New Testament · Epistles

Ephesians 1:11–23

Purpose, Power, and the Telescope — a Sermon by David Pawson

David PawsonSingle Sermon

The Text: Ephesians 1:11–23

In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might, which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Introduction: God’s Free Will

The theme of the letter to the Ephesians is the purpose and the power of God — his will. God is the only truly free person in the universe, because he is the only one whose will controls everything else and who faces no limitation on what he decides to do. When we say someone has a strong will, we mean two things: they know what they want to do, and they have the power to do it. God has both.

Look back through chapter 1 and the word will appears again and again. Verse 1: Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God. Verse 5: he destined us to be his sons according to the purpose of his will. Verse 9: he has made known to us the mystery of his will. And now verse 11: according to the counsel of his will. This phrase means that when God decides to do something, he consults himself alone. He has a counsel of one — and that counsel is sufficient.

The Two Grand Agents: Preaching and Praying

This passage divides into two clear parts. The first question is: how do I come into the purpose of God? How do I become part of the plan? The answer is through preaching. The second question is: how do I find the power to fulfil that purpose? The answer is through praying.

There will never be a day when preaching and praying are out of date. Preaching brings people into God’s purpose; praying brings people into God’s power. By preaching, Pawson does not mean only a pulpit sermon — wherever one person tells another about the purpose of God, that is preaching. You can preach on a bus, in a shop, in the street. And God will use those lips to bring people into his plan.

Part 1: Purpose Through Preaching (Verses 11–14)

‘We’ and ‘You’: Jews and Gentiles

Paul speaks of two groups in verses 11–14: we and you. The we refers to Jewish Christians — we who first hoped in Christ. The first people to pin their hope on Christ were Jewish; all twelve apostles were Jewish; most of the New Testament came from Jewish pens. The you refers to the Gentiles in Ephesus.

To a Jewish mind, the most astonishing thing about God’s plan was that it included the Gentiles at all. Many had come to believe that God’s plan was for Israel alone. But God had a bigger plan — to bring the Gentiles in as well. And so the opening of the purpose of God to the nations is itself one of the great themes of this letter.

Three Verbs: Hoped, Destined, Appointed

Paul uses three verbs to describe what happened to the Jewish Christians: hoped, destined, and appointed. These reveal God’s order of working.

Hoped.A Christian is someone who has pinned their hope on Jesus. Everyone has hopes — for their own life, for the world — but a Christian is one who has taken all that hope and pinned it on him. Others pin their hopes on science, politics, education, or other people. We are those who say: we have pinned our hopes on Jesus. On the road to Emmaus, two sad disciples said, ‘We hoped that he would redeem Israel.’ Jesus answered: you were right to pin your hopes on this person. He is fulfilling them. He is making it all come true.

Destined. Before we pinned our hope on Jesus, we had already been destined to do so. Pawson recalls the Friday evening in September 1947 when as a young man he committed his future to Christ — but now he knows that long before that night, he had been destined for that moment. It all started in the will of God.

Appointed. After we pin our hope on Christ, we are appointed — appointed to live for the praise of his glory. There are three levels of human life. You can live for yourself — for your own pleasure. One step higher: you can live for others — serving their needs. And many people who are not Christians reach that second level. But the third level is the Christian calling: to live for the praise of his glory. So that when people meet you, they do not merely think what a good person — they find themselves thinking, there must be a God, or this person would not be like this.

Three Stages of Coming into God’s Purpose

In verses 13–14, Paul traces three stages by which you come into God’s plan.

You Heard. No one has ever become a Christian without first hearing. If they could not hear, someone wrote it down for them — but it was through words that they entered the purpose of God. You first heard the good news: that God loves you, that he wants you as his child, that he is prepared to rescue you from yourself.

You Believed.Hearing alone does not bring you into God’s purpose. Many people hear the gospel and are unmoved. The second step is believing — and this is not merely a head exercise. It says: you believed in him. It is a personal relationship, and you do not enter into a personal relationship without the heart being involved. Pawson illustrates this with signing the consent form before a major operation: you hand yourself over, you trust a person, you say here I am.

You Were Sealed with the Holy Spirit. When God seals someone with the Holy Spirit, he stamps that life and says: this is mine, and one day I am coming to collect it. Pawson draws two vivid illustrations from the ancient world.

The first is the signet ring. In ancient Greece, when a man bought something large in the open market that he could not immediately carry home, he would take sealing wax, stamp it with his signet ring, and leave it until he could collect it. Nobody else could have it; it was marked as his. When God seals you with the Holy Spirit, he is doing exactly that — stamping your life and declaring: you are mine, I will come and collect what I have sealed.

The second illustration is the guarantee. In the ancient world, if you ordered a large quantity of grain, the seller would hand you one sack immediately as a pledge — proof that the rest was on its way. The Holy Spirit is exactly that: the first instalment of heaven, the down payment, the foretaste that guarantees the rest is coming. Because you have already received a little of heaven, you know the whole of it is on the way.

Pawson notes that this sealing is a definite, unmistakable act of the Holy Spirit that leaves no room for doubt. He traces five occasions in the book of Acts where this sealing is clearly recorded: at Pentecost (Acts 2), in Samaria (Acts 8), at Paul’s conversion in Damascus (Acts 9), at Cornelius’s household (Acts 10), and at the founding of the Ephesian church itself (Acts 19) — the very congregation to whom this letter was written. In every case, those who were sealed knew beyond doubt that they belonged to God.

The result of being sealed is praise: to the praise of his glory. The seal of the Holy Spirit liberates praise. Not just prayer — praise.

Part 2: Power Through Praying (Verses 15–23)

The Structure of Paul’s Prayer

Paul moves from preaching to praying. He says: I not only talk to you about God, I talk to God about you. Both ministries are essential — talk to people about God, and talk to God about people.

His prayer has the right structure: the thank you comes before the please. He does not rush in with a shopping list. First he gives thanks for their faith in the Lord Jesus and for their love toward all the saints. Then he makes his request.

Faith, Hope, and Love — and the Missing Dimension

There are three dimensions to a full Christian life: faith, hope, and love. Paul thanks God for their faith and for their love. But the area he feels they lack is hope — and he thinks this is still the most neglected of the three virtues today. Sermons about faith are plentiful; sermons about love are common; but hope is rarely preached.

What is hope? Faith reaches into the past and grasps the death and resurrection of Christ. Love reaches into the present and grasps the fellowship of God’s people. But hope is an anchor within the veil — it reaches into the future. It holds you to everything that is still to come. When the world presses down on you, when events seem chaotic and you wonder where it is all heading, hope is the anchor. It is the one thing that holds you.

Paul is writing this letter and praying for the Ephesians precisely to lift their hope. He is talking to them about predestination and the will of God because the will of God makes you hopeful. If it is his will that you are his son, he is not going to let you go now. If it is his will that you reach heaven, you will get there. Your hope is strengthened by trusting in his will rather than in your own.

Three Things an Enlightened Heart Sees

Paul prays for an enlightened heart — the kind of understanding that comes from inside, not from outside. Not the eyes of the head, but the eyes of the heart. And he says that this inner understanding will bring three things.

1. The Hope to Which You Were Called. God never leaves a job half done. He who began a good work in you will complete it. One day he is going to make you perfect, in a perfect world. That is the hope: holiness and heaven. The target, the prize of the high calling, the goal of it all.

2. The Riches of the Inheritance. We are millionaires. Behave as one who has received a fortune — because you have. One day you will inherit the whole universe and move through it as freely as Christ moves through it. To inherit the earth would be a large enough inheritance; to inherit a universe is beyond imagining. This knowledge cures envy quickly: whatever your neighbour has, they will lose it shortly, and what is waiting for you is beyond all comparison.

3. The Power Available Now. The immeasurable greatness of his power — and Paul means every word of that enormous phrase. He is not exaggerating. He means: tremendous, beyond calculation, the power that operates in us who believe. And to show how big this power is, Paul points to what it has already done.

The Power That Raised and Exalted Christ

The power available to us is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Christianity began in a cemetery — among the dead, with a corpse. A cemetery is the end of all human achievement and the end of all human hope. But it is the beginning of God’s. And from that garden tomb, the mighty power of God raised Jesus not only to life but to the highest point in the entire universe — far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come.

There was a day when everyone looked down on Jesus — the angels looked down at the babe in Bethlehem, men despised and rejected him, soldiers looked down at him on the cross and laughed. But now, if you want to see Jesus, you have to look up as high as sight can reach — and even then your eyesight cannot go high enough. He is in the highest heaven.

Head, Feet, and Body

Paul gives a vivid picture of Christ’s position. His head is at the highest heaven. His feet are on top of all his enemies — in the ancient world, a conquering king would plant his feet on the necks of his defeated foes, or have their portraits engraved on his footstool so that he looked down at them every time he sat on his throne. Christ’s feet are above all his enemies.

And where is his body? The body of Christ is the church. If the head is at the highest heaven and the feet are above all enemies, then the church — his body — is between the two: under his headship, and above his enemies. That makes the church more than conqueror. That means the gates of Hades cannot prevail against it.

Then Paul makes a startling declaration: the church completes Christ. Now that he is exalted in highest heaven, he needs a body on earth to continue his work here. We give him something he needs. But before that thought becomes arrogant, Paul immediately adds the corrective: the church fills him who fills everything. We complete Christ; Christ completes us, and everything else. We must never think that because we are his body we are therefore as important as he is. It is he who fills all in all.

Conclusion: The Telescope

Pawson closes with the image of a telescope. Looked through the right way, a telescope brings distant things near and makes them large. Turned round, everything shrinks and recedes. Paul is urging the Ephesians to look at God through the right end of the telescope — to get a bigger view, to magnify the Lord.

He offers a series of contrasts between small thinking and big thinking:

Get the telescope the right way round. See things from God’s point of view. And then you will live to the praise of his glory.

© David Pawson Ministry CIO
Listen to the original teaching at davidpawson.co.uk
© David Pawson Ministry — Transcript prepared for Koinonia.nu | koinonia.nu

Ephesians 1:11–23
David Pawson — New Testament · Epistles
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