Ephesians. Praise to the Father for our position in Christ, Pt 2

We're going to cover verses 7, Ephesians 1, 7, and 9 today. Actually, that starts what I have as a new section. I'll show you that in a second. That's going to talk about praise to the Son for our position in Him, part one. And Randy, next week, is going to go back and pick up part two of praise to the Father for our position in Christ.

I say, well, you guys are just chopping this up into small little tiny little pieces every two or three verses. But really there's just a lot in each of these verses. So that's what we're trying to do, make sure we cover all the important points. OK, with that in mind, so basically, like I mentioned, so let me go back and cover what in verses three through six.

Bob started out, actually two weeks ago, he talked about in verses three through six, the first part of that is our spiritual blessing in Him. You know, we saw that in terms of we're blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places for our being chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in Him. We should be holy and blameless. This is the part that Randy is going to cover next week. Our being predestined to adoption of sons, the kind intention of His will, the praise and glory of His grace, for grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

I've kind of underlined the personal pronouns here. So you can kind of see that the focus in Ephesians, yes, it is on our Savior and who He is and what He's done, but also it relates to us personally. And we're going to see a little bit, I'm going to go back and just cover, talk a little bit about Beloved or Beloved One, it talks about the Lord Jesus. So then the section that I'm going to cover today and then two weeks in today is going to be Praise to the Son for our position in Him. And then the remaining section is praise of the spirit for his work in the believer.

So that kind of takes in the first 14 verses. If you remember, that's one long sentence in the original language. And we're going to see where that can help. The translators have put in periods and commas. in those three through fourteen, and sometimes it could go different directions. So we'll see that. Okay. So part one. In him we have redemption through his blood. Actually, I wanted to do this. Could someone read just maybe verses one through nine, just to see how this fits totally into the context here. Ephesians one through nine. Chapter one, one through nine.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and to the saints which are Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. according as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, wherein he has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he has purposed in himself. Great, thank you.

So the section here, and once again I underline again the personal pronouns here, or personal aspects. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight. He made known to us the mystery of his will according to the kind intention which he purposed in him. And you'll notice, before we get into this too far, you'll notice that here they put a period at right here. And so the translators then start a new sentence and it goes in here. It has, in all wisdom and insight he made known to us a mystery of his will.

It could be that this part actually really belongs to the previous little statement. So I'm going to show you some options there and see what you think. I'm going to spend most of the time on verse 7 because it just has so much there. So let's go on with that.

In Him we have redemption through His blood. So it's literally, as I presented back in the introduction, when we see in Him, in the context of the New Testament, and looking at the structure of that in the original language, you could rightfully say that could be rendered our living union with Him or with Christ. But it even gets better than that. If you look back to the previous verse, verse 6 ends, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. That's actually speaking of our Savior, and He's called the Beloved or the Beloved One.

That kind of indicates what the Father thinks about His Son. The Father has put all his efforts, all his total plan of salvation is wrapped up in his son. And he talks about his son in various passages, like in Matthew he talks about, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Then in Colossians he says, for he rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. So that phraseology shows the intent of the father in terms of his son.

What's even cooler about that is that since we're seeing that we're in him, in our position in Christ, you look at 1 John. and you see all these wonderful declarations about the believer. One of them is in John, he addresses Beloved, let us love one another. Six times in 1 John he talks about Beloved, Beloved. So I guess my point here is that we're looking at our relationship with our Savior, and when we see statements about our Savior, and since we're in Him, That should give us even more encouragement.

So that's what I'm pointing out here. So basically you could say, in Him, in the Beloved One, we have, and it's the word echo in the original language, E-C-H-O, it's the idea that we are continually, in the present tense, we are continually having something.

We're continually having redemption. And actually, redemption here, there's actually, untranslated in the English, there's actually the word the. It wouldn't read too nicely. It would say, we have the redemption, maybe it would be, the redemption through his blood. So it talks about a particular redemption that God has wrought. This is not just, you know, the word redemption. was used in the Greek culture when they had slaves. Slaves were bought and sold in the market, and somebody could redeem a slave, take him out of the marketplace, and they could buy him, and that was referred to as redemption. Well, this redemption that God's talking about is very specific and very wonderful.

It's apollutrosis, a releasing on a payment of a ransom. So Paul uses it in several places. So let's just look at a couple of those. Can someone read Romans 3 24? Being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. So this is really neat.

So where does redemption For the believer, where does redemption live? It lives in our Savior. It is part of who He is. He has provided redemption, but He is redemption itself, which is kind of interesting. He is both the means of redemption, and as He first declares, it is literally in Him. And then the other verse there, I'll just read part of that, that talks about, but by His doing, You are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

So the basic idea is a release from something on the basis of some action by another. Like I mentioned in the Greek sense, it was a person who would pay money for a slave. In our case, the Lord Jesus had to pay with his own blood for our salvation. Paul's teaching is that redemption is the release from the penalty of sin based upon Christ's death.

And then Macaulay had a good statement. In a doctrinal context, this always implies a previous condition of slavery from which man could not Thank you. I have the word. I can pronounce it. Bonnie helps me a lot. So anyway, extricate himself. A lot of this is just very basic stuff to us. What's so neat is Ephesians just goes through and just goes one statement after another. We're in him. We have this wonderful blessing. It just lists one of these wonderful blessings after another.

So what we have is a permanent possession. We have redemption. We're not working for redemption. We're not hoping we get it. If we have put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, we have this. This is a possession that we have. I think it's important that we see, as we go through Ephesians, all these possessions that we have. That's to encourage us. That's to build us up. That's to cause us to praise our Savior and not to be worried about redemption. We have it. Okay, so I'm going to continue on here. Okay, so the next part is we have redemption and how is that accomplished?

It's through its blood. It's a preface. Christ was the agency that provided, His blood was the agency that provided our redemption. In Acts it says the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his blood." We have a song, There's Power in the Blood. When I saw that, I just got thinking of that song.

So the New Testament, over and over again, talks about the importance of the blood of Christ in so many different ways. And so it comes into play here in our redemption. And it comes into play in a lot of other truths about us in the Lord Jesus. Another statement from Macaulay, the outpoured blood of the Son of God at the cross is Lutron, the price for redeeming the ransom. So from that, a couple of verses that I liked here, Christ Jesus, the part of Christ Jesus who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and then 1 Peter 1 Well, let's actually read that. Let's read the full one.

Can someone look at 1 Peter 1.18-19?

It actually has a little bit more to say. I kind of... It's part of the verse there. Knowing that you were redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold, your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers. It was in 1819. But with precious blood as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. Yeah, you know, this makes a great comparison. It says, you know, knowing that you were not, we weren't redeemed with kind of ordinary things, like I was mentioning in the Greek system, they would bring whatever the currency was, gold or silver, that wouldn't be acceptable to God. It had to be the precious blood of the Lamb, unblemished, spotless, the blood of Christ.

This verse kind of shows you the value of His blood, and His blood was required for our redemption. So this verse just kind of builds on itself. In him we have redemption. And how was that accomplished? It was accomplished through the agency of his blood. And now we're going to move to the next part of the verse.

And it's going to talk about, it's going to give us, well, we can think of redemption as an additional fact. the forgiveness of our trespasses. You usually see the word trespasses and sins are somewhat interchangeable. I'll show you the definition of trespasses here in a second. You'll see forgiveness of our sins, and this is one of the few verses that has the terminology, forgiveness of our trespasses. But it's very similar to forgiveness of our sins. So you can think of redemption as a forgiveness of our sins or trespasses. So we're going to look at that for a little bit. So this phrase further explains what redemption is. So forgiveness is the word.

I'll make sure I can pronounce that. Okay, now I remember. What's cool is, these days you can listen to people, Bible teachers pronounce a word, hopefully they pronounce it right. You also can listen to, on your computer it will pronounce it for you. And this actually is pronounced offices. A-P-H-E-S-I-S. Offices, that's how it's pronounced. to send from oneself, to send away, to bid to go away, to depart.

So as I mentioned, 11 times it's followed by the word of sins, and only once by the word trespasses. So we have the one case that we're talking about here. I want to look at the other cases here. There's some other really good verses that are very helpful. Let's go to Acts here for a little bit. Let's start with Acts 10, 43. And we're going to see that this idea of forgiveness of trespasses or sins is totally linked to redemption. They're inseparable, if you will.

So Acts 10.43.

All the prophets testify about him. Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Right. So isn't that neat? Mine has it kind of flipped around a little bit. Mine has it that through His name, everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.

It's only through Christ that we can receive forgiveness of sins. And the other important point is, people kind of mistakenly think sometimes, well, God just says, Don't worry about that sin. That's okay. But no, it's the fact that every mention of sins and forgiveness of sins is linked with the Lord Jesus Christ and what he accomplished on the cross. And this makes us say that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sin. So it guarantees us that our sins are forgiven based upon his death on the cross. Then if someone could read in Acts, a couple of chapters down, 13-38.

Imani, maybe you can read that one. Only a few of us here today, sorry. Therefore, let it be known to you, brethren, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins. Good, okay. So through him, forgiveness of sin, actually mine has proclaimed.

You have the new King James here, I think. And then the last one, the Colossians one, is in whom we have redemption. the forgiveness of sins. That actually is a parallel passage. It links again. We have redemption that is the forgiveness of sins. So it links redemption and forgiveness of sins or trespasses. I'm not quite sure why Why the Holy Spirit?

It seems like this could be sins as well. But anyway, we have the word trespass. And it might be that in the culture, we use words somewhat synonymously. So sometimes you use one word, sometimes you use another. But the idea of redemption and forgiveness of sins or trespasses is just totally intertwined.

So then I'll give you the definition of trespasses. Paroptima, I think it is, a false step of blunder, literally a fall beside denotes a trespass, a deviation from upright and truth. And just remember, you know, the word for sins in the Greek is this word, harmatia, it's to miss a mark. That's kind of the short definite, to miss a mark.

So what's being, you know, so, okay, I have a question. I keep reminding myself I should have asked questions and been more immersed in here. But what do you think... Let's see, how can I phrase this without giving you the answer? Are you folks familiar with if I say... Let's see. I'll just say it. Just say it, okay.

Well, we can, you know, Scripture teaches that we, in terms of our salvation, in terms of our redemption, there's a present aspect, there's a past aspect, there's a present aspect, and there's a future aspect. So, you can say, I have been saved from the penalty of sin, I am being saved, and I shall be saved. Speaking of basically what was accomplished when you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, what he's doing in your life as you walk in faith, and what will be yours in eternity. So what aspect do you think about when it says, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. So what aspect do you think, is that talking about the past aspect, the present aspect, or the future aspect of our redemption.

Does that make sense? That's not a bad answer. You can see verses that will talk about... I need to give you some examples. The verses that talk about us walking by faith or living the Christian life, I think this verse can be looked at as, obviously, it's once we have been redeemed that will never happen again. We don't have to be redeemed any future time.

But I think that the focus is that this is something that is complete. So someone would say this is the aspect of redemption that is A past act, the present aspect... I don't know, I'm sure I have a good argument here. Maybe that wasn't a good question. Okay, I'm sorry. Isn't that redemption for past sins, present sins, and future sins? Absolutely.

So from that aspect, it's all three. But there is, and I need to show the verses, there is an aspect of of salvation and redemption that is true initially. That's called the past aspect. Then there's the present aspect. It's like I have been saved, I'm being saved, and I shall be saved. One talks about what is the Holy Spirit doing in your life now as a believer? That's the present aspect. The past aspect is that you came to faith in Him. And then the future aspect is that you'll be with him physically. I've heard that we're saved from the penalty of sin presently. It's the power of sin. The future would be the presence of sin. Right, exactly.

And so there's a comparable thing in terms of redemption. There's a comparable idea of that. But what's very true, which I presented earlier, is that redemption doesn't It continues on, just like it has occurred once you've trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, and you continually have that. We have redemption. That's present, continuing on. We have redemption. We don't go down the road and sometime, well, we don't have redemption. No, it's continual. So let's go on here. So a couple of just statements here. I kind of always kind of said this already.

Redemption and forgiveness are inseparably linked. And Matthew talks about in that Matthew 26, 28, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. So it links basically that the redemption through his blood, he poured out his blood, and it links that forgiveness to the sins. Redemption is so deeply rooted in Christ that He is not only the provider of redemption, but He Himself is our redemption.

And that's what 1 Corinthians 1.30 says, Jesus Christ became to us redemption. That's kind of taking pieces of that verse. So He is our redemption, and He provided redemption by His blood. So now we've kind of finished. We've gone through, in Him we have redemption through His blood. The forgiveness of our trespasses.

Now we're going to see the last part of the verse is according to the riches of His grace. According to the riches of His grace. So I have a couple things here. In Ephesians 2.7 it says, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. So it's really kind of interesting. If you look at these two verses, the verse we're looking at now, according to the riches of his grace, and then you see in 2.7 it has to show us the surpassing riches of his grace. So I kind of thought it was interesting. It shows you that God's grace, His method of dealing with man, He's dealing with man on a grace basis.

There's the riches of His grace and the surpassing riches of His grace. So I want to do a little bit more on this riches of His grace. According to is according to a normal standard. And the standard that God has is the riches of His grace. Riches is the word metaphorically of the riches of God or of Christ, the rich gifts and blessings imparted by God or Christ. There are a couple of verses there.

Can someone read the Ephesians 3.8 passage? To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Thank you.

So so we see that we have the riches of his grace. So in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. And in this passage, it was the unfathomable riches to preach unfathomable riches to the Gentiles. And then the Philippians passage. And this is a very familiar one.

And my God will supply all your needs according to the riches in glory in Christ Jesus. According to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. So now I kind of saw a little pattern here with of his grace. In this passage we have the riches of his grace. Then we see in other passages it will be like the word of his grace or the glory of his grace. The Lord is shown in his grace, there is riches involved with it, there is a word that proclaims his grace, and then there is the glory of his grace. That actually ends the part of verse 7.

Any questions so far? In him we have redemption through his blood, that is, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. So it kind of gives you the entire picture here. God has provided this for us. We have this as a permanent possession. It took his blood to accomplish it. It's inseparably linked with the forgiveness of our trespasses and sins, and it was according to the riches of His grace. You know, that's the statement, according to the riches of His grace, and then the way they're described is unsearchable.

I mean, it's just... Oh, I know. It's interesting, we say these things and it's just like, they're unsearchable. Well, actually, unfathomable. I have unfathomable witches. It's pretty amazing. So now, verses 8 and 9. In which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, So you see this period kind of shows up here in my mind. So here's some possibilities. So it's interesting. I hadn't thought a whole lot about this, but whenever you see which it obviously is taking the place of something. In this verse, it says, let me see. You have to read the whole context here, Roger. Let's go back here.

If you take verse 7, it says there's a comma. Do most of your Bibles have a comma after His grace in verse 7? Yes, semicolon. So if you read verse 7, we'll just read it from the, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

So the question comes up, what is which referring to? And it seems like, and it's not actually arbitrary, you can look at the, You can look at the tent, not tents, but the the person where there's masculine or masculine, masculine or feminine or singular or plural. Anyway, you can look at that. And so it looks like that. OK, I'm using that. So here's two possibilities.

He lavished upon us the riches of His grace, period. That would go along with the period up here. Or you could include in all wisdom and insight. So from what I understand, there's really not any way to tell whether, since it's one long sentence, whether in wisdom insight goes with verse 9, or it belongs to He lavished on us the riches of His grace in all ways.

It could go either way. I'm sure it's not too. So there wasn't any punctuation in Greek. Well, this is this is as they say, this is one sentence. And so what's happened is people. But there are. But obviously there are sets of ideas. Right. I mean, there's this idea and that idea. OK, but there's no there's no there's no punctuation. So the punctuation that we have in here was put in by the by the translators.

So the question is, you know, with an insight, does it go better with what you lavish upon us? with some insight, or does that start a new sentence that goes into nine. What I did here, I did a couple things on you. I probably confused you. I put in, I took witch out, I took witch away here, and I put in what it referred back to from verse seven, which is the riches of his grace. I did like it, because I wanted to get it in subject, Subject-Verb-Direct-Object-Order.

He lavished on us the riches of His grace. And then here, I included what was after the period in all wisdom and insight. I'll give you my two cents here. To my mind it seems to fit better describing how he lavished upon us his grace. It was in all wisdom and insight.

Some people believe that, and some people that believe that. The translators believe it goes the other way. They believe that it goes, in all wisdom and insight, he made known to us the mystery of his will. Actually, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference, because it's still in his wisdom and his insight. It comes from God. So whether that amplifies the fact of his lavishing that on us, or it tells us that in terms of the mystery of his will, you know, anyway. Or both. Or both. So you can take it as both, whatever you want. OK.

So let me ask you, do you find it helpful for future classes here? Do you find it helpful? I purposely tried to put it. And the verse reads, which you lavished on us in all wisdom and insight. So what I did is I put in what which referred to to try to make it more explicit. So it tells us. what he lavished. He lavished the riches of his grace. So do you find that helpful? Good, good. Okay, I was hoping you'd say yes. You say no, what am I going to do? Alright, so lavish is the idea, it's used in the sense to make to abound, abundance. Let's see here. Yeah, there's a great, great verse.

Could someone read 2 Corinthians 9.8? And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed. Good. Thank you. That's great. So God is able to make all grace abounding, to cause to abound. So He has caused to abound or lavish the riches of His grace in all wisdom and insight.

So the question comes up, what about this wisdom and insight? So let's see, I kind of put it all down here. So wisdom and insight, two kind of interesting words. One is Sophia, actually it's a girl's name. But the idea is knowledge that is seen, knowledge that sees the heart of things. It sees things as they really are, just on the surface, and then Pharnaces is like discernment. So he is provided as we walk in our Savior, as we're in Christ, therefore he has lavished on us in Christ with the ability to see things as they are and to walk on these truths. You'll see that actually insight or phronesis isn't used too many times.

It's used in this verse and it's used in Luke 1.17. Sophia is used quite a bit. It's kind of the word you'll see whenever you see wisdom, that's the word that is used for wisdom.

In that Colossians passage it says, Colossians 1.9, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and understanding. And then in the other Colossians passage, in two and three, it talks about the true knowledge of God's mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So it's really interesting that he is causing to abound in us, the idea of lavishing, as we are in him, knowledge, the Sophia, And that should lead to our ability to discern what is proper.

You know, Verne's been showing his little bullseye that he does. And he gets down to the center there. Some of it are the truths that God has established about himself. But you get down to the center of that bullseye, then God says, well, you know, If you know me and walk in me, you can make decisions.

You will have this wisdom and insight to make the decisions based upon what you know about me and what my character is. So I think this kind of amplifies that. Because he's lavished on us this wisdom and insight. And he wants us to use that to walk in our Christian life. Do you think that's both for spiritual things and for just everyday practical things? Well, I don't know, I'm just thinking sometimes you read things that people write about the Bible or something.

It's obvious they're not Christians. Well, yeah, right. They don't understand it. Sometimes I'm even looking at like Hallmark cards or something, supposedly being Christian cards, and I go, that's not right. Well, but Bonnie, you're doing exactly what, right, this is what you're doing. I mean, that's what I think. I think this is exactly what you're talking about. You look at that and you say, That isn't what God has declared. It just isn't it. I mean, you may think that's a... I've seen the same thing.

It just drives me crazy, those cards. I can hardly... I don't go to the Christian cards. I don't want to read them because I'm afraid that they're... Sometimes they're just not right. They are not right. They are not right. They think it's Christian, but it's not. That's their interpretation of God. Well, I think that amplifies exactly what this is talking about.

The fact that we know the Lord Jesus and we have the Holy Spirit and he's given us his wisdom and his word. We know the truths about him. We know there's only one God and there's three persons. Some real basic stuff for every believer. People will come up with all kinds of crazy ideas about you know, whatever it is, just bombard us all the time. And we just say, no, that's just not true. I don't care what you think, that's just not true.

And that's to cause us to have discernment, right? So we don't use that Christian card. Or we change it. Like we're always changing the music, right? Here at Holly Hills. I thought that song said that. No, they changed it. You don't even have to correct Christians sometimes.

I think the Lord wants us to take what we know about Him, what He has taught us. We've been taught by the Holy Spirit and by people, teachers or whatever. and to use that to live our lives, to walk on those truths. It doesn't necessarily tell me how to balance my checkbook. But it does help us to know that we are to be responsible. Knowing him and knowing his word does filter down to the practical, to the non-spiritual things.

Actually, we're going to see at the end of Ephesians, we get to the practical part. We're going to see very practical stuff. Husband, love your wives. And about children. There's some very practical stuff that will come out. We'll see that coming down the road here. But the foundation of that is to understand his wisdom and truth. We've got two charts to go.

He made known to us the mystery of his will. This is the one where Verne has this moose flying across the screen. Mystery in scripture is something that was concealed in the past, But now it's been revealed. So what's being said here it seems like is that he has made known to us the mystery of his will.

So there's something that was unknown. about his will, and he's going to tell us that in these verses. He doesn't address it here, but it's coming in the next verse, after verse 9. And we'll cover it the next time I talk, which will be in two weeks. And it's going to be about our Savior. It's going to be about the fact that everything's wrapped up in him.

But of his will is used in terms of... Here it talks about the mystery of his will. It used about the kind intention of his will, the counsel of his will, the knowledge of his will, the exercise of his will. So we see that God's will is something that is spoken of a fair amount in scripture.

And this is going to talk about the mystery aspect of his will. So for his own purposes, he didn't disclose something about Actually, in this case, it was about Christ. And he wants to disclose that. It was not previously known, but now he's going to disclose it.

And it's according to this thing about kind intention. This is kind of interesting. The kind intention. Actually, Randy's going to cover that a little bit back in his verse, because he has that phrase, too. The kind intention, or King James has the good pleasure. The kind intention is the idea of a sense of good pleasure with a purpose. The idea of benevolence. He purposed in him.

So now we have witchy. So I'm going to do this again on you. I have another witch here. This is an opportunity for Roger to try to confuse you. Witch refers back to kind intentions, I believe. And that's just not me. The tense and form of the Greek shows that. So it's not just my best guess. That's what the Greek says. So you could do it this way.

He purposed the kind intention in him, or his good pleasure in him. And it's in something called the middle voice, which lays stress upon the personal interests of God in doing so. So he purposed his kind intention in him, in Christ. From the previous part of this, there was a fact that was unknown about him, the mystery of his will, but he's going to reveal that.

He's going to reveal the next verses that everything, if you look at what's to come here, everything's wrapped up in Christ. You get to verse 10, it says, with a view to the administration, suitable to the fullness of times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven, things upon the earth. That's a previously not revealed aspect that he's going to reveal now. That's a mystery in this context. There's other mysteries in scripture, but in this context, the mystery is about this fact that everything's wrapped up in Christ. Let me just give you a short little summary here that I was thinking about. If you go back to verse 7, it talks about, I kind of listed about four or five, six things.

We have redemption through His blood. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses or sins. And it was according to the riches of His grace. He lavished His riches and grace on us in all wisdom and insight. He made known to us the mystery of His will. which is to follow, and it was according to the kind intention, and he purposed this kind intention in our Savior, in Christ.

So this kind of took what we talked about. Let's just take those three verses and kind of make them into statements. Sometimes that's kind of helpful, I find, to take and just put out statements about each of the verses. It kind of helps you to remember it sometimes. Well, thanks to your hearty group, you made it through. Hopefully next week, Randy will be covering the 5 and 6 verses 5 and 6. Well, let's just close in prayer then.

We thank you, Father. Thank you so much for your word, Father. We thank you, Lord, just for this marvelous book of Ephesians, which has so much detail about our relationship to our Savior, that we're in this living union with Him. that it can't be broken, it can't be changed, and that we have these wonderful possessions of our salvation, our redemption, our forgiveness of sins. And that you've lavished all these things upon us, Lord. Not that we didn't earn them, we didn't ask you for them, but they're all part of the riches of your grace, Lord. We thank you for that. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.