of what you guys did week after week after week. So anyway. All right. So let's close.

We thank you, Father. We thank you for our time this day, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have. We thank you for the plans that you made in eternity past that have provided for this wealth of truth and riches that we have. We pray that we would count upon these and trust these as we walk by faith. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.