“Our Fate and Calling” on Ephesians 1:1-6 by Joe Ellis — September 8, 2024

As we begin — let me ask a question: what’s your relationship with the word ‘fate’? What happens to you when you hear people talk about their fate, or fate in general? Do you ever think about how fate relates to you personally? Do you think ‘It was my fate,’ or ‘it was fated to be?’ Or would you reject the idea of fate as some weird new-age belief that has nothing to do with Christianity?  Keep this in mind as we turn to look more closely at these first few verses of Ephesians. 

The letter begins with “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the King, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”  When Paul says heavenly realms, he’s not talking about outer space (although I’m pretty sure he’d have been incredibly interested to learn what we know now about the solar systems and galaxies). But when Paul talks about the heavenly realms he’s not primarily talking about outer space— he’s speaking of the spiritual realms. Now, when I say the ‘heavenly’ or ‘spiritual’ realm, we have our own mental map of what we’re talking about and who lives there. As Christians, we will mostly think about heaven, the domain where God the Father lives on His eternal throne, the domain where the Lord Jesus Christ rules from the Father’s right hand. It’s the domain where the Cherubim and Seraphim, and the heavenly armies and archangels praise and serve God without end; the domain where all God’s holy people who have died join in unending praise before His throne. That’s perhaps the neighbourhood most of us mentally go when we hear “heavenly realm.”

Yet when Paul and the Ephesians would hear the phrase, ‘heavenly realm,’ they would not have thought only of God’s neighbourhood. The heavenly realm apparently has borders, realms of darkness and light. For the ancient people, the heavenly realms was also the place where powers of darkness lived and dwelled — of course, far outside God’s presence, but a reality nonetheless. Throughout Scripture, there is the firm, consistent and repeated conviction in which God reminds His people, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God”. Throughout Scripture there is probably no other firm, consistent and repeated conviction that the people of God consistently doubted over, and over and over. They looked into the heavenly realms and saw other powers and principalities that elicited fear, subservience, and worship.  

The people in Ephesus, who first received this letter, lived with a very particular and powerful presence from the heavenly realm. When you read Acts 19, you get a sense of a very powerful presence in Ephesus. Before Jesus, when the people of Ephesus looked into the heavenly realms, they would have understood it to be the domain of the goddess, Artemis, called the Queen of the Heavens. Her domain was connected to earth through her magnificent temple, which resided in Ephesus. This temple, a place of considerable power, was considered at the time one of the wonders of the ancient world. You would see priests of Artemis come and go from the temple, all these priests were castrated for service of Artemis. She had unspeakable power over the people. For many ancient cultures, when they looked up into the heavens and saw the stars and the constellations, they didn’t see distant galaxies, stars and planets — they saw celestial bodies which were in control of their fate. People’s lives, their fate, whether or not they were blessed, were wrapped up in the alignment of these heavenly bodies.  Now consider that the goddess, Artemis, wore a necklace of stars around her neck. What do you think she was declaring through this necklace? Power. The one who wears stars as a necklace, is the one who wears their fate as jewelry. What if you believed your fate, the good that did or didn’t happen, the blessings you did or didn’t receive, was hung around the neck of the goddess Artemis? Would you be quick to abandon her for another god? Is it safe, the Ephesians may have wondered, to provoke the displeasure of she who wears their fate as a necklace? 

Now consider how that background shapes your hearing of Paul’s opening words:  “Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus the King, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” For me, I hear this as a word of protection to a people for whom following Christ left them vulnerable in a terrifying way. Fear not she who allegedly wears the stars around her neck, for you are following the one who spoke the stars into being. He has blessed you with every spiritual blessing. In following Jesus, they would not find themselves under the curse of the Queen of Heaven, but blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus.

But does she not wear their fate as a necklace? Paul speaks to the people of Ephesus about fate: their fate does not belong to the Queen of Heaven. Their fate was not worn as a necklace by this goddess — Listen to Paul's words about fate: “The Father of all Creation, he chose us in Him before the creation of the cosmos to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.” How are these words different when heard framed within the context of Ephesus?

Many Christians, including myself, come to this passage with questions around free-will. What does this passage tells us about whether or not we choose God or does he choose us? While Paul would be hard pressed to be any clearer that God certainly chooses us, I believe Paul’s point is more pastoral, he is saying, “You are safe. Fear not Artemis or any other power, you belong to the Father. Your fate is not dangling around the neck of the Queen of Heaven. God chose you in Christ before the foundations of the world. Your fate is not tied to a necklace of stars. God has secured our fate in Christ before the foundation of the world.” 

Now, I would be somewhat surprised if any in our congregation feared their fate was in some way bound to a necklace which a goddess wore around her neck — perhaps though, we would do well to take with greater seriousness that there are in fact dark powers in the heavenly realms (but we’ll save that for a later time). If not her, who or what do you believe controls your fate? Chance? Randomness? Station of birth? Politicians? Market forces? Genes? Family? For many in our culture, we hold on to the firm belief that our fate is wholly in our own control. It’s the American dream, and more and more the Canadian dream, after all. We want to be the author of our future. If we rise to riches or stay in poverty, the responsibility is ours. We are the masters of our fate. The American dream declares that nothing determines your destiny but you, that each of us wears fate as our own necklace.

The American dream lives in deep tension with our faith in Jesus Christ. On the one hand, as Christians, we don’t believe simply that we are God’s puppets — that he is pulling the strings of everything we do or say. As Christians, we believe that we do have real choice, and that when we choose this or that it is us making this choice. Yet, this power to choose lives in a deep and mysterious tension with the reality that God in control of all things, and “chose us in Christ before the creation of the Cosmos to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”

The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is master of our fate, and this was so before the foundation of this world. This was a word of comfort to the Ephesians, whose fate was not subject to the whims of the Queen of Heaven. For us today, this word on fate may also be a word of comfort, but it also calls us to humility. Our fate is not our own. We do not wear our fate as our own necklace — at the end of the day our fate is the possession of our Father in heaven. We have not as much power over our destiny as some would like to believe. Yet, take comfort in that, for you are treasured in Christ, by the Father, before the world began. It’s your fate is to be holy and blameless in His sight. Your fate is to be adopted as a child by God the Father, simply because it is the pleasure of His good will. Ultimately, this is not your choice. Your fate is far too precious to be left up to you or me. As a child of God, your fate has been chosen for you, in Jesus, to be holy and blameless before Him — to be adopted as His child. That is your fate, foreordained before the foundation of the world. 

Now, I’m going to shift gears slightly — we’ve been talking about how Paul’s words would have been heard in the Greek culture, now let’s hear how His words would have been heard from within Israel’s Culture and related to their Scripture. Did you notice that verse 4 says our fate is not only to be chosen in the Messiah, the Christ, but to be Holy and Blameless before Him. Holy and Blameless — this is significant language. This language of being Holy and Blameless has a very specific resonance in Scripture. When God called His people, Israel, out of Egypt, His purpose was always for His people to be like Him as a witness to the surrounding nations — to be holy and blameless. Before giving His law to the Israelites in Sinai, God said, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am Holy.”  Israel’s calling, vocation and fate was to be Holy as God is Holy. One top of that, when God called Israel out of Egypt — this is what God told Pharaoh about His people — “Israel is my Son, my firstborn.” That shapes the way we hear Paul talk about adoption in Ephesians. Just as God marked out the people of Israel as His child, His Son, Paul says that in Christ Jesus we are grafted into this family. So, when, we hear Paul declare that our fate was to be adopted as God’s sons and daughters to be holy and blameless — we are taken up into the story of God’s people. The calling of the ancient people of Israel becomes our calling:  God predestined us to be a part of His Holy people. 

The ancient nation of Israel had a deep sense that they were God’s chosen Son, and this came with a job — to declare God’s glory to the surrounding nations. Now, as the nation of Israel became a monarchy, something happened: the King became a representative of the people. So what was true of the people was true of the King and what was true of the King became true of the people. So just as God called the nation of Israel ‘His Son,’ God also gave this title to the future King. Listen to the promise that God made to King David through the prophet Nathan about one of His descendants.  “I will be his father, and he will be my son.” God promised Kind David that one day, a king would come from his line who would be truly marked out as God’s son — and in this King, God’s people would see what true ‘Sonship’ looks like. Not only that, but because what is true of the King is true of the people, God’s people will experience being a true child of God through life in the King.

This is the significance in the Father’s words to His Son when Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan — God said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Or the Father’s words to Peter, James and John in the transfiguration on the mountain: “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to Him!” Jesus the King is God’s Son, He is the true embodiment of Israel. And in the King, we are adopted as sons and daughters of the Living God. You see Paul continually using the phrase “in Christ,” which could also be translated “in the King.” Only through being “in the King,” can we experience what it is to be a true son or daughter of God.

Now let’s bring all this together. Paul is saying to those hearing his letter to the Ephesians, that before the foundation of the world God has chosen us for adoption in Jesus the King. That is our fate, and we cannot be adopted as God’s children outside of being in Jesus. We are God’s children because Jesus is God’s Son and our own status of being sons or daughters is bound up in Jesus. God chose us to be in the Son before the foundation of the world, this has always been our fate.

Yet, this does not mean simply that we are to live out our faith in the fact that we have such a glorious fate because we are chosen. Our fate is tied up with a calling: to be Holy and Blameless in this world. This was Israel’s ancient calling, and so it is ours as His adopted children. Our fate is a calling — and that is to partner with the Son in redeeming the whole world — transforming the whole world into God’s Kingdom. A few verses later Paul puts it this way: His “plan for the fullness of time, is to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Tom Wright puts it this way, “God’s plan is for the whole cosmos, the entire universe, his choosing and calling of us, and his shaping and directing us in the Messiah, are somehow connected with that larger intention. How this works out we shall see a little later. But the point is that we aren’t chosen for our own sake, but for the sake of what God wants to accomplish through us.” 

So Paul begins the letter to the Ephesians with an incredible comfort and an incredible challenge. Our fate, is not bound up with some hostile, unknown, chaotic, dark or mysterious presence — our fate is bound to the Father, who chose us to be in Christ before the foundation of the world. Yet he chose us not simply to rest in our blessed and assured fate of an everlasting inheritance. He chose us as His children to partner with His Son in His ongoing work, until things in heaven and in earth are brought under one head, Christ.