Ephesians 3

Chapter 3. Saved and SealedIn order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:12-14)This is the third of the blessings of the Spirit in the heavenlies which the apostle is unfolding in this sublime treatise. First, we were chosen in Him; next, we were redeemed by His blood; now we are saved through His Word and sealed by His Spirit. The Relation of the Word of God to Our Salvation It is here called “the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation” (Ephesians 1:13). This is important. Salvation is not a mere emotional feeling or subjective experience, but a transaction resting upon a definite word from God. We are saved by the truth and the gospel of our salvation. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). If I am indebted to a man for a large amount, and know that I have not the means to pay him, I cannot be relieved of my difficulty by my friends trying to cheer me with kind speeches and good feelings. I must know by definite and authoritative documents that my debt is paid and my obligation canceled; a check for the amount or a receipt from my creditor alone can bring relief to my anxious mind. And so our salvation rests upon a word of God, an authoritative statement from the Judge Himself, by whom we have been condemned, that the debt is paid and we are released from condemnation. This is the word which the gospel brings us, which states a definite and stupendous fact, namely, that Christ has redeemed us, that God has provided for our salvation long ago, that in fact we were saved in Christ’s work before we were born; and all we have to do now is to know it, to claim it, and to enter into its enjoyment and the rest it brings. This word is called “the gospel of your salvation” (Ephesians 1:13); that is, the good news, that you may be saved by simply accepting it. It is not a mere statement of abstract truth; it is a personal message for you. Christianity differs from all other religions in this. They are speculations and ethical theories. This is a personal message of love and mercy from God to every man, offering him eternal life. Two men stood before an audience of 1,000 prisoners in a state penitentiary. One delivered a moral address, and was listened to with moderate interest. The other simply stood up and said: “Will John Smith please to stand up; I have a pardon for him.” Instantly 12 men sprang to their feet, and so intense was the excitement that some of them fainted. They were all named John Smith. It was a question of their personal salvation. That is the gospel Christ sends to sinful men. It is intensely personal and profoundly important. Beloved, have you accepted it for yourself as the gospel of “your salvation”? The Relation of Faith to Our Salvation Not only are we saved through the word of the gospel, but this word must become a matter of personal faith. And so we read, “Who were the first to hope in Christ… And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal” (Ephesians 1:12-13). Here faith is described under three terms, namely: trust or fore-trust, Galatians 5:12; trust, Galatians 5:13; and believe, Galatians 5:13. They had fore-trust in Christ, that was previous to His coming. They had looked forward in hope and expectation to Him as their promised Messiah. Next, after they heard that He had come and received the gospel of salvation through Him, they trusted Him for themselves. Then this grew into a stronger faith so that they fully believed in Him, and entered into the actual reception of all the blessing of His salvation. Trusting, while not essentially different from believing, expresses a sligtly different phase of faith. Believing is the more mature experience. Trusting is the heart word; believing, the intellectual act. Trusting is the soul feeling after God and reaching out its tendrils toward Christ; believing is the deep and full assurance which has found Him, accepted Him, and entered into rest and confidence in Him. Our trust may be weak, timid and lacking in full assurance, and yet it is trusting all it can. But we must come to the place where we believe, rest and receive. What is it to believe for salvation? It is not enough to believe that God is able to save us, to hope that someday He will take us to heaven. It is more definite, robust and committed than this. It is to believe that He does save us as He said He would, if we sincerely take Him at His word. His command is, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). The secret, therefore, of finding salvation is first to understand that it is offered to us in the Word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and then frankly and fully to accept it and believe that it is ours for the taking. In the same way we must believe for every other experience of the Christian life, and especially for the sealing of the Spirit, which is next mentioned here as coming to us after we believe. Let there be no mistake here; faith is the only door of mercy, the only way of receiving what God has given. It is part of the very nature of things that we can take things from God only by believing. God gives to all men, of course, but of the unbeliever and waverer He says, “That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:7). Doubt, distrust and fear hinder the heart from trusting, and shut all the receptive organs of our spiritual being, so that we cannot even take what our Father longs to give. The Relation of the Holy Spirit to Our Salvation While the Word of God is the ground of our faith, and faith is the receptive act by which we take salvation through the Word, yet, back of all that there is a personal and divine Agent, the Holy Spirit, through whom we are able to believe the Word, and by whom we are sealed after we have believed the Word and are led on into all the fullness to which this great salvation introduces us. Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit is actively engaged in leading us on, even in the earlier steps of faith; but after we have taken these steps, the Spirit comes into entirely new relations with us, and becomes the personal and indwelling presence and power of our Christian life. This is here described by the strong figure, “You were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13), or, as it might be translated, “with that Spirit of promise, the Holy One.” Now it is important to notice at the outset of this part of the subject the force of the preposition with. He does not use the word by but with. If by had been used, the meaning would be that it was the Holy Spirit who did the sealing, and that the seal was something different from the one sealing; but the with conveys the idea than it was God the Father who sealed us, and that the seal was nothing less that the Holy Spirit Himself. Sealing therefore is not some experience or feeling that the Holy Spirit brings us, but it is the actual reception of the Holy Spirit Himself, and He comes personally to live within us and to become the power of our new life. This is a most important truth. It had already been taught in the life of our Lord Himself, and the fact that He received the Holy Spirit as a Person to dwell in Him long after his birth and childhood, in the 30th year of His age, and just before beginning His public ministry. It is also certain that the apostles received the Holy Spirit as a Person long after their conversion. In like manner, the believer, after he has accepted salvation through faith in the Word, comes into a new relation with the Holy Spirit who enters into personal union with him and thus seals him, stamps him, sets him apart for God, and becomes the Guarantee and Keeper of his life against all the power of Satan, self and sin. Let us pause here and ask, Have we received the Holy Spirit since we believed? Have we first received Christ as our Savior, and then received the Spirit as our Keeper and our Power for life and service? At the same time let us not make the mistake of supposing that there need be a long interval between our receiving Christ and our being sealed with the Spirit. Here we are told it was after they believed, probably just after that they received the Holy Spirit. This should immediately follow the experience of conversion. Indeed, there is no assurance that we can keep our conversion without the sealing of the Holy Spirit. That is the great lack in the religious teaching of today. Men and women are hurried into a profession of religion under a superficial excitement, and it is little wonder if they fall away. Every disciple ought to be led on to a baptism of the Spirit, which is as essential for our own Christian life and walk as it is for our work for others. This sealing of the Spirit is presented to us under two very striking figures. The first is that of the seal, the second a deposit. The seal is a familiar figure, both in ancient and modern life. It is used in connection with public documents and commercial contracts. As applied to the Holy Spirit, it expresses three things: reality, security and resemblance.

1. Reality The mark of the seal is unmistakable. It cuts a deep impression into the wax or paper, so that it is patent to every sense. This figure means that when we receive the Holy Spirit something very real occurs; there is no mistake about it, you know it and others know it. Your Christian life is not a vague “perhaps,” but your convictions, impressions, hopes and purposes are clear-cut, definite and unequivocal. Your Christian experience becomes real and thorough; people know where to find you, and you have no doubt about your own bearings. Christ is very real to you; the things of eternity are intensely vivid; you are alive to God in all the powers of your being; your life is a life in earnest; your soul is a soul on fire.
2. Security The Holy Spirit brings certainty. You know that you belong to God; you know that you have passed from death unto life; God has marked you for His own, and you know that you will be kept from Satan, self and sin, and your heart learns to say, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (2 Timothy 1:12). “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).
3. Resemblance It impresses the object sealed; the very mark on the seal itself stamps its own likeness on the soft wax. So the Holy Spirit stamps upon us the image of Christ and makes us Christlike. Nay, more, He stamps upon us identity with Christ. Not only are we like Christ, but we have Christ Himself to live within us, and to reproduce His own character, life and loveliness within us. The Holy Spirit brings us not only His own personality but also the personality of the Lord Jesus, and thus we come into closer personal union with our dear Lord and our living Head. Such then is the blessed privilege of being sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. So important is it that in the literal translation of the verse it is often spoken of as the “Holy Spirit of promise.” It is emphasized as if there were no other promise as important as this one. How may this unspeakable blessing be received? It is made very plain in this passage, “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal” (Ephesians 1:13). You take Him by believing; that is, you believe that you receive Him, and you begin to act immediately as if you had Him. This is the secret of every advance in the Christian life. You must take what He gives by simple faith, and then reckon upon His word and act your reckoning out, and God will make it real. Oh, that some who read these lines would thus receive Him now! But there is another figure in this fine passage describing the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life. It is the word earnest or deposit. “Who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (Ephesians 1:14). Now an earnest in ancient times was a legal pledge of a commercial transaction. When a man bought a piece of land, he received from the seller, not only a covenant to deliver the land to him in due time, but also a little handful of soil as a guarantee that the whole property would be transferred to him. Now the Holy Spirit is such a guarantee and pledge, and is also a sample of the inheritance of glory which Christ has purchased for us, and is in due time to convey in all its fullness. We have been looking, in this sublime epistle, into two eternities. The first is that past eternity when we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world for our great salvation and heavenly calling. The second is that eternity to come, for which He has been preparing us; and when He will gather together into one, all things in Himself, and we will sit with Him in the center of a universe of harmony, righteousness, beauty, glory and ineffable happiness, as the sharers of His throne and the very bride of His heart. But how will we understand that distant vision? How will we foretaste that coming glory? What telescope, what eagle eye can disclose the passing glories of that heavenly vision? Listen! The Holy Spirit is the “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14). He comes to be the revealer of the ages to come, to be the celestial telescope that pierces the distant firmament and brings nearer the vision of the coming glory. Nay more, He comes to be the beginning, the foretaste of what heaven will be, and to give us in our present experience some little taste of the fruits of paradise and the river of the water of life. Best of all, He comes to be to us the guarantee and pledge that all this will yet be ours in full fruition. That is the meaning of the earnest of our inheritance. Like Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, who went to bring a bride home for Isaac, and who showed her, as they traveled homeward, some of the glories of her future lord; so the Holy Spirit is trying to make us understand what our future home and hope will be. Sometimes our hearts grow too big for our bodies. Sometimes it seems to us as if we would burst these frail shells and break forth into some vaster realm. Sometimes we almost catch the foregleam of the light that never shone on land or sea. Sometimes we almost hear the music of harpists playing their harps (Revelation 14:2). Sometimes when loved ones pass through and leave the gates ajar, we can feel for days our hearts throbbing with their rapturous joy, and we are almost conscious of their ascension through those heights of glory. Ah, beloved, these are the throbbings of the Spirit, the Deposit of our inheritance. These are the buds of faith’s springtime bursting into millennial blossoms. These are the throes and birthpangs of a greater life to come; and He has said of such foretastes and sweet hopes, “If it were not so, I would have told you” (John 14:2). Will we know each other there? Will we meet our loved ones again on that bright shore? Ah, beloved, the old Scotchman answered this well when he said to his weeping wife, when she asked him this question on his deathbed, “Janet, do you think we will be bigger fools than we are now? But,” he added, “I may be a thousand years in heaven before I shall be able to take my eyes off Jesus even to look at you.” Oh! if we could but lie closer on His breast and listen more carefully to His whisperings, He would often speak to us of things to come, and we would dwell with Him in the soft, sweet light of the land of Beulah, living under the powers of the world to come, and seeing “the king in his beauty” and “a land that stretches afar” (Isaiah 33:17); for “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).