Marked and Sealed

Amos7: 7-15
Eph1: 3-14

It is passages like this one in Ephesians that make many regular Christians throw up their hands in frustration about reading the bible on their own. It’s a very wordy text, full of words that seem to have many possible meanings and it can leave even those of us that have studied the bible extensively, scratching our heads. This is a passage that has caused a lot of controversy and discussion over the years because of words like predestination, adoption, inheritance, and redemption.

There are some people, like John Calvin, who consider this passage to confirm that there are certain people who are predestined to be saved. The idea of predestination is that a person does not get saved through their own merits, but through God’s will. This opens up the idea that there are those who will be saved even if they never accept Jesus into their hearts, or someone that has done awful things could already be predestined for heaven. Then there is the question of how are we to know who is predestined and who is not?

There is another theory where people believe when the author writes that we are predestined to adoption to sonship in Christ, that every human being has been predestined to be saved. The idea of universal salvation (everyone in the world is saved no matter religion, creeds or deeds) is appealing to those of us that think about loved ones that have passed, but were not exactly faithful Christians. This idea that everyone in the world is saved no matter what they do or believe, seems to make our faith and our response to God, immaterial. Since Jesus makes a point of saying we should have faith and that we are to respond to God with love for others, it doesn’t seem like this could be the correct definition of predestination.

The other theory on predestination is slightly different. Through Jesus Christ, every person is given the ability to be saved. However, salvation is given to those who respond to their adoption with faith and love for Jesus, and they are the ones that are given eternal life. This definition includes free will. We choose to accept the gift God wants to give us or we may decline it. The way we conduct our lives, shows God who we are and who we want to be.

The word adoption and sonship are very important as well. Through Jesus Christ, we are no longer just human beings who believe in God. We are welcomed into the family of God. We become brothers and sisters not just IN Christ but TO Christ. Think about this.. if we are Christ’s brother and sister, then our parent is God. When we accepted Jesus into our hearts, we were dropped smack dab in the middle of the family relationship and dynamics.

There are those of you out there that have either been adopted or adopted a child into your family. So you know and understand this better than most. Adoption is not about superficially adding a person to the family. When we adopt a child, we accept them into our hearts, into our lives and they become such a vital part of us that we cannot imagine life without them. I had someone tell me not too long ago that when they adopted their son, she loved him so much that sometimes she forgot he was adopted because it just wasn’t what was important. The important part was this child was a part of her life and she was a part of his. The love between the two is what mattered most, DNA mattered very little.

God feels the same way about all of us. We are God’s children, and as such, we are privileged to the same wonders and benefits that are given to Jesus. That is amazing, and also brings us to the word inheritance.

What do we receive as children of God? What is our inheritance? It’s not just salvation, as if that wasn’t enough on its own! When we chose to believe in Jesus, we were marked as God’s own and we were given a wonderful gift – the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a beautiful gift because it means we do not go through life alone. There are many of us sitting in these pews today who have known loneliness. That deep, abiding ache that empties and drains us of life. The sorrow and pain we feel that no one will understand what we have gone through. No one truly understands the person we are and the mistakes we have made, the things we want to accomplish and those we have not been able to.

But the Holy Spirit is a gift unlike any other. God’s Spirit, given to us the moment we profess belief in Jesus Christ. Through that Spirit, we are promised that never again will we walk alone. Never again will we be misunderstood and left to fight our demons by ourselves. We have a champion, we have a Savior, we have one that will mediate our prayers and concerns to God for us. The Holy Spirit, if we allow her too, will fill those empty, aching voids with the love of Christ, with the acceptance of God the Father, and will guide us right into God’s waiting arms.

Think of the Holy Spirit as your personal guide to heaven, your personal guide to eternity spent with God who loves you more than you could ever comprehend. Now that, my friends, is an inheritance!

The final word in this passage we will look at is redemption. Sometimes we call Jesus our Redeemer. We are redeemed through Christ. What does that mean? Who is it that we need to be redeemed for?

Not many of us will argue that humanity is full of flaws. We are prideful, arrogant, disdainful of others, and we lack compassion. These are just some of the many sins we commit daily. With such flaws, it would seem impossible to get to heaven on our own. It is why we needed Jesus Christ. God tried to help us become better people, offering covenant after covenant with us and always, we broke them. When he sent Jesus, he made a new covenant that is unbreakable. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, when he died he accepted all of humanity’s flaws as his own, he took the punishment we were meant to have.

Thus, we were redeemed in God’s eyes. When God looks at each of us, he does not see a sinful human being, but he sees His Son. He sees the blood Jesus spilled for us, the compassion Jesus has, and the love for the Son, becomes love for all. This is what adoption and redemption are all about. We truly are now one of God’s own children because God sees in each of us His very own Son.

This passage may be filled with a lot of big words and confusing sentences, but it is one of the most important we will discuss. Here, we learn about how we are saved and we learn about our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. God loved his creation enough to send his Son, who loved us enough to take away our sins so that we would be given the chance to accept eternal life with the help and direction of the Holy Spirit. If you are ever again in doubt that God loves you, remember this passage, and remember what Jesus has done for you. You are not alone and you are not unloved. God is right by your side, now and always.

Amen.