EPHESIANS 1:4-14
Ephesians 1:4-14 reveals the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, moving to dispense Himself into us. First, verses 4 through 6 show us the Father’s selection and predestination for God’s eternal purpose. The Father’s selection is His choosing, and His predestination is His marking out. His selection and predestination are for the fulfillment of His eternal purpose, His eternal plan. We feel that a better translation of verses 4 and 5 is as follows: "According as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before Him, in love, predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." God’s choosing includes His predestinating. How did God choose us? He chose us by predestinating us. When someone goes to the supermarket, he may select something and then mark it out. His marking it out is the action of his selecting. Actually his marking out is his selection. God the Father selected us by marking us out before the foundation of the world.
Verses 7 through 12 of Ephesians 1 go on to reveal the Son’s redemption for the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose. God the Father chose us. Then the Son came to accomplish God’s economy by His redemption. We were chosen and predestinated, but after creation we became fallen. Hence, we need redemption, which God has accomplished for us in Christ through His blood.
Verses 13 and 14 reveal the Spirit’s sealing and pledging for the application of God’s accomplished purpose. First, God has an eternal purpose. For this purpose God selected us. Then the Son came to accomplish this purpose by His redemption. After the accomplishment of the Son’s redemption, the Spirit comes to apply what the Son has accomplished according to the Father’s selection. This application is by the Spirit’s sealing and pledging.
A proper sealing cannot take place without the element of ink. A seal also bears an image. When a seal with ink is applied to something, the ink will be in the same form or image as the seal. If the seal is round, the impression made is also round. The seal is God Himself, and the ink is the Spirit. The sealing of the Spirit causes us to bear God’s image, thus making us like God.
Furthermore, this sealing is also the pledging. God has pledged Himself to us and in us for our security, our guarantee that He belongs to us, and for our foretaste in participating in Him as our inheritance—enjoyment. When a person buys a new Bible, he may put his "seal" with his signature on it. This seal on his Bible displays the fact that the Bible is his. In another sense, the seal becomes a pledge to guarantee that the Bible belongs to him. Thus, we may say that the sealing is the pledging. Now we can see that Ephesians 1:4-14 reveals that the Triune God has been wrought into us for the fulfillment of His eternal economy.
(Living In and With the Divine Trinity, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)
