Take a minute here and answer this question: “Who am I” and complete this sentence “I am …………” on a piece of paper. How we answer this question and complete this sentence in our worst moments and in our best moments says a lot about our maturity in our walk with Jesus.
For instance, in our worst moments, when we’ve failed at something or when our struggle with sin becomes nearly unbearable we might say things like: “I’m such a failure. I’m a loser. I’m hopeless. I’m unlovable. I’m unwanted.” But in our best moments when we’ve succeeded or when we’ve accomplished a great task we might say things like: “I’m successful. I’m lovable. I’m desirable. I’m wanted. I’m respectable.” It seems more bearable to live in the second headspace than to live in the first. Our better moments are easier than our worst moments.
But the problem with either of these moments is that both of them are based on my performance. In other words, what I do has a tendency to drive or influence what I believe to be true about who I am. This is called performance driven identity which is closely tied to something else called legalism which is closely tied to something else called works based righteousness.
In other words… if I base who I believe I am upon what I do right or what I do wrong then the bad news is that I wind up living in a cycle of performance based identity where my belief about who I am at the core is driven by the things I do. And the worst outcome of this kind of belief system is that I become a legalist who lives every waking moment of my life trying to balance the scales of my broken identity by earning enough stars on my chart to offset all the red checkmarks.
Watch the following video by clicking on the image…
I want you to imagine this with me. Imagine that you come upon a little boy sitting in a house all by himself and upon entering the house you ask this little boy who he is and he answers by describing his poor life to you. He explains that he has little to no money, nobody loves him and he’s worn out from working hard every day just to make ends meet. But then as he explains this he also brightens up and explains that even though he’s really poor, whatever money he does earn he donates a portion to other poor kids and the other portion he spends on whatever he thinks will make his heart happy. And throughout this process he has learned that he can get some people to love him if he buys them expensive meals, which in the end, means that all of his hard work is worth it because it makes him feel like a winner.
Now imagine this too. As this little boy is explaining all of this to you, you are carefully examining his poor condition and to your surprise he is actually living in what the majority of the world calls a mansion. And not only does he live in a mansion but he also has a very loving family and to top it all off his entire family is loaded beyond belief. They’re actually the wealthiest family on the face of the planet.
You’re confused now right? Your asking yourself: “Why does this little boy think so poorly of himself? Why does he believe that he’s unlovable? Why does he believe he needs to work so hard to earn more money and buy himself a new group of friends? Why does he believe he’s so cursed? Why doesn’t he believe how blessed he really is?”
And the answer becomes clear immediately… He’s been deceived. In fact he’s believed lies about himself for so long that he’s stuck in this pattern of trying to earn all of the things which he already has and he’s doing all of this so that he can become the person he already is. This is precisely what the apostle Paul dives into in the opening verses of the book of Ephesians.
And in fact this is literally the point of the first three chapters of the book of Ephesians. In these first 3 verses and then for the rest of the first three chapters of the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul is going to drive home the truths of who we are in Christ Jesus. He’s going to answer the question “Who am I?” and he’s going to finish the sentence “I am………” for us over and over and over again because he knows that if we are ever going to begin to live our lives in freedom and maturity then the only way we’ll do it is if we first have a correct understanding of the mansion that we’ve been blessed with.
Take a look at Ephesians 1:1 – 3…
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
These first three verses don’t appear to be all that astounding at first glance. And you might be thinking: “I’ve read those verses a thousand times.” Or you might be thinking “this is the first time I’ve heard these verses and they’re cool and all but when are you really gonna get to the meat here?” Let me assure you that there is more stuff packed in these three little verses than meets the eye at first glance.
These first three verses are more than just the opening lines or the opening greeting in a short letter. The apostle Paul wastes no time at all in getting down to the business of laying down some of the richest theological phrases ever written on the topic of our identity as people who are truly blessed in every sense of the word. In short… the apostle Paul impresses this truth on his listeners: “You are blessed beyond belief. You are blessed with a new calling, blessed with new titles, blessed with grace and peace and you are blessed with a spiritual inheritance that’ll knock your socks off.” Simply put, you and I are blessed.
This is our identity if we’ve trusted in Christ! We are not cursed we are blessed. We are not outcasts we are blessed sons and daughters who’ve been set apart for God’s love. We are not enemies of God we are blessed family members who’ve been adopted by God’s grace. We are not left here like rotting corpses we are blessed with a new life that lasts for all of eternity. Take a look at this first category of blessing with me…
#1: We are blessed with a new calling… (1)
At one point every one of us has followed the calling of the desires of our hearts into destruction. We’ve desired to be loved so we’ve followed the calling of a new lover into the mess and the devastation of relational and sexual sin. We’ve desired comfort so we’ve followed the calling of seclusion from relationships into the loneliness of relational disconnectedness. We’ve desired power and influence so we’ve followed the call of that new career and fought our way up the corporate ladder only to find that power and influence is a rotten meal.
We’ve all followed the calling of our sinful impulses and the selfish desires of our hearts and on the back end of following those callings we’ve all experienced the identity displacement or identity corrosion that following the calling of sin produces in our hearts and lives.
And it’s no different with the apostle Paul. Before Paul met Jesus he was known as Saul. Saul was named after the tallest and possibly most vain of all of Israel’s kings and up until he met Jesus he was no different. He was proud of his long list of religious accomplishments and he pursued power and prestige by assaulting Christians violently. He longed for the comfort of success and he was energized by the respect that his accomplishments won for him inside his circle of friends.
And then one day, as Saul was following the calling of his sinful and selfish desires he ran into Jesus on a road called Damascus. And here’s the thing… you and I can be duped into believing we’re doing the Lord’s work when in reality we are more like vicious wolves who are driven by the calling to quench our deep thirst to be loved, respected, comforted, needed and wanted. This is where Saul was when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
And when Jesus shows up he literally blinded Saul and knocked him right off his high horse and into the dirt and in that posture of blindness and brokenness in a pile of dirt, Saul, the vain and sinful legalist became Paul the man who was cut down to size by the grace of God. In a moment, this proud man became a broken man with a new calling. This is why this great apostle begins his letter with the words, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.”
He literally says I’m blessed with a new calling. I’m no longer Saul. My name is Paul. I’m not a man of self-imposed importance. I’m a man of small stature. My ego has been shredded. I used to be a murderer of Christians. Now I’m an apostle of Jesus Christ. I’m a person whose been sent by God with a message of good news for the downtrodden. I’m no longer confident in what I can accomplish or what I can make happen. I’m confident in the new calling that I have because it is by the will of God that I am called. I am blessed with a new calling and I want you to experience this too.
Sometimes I struggle with believing that I am in fact blessed beyond my wildest dreams. When I think of myself I struggle with who I used to be. And it’s even harder when I behave like the person I used to be. When I behave like a castaway. When I behave like an enemy of Christ. When I behave like a sinner. My tendency is to try to prove that I’m better than that by running through my checklist of right things done to tip the scales back towards balance.
It’s hard for me to hold onto the truth that I am blessed with a new calling in Christ Jesus. My new calling is that of a man of little stature on my own. On my own I would make a shipwreck of everything but because Jesus saw fit to save me and because I belong to him now and because his Spirit powerfully works in me, I am his mouthpiece. I am blessed with a new calling. How about you? Can you indentify with the truth that you are blessed with a new calling? Take a look at the second category of blessing with me…
#2: We are blessed with new titles… (1)
I have a tendency to call myself names. I give myself titles that don’t belong to me. I call myself stupid. I call myself insecure. I call myself inferior. I call myself by all sorts of titles that don’t belong to me and then I work hard to earn a different title or to prove that I’m not really the title that I believe I am. Do you ever do this?
Do you ever believe that you’re unlovable and then work hard to make someone else love you so that you can prove that you are in fact loveable? Ever believe that you are a victim and then work hard every day to prove to yourself or to others or to God that you are not a victim but instead you’re a winner?
Paul wants to establish early on that we have a new identity in Christ Jesus. We are seated with Christ in a mansion so full of blessings that if you and I could grasp it, it would blow the doors off of any momentary pursuit of happiness in this life. We are blessed with new titles that we should be proclaiming over ourselves and then operating out of. In other words we are not who we once were. We are new creations in Christ Jesus. Our titles are no longer unfaithful outcasts. Our new titles are faithful saints.
This is why Paul says “To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” Another translation would say “to the faithful saints in Christ Jesus in Ephesus.” This statement would have been scandalous for the people in Ephesus because Ephesus was one of the five largest cities in that area that boasted of some of the most horrific sins known to mankind. Sexual sin of every kind was rampant and public and popular in Ephesus. Power hungry abusive leadership was the name of the game for business in Ephesus. Sorcery and witchcraft were some of the major money making trades of the culture in Ephesus. If anybody struggled with negative self-talk it would have been the Ephesian Christians who had been saved out of this disgusting culture.
And who better to remind them of their new titles than the apostle Paul himself? If any one individual had an excuse to struggle with negative self-talking titles it would have been the apostle Paul! But Paul wants to remind these young believers to trust in their newfound identity. He wants to remind them that they are not unfaithful outcasts who are facing damnation. They are saints. They are people who’ve been set apart for the love of God for all of eternity and they are faithful because the blood of Christ has redeemed them and the Spirit of Christ lives within them and the Spirit of Christ is animating their faithful walk. They are not failures they are trustworthy. And they aren’t trustworthy because of their performance. They are trustworthy because of the trustworthiness of Christ’s performance at the cross, which enables them to now live in a trustworthy way.
When I realize that my performance doesn’t dictate my right standing with God but that my right standing with God is dictated by his declaration and decision over me… when that happens, I come to life and I want to live like a man who is actually alive. When I realize that I am set apart for God’s love… then regardless of how I feel and regardless of what I fear… I am free to live and to love obediently according to the commands of God because I now desire to live up to the new title I’ve been given. Have you tasted this freedom that the blessing of new titles brings to your life? Take a look at the third category of blessing with me…
#3: We are blessed with reconciliation… (2)
Sometimes I feel so unworthy of God’s grace and the peace I experience with my Father because of the cross of Christ. And in one sense I really am undeserving of his grace and peace. I’ve lived as one of his worst enemies. I’ve done what is detestable in his sight. I’ve prostituted myself to every whim and desire of my sinful flesh. I’ve lived hatefully towards God and blasphemed and even cursed His name with my words and my actions.
But God in his rich grace made the gospel clear to me and he’s saved me and he’s transformed me from being his enemy into being an object of his grace and a recipient of peace between him and I. I made him to be my enemy and he made me to be his son. I am blessed with grace and peace.
And the apostle Paul could say the same thing. He too experienced the same amazing grace that produces peace between enemies. And out of that rich experiential understanding of his own identity in Christ, the apostle Paul reminds the believers at Ephesus that they too were now identified as recipients of grace and peace and therefore were blessed with being reconciled to God the Father.
But this picture is even more nuanced than that. When Paul uses this greeting he’s actually using the favorite greetings of two cultures that were at war with one another to say hello. The Jewish culture and the gentile culture both used one half of this greeting to greet one another. The Jews owned the greeting “Peace to you” and the Gentiles owned the greeting “Grace to you” and these two groups of people hated each other. Think of this in terms of the white supremacists and antifa groups of our day.
This is how radical this greeting is and in the Spirit’s provision the apostle Paul uses both of these greetings from these two warring cultures and he mashes them into one greeting to illustrate the power of God’s grace and peace in reconciling or bringing together two parties that had previously been at war with one another.
This is what God’s amazing grace does. God’s amazing grace makes us sons and daughters instead of enemies. God’s amazing grace brings peace to the war between us and our Father in Heaven. We are reconciled into one peace-filled household of faith by the grace of God through the performance and the work of Christ who died at the cross so that people from every tribe, every tongue and every nation could be reconciled under a new identity. This means that people from every so-called race, every ethnic background and every social background has been reunited into the family of God by the performance of God alone.
Imagine the radical nature of the peace that this grace produces by imagining white supremacists and antifa laying down their lives for one another rather than viciously going to war against each other. Imagine people who previously held onto public displays of statues that are icons of terror in the lives of others deciding to take them down out of respect and love for their fellow man instead of arguing about whether or not they are actually icons of terror. And also imagine the opposing side, instead of destroying these statues, respectfully acknowledging the act of love being done for them as an extension of God’s love to them.
Wouldn’t this kind of reconciliation be more God honoring? Wouldn’t it be more healing? Wouldn’t it be more healthy than the horror we keep experiencing over and over again in our country? Wouldn’t it be better if we argued about how much more we could do to reconcile with others rather than digging our heels in over petty little things like statues? There is hope my friends. This is the kind of reconciliation you and I will experience in eternity. This is what Heaven will be like. And if you are a Christian… then you and I have been reconciled to God and we are now called to live out that same kind of reconciliation in the world we live in.
When I feel at odds with God or when I believe that I am an outcast or when I believe that I am hopeless or unlovable or unfixable… and when I begin to work or to try to earn my relationship with God… or to make my relationship with God good again… he reminds me that it by his grace alone that I am able to trust in him alone for the peace that my soul desires. This is a massive blessing! Can you imagine it yet… the mansion of blessing we sit in? We are blessed with grace and peace beyond our wildest dreams. Isn’t that a better motivation to live as God has called us to live? Isn’t it better to live like a reconciled person whose been reconciled by someone else’s work rather than working to attain the reconciliation we can never achieve on our own? We are blessed with grace and peace that results in real reconciliation. Take a look at the fourth category of blessing with me…
#4: We are blessed with spiritual inheritance… (3)
The idea of spiritual inheritance is super hard for us to grasp sometimes because it’s so intangible. When we think of an inheritance, we think of physical property like big fat inheritance checks, or physical belongings like homes, cars, real-estate or grandma’s fine China and silver ware. And the reality is that we are so focused on the momentary present pleasures of things in this life that we often doubt the blessings of our spiritual inheritance.
This is what makes it difficult to have a conversation with anyone about the eternal spiritual inheritance that we have in Christ Jesus. And one of the things I deeply believe… Is that if we could grab a hold of this seemingly intangible principle… the division and war and conflict within families… within the church… within our world… would be radically transformed.
Listen… it’s not just that we have an inheritance that is eternal and is going to be given to us one day far off in the future. It’s a both now and later kind of inheritance. This is why Paul says “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” In other words Bless God… He has blessed us (not… he is going to bless us… he has blessed us), with every spiritual blessing you and I could possible imagine and he will continue to bless us in eternity. This here and now blessing flows from our future home in Heaven. We live in the right here and right now of the blessings of Heaven. We live in a mansion of gold and silver right now because of the work of Jesus and the place we are headed to is full of the riches of God’s presence in ways that will surpass your greatest dreams.
I struggle with doubt. I have a tendency to doubt the spiritual inheritance that the Lord has given me. Because I doubt my spiritual inheritance I get really impatient and critical. I begin to desire to be seen as someone who is wise and I really want to be accepted and loved. Sometimes this doubt that fuels these desires drives me to overwork myself to achieve more things or to fix things that I can’t fix or to have all the answers or to seek approval from other people or to act in certain ways or say certain things that I think will make people love me. In short… I struggle with doubting the blessings of my spiritual inheritance. Can any of you resonate with this too?
This video may help to illustrate what I’m getting at…
In conclusion…
“You are blessed beyond belief. You are blessed with a new calling, blessed with new titles, blessed with grace and peace and you are blessed with a spiritual inheritance that’ll knock your socks off.” The question is, do you believe it and will you live like you believe it?