Ephesians
3:11
"According
to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:"
What does that mean, "Why did Christ come?" We always teach that first and foremost, He came to the Nation of Israel
to be their Messiah, and King. But the overall purpose was to die
for the sin of mankind, and to be the Savior of the whole human race,
and be our Lord for all eternity. But
this was not all. He came as the end to the “everlasting” or
conclusion, fulfillment, propitiation of the promises, covenants and the Law as
the hidden unseen one to which they all pointed towards. As the
“eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ” before the foundation of the world. This foundation took place in Genesis 3 because within it we find the first promise of restoration upon which all promises and covenants of the Old Testament speak. In verse
12 and remember when we started the book of Ephesians we told you there
were over 90 times that we have the prepositional phrase "IN
HIM, IN WHOM, IN CHRIST," because this little
letter is positional!
Where
are we as believers? We are not just members of a local church on
the corner, although that is certainly applicable for most of Christiandom as a religion. But we are
members of the bigger universal picture, we are members of the One
Body of Christ if we have believed and received the revelation of this Gospel for our salvation! When we have been placed into the
One Body of Christ as the condition of the Marriage Feast and the Passover for Paul tells us that Christ Jesus is our Passover just as in Exodus 12, this is found in 1Corinthians 5:7. In this revelation we have in effect been placed in union with Christ
that the religionist and the world knows nothing of. We have to keep in mind that a lot
of church members are not in the Body of Christ! Though they confess and profess that they are does not make it so. We mean a lot of
them! We would hope with all our heart that we are wrong, but we do not
think so. We have multitudes of church people who have never had this
kind of a salvation experience where God places them into the Body.
Baptism
has always been a controversy from the very onset of Christianity.
People get all hung up if you do not practice it according their
format of baptism. But listen, Paul puts baptism way down at the very
bottom of everything, because that is not the important thing. The
important thing is "are you in the One Body of Christ?"
Listen, we do not care what denomination you belong to, we know as
you look out over your congregation, that there are people who have
been baptized that are no more saved than the dog out there on the
street. You know that and we know that. They have no New Life in
them, they have no love for the Word, and they have no love for the
Lord, but they have been baptized in water. And just as the prophets told Israel, they serve God with empty words of lip service, with NO heart in them. So baptism is not what
counts, what counts is, "are we in the One Body of Christ?
Are we positioned where God wants to position us?"
Ephesians 3:12
"In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him."
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