Sermon25-51 Eph1 Guide

Eph 1:3-14 theme verse Eph 1:10

The praise and honor and glory be to our heavenly Father who seeks true worshipers who worship Him with the Spirit and truth.

In this forty sixth Sunday of 2025, on Pentecost Sunday, I pray that His grace of the application of all the benefits which Jesus earned for our salvation and also the glorious ministry of the proclamation of His kingdom by the power of the Holy Spirit may be full in our life. Until last week, we looked at the Canons of Dort from the first through the fifth doctrine one by one, yet this week we would like to look at the Canons of Dort through its different name of TULIP together.

1)    First, to summarize today's text, in Ephesians 1, Paul states that God bestows spiritual blessings in heaven to His people. And he says this happens through the election and predestination of God in love before the creation, the grace of vicarious atonement ministry of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, in the cross and the work and sealing of the Holy Spirit to those who believe in Jesus. And then he said it is to unite all things in heaven and on earth in Christ, that is, to gather them under the authority of Christ as their head. In other words, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, human beings became to decide good and evil by their own, instead of God’s will and standards for good and evil so that the created order was destroyed. Therefore, it is said that after establishing His will and plan to restore His creation order, God has been fulfilling His will.

2)    However, according to the following chapters 2 & 3, the problem was that human beings were spiritually dead, being caught in total depravity and total inability so that even though they can perform some good deeds on their own, those good deeds cannot satisfy the criteria of the perfect God to earn their merits. Furthermore, they cannot return to the original state of creation, I mean, the state before eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in which they attributed the standard of good and evil to God. And even they became incapable of understanding and believing the gospel. Therefore, as stated in Ephesians 2 and 3, God created new humanity in Christ by His grace and regenerated them into new beings, and saved those who believe in Jesus of the gospel.

3)    To summarize all these things theologically again that: As Ephesians 2:1 says, since all human beings are in a miserable status, I mean, unable to save themselves due to total depravity and total inability. And then as verses 4-5 of today's text say, God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons through Christ Jesus to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. So, in order to do that, verse 7 says that Christ Jesus was sent to this earth and crucified in the cross for the vicarious atonement so that He grants the forgiveness of sins and the righteousness of Him to all who believe. And then, verse 13 says, the Holy Spirit regenerates us in Him, and by the evangelists who were sent by God, we could hear the Gospel and believe it by the irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit who enlightens and inspires and helps us to understand and believe in it. And also we are sealed by the Holy Spirit so that we could persevere to the end to get the final victory by the grace of protection and perseverance.

4)    However, the Arminian Remonstrants raised objections against Calvin's doctrine of salvation and submitted a memorandum of remonstrance in 1610 that: Article 1 claims that predestination is not unconditional but conditional. That is, God has chosen to save all who believe in Christ and persevere to the end through Jesus Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Article 2 insisted the universal atonement, I mean, Jesus’ atonement is not limited to the elect. They assert that Jesus Christ, by His death on the cross, secured all, but only believers participate in it. Article 3 discusses saving faith, arguing that the free will of fallen humanity cannot conceive of anything truly good. Therefore, to truly do good, human beings need to be born again by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. And Article 4 asserts that human beings cannot do any good without God's prevenient, ongoing, enlightening, and cooperative grace. But, this grace is not irresistible, yet, can be resisted. And finally Article 5 asserts the uncertainty of human perseverance. I mean, true believers can persevere to the end by grace and be saved, but this grace is uncertain because it can be lost through sloth or indolence.

5)    Therefore, the Council of Dort was held over two years, from 1618 to 1619, to examine the five Remonstrants' claims using Scripture and then rejected them through the Canons of Dort. I mean, in the first doctrine of ”Holy Predestination," they state that God chose a specific number of people by grace alone, according to His sovereign good will, before the creation of the world. And in the second doctrine of "The Death of Christ and the Salvation of Human”, they state that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, True God, in the world as also a true human being to pay the price for human sin on the cross. And also He obtained righteousness through His obedience throughout His life, opening the way for Him to infuse His righteousness to those who believe. And then in the 3rd and 4th doctrines of "The Fall of Human, Conversion, and the Way it occurs”, it is stated that all humans are fallen, totally corrupted, and totally unable to understand the truth of the gospel on their own. Therefore, God sent the Holy Spirit to regenerate them, opening their hearts to understand the gospel, and thereby inspires them so that they can repent and respond with faith when the gospel is proclaimed. Furthermore, God enables them to continually achieve sanctification throughout their lives on earth. And in the 5th doctrine of "The Perseverance of the Saints," it is proclaimed that the elect, by the grace of perseverance, can endure the suffering and ultimately achieve the final victory on their faith journey.

6)    However, even though these teachings of Calvinism are clearly evidenced in Scripture, the doctrines of God's sovereignty, His election and predestination before the creation, His grace of regeneration before faith, which He gave faith as gift, are difficult for human wisdom to understand. This can easily lead to misunderstandings, such as God's unfairness, and the tendency to blame Him for sin. But, since Arminianism ultimately makes salvation dependent on the imperfect will and deed of human beings, thereby diminishing the certainty of salvation and, in some ways, even rendering salvation impossible for anyone. And also this leads to various concepts, such as the necessity of prevenient grace and the denial of mediation of Jesus Christ, which totally contradict Scripture. Therefore, especially when meditating on these biblical teachings, recognizing that we are entering God's realm, we have to approach them with reverence and be very careful not to force interpretations with human reasoning like Arminius.

7)    So, as Richard Mouw, one of the leading Reformed theologians of this era, said in his book, "Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport," that “TULIP is the most effective as a "Looking Back Frame" after salvation so that this is best understood after someone experienced God's amazing grace and then when they try to reflect on how it all unfolded”, to explain this doctrine of the salvation with a "Looking Back Frame," Human beings, created in the image of God and filled with the knowledge of God in their intellect, purity in their emotions, and righteousness in their will, so were holy. But, after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their intellects were darkened, their judgment distorted, their emotions impure, and their will filled with malice, rebellion, and stubbornness. So they became unable to do what is good in God's eyes and also unable to understand the spiritual things in heaven. And also they cannot renew their heart on their own. Therefore, God sent His beloved only Son, Jesus Christ, to this earth to accomplish the vicarious atonement ministry in the cross. And then, He raised up evangelists, sent them to preach the gospel of salvation through faith to all people so that  those who believe in Jesus could receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life, while those who do not believe has to face eternal punishment. However, after time has passed, when we who have become believers look back on the first moment of our faith, we realize that it was purely by God's grace. I mean, first, the truth of the gospel that we came to believe in was not something we possessed on our own. Instead, God sent an evangelist to convey it to us. And secondly, as Luke 24:45 says that "the Lord opened their minds to understand the Scriptures," when the resurrected Lord appeared to the disciples and testified the things happened through the Bible, and also as Acts 16:14 says that the Lord opened her heart to listen to his words, when Paul preached the gospel to Lydia, a seller of purple cloth in Thyatira, so when the gospel was preached to us, we became to know that God opened our hearts to understand and believe it. Moreover, even when we stumble due to our remaining sinful nature, the Holy Spirit does not leave us, but turns us back to God, enabling us to endure and persevere in the salvation. And also we recognize that God chose and predestined each of us before the creation, that our Lord Jesus Christ bore each of our names in Him and crucified for us, and that finally, in due time, the Holy Spirit whom God sent to us, granted us new birth and will guard us to the end. So after we recognize all this grace, we cannot help but give thanks, praise, and glory to Him.

8)    One more thing we have to know, I mean, the salvation does not simply end with the forgiveness of sins. What this means is that according to the today's text, as verse 10 says, "(To) bring all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ," and verse 14 says, "(This is) the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession," and also Ephesians 2:15 says, "To create in himself one new humanity," to summarize all these verses, God's work of salvation is to recover His creation order which was destroyed when humans ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and started to think and live according to their own will. Therefore, God makes us new people, a new humanity, created in Christ. So as Christ did, we start to submit ourselves to God's will, not to our own will, and do God's work, not our own work to inherit the kingdom of God in which these things were realized. In that perspective, we have to be born again and become new humanity who can depend on God fully and live in obedience to God's will. In order to do that we have to be born again and learn  Christ's character, that is, meekness and humility and also God makes us trained in this humility and gentleness by leaving us with our sinful nature through which when we fall, we might become more humble and more dependent on His grace, so that we might be conformed to the image of Christ. Therefore, we have to remember that this new humanity with humility and gentleness before God is the end of His graceful salvation.

9)    As such, Eph 1:3-6 say that "God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely bestowed upon us in the One he loves," this is God's sovereign plan and will ultimately be accomplished. Therefore, I pray that we may all realize the amazing grace of God deeply embedded in our salvation, learn the Lord's humility and meekness, and become victorious to the end with the power God gives us.

Key Questions as Small Group Activity

Q1 Through today’s text, we became to know that when we were in the misery of total depravity and total inability, God sent His Only Son to the world for vicarious atonement for us and raised and sent evangelists to proclaim this Gospel to us and saved us by faith in Jesus. So, after meditating on the moment when we believe Jesus first and God’s grace, I hope we could share our thought and experience with our team members together to learn from each other.

Q2 And also, looking back our faith journey, we became to know that all our salvation was His grace. So after reviewing our life and checking what kinds of grace we received, I hope we could share our thought and experience with our team members together to learn from each other.

Love you. Thank you. God bless you.

Prayer Note

Dear ( God’s attribute which you found Today ) God!

Thanks for ( something you received through the sermon or  even during the week )

Praise, gratitude and glory be to You, Lord!

Today, I realized my sin (pains) that ( the sin God reminded through the sermon ),

please forgive (or heal) me and help me not to repeat ( the sins you recognized   ).

I learned that ( something you learned through the sermon                                    )

Please help me to live in that (  learned way of life                                                )

I pray in ( Jesus’ attribute you find ) Jesus’ name. Amen.