In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and understanding (Ephesians 1:7-8).
In Him. In studying these verses I begin by making note that the first two words of this section are the same as the last two words in verse 10 – in Him. The study of verses 9-10 will not come until next time but I want to make you aware of this point now. This is what is commonly referred to as an inclusio in theological literature. Inclusio is simply a term used to refer to a literary device where something is used to bracket material. In this case we have the phrase in Him being used to bracket everything else written in verses 7-10.
In Him emphasizes, yet again, that every blessing we have is in Christ. Recall from the previous studies that every spiritual blessing is “in Christ” (verse 3), we were chosen “in Him” before the foundation of the world (verse 4), we were predestined to adoption as sons “by Jesus Christ” (verse 5), and we were made accepted “in the Beloved [One]” (verse 6). All of the blessings that the Father gives us are in Christ. The work of Christ secures our salvation and glorifies the Father. For these reasons Christ has the preeminence. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the saints in Colosse:
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:9-17).
The quote above from Colossians tells us of Christ’s preeminence which is indirectly connected to our study of Ephesians but the quote has many direct connections as well. One such connection is, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. We see all of these phrases from Colossians here in Ephesians, including the next one.
We have redemption. Here it is important to note the first two words of this phrase. We have. There is a noticeable shift in verb tenses from the aorist tenses previously in the text to the present tense used here. We have. We possess redemption. It is ours right now. The verb for we have (ἔχομεν) is a present active indicative. What that simply means is that the Father (active) truly gives to us the redemption accomplished by the Son for His people (indicative) and He gives it so that we have it now (present).
In Christ we have redemption. The word for redemption (ἀπολύτρωσιν) is an economic term that was used for the price paid to free, or redeem, a slave. For much of world history, including the time and location of the incarnate Christ and His Apostles, slavery was ubiquitous. It was everywhere. A discussion of biblical slavery versus non-biblical slavery would take this study too far afield so simply note that slavery, in whatever form, was a common and accepted facet of everyday life. There were several ways a slave could receive his or her freedom and one of these ways was to buy a slave’s freedom, to pay the ransom price. Christ uses this imagery in speaking of His own redeeming of a people for Himself.
“And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:44-45 emphasis mine).
A form of the word is also found in 1 Peter.
“And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:17-21 emphasis mine).
Through His blood. This redemption that we have is through the blood of Jesus. Blood is required for remission, or forgiveness, of sin (Hebrews 9:22). Christ speaks of the shedding of His own blood as that which provides forgiveness for His people.
“Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins’” (Matthew 26:27-28 emphasis mine)
The requirement is not that of just any blood. The blood required to forgive sins must be the blood of a perfect one. One who is not marred by sin. It is the blood of an absolutely guiltless one that must be shed to remit the sins of a guilty one.
This was foreshadowed in the Old Testament sacrificial system which you can read about in the first ten chapters of the book of Leviticus. Many of the sacrifices were animal sacrifices where the animal had to be slaughtered and its blood spilled. The guilty sinner had to provide a spotless, acceptable animal to be killed and have its blood spilled in place of the death that sin demands of sinners themselves. “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The animal was not guilty of the sin of the human. The animal was a guiltless substitute. But the animal, not having a human nature, could not actually atone for human sin. It served as a picture of the perfect substitute who was to come, Christ, who would shed His precious blood as the blood of a lamb without spot or blemish (1 Peter 1:19).
The Old Testament sacrificial system was a type, a pointer, that looked forward to the antitype, or fulfillment, which is found in Christ. The blood of animal sacrifices prefigured the blood of Christ. The Old Testament sacrificial system is the shadow and Christ’s sacrifice is the substance. We read of this in the book of Hebrews.
“For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins...
...Previously saying, ‘Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them’ (which are offered according to the law), then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.’ He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:1-4, 8-10).
The forgiveness of sins. This redemption that we now have is a redemption in which we have the forgiveness of sins. It is the word paraptōmatōn (παραπτωμάτων) meaning trespasses. This same word (παραπτωμάτων) is found in the book of Romans.
“And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many trespasses (παραπτωμάτων) resulted in justification” (Romans 5:16).
The one offense in the Garden of Eden spawned all of the sin in the world that followed. But by the one sacrifice of Christ all of the sins of those who believe in Him are forgiven. Although the sins are many, it is not the case that each sin requires its own separate sacrifice because the one sacrifice of Christ abounds in such a way that it covers each and every sin of His people. This speaks to the abundance, the riches, of God’s grace and that is the next phrase here in Ephesians.
According to the riches of His grace. Our redemption through Christ’s blood and the forgiveness of our sins are according to the riches of God’s grace. Riches (πλοῦτος) signifies wealth or plentiful abundance, and it is the wealth, the abundance of the Father’s grace, which He pours out on us in Christ. This is the grace that Paul greets the reader and hearer with in verse 2; it is the grace that Paul writes of in verse 6 which demonstrates God’s glory and for which God is to be praised. By the grace of God, through the blood of Christ, we are redeemed from the slavery of sin, our sins are forgiven, and all of this is according to the riches that God possesses. God is the Creator of the heavens, the earth, the seas, and everything in them (Psalm 146:6). He owns everything. Such are His power and riches.
Which He made to abound toward us. The riches of God’s grace are made to abound (ἐπερίσσευσεν) toward us. The word abound means “lavished.” It is excess, a super-abounding, not simply enough but over and above that which is enough. The word is found in a number of places in Scripture. One place is in Matthew 14 where read about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. What happened after the thousands of people ate their fill?
“So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained” (Matthew 14:20 emphasis mine).
That word “remained” is our word here in Ephesians. After the thousands ate their fill there were twelve baskets full of that which was “over and above.” The word is also found in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8 emphasis mine)
In the verse quoted above, the word is found twice. God as able to make all grace “abound” toward us that we might have an “abundance” for every good work. In the context of Corinthians this abundance of grace is for ministering to the needs of fellow believers. But the idea of superabundance is the same. Our redemption and forgiveness in Christ is a lavishing, a superabundance, of grace toward us. It is enough to redeem and forgive us - and more on top of that. The love of God, who is love (1 John 4:8), in His good pleasure, lavishes His grace upon us. It is as though this cannot be emphasized enough – The personal, loving, relational God brings us into a personal, loving relationship with Himself, making us sons in Jesus Christ, and therefore lavishing upon us all that which pertains to sons, heirs, co-heirs with Christ who is the Beloved Son.
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together” (Romans 8:14-17).
In all wisdom and understanding. Remember from previous studies that all of God’s work for His people is done according to His love and according to His good pleasure. It is not the work of person-less fate. It is not mechanical indifference. It is the relational, loving work among the persons of the triune God toward persons made in God’s image that those persons might share in the relational love of their Creator, the triune God, by His grace. God lavishes His grace upon us in all wisdom (sophia, σοφίᾳ) and understanding (phronēsai, φρονήσει).
The work of God in blessing us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy before Him in love, predestining us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will, making us accepted in the Beloved Son by whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He lavishes upon us, is the wisdom of God. The gospel of grace is the wisdom of God.
“but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24 emphasis mine).
The wisdom of God is made to known to us in Christ, as the believer has the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).
“To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Colossians 1:27-28 emphasis mine).
The word translated here in Ephesians 1:8 as “understanding” is variously translated as “insight,” “prudence,” “intelligence,” “attitude,” or even as “wisdom.” We find the word (φρονήσει) used in the account of the birth announcement of John the Baptist where it is often translated as “wisdom.”
“He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom [φρονήσει] of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).
The distinction I understand Paul to be making here between “wisdom” and “wisdom,” as it were, is the distinction between the wisdom of the plan of God’s grace and the wisdom of that plan being worked out in and among believers. Near the beginning of this study I noted the switch from aorist tenses to the present tense with the verb “we have.” I see, not an exact, but a similar idea here. The words wisdom and understanding are nouns, not verbs. But I think sophia (σοφίᾳ) here refers to the plan of God in redemption, in eternity if you will, and phronēsai (φρονήσει) refers to our living participation in that plan of God, the having it now. It is blessing upon blessing. Here and now, while we walk this dusty planet, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the spiritual realm in Christ, from before the foundation of the world. With Paul, I say, Blessed be God!
I pray that these studies encourage you to contemplate who our God is; to contemplate His work in eternity and His work in time. His work in others and His work in you. I pray that as you contemplate this wisdom and understanding of God’s grace which is lavished upon us as believers in Jesus Christ that you grow deeper in your love for Him. I ask that you pray this for me along with yourselves.
The study will pick up in verse 9 next time.