Loved From the Beginning

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 117
• Hymn — All People That on Earth Do Dwell
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Sin
• Assurance of Pardon — Romans 8:1
• Scripture Reading — Luke 8:26-39
• Hymn — Jesus Shall Reign
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Hymn — How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place
• Prayer for Illumination
• Sermon
• Hymn — Jesus, Lover of My Soul
• Benediction — Ephesians 3:16-19
• Hymn — Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow

Sermon Title: Loved From the Beginning

Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-6

I. The Wrong Foundation for God's Love

• A. Many Christians silently doubt God's love, fearing that voicing those doubts will make them more real or reveal they do not truly belong to Christ.
• B. The root error is building one's understanding of God's love on personal performance — faith, obedience, purity, or works.
  1. This creates a crushing, transactional burden: God loves me more when I do well, less when I sin.
  2. Even mature believers such as R.C. Sproul wrestled with this doubt, so Christians need not feel alone or disqualified for struggling.
• C. The thesis: God does not love you for your sincerity, obedience, circumstances, or performance. God loves you in his Son, Jesus Christ.

II. In Christ, God Chose You

• A. Ephesians 1:4 — God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him.
  1. Being chosen to holiness and blamelessness assumes we do not possess them in ourselves; Christ's holiness becomes ours by union with him.
  2. God did not look into the future and foresee our faith or good works as the basis of election; he chose us according to the good pleasure of his will (Ephesians 1:5).
• B. Because election is rooted eternally in Christ before creation, it is secure and unchangeable — it cannot rise or fall with our daily performance.
• C. The parallel with Joshua illustrates this: every gain in the promised land was already Joshua's by promises made centuries earlier to Abraham — how much more certain are God's promises to us, secured in our Joshua, Jesus.
• D. John Calvin observed that whenever we ask why God called us, blessed us, or opened heaven to us, the answer is always the same: he chose us before the foundation of the world.

III. In Christ, God Adopted You

• A. Ephesians 1:5 — God predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.
  1. The Greek word predestined simply means "to destine beforehand," making the concept inescapable in the text.
  2. Roman adoption practice illustrates the richness of the term: the adopted son was sold three times, transferred fully to the new father, and received all rights and privileges of a natural-born son.
• B. Application of Roman adoption: we are no longer under obligation to our former father the devil, no longer children of wrath or sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2), but full heirs of eternal life and the kingdom.
• C. Two essential features of this adoption:
  1. God does it in love and with pleasure — not out of cold obligation.
  2. God does it through Jesus — Christ shares the privileges of his Sonship (fellowship with the Father, eternal life, glory, authority over the new creation) with his adoptive brothers and sisters within their creaturely capacities.
• D. Jesus is not a divine delivery person bringing salvation as a package; he is the location and sphere of our salvation — Christ himself is our election and our adoption, the means and the appointed end.
• E. Johannes Brenz, a friend of Martin Luther, expressed this: the Lord cared about you before the world was made; how much more will he care for you now that you exist and are in Christ.

IV. In Christ, God Bestows Grace and Every Blessing

• A. Ephesians 1:3 — the Father has already blessed us (past tense) with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ — not some, not half, but all.
• B. Spiritual blessings surpass earthly ones because, as Jerome noted, the earth is too small to contain a spiritual blessing; they are secured not by our strength but in the person of Christ.
• C. Ephesians 1:6 — the summary word for all God gives us in Christ is grace: freely bestowed, unconstrained by anything outside God himself.
  1. A student of Luther noted that works always carry doubt with them; those who base salvation on works can never be certain — this is the anxiety that gnaws at believers in the night.
  2. God's grace was bestowed on us in the Beloved before the foundation of the world, making it utterly independent of our performance.
• D. John Newton's dream illustrates the security of grace: the angel retrieved the precious jewel Newton had thrown overboard and said, "Still yours — but I will keep it for you, because you cannot hold it in your own strength." So Christ holds our salvation for us.
• E. This grace does not lead to licentiousness; we were chosen unto holiness and blamelessness, and those in Christ will live for Christ — but holy living is our response to God's love, not its basis (Romans 6).

V. The Call to Rest in Eternal Love

• A. Christians must shift the foundation of their understanding of God's love from the unstable ground of their own works and faith to the free, eternal love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
• B. Only this foundation will lift the shame from the self-condemning believer who walks with hunched shoulders, knowing he is unworthy.
• C. Only this foundation will humble the proud, showing that salvation cannot be earned but only received through faith in Christ.
• D. God's love song over his people is: I have loved you from before time began — I love you still — in my Son Jesus — and my love will never be corrupted, stopped, reversed, or destroyed.