Ephesians 1:13-14

¹³And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession--to the praise of His glory.

According to Ligon Duncan, one of the paradoxes of the Christian life is that “it is not until God is at the center that we experience true exaltation, for until we become last we are not in the position to be exalted with Jesus Christ; until we are humbled, we cannot be raised. And it is when God is at the center, when God is at the center of life, that we are best off, and our deepest and realest needs are most attended to.” We learn that reality throughout this prayer of praise. Paul has been praising God the Father for all kinds of spiritual blessings in Christ. He’s been using “us” and “we,” speaking primarily of “first-fruits” Christians (“we who were the first to hope in Christ”), including mostly Jewish believers, as the beneficiaries of these blessings. But knowing that the gospel is for all generations of believers, both Jews and Gentiles, Paul switches to “you.” The churches of Asia Minor, including at Ephesus, were a mixed bunch of people, of whom many were new to the faith, compared to the apostles and “first-fruits” Christians. So Paul’s message, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile, is that newer believers (mostly Gentiles) are saved in the same way regarding foreknowledge, predestination (election), and calling, and are now every bit as complete in Christ, thanks to the indwelling Holy Spirit, as “first-fruits” believers (mostly Jews).

Paul will elaborate in Ephesians 2-3. But for now, he is detailing the blessings that are bestowed to every one of God’s chosen people. It’s as if he says, “You were also included in everything that I just said about the blessings of God the moment you heard the gospel and believed it.” Paul is effectively saying that election and predestination have no impact on a person until they hear the gospel, because it is a blessing of God to be able to hear the truth – not only to simply hear it audibly, but also to hear it with understanding (calling). Jesus, in the Parable of The Sower (The Four Soils), makes it clear that not everyone who comes in contact with the word of God really hears it and understands it and embraces it. Paul is saying that his audience, thanks to God’s grace, really heard the gospel. If you stop the sentence after hearing, you’d think that was enough. “You were included when you heard.” But Paul doesn’t start or stop there with “hearing.”

Remember, it’s one long sentence. And Paul is really saying that hoping (from v12) and hearing with understanding (from v13) and believing (from v13) go hand in hand. No one hears with understanding and fails to believe (Hebrews 6:4-12). Thus, Paul says, “Having believed, you were marked with a seal.” The gospel must be heard with understanding and believed to affect its audience. Being “elect” is insignificant until you come to faith; being “predestined” is worthless until you are a believer in Christ. The Holy Spirit’s calling (regeneration) is what unites these critical aspects of the golden chain of salvation. No one can claim the benefits of election and predestination apart from faith in Christ. But once you believed, then election and predestination reveal a truth that is meant to be humbling and glorious. You walked through the doorway – Christ – by hearing and believing the gospel of your salvation, and when you turned around, you saw on the doorpost a sign that said God chose you to walk through that doorway from before creation. That sign, that understanding, gives new meaning to the word “love.” Paul is saying, “You, new believer, Gentile believer, are every bit a child of God as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and even Jesus Himself. God gave you His Spirit to prove it, as a down-payment to guarantee your inheritance.” By placing His seal – the Holy Spirit – on us, or in us, God is claiming ownership of us. No one can tamper with God’s seal; He’ll protect us until the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Corinthians 1:21-22, 5:5; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22).

Next, notice that Paul specifies the means of coming to faith as “the word of truth” and “the gospel of your salvation.” Satan wants us to doubt or despise the word of God, and Paul speaks to both of those errors. First the word of God is true; we don’t doubt it. Unbelievers sadly, according to 2 Timothy 3:7, are “always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.” Second the word of God is unto our salvation; we certainly don’t despise it (Romans 1:16). We rejoice in the gospel as Horatio Spafford did in 1873 when he wrote these lyrics sailing over the spot in the Atlantic where his four daughters had drowned just a week earlier, “My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! / My sin, not in part but the whole / Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more / Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”

Regeneration and faith meet through the promised Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 6:16-18), who calls us and is given to us as a deposit, as a seal of guarantee. Calvin notes, “Seals, which among men have the effect of removing doubt, …give validity both to charters and to testaments; anciently, they were the principal means by which the writer of a letter could be known; and, in short, a seal distinguishes what is true and certain, from what is false and spurious.” The Holy Spirit, promised to the Gentiles in the Jewish sacred text – our Old Testament – is like a brand that God places on all of His children, the wheat that grows up with the chaff. The Holy Spirit is a confirmation of the promise of God to bring you to new life, eternal life, a life in the presence of God, saved from His wrath, and a life of inheritance as a co-heir with Christ of all things.

The Holy Spirit is in you – if you trust Christ with genuine saving faith. He is your guarantee. If you don’t have Him – if He doesn’t have you (we are “God’s possession;” see Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 7:6; 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 Peter 2:8-10) – there’s no guarantee of salvation or inheritance. To realize that we belong to God, that we are God’s special possession, ought to change the way that we approach life. Calvin says, “The true conviction which believers have of the word of God, of their own salvation, and of religion in general, does not spring from the judgment of the flesh, or from human and philosophical arguments, but from the sealing of the Spirit, who imparts to their consciences such certainty as to remove all doubt. The foundation of faith would be frail and unsteady, if it rested on human wisdom; and therefore, as preaching is the instrument of faith, so the Holy Spirit makes preaching efficacious.” When we thank God for His blessings toward us, the gift of the Holy Spirit ought to top the list; He is the deposit of glory as we wait for the redemption spoken of earlier – to the praise of the glory of God.

Calvin concludes, “The glory of God may sometimes be concealed, or imperfectly exhibited. But in the Ephesians God had given proofs of His goodness, that His glory might be celebrated and openly proclaimed… The frequent mention of the glory of God ought not to be regarded as superfluous, for what is infinite cannot be too strongly expressed. This is particularly true in commendations of the Divine mercy, for which every godly person will always feel himself unable to find adequate language. He will be more ready to utter, than other men will be to hear, the expression of praise; for the eloquence both of men and angels, after being strained to the utmost, falls immeasurably below the vastness of this subject. We may likewise observe, that there is not a more effectual method of shutting the mouths of wicked men, than by showing that our views tend to illustrate, and theirs to obscure, the glory of God.”