Ephesians 1:12 shows us the purpose of our hope in Christ: “so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.” Paul is continuing the long doxology that began in verse 3, where he has been unfolding the riches of God’s saving work—election, predestination, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, wisdom, insight, and our inheritance in Christ. The “we” in verse 12 points especially to Paul and those first Jewish believers who first placed their hope in the revealed Messiah after Christ’s death, resurrection, and the coming of the Spirit. Yet this hope was never meant to remain with them alone. God’s plan was always that salvation would come through the Jews and then spread to the Gentiles, bringing together one redeemed people in Christ. Biblical hope is not wishful thinking, but confident trust in God’s sure promise. To hope in Christ is to believe in him, rest in him, and entrust ourselves wholly to him as the risen Savior.
The goal of all this saving work is “the praise of his glory.” God did not save us primarily for our comfort, happiness, or self-fulfillment, but so that his glory would be displayed in and through us. Just as God formed Israel for himself that they might declare his praise, he now calls all who are redeemed in Christ—Jew and Gentile together—to live as salt and light in the world. Our lives, obedience, suffering, worship, witness, and daily responses are all meant to magnify the greatness of God. This means our salvation is not ultimately about us, but about God receiving the honor due his name. Therefore, Christians must examine where their hope truly rests, lay aside every lesser hope, and live as those chosen, redeemed, and preserved for this one great purpose: to be to the praise of his glory.
FULL SERMON TEXT:
Last week we were in Ephesians chapter 1 and looked at verse 11. I want to go back and preach that again, but I can’t. I’m going to keep moving forward. I want to go back to that again and again and again.
We talked about the fact that we have obtained an inheritance and all that the inheritance includes—all of our salvation. But in particular, that it was predestined in accordance with the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
That statement alone about God, if we could begin to wrap our minds around what that truly means, it would make a difference in every area of our life. If we truly understood God’s sovereign providence over all things, it would change how we view all things, including ourselves.
But we move on again. And we could meditate on that verse for a long, long time. But praise the Lord that when we preach through things like this, when we go through things like this in our sermon series, it’s not as if we leave that one behind as we move forward. It makes a difference in all that we look at from this point on.
Everything we look at from verse 12 all the way to the end of chapter 6 in Ephesians finds its purpose in the God who’s working all things according to the counsel of his will.
So last week we looked at that verse, and today we pick up where we left off and look at verse 12. Again, Paul is continuing the same long sentence in the original Greek. From verse 3 all the way through verse 14 is just one long sentence in the original language. This doxology of theology that Paul has been expressing to us over the last few months as we’ve worked our way slowly through these verses and sought to mine out the riches for ourselves, for our church, and for today.
Today we come to verse 12. And in this short verse we see the supreme goal of God’s electing, his predestining, and all of his providential work that we’ve looked at so far.
All the blessings that we have celebrated—the adoption as sons, redemption, wisdom, insight, our inheritance—all of these things find their final purpose here: that we who hoped in Christ might exist to the praise of God’s glory.
So, will you stand with me for the reading of God’s Word?
As has been our practice since we started in verse 3, we’re going to start back in verse 3 and read this all together, all the way up to verse 12.
Paul says this, beginning in verse 3:
“Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
Father, this morning as we look at this short verse, how it shows us the purpose, the reason why we have hope in Jesus, the end you had in mind, the goal that you had planned. Lord, remind us again of this wonderful truth.
Lord, you’ve already stated these things in Ephesians, and we’ve already looked at them once, and you’ve given it to us again, and you’re going to give it to us a third time. Help us pay attention, Lord. When you repeat yourself, it’s on purpose.
So Lord, hide these words in our heart. Teach us this morning. Reprove us, correct us, train us in righteousness so that we may be complete, equipped for every good work. Do this by your Spirit for the glory of Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated.
Verse 12 picks up, “so that.” Once again, in our English versions, translations of the Scriptures, we’re picking up in the middle of one of the sentences that was broken down here, which began last week: “In him we have obtained an inheritance.”
So all of that connects to the “so that.” It’s not just arbitrary again. But I also want to say, remember our English breakdown of this sentence is not really how it is, because it’s all one long sentence in the original.
So “so that” connects us not just back to verse 11, but all the way back. It connects us to all these things.
Go back to verse 11:
“In him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
Paul writes here, “So that we who were the first to hope in Christ.”
Now, last week in verse 11, we talked about that little word “we” and connected it to “us.” The “we” here that Paul is talking about would include himself. That’s how grammar works. He is a believer, a follower of Jesus, and he’s referring also to those whom he’s writing to, which would include the “we,” fellow Christians.
So at a most basic and generic level, it’s referring to all Christians of all time, in all places, forever. We can apply that broadly.
But in particular, I didn’t bring this out last week because I was focused in on another part of the Scripture that we needed to spend our time in, but the same “we” shows up again here. In particular, who he’s referencing is those who were the first to hope in Christ.
Who does that refer to? Who is Paul referencing here? Who is the “we,” then?
Well, it’s him again, but him and the apostles and those first believing Jews in Jerusalem and in Israel.
You see, the promise of our salvation, brothers and sisters, if you read through the Old Testament, came through the Jews. It came through Israel. The promised Messiah was not something out there that the Jews just kind of believed in. It was tied directly to the Jews.
Think of all the genealogies. Think of all the history that we hear about. Where did Christ come from? From the Jews, from certain lines that we read about throughout the Scripture, all the way back to Adam, and in particular into Abraham as he was called out from the rest of the world, Isaac and Jacob, down the line to David, all the way to Joseph and Mary.
Salvation came through the Jews in God’s plan, purpose, and the counsel of his will. He meant to bring salvation through this tiny little people group of Israel.
And so the “we” here specifically is Paul talking about him and his fellow Jews who were converted there after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The first to hope in Christ.
Now, that doesn’t mean the first to ever be saved, because throughout the Old Testament, all the way back, we’re still saved by grace through faith in this promised Messiah.
But now, when Paul’s writing, what had already taken place? Christ had come. He lived the perfect life. He died the death he meant to die in place of us, for all who would call on him to be saved, to die for our sins, and then to be resurrected from the dead to justify the sinner.
That has already happened. And furthermore, those 40 days following the resurrection had already taken place. Pentecost had already taken place, where those first Jews were saved and then spread from there.
So Paul is referring here to the Jewish believers, those early converts to Christ, which would include him and the apostles and all of those believing remnant of Israel. They were the very first to place their hope in the revealed mystery, the revealed Messiah. They were the first heirs, you could say, of the Old Testament promises.
They hoped in Christ first, just in time before the gospel spread out to the Gentiles.
Now I only bring that out because I want to make sure we understand the history. It’s all connected. But in application, it still applies to all of us. We’re still part of that working out the plan through the Jews, but ultimately to the world.
But what does it mean to hope?
And this is the part that struck me at first. I’ve read these verses a lot. You’ve heard them a lot over your lifetime if you grew up in the church. You’ve probably read these verses and you kind of just go by them and go, “Oh yeah. Okay, yep. I know that. Yep. That sounds familiar. I’m good.”
But when you sit down and you think about it, like I get to do every week, and sit on these verses and let them stew, one thing that stuck out to me is why does it say “the first to hope in Christ”? Why not the first to believe in Christ or the first to be saved by believing in Jesus?
Why put it in these terms? “We who were the first to hope in Christ.”
We see hope in the New Testament, I hope you understand this, and we’ve talked about hope a little bit before as we’ve come to it in other parts of Scripture. Hope is not wishful thinking like we think of it today.
“Well, I hope I get that job. Well, I hope I get this. Well, I hope this happens.”
Hope in the Scriptures is actually tied to something that is absolutely certain. Biblical hope is having confidence. It’s having a trust in something that is expected to take place. In other words, hope in the Scriptures is another way of describing saving faith.
To hope in Christ is to believe in Christ. It is to entrust ourselves to him as the promised Messiah. He’s the one who saves us from our sins and ultimately from our eternal death, which is something that is to come, that is in the future. He saves us from that.
So to hope in him has this same quality of belief, of faith, of trust.
So then the Jewish believers who first hoped in Christ—what he’s saying is, we were the first who actually exercised genuine faith in this person Jesus. They saw Jesus as the one who had fulfilled all of those Old Testament promises.
So their hope was not in their own righteousness, their own heritage, or their own works. These first Jews, these first to hope in Jesus, their hope was in Christ and in Christ alone.
In other words, hope in Christ and faith in Christ are two ways of saying the same thing. Both of these phrases describe the heart of a person who truly turns from trusting in themselves and rests entirely upon Jesus for their salvation.
For centuries, the Jewish people waited for this promised Messiah. And the Old Testament Jews, that was the center of their hope. Unfortunately, that’s been lost in the Jewish religion today and for the last 2,000 years. It centered on the hope of a coming Messiah.
And so then when Jesus came and accomplished all that he came to accomplish, that he accomplished redemption for his people through his death and resurrection, many of those Jews believed. They took God at his Word. They acted upon the hope that they had from the Scriptures, that God had answered, that he had come through, that he had delivered on his promise.
They were the first to hope in Christ with full confidence because, well, they just saw him. They saw it fulfilled in their own eyes. No more mystery, like we talked about a couple of verses ago.
And so those first Jews to believe represent the faithful remnant, the ones whom God promised would believe.
So this understanding of the “we”—“we who have first hoped in Christ,” talking about those original Jewish believers, the ones whom God saved there at the beginning of all this stuff—fits into the larger context when we talk about verse 11 again, that “we” would also then have been specifically referencing those early Jews.
But then what we’ll see moving forward into verse 13 and 14—and again, I’m only bringing it up now because I’ll focus my attention on something else in the next two weeks—he switches it from “we” to “you also” in verse 13, which would be a reference then to all the Gentiles, those in Ephesus, those who were not Jews.
And then verse 14 brings it all together and he says, “our inheritance.”
You see that? It’s subtle, but again, if we just kind of read through it like we’ve always read through it, we might not see it.
God’s revealing in pronouns, in “we” and “you” and “our,” this inheritance that he has promised, that he’s predestined, didn’t belong just to those believing Jews. It didn’t belong to just those first believing Jews. It belongs to all who will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And what a beautiful progression that God shows here. The gospel did come to the Jews first. That was part of his plan. And now it’s reached out to the Gentiles as well. That was part of his plan.
So yes, the applications within each of these verses as we go through them still apply to all of us because we’re all a part of God’s people. We’re all a part of God’s church. But it is really neat to see the progression, to see God’s plan actually working out.
It wasn’t just, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to show you how it’s going to happen.” And then he did it. It’s wonderful.
So these Jewish believers who first hoped in Christ were not chosen for their sake alone. They were chosen as the beginning of a larger group of people: the church. A people from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation who would all together bring praise to God.
“So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
Now, I want to focus in on just the “might be.” I know I keep going down to one word or something at a time.
“We who were the first to hope in Christ might be.”
Now, this word “might,” let’s be careful, is not saying, “Well, you might be.” It’s not a possibility. It’s “so that,” “in order that.” You were the first to hope in Christ in order to bring this about. Not so that it might happen. That’s not what he means.
“So that you might be.” We could almost say, “will be,” that it’s going to take place.
But notice the focus of the attention is on the being.
You see, you’re not primarily a Christian because of what you’re doing or not doing. You either are or you aren’t. You’re either his or you’re not. You’re either redeemed or you’re lost. You’re either a saint or you ain’t.
This is the heart of the verse and the climax of the doxology. We’ve heard it now three times, remember? It kind of sounds familiar. Like, haven’t you preached this before? “To the praise of his glory.”
Yes, I have, because it’s in this sentence three times.
Paul’s already said it back in verse 6. He said, “God blessed us to the praise of his glorious grace.” He’s going to say it again in verse 14 when he was talking about our inheritance.
It’s almost like repetition is how we learn. And it’s not that that’s something I made up. It’s a biblical principle. And it’s also not something that science figured out. “Oh, if we just repeat things, we can make things change.” No, God said it already. God repeats things.
Why? So we’ll learn.
Everything from the spiritual blessings that incorporate all of the things to the specifics of those blessings—election, predestination, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, the revelation of the mystery, wisdom, insight, the granting of the inheritance that we have obtained—has one goal: the praise of God’s glory.
We exist as redeemed. He has made us. He has saved us. He has chosen us. He’s done all these things for the praise of his own glory.
God is not acting in your life primarily for your comfort or for your happiness. You might need to turn off some of those guys that you listen to on the radio and TV who tell you that God exists so that you will be happy. God wants you to be comfortable. God wants you to be wealthy. God wants you to have everything you want.
No, he doesn’t.
He doesn’t exist for your comfort and for your happiness and for your entertainment and pleasure. He exists for his own glory.
“Well, that’s selfish.”
Well, he’s God. He’s the only one who can be selfish in this area. We don’t live for our own glory. Why? Because there’s something more glorious than us. We’re not worth the glory. He is.
There’s no one higher. There’s no one greater. So he deserves all the glory. Everything exists for his glory. God does all that he does to display and magnify his own glory.
That means then, in the context of this verse, that those Jews who believed, who were the first to hope in Christ, were saved, were chosen, were preserved, were redeemed, so that through their lives, through their faith, through this hope in Jesus Christ, the glory of God would be made known.
That’s why he saved those Jews. That’s why he saved you.
See, God’s pattern has been this all throughout the Old Testament. He chose Abraham out of all the other people there. And what did he do? He worked through history so that Israel would declare his glory.
In Isaiah 43:21, God calls them, “The people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.”
So when God delivered Israel from Egypt, which you guys are getting to in the adult class in here, he did that so that the Egyptians and all the nations would know that God is the Lord, that Yahweh is the one true God, because his glory was at stake and his glory was the goal.
And now, post-Christ, post the gospel in Christ Jesus, this believing remnant of Israel still is called to fulfill that same purpose: to be a light to the nations, to exist, to show the glory of Yahweh.
And that’s what they did.
And that’s why Paul can even write this letter to the Ephesians in the first place, because those original believing Christians, Jews that had hoped in Christ, went out and they shared that good news. They shared that Messiah. They shared that hope in Jesus Christ.
And that’s why you and I are here believing today.
And I want to say they could have kept it to themselves, those original believing Jews, and still just kept it to a Jewish religion. But I can’t say that because they didn’t. That’s not how God worked it out. That’s not God’s plan. That was not God’s purpose. That was not what they were called to be, just to be for themselves. They were to be for the world.
So they fulfilled that calling to go to the nations rather than keeping it to themselves.
And that’s the same call for us today, Christian. Jesus calls us salt and light. He calls us a city on a hill. We are a royal priesthood. We’re a holy nation. That is what those who are saved are by nature of being redeemed.
“That we might be,” like this verse says. We exist as believers now to the praise of his glory.
And God, in his wisdom and his counsel, has determined to use us to display, to share his gospel, so that those who will believe might be saved. And for us to live in such a way that people will see our good works and glorify the Father just by the nature of who we already are.
See, this is the already nature of our hope in Jesus. We are already saved. That’s who we are. That’s our identity. That’s who we be, people.
“That we might be.” We hoped in Christ so that that’s who we would be. That was God’s plan. That we would hope in him and be his people for his own glory.
See what it says?
“So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
So what does this mean then?
There’s the already, but there’s still the not yet. There’s more to being than just, “I’m here. I be a Christian.” That’s worked out, is it not?
None of us are human beings. We’re all human becomings, right? None of us are Christian beings. We’re Christian becomings. We’re becoming more and more like Jesus.
We have to live our life now. We are not just statues. So, we don’t just become, we live to the praise of his glory. That’s what being is. It’s to be and to live as those who have been redeemed and for the glory, to the praise of his glory.
So this means that our very existence as Christians has a God-centered purpose. We’re not saved so that we could live for ourselves.
Once again, God did not save you so that you would enjoy your life. God didn’t save you so that you would feel good about the rest of your life until you go and see him. That you’d be comfortable. That you’d be happy. That you could do whatever you wanted now because, “I’ve got that ticket punched.”
No. He saved you to be his, so that you would live as his.
We’re saved not so that we can live for ourselves. We are saved so that God would be glorified through us. And that includes even our hope in Christ.
Remaining hopeful in Christ, keeping our hope in Christ, is part of how we live to the praise of his glory. To continue on, to grow in our Christlikeness, to live out a holiness, sanctification, to live and to obey his commandment and commission.
We continue to hope. It’s not a one-time event. It continues on. It’s a continuing blessed hope that must, that will, affect the way we live.
So living to the praise of God’s glory means that our daily lives, every moment, our obedience, how we deal with trials and tests, what we worship, how we witness—all of that, all of our life, is meant to display the glory of God.
And in particular, the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And even more specifically, the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We believe in a triune God, and this God deserves the glory and wants to display his glory in and through us.
As Philippians 1:11 says, we are to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
And look, Christian, even our sufferings serve this purpose. God is glorified in our suffering.
This “to the praise of his glory” is the purpose of everything in our life: the trials, the tests.
Why? Well, what we know in particular for the trials and tests, Scripture actually tells us exactly what that is. The trials and tests are to test the genuineness of our faith, so that, as 1 Peter 1:7 says, we may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Everything in our life is meant to display the glory of God.
Old English preacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it powerfully when he said this: “You and I are meant to be such people that the only explanation of us is God. We glorify God when people look at us and say, ‘That’s extraordinary. That isn’t man. That’s God.’”
Listen, I know this is easier said than done. Okay. So, you’re just telling me to live my life perfectly?
Yes. Yes, I am. Everything to the praise of his glory.
Listen, I get it though. There are days when living for God’s glory feels impossible.
There are days—here we go, I’m going to confess a little bit here to you. Might have to delete this from the sermon. There are days when I want to throat punch people who make my daughter cry. Amen.
I get angry at those people who make my son feel like he’s not good enough. And I struggle not to take vengeance on those who upset my wife. And there are many other things, of course.
But I get it. This isn’t easy. This isn’t a simple request. “Oh, live to the praise of his glory.” Okay, I got it.
I get it. It’s hard. I struggle. We all struggle. We all battle with the flesh. We all battle with the old self. We all feel the pull towards self-protection, towards self-glory, instead of living to the glory of God.
And yet, even in those moments, the calling of God remains the same. The purpose of God remains the same.
God has chosen us and given us a living hope in Christ precisely so that we would learn how to respond differently to those kinds of situations. Not in our own strength, not in our own wisdom, not in our own best ways of trying to figure things out, but by his grace and his strength, his Spirit, and for his glory.
In every generation from this point on, God raises up a people whose lives declare his glory.
Paul expresses here that the Jewish believers, those who first hoped in Christ, were the beginning of that people. And now we, that is the royal “we,” redeemed Jew and Gentile together, we continue that calling on today.
All the redeemed, all of us, are to live for this one purpose: to glorify God and to make his glory known. That’s why he has saved us. That is why he has given us this hope in Christ.
Now, I wanted to mention one thing because I brought it up back when we were talking about election, but I think it bears repeating along the way, especially since I’ve heard some of this from some in our church recently. Not who have made this argument, but who had people make this argument to them and had questions they talked about with me.
One argument that people have against those who believe these truths, believe in election, believe in predestination, as the Bible clearly teaches, is: why preach the gospel? Why should people repent and believe the gospel if God’s just going to save whomever he wants to anyway?
Good question.
The answer is God determines not only the who will be saved for his glory but also the how that they will be saved for his glory. Both the who and the how are to the praise of his glory.
He would not receive all the glory if he only saved whom he said he would without doing it the way that he said he would.
And he has said in his Word that he will save a people through their faith in the proclaimed gospel, believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And that those who believe would then continue to declare his glorious gospel to the ends of the earth.
That is our purpose.
Church, you are still alive today not so that you can enjoy life, but so that you can glorify God and be his light in the darkness, sharing the hope in Christ that you have with the people around you.
If our purpose in salvation was comfort, perfect peace, pleasures forevermore, then when we put our faith in Jesus, he would have taken us to heaven, because that’s where those things are.
They’re not here. Not in perfect peace, not perfect joy, not perfect pleasures. They will be there.
We’re here for the glory of God. To do and to live and to be to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:12 then teaches us that God’s whole saving plan, from eternity past in choosing and electing and predestining all the way to the future when we finally take hold of the inheritance that he has promised, all of it has one goal: that those who hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
So that means that our salvation is not about us and about what we want. It’s about God receiving the honor and praise that are due to him alone.
So here is the charge for us. We are to live then as those who were chosen to the praise of his glory.
So we should lay aside every lesser hope and set our hearts on Christ, who is our living hope, with a hope that is confident, active, and looking forward with eager expectation because it is hope in a risen and living Savior.
So examine yourself, Christian. Examine those decisions you make throughout the day. Examine the responses that you have to the trials that you’re facing, that are there according to the counsel of his will, by the way.
Look at what you’re putting your hope in. Look at what you’re worshiping. What are you spending your time on?
Do they magnify the greatness and glory of God?
Because if the answer is no, then those things need to be put away. They’re not worth your time. We need to resolve to reform every area of our life so that God receives the glory in every single thing.
Jonathan Edwards, another old preacher, said, “God’s glory is the last end of all his works. The end of the creation of providence and of redemption is the manifestation of God’s glory.”
So Christian, beloved, we are to be. We are to be to the praise of his glory.
Amen. Amen.
Let’s pray.
