Ephesians Study 2: The People of God

Introduction

A warm hello to everyone who is joining me again today. My name is Sarah Bradbury, and this is Garden to Glory: The Mystery of God.

This is the second installment of our exploration into the book of Ephesians. Last time, in our introduction to the book, we asked the questions: “Why do we care to serve any gods?”, “What makes false gods unworthy of our worship?”, “How is the God of the Bible better?”, and “Why do we care to give God glory?”.

As we pick up the discussion in Ephesians 1:3-11 today, we will be talking about the mysterious plan of God that will eventually unite all things under Jesus; the role the Jewish people have played in that plan; and the addition of Gentile believers into that unity of Christ. All these things will help us answer the question, “Who are the people of God?”

So to begin this discussion today, let’s read Ephesians 1:3-11:

Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure.

So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belong to His dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.

God has now revealed to us His mysterious will regarding Christ – which is to fulfill His own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.

Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan.

The Plan of God

God has always had a plan. That plan has always been to unite everything and everyone under the authority of Jesus Christ.

We read in Philippians 2:9-11:

Therefore, God elevated Him to the place of highest honor and gave Him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What does it look like for everyone and everything to be united under the authority of Jesus?

To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t really know.

That might not be what you want to hear from someone who is trying to teach you the Bible, but whether or not we want to admit it, this is true of all of us. Pastors, teachers, and evangelists may make convincing arguments that they can explain every detail of God’s plan for us, but even the Apostle Paul had to admit that his knowledge was limited.

He says in 1 Corinthians 13:12-13:

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

I am convinced that the full understanding of God’s plan for all of time is something beyond our ability to grasp fully in our current time, but this passage in Ephesians 1 shows us something amazing. It shows us that part of God’s plan to unite all things under Jesus at the right time has always been to choose a group of people to be part of God’s family and for that group to be made holy and blameless because of a unique relationship with Jesus.

God has been working out the details of this plan throughout all of human history and has been hinting at this end goal of unity the entire time.

The Beginning

From the very beginning of human sin and rebellion, God made a promise of reconciliation and redemption. Adam and Eve, the first humans, sinned against God in the garden of Eden. The consequences of that sin were severe. Yet God did not curse Adam and Eve themselves as a result of that sin.

The ground was cursed because of Adam’s sin, and pain in childbirth was increased because of Eve, but the only curse pronounced on creatures in the Garden was pronounced on the serpent. We know from Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 that the serpent was Satan himself.

Genesis 3:14-15 says:

Then the Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild.

You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live.

And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

This is the first time in human history that the gospel was declared.

I’d like for us to note two things in God’s words to the serpent.

The Seed of Eve

First, God showed His plan of redemption by promising to send the Seed of Eve to crush the head of the serpent.

God had told Adam that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. However, in this promise to send a Seed of Eve, God graciously showed mercy and hope. He was indicating that both humans will, in fact, live long enough to have children.

The narrative of Genesis – and the whole Old Testament – is one of continuing to search and wait for the revelation of who that Seed will be. We, of course, know from the New Testament that this future Seed is Jesus.

In Hebrews 2:14-15, we read:

Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.

The Beginning of the People of God

The second thing I would like us to notice in God’s words to the serpent is that God identifies Eve as a teammate in the war against Satan.

Despite the fact that Eve had sinned, God not only promises to destroy Satan with one of her descendants, but He also promises to put hostility between Eve and the serpent.

God not only set in motion the plan to destroy the source of evil in the world, but He also showed His redemptive love in naming Eve as an enemy of Satan. She was the first to fall victim to Satan’s lies, but she did not belong to him. God calls her to be His own, and by doing so, God shows that His plan is not solely for His Son – her Seed– to defeat Satan and rule over him. It is also to partner with and redeem sinful humans, of which Eve was the first.

This is the beginning of the distinction of the people of God. This story continues to build throughout Genesis and the rest of the Bible. As God continues to call certain people to Himself, He shows distinctions between those who follow Him and those who continually reject Him.

How People Learned about God

As we read in Romans 1 during the last installment of this study, the existence and power of God can be seen clearly in creation. However, humans have the tendency to look at the revelation of God and twist it into false gods.

Despite this tendency, God’s plan of redemption has been at work since the beginning. God has revealed this plan of salvation to humanity in a number of ways throughout time.

Most religions in the world have a geographical and cultural aspect to them. If you are Hindu, for instance, there is a very high chance that you live in India or your family is from there. Buddhists primarily live in Asia, and if you live in the Middle East, the probability that your religion is Islam is very high.

All the religions of the world began in particular places and have been deeply interwoven with the cultures of those areas. This was especially true in the ancient world when modes of travel were much more limited than today. Also, the absence of things like the internet and cell phones meant that cultures were pretty secluded from each other. Thus, you were fairly unlikely to hear about the religious practices of people outside of your community.

The way to learn about the god of any nation at that time was simply to live in that culture, and to do this was to serve whatever gods that nation served.

We see this idea clearly in the book of Ruth. Ruth 1:14-16 says:

And again they wept together, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye. But Ruth clung tightly to Naomi. “Look,” Naomi said to her, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. You should do the same.”

But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.

In a world where the knowledge of God had been distorted and individual nations were teaching people to follow false gods, God continued with His plan to unite all things in Christ by meeting humans where they were.

A New Nation

God chose to set apart a new nation whose national identity and cultural practices would teach the world about who He really is. In Genesis 12:1-3, we read about the beginning of this new nation:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram, who would later be renamed Abraham, became the father of the nation of Israel. We know the descendants of Abraham today as the Jewish people, although Abraham had other descendants who became their own people groups as well.

Abraham died long before he was able to see his descendants grow large enough in number to be viewed as a nation. He did not see the fullness of God’s promise to him, though he did get to see the beginning of that promise through the miraculous gift of a son.

It was about 400 years after God’s promise to Abraham that God brought his descendants out of Egypt, a land in which they had been slaves. Though they had been their own distinct race and culture inside the land of Egypt, it was 400 years of waiting for freedom and a land to call their own.

After God miraculously saved the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, He set the nation of Israel further apart from the surrounding nations by giving them instructions on how to live, work, and worship. In Exodus 19:5-8, we read God’s words to the newly-liberated Israel:

“Now if you will obey Me and keep My covenant, you will be My own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to Me. And you will be My kingdom of priests, My holy nation. This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.”

So Moses returned from the mountain and called together the elders of the people and told them everything the Lord had commanded him. And all the people responded together, “We will do everything the Lord has commanded.” So Moses brought the people’s answer back to the Lord.

Forty days after the people of Israel promised to do everything God commanded them, they instead demanded that a golden calf be made so they could worship it. They did this instead of worshipping the God who had created everything, the God who only months earlier had performed many miracles to show His power over the false gods of Egypt and liberate them from slavery.

In case we are tempted to believe that the nations of the world would not have distorted the character of God revealed in creation if they were simply given more direct communication with God, the nation of Israel proves that theory wrong.

In Romans 9:4-5, Paul speaks of the unique privileges of being a Jew:

They are the people of Israel, chosen to be God’s adopted children. God revealed His glory to them. He made covenants with them and gave them His law. He gave them the privilege of worshiping Him and receiving His wonderful promises. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their ancestors, and Christ Himself was an Israelite as far as His human nature is concerned. And He is God, the one who rules over everything and is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.

God truly did set Israel apart in the world! Unlike the other nations, God spoke directly to Israel. He made promises to them, and He saved them time and time again despite their frequent rebellion in serving other gods instead of the one true God.

God sent judges, prophets, priests, and kings to the nation to make God’s ways and laws known to the people. Through the system of sacrifices, priests, the temple, and holy feasts, God used tangible practices to shadow deeper truths of His mysterious plan for all of history.

Israel Dishonors God

However, Israel never succeeded at following God’s law perfectly enough to become a nation of priests. While some Jewish prophets spoke the very words of God and foretold Jesus’ coming, other Jewish people put those very prophets to death.

Though God set Israel apart to make His character known to the world, Israel was often known for their rejection of God rather than their worship of Him. Paul points out this irony in Romans 2:17-28:

You who call yourselves Jews are relying on God’s law, and you boast about your special relationship with him. You know what he wants; you know what is right because you have been taught his law. You are convinced that you are a guide for the blind and a light for people who are lost in darkness. You think you can instruct the ignorant and teach children the ways of God. For you are certain that God’s law gives you complete knowledge and truth.

Well then, if you teach others, why don’t you teach yourself? You tell others not to steal, but do you steal? You say it is wrong to commit adultery, but do you commit adultery? You condemn idolatry, but do you use items stolen from pagan temples? You are so proud of knowing the law, but you dishonor God by breaking it. No wonder the Scriptures say, “The Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you.”

The Jewish ceremony of circumcision has value only if you obey God’s law. But if you don’t obey God’s law, you are no better off than an uncircumcised Gentile. And if the Gentiles obey God’s law, won’t God declare them to be his own people? In fact, uncircumcised Gentiles who keep God’s law will condemn you Jews who are circumcised and possess God’s law but don’t obey it.

For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.

There are times in the Old Testament when we can see the character of God being made known to the nations of the world through God’s relationship with the nation of Israel. However, here we see that the hypocrisy of Jewish people preaching God’s law while failing to follow it actually accomplishes the opposite. Instead of making God’s greatness known to the surrounding nations, their twisted reflection of God was causing God’s name to be mocked.

If we claim to have a special relationship with God and teach that we have all the right dos and don’ts yet do not live the way we tell others to live, the people around us are right to belittle us for it. And if we invoke the name of God in this hypocritical foolishness, we bring dishonor to His name and are not true witnesses of God to the world.

It is easy to look at the nation of Israel and feel superior. After all, God performed miracles for them, spoke to them, and gave them step-by-step instructions for how to live and worship Him. How could you mess that up?!?

However, the fact is that the law given to the nation of Israel was just plain impossible to follow without a change in heart granted by the Holy Spirit through faith. The attempts of the nation of Israel to earn their title as the chosen people of God actually became an obstacle to their faith in God.

Jesus, the Image of God

When Jesus came to Earth, He gave humanity a clear picture of who God is and what He is like. We read in Colossians 1:15 that:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

And in Hebrews 1:3, it says:

The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God.

Just like God responded to the nations twisting their knowledge of God in creation into false gods by revealing Himself more fully to the nation of Israel, God responded to the false witness of the Israelite nation by sending Jesus, God Himself, to make His true character known.

Faith has always been the way to God, but the revelation of God in the person and work of Jesus and the giving of the Holy Spirit has made faith accessible to all people everywhere.

Paul talks about the change in understanding between Israel following God’s rules and all nations being made right with God through faith in Jesus in Romans 9:30-10:4:

What does all this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God’s standards, they were made right with God. And it was by faith that this took place. But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of by trusting in Him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path. 

God warned them of this in the Scriptures when He said,

“I am placing a stone in Jerusalem that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall.

But anyone who trusts in Him will never be disgraced.”

Dear brothers and sisters, the longing of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved. I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with Himself.

Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in Him are made right with God.

The concept that the Jewish people are not completely and exclusively the people of God was a very hard reality for the Jews of the New Testament period to accept. As a result, there are many passages in the New Testament dedicated to discussing this subject.

Even today, there are many people who still see the nation of Israel as the chosen people of God and will argue that they are, in fact, made right by following the Old Testament law. Even some who consider themselves Christians will argue for this idea today.

I believe there are still some plans that God will work out for ethnic Israel in the future. I look forward to that day, but if we ask the question, “Are the Jewish people the true people of God?”, Galatians 3:21-29 would indicate the answer is no. It reads:

Is there a conflict, then, between God’s law and God’s promises?Absolutely not! If the law could give us new life, we could be made right with God by obeying it. But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.

Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed.

Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are His heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.

Here we see the same principle that we read about in Ephesians. The chosen people of God is not the nation of Israel; it’s those who believe in Jesus whether they are Jewish or Gentile.

This begs the following question: if God chose the nation of Israel to be His people and special possession in the Old Testament but changed it to people of all nations who believe once we get to the New Testament, did God’s original plan fail? Is this simply His “Plan B”? No.

Did “Plan A” Fail?

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 9:6-9:

Well then, has God failed to fulfill His promise to Israel? No, for not all who are born into the nation of Israel are truly members of God’s people! Being descendants of Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted,” though Abraham had other children, too. This means that Abraham’s physical descendants are not necessarily children of God.

From the very beginning of Israel’s story, God hinted at the idea that not every person who physically descends from Abraham is a true child of God. Throughout the Old Testament, there are various condemnations of Israel that show God’s favor is not universally applied to the entire nation.

Yet no matter what the status of the nation as a whole may have been, God always reserved a portion of the nation of Israel as His true people. He continues that to this day. Romans 11:1-5 says:

I ask, then, has God rejected His own people, the nation of Israel? Of course not! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham and a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

No, God has not rejected His own people, whom He chose from the very beginning. Do you realize what the Scriptures say about this? Elijah the prophet complained to God about the people of Israel and said, “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.”

And do you remember God’s reply? He said, “No, I have 7,000 others who have never bowed down to Baal!”

It is the same today, for a few of the people of Israel have remained faithful because of God’s grace – His undeserved kindness in choosing them.

If we can see that the people of God were always a portion of the nation of Israel and not the whole, the question is whether we can see any intention of God to include Gentiles into His chosen people before we get to the New Testament. After all, our passage in Ephesians tells us that God loved us and chose us before He even made the world.

In fact, God did show us in the Old Testament that His plan was always to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

We see this in God’s promise to Abraham that all of the families on Earth will be blessed through him.

In Genesis 14, the king of Salem, Melchizedek, was called a priest of God most high. This was despite the fact that he was not an Israelite! In fact, Abraham even paid a tithe to this priest. Melchizedek is also mentioned in Psalm 110:4 and Hebrews 5 as a picture of the priestly order Jesus is now a part of.

The book of Ruth is named after a Moabite woman who chose to follow her mother-in-law back to the nation of Israel and was received into the people of God. Ruth also became part of the earthly lineage of Jesus.

Rahab was a prostitute in the town of Jericho. She hid two spies from Israel who had come to Jericho to scope out the situation. Because of her kindness to the spies, Rahab was spared when the city was destroyed. She, too, joined the nation of Israel and became part of the ancestral line of Jesus.

Naaman was a commander of the Syrian army and an enemy of Israel who was healed from leprosy by following the command of the prophet Elisha. Naaman then determined that there was no God besides the God of Israel and committed to serving the true God.

King Nebuchadnezzar was one of the bad guys in the book of Daniel. He was an arrogant king who had destroyed Jerusalem and the temple of God. He took many people from Israel and brought them into captivity in Babylon. God judged him for his pride, but in the end, Nebuchadnezzar turned to God and worshipped Him.

The entire book of Jonah appears to be a satirical condemnation of Israel’s belief that only the nation of Israel is worthy of God’s mercy.

And Psalm 86:9 says:

All the nations you made
will come and bow before you, Lord;
they will praise your holy name.

This is just one of many Old Testament prophecies of the nations coming to worship God. Thus, we can see that the people of God have never been exclusively Jews. The people of God have always been those who believed in Him.

This knowledge was mostly hidden from the world before Jesus came. The obstacles of geography, culture, the law, and circumcision kept many Gentiles away from God. Simultaneously, many Jewish people tried to earn their way to righteousness by following the law, which they could only fail at doing.

Back to our text in Ephesians 1, we read in verses 9-11:

God has now revealed to us His mysterious will regarding Christ – which is to fulfill His own good plan. And this is the plan: at the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.

Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan.

When the Holy Spirit came to believers, God revealed to all Christians forever that His plan for the fullness of time is to unite everything and everyone under Christ.

While we will not understand every aspect of what that unity will look like until He has completed it, God has shown us the beginnings of that unity in the family of God that we are invited to be part of.

In Conclusion

For many of us, the debate between Jews and Gentiles as the people of God seems old fashioned and irrelevant. However, in the Old Testament world and into the early church period, there was no bigger division than the divide between Jew and Gentile.

This is the reason why much of the New Testament is dedicated to explaining and verifying the unity of Jew and Gentile in Jesus. This divide was so prevalent that these debates are still taking place among different groups to this day.

For those of us who do not feel the need to continue this fight that seems to have been settled in Scripture, I believe there are still takeaways from this discussion that we can glean today.

1. A national identity of being God’s people is arrogant and false.

If the nation of Israel was not the undeniably holy and perfect representation of God in the world, certainly no other nation can claim that title.

The nation of Israel was founded by God through miracles and direct revelation, yet the Old Testament itself condemns Israel for not following God. This accusation is repeated in the New Testament by Jesus and others.

In the U.S. today, there are some who like to think of our country as a “Christian nation.” There are books dedicated to the idea that the founders of America were Christian, and therefore, the laws they wrote were the epitome of righteous living for all.

There are also many books you can read that will negate the idea that the founders were Christians, but whichever conclusion you believe does not negate the example we have of the nation of Israel. Though founded by God Himself and given His laws, the nation was not righteous. Also, the laws they were given were not meant to last forever or to accomplish God’s perfect will for all time.

While America, like all nations that have come after the time of Jesus, has been influenced by Christianity, it is just one of many nations that will be united under Christ. We do not have the grounds to boast about our superiority any more than the Jewish people do.

2. We should be cautious not to twist our knowledge of Jesus into a false god.

If it is the natural tendency of all humans to take the revelation of God and twist it into falsehoods (and if the nation God specially set apart also did this until they, too, were serving a false representation of God), then we who are given even further revelation in the complete Bible and the example of Jesus ought to be careful that we do not twist this into a false god of our own imaginations. We will discuss this more next time.

3. We should anticipate more unity.

As we move forward in time through God’s plan to unite all things under Jesus, we should remember that the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile was just the beginning.

There are no ethnic boundaries that keep us out of the family of God. There is no sin that God cannot forgive and that Jesus hasn’t paid for. Your religious or secular past cannot negate your current belief.

This is good news to us. It’s also a challenge to question whatever qualifications you might personally have in deeming someone else worthy of God’s salvation or their full participation as heirs of God.

Galatians 3:27-29 says:

And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are His heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.

Join me next time as we discuss how to know if you personally belong to Christ and are among the people of God.

Until then, brothers and sisters, may God – who chose you before He made the world – continue to work out His good plan to unite you and all things under Christ Jesus forever. Amen.

To help you meditate on the principles we have discussed today, I have made a short Spotify playlist that you can find here.