Eyes Opened to Hope – Ephesians 1:18
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18 is that believers would have “the eyes of your hearts enlightened,” meaning that God would give them spiritual sight to understand, believe, and live in light of what He has already given them in Christ. Though the Ephesians had already heard the gospel, believed, been sealed with the Holy Spirit, and received every spiritual blessing in Christ, Paul still prays that they would truly see these blessings. This reminds us that Christians still need the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. Spiritual sight is not merely having more Bible facts, but having the whole inner person—our thinking, desires, will, affections, and worship—opened by God so that truth shapes the way we live. Apart from grace, we are spiritually blind, and even as believers we still need God to keep opening our eyes so that we do not grow cold, proud, dull, or resistant to what He has said.
Paul specifically prays that believers would know “the hope to which he has called you” and “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” Biblical hope is not wishful thinking, but confident expectation in what God has promised. Since God is the one who called us, our hope does not rest on our feelings, circumstances, or strength, but on His purpose, promise, faithfulness, and saving grace. This hope steadies us in suffering, discouragement, sin, and even death because Christ gets the final word. Paul also wants believers to see the riches of the inheritance God gives His people. This inheritance is rich because it comes from God, belongs to all the saints together, and cannot be threatened by earthly loss, suffering, politics, the economy, or death. Therefore, Christians should pray this same prayer for themselves, their families, and the church: that God would open the eyes of our hearts to see the hope of His calling and the riches of our inheritance in Christ.
FULL TEXT SERMON:
As we come to this next verse, we continue in the pattern which we have practiced here for at least the last four and a half years since I’ve been here, but has been the practice of this church for a long, long, long, long time: to go verse by verse, section by section, through different books of the Bible.
Currently, we are here in the letter of Paul to the Ephesians. We’ve worked our way meticulously to this point. I think this is literally, we’re on verse 18 in chapter 1. I think this is number 18 of the sermons. We’re taking our time. We want to mine out the riches of God’s Word for us today.
And this morning is no different. We pick up here in verse 18, right where we left off from last week.
Paul here, again, we can fill in some context pretty simply since we’re so close to the beginning of the letter. The beginning of chapter 1 is the introduction, and then he moves quickly into this doxology in verses 3 through 14 that we took our time working through to see God’s great salvation.
And a couple of weeks ago, when we got to verse 15, it sort of changed direction. Instead of it just being a praise to God, Paul expressing his love and praise to the Father for his salvation, now he turns to say, “for this reason,” for all of that, because of all that he has just expressed.
Because he has heard of the Ephesians’ faith in the Lord Jesus, their love towards all the saints, he gives thanks for them. He turns to thank God and to express prayer to God on behalf of these believers for the very things that he just praised God for in that previous sentence. Remember, verses 3 through 14 was all one sentence there in the original.
And so again, two weeks ago we turned the corner into thanksgiving and prayer. We’re looking at this new section here. We looked at Paul’s thanks for the Ephesians, for the church. Last week we talked about the fact that he remembers them in his prayers, that the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, Father of glory, may give them the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him.
And we gloried in the fact that God is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, and that knowledge of him is our highest aim. And that comes through the Spirit.
And so where we pick up this morning is right in the middle of a sentence. The verse is broken down, but it’s continuing on in our English translations here. This is the beginning of verse 18. It’s continuing the prayer that Paul has for the church.
He’s still praying, and he will continue to be praying through basically the rest of the chapter. It sort of morphs throughout the prayer into more of a teaching, which all of it is teaching, but you’ll see what I mean as we get to those different verses.
He continues the prayer. And this morning we see that this part of the prayer is that Paul is praying that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened.
I mentioned this a little bit last week in the sermon that it seems sort of strange that Paul should be praying here for the very things that he just praised God for in the previous section.
Well, if those things are already true, if we already have those blessings, if all of those things are already true about Christians, why is he praying for them?
Because we need to put our attention on those things. We need to focus our attention on the very things that God has promised.
When we spend our time meditating on them, praying for them, asking God to fulfill the very things that he has promised, we are right in the center of God’s will. That is what he uses to grow us, to change us, to mold us, to shape us.
These Christians had already heard the gospel. They’d already believed. They’d already been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, all these things. And yet Paul here this morning prays that they would see.
Interesting.
That we can know or we can have faith in God. We can be saved by the grace of God alone, through faith in Christ alone, through grace, all those things. We can have salvation securely and yet not see all the blessings that he has given.
We talked a little bit about this last week, the fact that our knowledge of God, the fact that the desire for a greater knowledge of God, is our highest aim.
The more we know God, the better we understand ourselves, the better we understand this world, the better we understand what he desires for us.
The same is true here. The more we recognize the real blessings that God has given, the better we can see the hope that we will talk about this morning. The more we will live a life that is marked by faith rather than doubt. That we can live a life of courage rather than being discouraged. That we can understand the inheritance rather than continuing to live in spiritual poverty.
So Paul prays here this morning in verse 18 that God would open the eyes of their hearts.
If you would stand with me for the reading of God’s Word. For the sake of context, I’ll pick up where we were last week in the middle of verse 16, remembering. And we’ll read through 18.
Paul says:
“Remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.”
Father, this morning, as we come to this verse, would you do the very thing that Paul prayed for here? Lord, would you open the eyes of our heart? Would you help us to see the hope that we have? Would you help us to see and to experience and to live out this inheritance that has been promised?
Give us sight. Lord, we know already, as we’ve studied through this book so far, that that sight does not come on our own. We need your Holy Spirit to illuminate our hearts so that we can see and understand these things.
Lord, continue as you do week in and week out to speak to us through your inspired Word. Lord, do with it what you have intended. Teach us. Reprove us. Correct us. Train us in righteousness so that you can work in us a completion, a perfecting, a maturing so that we will be equipped for every good work.
Lord, we ask you to do this this morning, not so that we would be better workers, but so that you would receive glory in and through your church. Do this by your Spirit and for the glory of Jesus Christ alone. In his name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated.
So I give you some behind the scenes now and again, some insight into Pastor Mark here. Oftentimes, probably more often than not, to my own shame and guilt, to expose some of my own ways of thinking and heart behind—let me just say it right here.
When I came to this verse, I was like, this is a boring verse, God. How am I going to preach this and make it exciting?
And how arrogant, obviously.
I mean, I get it. When you go verse by verse, it’s like you gotta hit them all, Mark. It’s not just we are committed to line-by-line expository preaching because we want to make sure we cover those difficult topics. We need to cover those not as exciting topics as they might seem on the surface.
Every word is from the mouth of God and profitable for those things that we just prayed for, for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.
I had to have the eyes of my heart enlightened this week, and that’s where this verse begins.
Paul prays, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.”
We need God to open our eyes. The eyes of your heart, though. We sing the song, “Open the Eyes of My Heart.” By the way, that wasn’t planned. He planned that like a month and a half ago. He gets our music planned and arranged. That was not planned. Planned by the Lord. Planned by the Lord, not planned by me or by him.
We need the eyes of our heart.
That’s a strange phrase, you know?
Even some people who don’t like our new ways of singing, our music, because it’s too much like a rock show, don’t like these newfangled praise team songs. You know, they might hear something like that song and go, “That sounds dumb. Open the eyes of my heart?”
Open the eyes of my heart.
It’s right out of the Scripture. It’s right out of the text.
It is weird language, though. I mean, I don’t have an eye there. Do you have an eye on your heart? No. Of course not.
This is figurative language. We gotta take our time. We gotta slow down. We gotta think about it.
We know that we’re not referring to the physical heart, and even if we were, we know hearts don’t have eyes. Paul knows that. He’s not an ignoramus, as Cracker Barrel would tell us. Paul knows.
He’s talking about a spiritual sight here. He’s talking about having the ability to see, the ability to understand, the ability to believe, to grasp, to live in light of what God has revealed.
In the Scripture, we have talked about this multiple times. Almost every time the heart comes up in our verses, we discuss this. The heart is not like what we would describe it today, even metaphorically. We’re not talking about the physical heart. Even nowadays, when we talk about, “my heart is full,” or “I’m following my heart,” we know we’re not talking about our physical organ.
But typically, what we mean by heart is our feelings, how I feel.
That’s not how Scripture uses heart.
The heart from the Bible is not the place of feelings. Remember, if some of you were here all the way back when we were in Philippians 1, that was a long time ago. Four years ago. There was a word there, splagchnon. Original Greek. I love that word. It means the bowels, the guts. That’s where your emotions come from. When the Scripture talks about feeling or emotions or affections, that’s the terminology that the Scripture uses.
The heart is never in reference to that in terms of that you should follow those kinds of things. You should instead understand what the Bible actually means by heart.
The heart is the inner man.
Every human being is a duplex being. You exist as body and spirit in one. You have a body, you have a spirit. That makes one soul. That’s you.
So if you’re only ever thinking about the physical, you’re missing half your life, right? You’re not understanding half of who you are.
The heart is the inner man. It’s the spirit. It’s the spiritual aspect of what a man is.
And so in Scripture, when Scripture refers to heart, it’s referring to everything you are with all you’ve got. It’s the center of a person. It includes what we think, what we love, what we desire, what we choose, our will, and what we worship.
So our mind, our heart, our thinking, all those things is referring to that same spiritual aspect of a man.
So when Paul prays that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, he is praying that God would open up their inner person to see what is true. That doesn’t limit it to any one particular part of the person.
“Well, I just wanna feel it,” or, “I just wanna think about it.” Well, “I choose it, but I’m not gonna think about it or feel it.” It’s all of the things, all of who you are spiritually. It includes the whole gambit.
He’s asking, he’s praying to God that he would open their whole spirit to see what is true. He’s praying that God would change their thoughts, their will, their emotions, all of it.
There is not one element of you, believer, that the Scripture does not speak to. When it talks about your heart, it’s referring to all of you, your whole soul, your whole mind, your whole spirit.
That means then if Paul is praying for this, he is saying, just like we had alluded to last week when we were talking about knowledge and information, he’s not just asking God to give us more information. Fill their hearts with more facts. None of that.
But that the facts that he illumines to us from his Word would make their way out in the way we think, in how we choose, in how we emote, in how we feel, what motivates us.
Because what is inside, what we believe, is how we will live. It’s from the inside that we live. You only act like you do on the outside because of what’s on the inside.
So he’s not saying, “God, just change their habits, their physical habits,” because that doesn’t change anything. It’s part of it, but unless the inner man, unless the heart is changed, nothing changes.
So he’s praying that God would not just fill their heads with information, but that all of the truths of God’s Word would work themselves out in their heart, would correct wrong thinking, would stir up their faith, would produce obedience in the way that they live their life.
And that’s how God works. He gives us his Word. His Spirit opens our eyes to understand his Word in order that from the inside out, we may live out the Word, believing what he has said and putting it into practice.
The only change that will ever stick is heart change. And that’s what Paul is praying to God for here. He is praying that their eyes would be open to truth so that all of these things can happen.
Because the truth is, apart from grace, if we are lost in our sins, we are still blind. We are spiritually blind. Before Christ—and such were all of us, right? That’s the nature of man before we are redeemed. Before Christ, we did not see correctly.
So our heart was not informed correctly, which means our beliefs were misinformed, which means the way we lived our lives was misinformed, the way we emoted was misinformed, the way we felt was misinformed.
You want to know why there’s so much problems in this world? It’s because we’re blind by sin, and so it comes out in the way we live. We’re blinded to the truth. We cannot see. We’re in the dark. We’re lost.
We didn’t see correctly.
Paul is going to say in Ephesians 2:12 that we were having no hope and without God in the world. Then in chapter 4, he’s going to say that unbelievers are darkened in their understanding.
That’s what sin does. Sin blinds us. It makes us look at God wrongly. It makes us look at ourselves wrongly. It makes us look at the world wrongly. It makes us look at suffering wrongly. It makes us look at eternity wrongly. It makes us even look at Jesus wrongly.
And so the thing is, we don’t need just a little religious adjustment. We don’t need to just come to church more, or read our Bible every day, or do a little bit of volunteer work every now and again in order to get our minds right.
No. We need God to open our eyes. We need illumination. We need God to help us to see the truth.
Acts 26:18 describes a person’s conversion from that lost state to believer as God opening their eyes. It says, “turning sinners from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.”
That’s salvation language. To go from dark to light can only be done when God opens blind eyes.
But see, even again, he’s talking to believers here. Like, well, my eyes have already been opened, Mark, so I’m good now, right? Like, I’m never going to have any trouble with this ever again. I totally see the light and I’m walking in the light.
No, no, no.
Even still, we have indwelling sin. We still fight against this flesh. There is still clearer sight that we need, even as believers. People who have already believed on the Lord Jesus, who have already been sealed by the Holy Spirit, who have already been gifted with all the spiritual blessings that we just finished talking about.
We need the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened.
So if you ever get to the point in your walk with the Lord, if this is your heart, if this is your attitude, listen to me:
“Well, I already know these things. I don’t need to listen. I don’t need to hear what he has to say. I already heard a sermon about that one time when I was eight.”
We need to be careful if we ever find ourselves with that kind of attitude, because that’s usually what we say right before we stop listening. And sadly, there are many in the churches today who’ve stopped listening.
Listen, these are not new truths for you guys, even. I’ve told you this multiple times. I know I have. Why have I told you this multiple times? Repetition. Very good. Repetition is how we learn.
God brings us back to the same truths again and again and again and again because why? We forget them again and again and again.
How many times does God’s Word have to say something for it to be true? Once.
But when God repeats himself, we need to slow down and pay attention. If God is repeating himself in the Scriptures, we need to ask the question, “God, why do I need to hear this again?”
Not in a defensive kind of way like, “Well, why do I need to hear this again?” But I mean, “God, show me. Why is it that you’re showing me this again?”
We need it.
Listen, you don’t need light just for a little while. “Okay, turn the lights off now. I’m good.” We need constant light, constant illumination.
You know, it’s nice to have the next step in our path lit up so that we know where the next step goes. But wouldn’t it be nicer if we could see a little bit broader, we could see a little bit farther?
I’m not saying we’re going to ever get God’s vision. He is omniscient. But what happens as we grow in God’s Word is the light grows. We see more. We understand more.
That doesn’t mean we become better Christians in a sense that we’re better than other people. Don’t get me wrong on that.
What I just mean is we’re able to understand better. We can see things maybe that our brother that is walking next to us can’t see. We’re able to help one another better. We’re able to love our brothers, our neighbors better. We’re able to love God better because we can see him better. We better understand who he is and what he has done.
We need continuous reminders again and again and again. And so God tells us again and again and again. So we need to keep our eyes open again and again and again.
But we need God in order to keep opening our eyes. Because ultimately, as we remember, that spiritual illumination, that spiritual sight only comes through the Word by the Holy Spirit.
Paul prays for the church here for enlightenment. He prays for it because God has to give it. He prays for it instead of just telling, “Hey, church, open your eyes and pay attention.”
He prays for them to be able to see. He prays for this enlightenment. He prays for this light because he knows that unless God does it, it’s not going to happen. Unless the Spirit does it, it’s not going to take place.
Again, that doesn’t mean we just sit around and do nothing. God’s not commanded us to wait for some spiritual understanding while ignoring what the Scriptures clearly say in front of us.
But he might not help you to understand the next thing yet until you’ve obeyed the thing he’s already illuminated.
And that’s where a lot of people get stuck for 40, 50 years of their life. They’ve not obeyed the very clear thing that they know they’re supposed to be doing, and instead of dealing with it, they fold their arms and they plow ahead.
That’s dangerous. Because while you think you’re walking in the light, you’re running as fast as you can into the darkness.
God has commanded us to obey his Word. So faith is not just going blindly on our own way. That’s laziness.
God opens our eyes through his Word and by his Spirit.
2 Corinthians 4:6 says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’ has shone in our hearts.”
The God who spoke light into creation from his mouth must shine light, spiritual light, into our hearts.
So how do you work this out practically? What are some things you can do?
Well, if he’s praying for this, guess what you should be doing? Praying for this.
Pray.
Before you read the Scripture, when you sit down to do your quiet time, your devotion, your family worship time, and when you open the Word, pray. Not as a, “Okay, well that’s the first step.” You know, you have to open in prayer and close in prayer. But actually pray, “Lord, open our eyes to see the truth. Open our hearts to understand.”
But not just then. Pray before you come in here. You know, we pray at the beginning of a sermon, the service. We pray at the beginning of a sermon. We do those corporate kinds of praying, but you should be praying for yourself as you enter into this place.
And as the Word is opened and it is about to be told to you, you should be praying in your heart and in your mind, “God, open my heart to receive and understand your Word.”
That’s a prayer he not only wants you to ask, but it is part of his will. He will answer.
When you get to those points, if you ever notice that you’re at that point where your heart is clearly cold and you’re saying, “I don’t need to hear that,” or some of those other things that I’ve mentioned already, that’s when you need to pray, “God, please don’t let me stay like this.”
Pray. Pray when you’re confused. Pray when you’re discouraged. Pray in all of these circumstances for what? For God to show you himself. For God to illumine your mind, your heart by his Spirit to the promises of his Word so that we can understand and know him, understand and know ourselves, understand and know what he’s doing in our lives and what he wants for us to be doing.
Lord, open the eyes of my heart. Help me to see what you have said, and help me to believe it and obey it.
Pray that prayer. It is a good prayer.
Y’all haven’t been listening fast enough.
“Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”
We need to know the hope of God’s calling. That’s Paul’s next part of his prayer, that the eyes would be open in order that we could know what is that hope.
But notice, it is the hope to which he has called. God is the one who is calling.
We did not call ourselves into salvation. We did not wander into regeneration. We didn’t fall into this hope by accident. God has called us into this hope so that we would know what it is.
Of course, we’ve already talked about this a little bit. In Ephesians 1:4, he says that God chose his people in Christ before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1:5 says he predestined us for adoption, and then in time he called us through the gospel.
“For this reason, I’ve heard your faith in the Lord Jesus.”
There was a moment when you heard the gospel and believed it. God called you effectively by his good news, and you believed.
See, our Christian hope then is not based on how we feel at any given moment. Praise the Lord. Because some days, I’m just not feeling it.
Our feelings are not trustworthy counselors. But our hope, Christian, rests on God’s calling, God’s purpose, God’s promise, God’s faithfulness, God saving us.
It is the hope to which he has called us.
Romans 8:28, the verse we come back to often, says that we were called according to his purpose. Romans 11:29 says that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
So that means, beloved, that God does not call you into salvation, call you into unity with Christ and then, “Whoop, I changed my mind.”
Praise the Lord for that.
This hope is not something that is unsettled.
Hope, biblical hope, is not wishful thinking. That’s how we talk about it in our culture. We say stuff like, “Well, I hope it doesn’t rain,” or, “I hope the test results are good.” Well, I hope this, I hope that.
Biblical hope is confident expectation in what God has promised.
God said it. My hope is set in it.
Paul wants these believers to know the hope to which he has called them. He wants them to understand what God has brought them into and also where God is taking them.
He’s already expressed the hope of salvation and all the things and how God works in all of these ways. But this hope doesn’t just stop up to the point of salvation. It continues on in our sanctification, and it’ll continue on until our final sanctification or our glorification, when the resurrection, when we are made completely holy, when we enter into the eternal presence of Christ forever, and when all things, as we talked about in verse 10, are summed up in Christ.
Paul calls this in Colossians 1:27. He says, “It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
So hope is not this wishful thinking.
Biblical hope gives us proper expectations.
We have all kinds of expectations, don’t we? And some of us have some unbiblical expectations that have been unmet, and we are very upset about that.
We do this every day, do we not? We have unmet expectations daily.
“Well, my wife wasn’t supposed to talk to me like that. Well, my son or my daughter should’ve had that done already. Well, such and such, so and so, this, that, the other,” from home, from as small of the circle as it is, to the ends of the earth, right?
“Well, those people over there in that country,” but whatever. Unmet expectations.
Biblical hope helps us to meet those unmet, unbiblical expectations.
You should not expect what the Bible does not say. If God doesn’t promise it, you shouldn’t have an expectation for it. Which means if it’s not happening the way you want it to, you’re wrong.
But on the positive side of it, when our expectations are in what God has promised, we should have every hope and every confidence that God will do exactly what he said.
You see, we struggle daily, do we not? We don’t struggle because we don’t know that God has spoken. We don’t struggle because we don’t know that God has given us his Word. We struggle because we’ve been listening to the wrong expectations.
Some people come into Christianity thinking that if they come to Christ, then all their difficulties will be removed. That’s a lie. That all their relationships will be fixed. That they will not have to suffer like they used to. They can keep it at a distance.
But God doesn’t promise that.
So if anybody told you that, and I don’t know if anybody actually tells people that, although the faith healers and the prosperity gospel preachers come awfully close many times, that was not Christianity. That was not what the New Testament says. That’s not what God’s Word says.
Paul prays here that believers would know the hope of God’s calling. The hope is not without pain and suffering in this lifetime. The hope is that God, who has called us to himself, is making us like Christ, and one day will bring us to glory.
That’s our hope.
And this hope cannot be taken away. This hope steadies the believer.
If we know the hope to which God has called us, then whatever it is that we’re going through right now does not get to define everything else in our life.
Suffering, Christian, does not get the final word for you. Sin, Christian, does not get the final word for you. Death itself, Christian, does not get the final word. Christ does.
I know that sounds preachery. But that’s the reality.
A Christian who doesn’t have this hope, they’re gonna go through life tossed back and forth. The things they go through are gonna feel like it’s everything in their life. The season they’re walking through feels like this is the end. The discouragement that they’re feeling at the moment seems to undo every promise of God.
But when the eyes of the heart are enlightened to see with eyes of faith by the Spirit through his Word, we see the present in light of eternity.
It doesn’t make suffering go away. It doesn’t make hurt hurt less. Christians are still gonna go through stuff. We’re still gonna grieve. We’re still gonna have sorrows. We’re still gonna hurt. We’re still gonna get tired.
But Christian, you should know you’re not weird if that’s you. We live in a fallen world. We will experience these things. But what gives us an anchor to our soul is the biblical hope that we have in and from God. It is what steadies us.
He is what steadies us.
God has called us, and he will bring his called ones to the end.
“Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
We need to know the riches of his inheritance.
Now again, this has all been sort of repetition, hasn’t it? This is repetitive. Everything we have talked about we already talked about in chapter 1, just from a different perspective. Now we’re talking about praying for it.
Paul says, “What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?”
Now historically, and I think I even brought this up when we covered it last time, this phrase is understood in two different ways. Some understand this phrase as the inheritance of God, meaning it’s the inheritance that God gives to his people.
Ephesians 1:14 speaks of the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance. Colossians 1:12 says that the Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
Other people, however, understand it as God’s inheritance is his people, meaning the saints themselves are his treasured possession.
So the position I took and shared before, and where I still am today, is that I believe that it’s the first. But regardless, there are good men on both sides, and this is not an issue that should be a sticking point.
I lean towards the inheritance God gives his people because it seems to fit the context better, especially again, coming out of verse 14.
But either way, don’t miss the point here. Paul wants believers to see that what God has prepared for his people is rich and glorious.
First of all, the inheritance is rich because it comes from God, who is rich in everything, right?
We talked about that word “rich” meaning that he has everything. There is no limit to his riches, and he gives out of his riches. He doesn’t give according to his riches.
So the inheritance that he is giving to us is rich because it is from him. God doesn’t deal with us out of poverty, but out of his richness.
God is not, like I mentioned a few weeks ago, giving you a little dropper full of what you need. He is giving you all the mercy.
You’re not just gonna barely make it past the finish line. He’s not just gonna manage to save us by the end of all this. He’s not running low on grace. His mercy is new every morning.
He gives according to the riches of his grace, the riches of his glory, the riches of his eternity, his infinity.
So when Paul is speaking of this inheritance, he wants us not to just see that we’ve got something. There might be a little inheritance waiting for you down the road. He wants us to see how big, how full, how secure, how glorious that inheritance, that future, is in Christ Jesus.
The inheritance is rich because it comes from God, but the inheritance belongs to the saints.
It says the inheritance is in the saints. Or we might say, among the saints. The same idea.
That word saints meaning the holy ones, us, the Christians. We talked about that from the beginning of chapter 1.
So this inheritance, this richness of the inheritance that we have, belongs to us all together. Yes, there is a private salvation. Yes, you are individually saved, but you are saved to be a part of God’s people.
And so among the saints, in the saints, within us, we have all, each of us, the richness of this inheritance. We have it all.
God is saving for himself a whole people. He’s not just saving individuals. He’s saving the whole group.
We think too small of our Christian life. We think of my walk, my struggles, my future, my needs. And those are important and those things matter, but God’s plan is bigger than any one of us. It’s bigger than any one of us individually.
The inheritance that we will possess will be possessed among the saints. All of us together will receive the same thing together.
So we’re not just waiting around, sitting here until we individually go to heaven. We are the people of God, the heirs of God, the body of Christ. And the inheritance is ours.
Yes, we have our problems. The church has its issues. Anyone who’s been at the church any length of time knows that.
But we do not despise what God loves.
We don’t look at the saints, we don’t look at one another as though they are an inconvenience between us and God.
“Well, if those people would just get out of the way, me and God are good.”
Or, “I don’t need the church. I’ve got Jesus.”
We talked about that a couple weeks ago. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t say, “I love Jesus,” and hate his bride.
God gives this inheritance to his people, to his church.
And so then if this inheritance is ours and it belongs to the church, then this inheritance should change how we live now.
Paul prays that believers would know this inheritance because, again, knowledge of these things, illumination of these things, helps us. It changes us right now.
If I know that I have an inheritance in Christ, then I don’t have to live as if the world is all I’ve got. If I know what’s coming, I’m not so attached to what I’ve got right here and now.
I don’t have to chase all the earthly comforts as if my soul depends on me getting this thing. No, I don’t need it.
And we surely don’t need to panic when some of these kinds of things are taken away from us, stripped from us, or kept from us.
Listen, the inheritance that is awaiting the saints is not a fragile inheritance. It’s not like our retirement funds. It’s not up and down depending on how the economy’s going.
It’s rich. It’s full. It’s everything it needs to be forever, for all eternity, for all the church. We won’t lack a thing when we get there.
Praise the Lord, it’s not being held together by the politicians.
This inheritance that is promised to the saints is not even threatened by death.
“For me to live is Christ, but to die is gain,” Paul says to the Philippians.
The inheritance is ours.
Again, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about the things here and now, but we should recognize that those things don’t matter the most. They’re not the ultimate in our life. They will not continue on for eternity. Those things are temporary.
So when we are tempted to despair, we need to remember the inheritance that is awaiting the saints.
When we’re tempted to envy the world around us for what they have and what we’re lacking, we can remember the inheritance.
Here’s a tough one. When we’re tempted to think that obedience isn’t worth it because it might cost something, we can remember the inheritance.
Or when the week has been heavy, when the bills are tight, when your health is lacking, when the diagnosis that you just got hurts, when that relationship is strained, when that child has gone astray, we can remember the inheritance.
God has not left us poor. He has made us rich in Christ Jesus.
So in this verse, Paul prays that believers would see what God has already given in Christ.
Beloved, we need the eyes of our hearts enlightened. We need to know the hope of God’s calling. We need to know the riches of his inheritance among the saints.
So pray this same prayer that Paul prays for yourself, for your family, for the church, and then put what God says into practice.
Amen.