Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to Gospel in Life. Modern culture often says that our beliefs are secondary as long as we live like decent people. But the Bible insists that what we believe shapes our day-to-day lives. All summer long, we're sharing a series from Tim Keller which unpacks the core beliefs of the Christian faith. Dr. Keller looks at how the truths that shape our understanding of God, ourselves, and our salvation can transform us and free us in every part of our lives.

Tim Keller: Tonight, I'd like to take a look, since we've been going through the book of Ephesians—at least when I was here, we were. I'd like to take a look again at this huge sentence that we started looking at in the late spring and early summer. It's Ephesians chapter one, verse three to 14. I'm going to show you tonight that there is a second major division in it, and I'd like to give you an overview of it.

We've been looking for weeks at the beauty of the first part of that sentence and what it means that we were chosen to be adopted as his children, to be his sons. We spent a number of weeks on what it means to be adopted. I want you to know that I don't know if it helped you, but I wrote most of those sermons sitting in a convent on the shores of the Hudson River back in late May, and it changed my life just to think about the first part of the sentence. But starting at verse nine, we have a second part, and I'd like to introduce you to that tonight.

Let me read you the whole sentence again. Chapter one, verse three through 14. In the Greek, it was all one sentence, even though the English translators have had to break it up just to make it comprehensible.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world 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 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.

In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

In him, we also are chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might live for the praise of his glory. And 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, who is a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory.

This is God's word. It's a very long, convoluted sentence. In order to really get the grip of it, you have to get it in the original language and look at the sentence structure. You will see that the main verbs mark out the divisions of the sentence and therefore the subject or the headings. The first main verb was chosen and predestined to be adopted, to be holy and blameless. But then now in verse nine, it says he has made known. This introduces a new area, a new amazing privilege that I want to look at tonight.

We said that verse three to 14, this whole sentence is all about salvation. In New York, a person who talks about being saved, a person who asks you if you are saved, a person who talks about Christ saving us, that kind of religion generally is looked down upon as shallow and narrow. And yet we are trying to show you here that Paul is revealing that salvation is not a narrow and shallow thing but the broadest and deepest and richest thing possible. He's breaking down everything that salvation means all in this one marvelous introductory sentence.

We looked in a way at what God does to the individual when you receive Christ as your Savior. We saw that what he has done is he makes us holy, and he comes inside and he adopts us. But verse nine to 12 introduces a new idea. The new idea is he has made known the mystery of a plan that he's had throughout the ages.

The difference is this. It's not there anymore, but I think it was last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art they had an exhibit of Tiffany windows. Tiffany glass, stained glass, colored glass windows. There are two ways to look at a Tiffany window. There's the glory of the microscopic view, and then there's a different glory to get the macroscopic view.

If you go in real close—and of course when you're over 40 to go in real close and see something you got to take your glasses off unless you are still probably too resistant to the inevitable and you haven't got bifocals yet—the microscopic view is to get up real close and examine the individual pieces of glass. Delight in and be amazed at the artistry, at the purity of the color, at the vividness of the color, at the purity of the texture. You can look and see glories close up that you can't see anywhere else.

And yet unless you move back and get the big picture, you don't realize that this beautiful little gorgeous piece of blue glass is actually the eye in a deer in a forest. Until you stand back and get the macroscopic look, you can't see the beauty of what that little blue piece of glass really means. I've been thinking about the difference between a macroscopic and a microscopic look. You've actually got to do both in order to get the full beauty and glory of what the artist has actually put into that piece of art. To look up close is not enough. When I stand back and see just how that beautiful little piece is in its teardrop shape but it's now an eye of a deer in this beautiful forest, I'm getting a new look at it.

You and I live in the most individualistic culture that has ever survived, and who knows how long ours will. We are completely immersed in our own individual needs, our hurts, our goals, our own fulfillment or lack thereof. We are absorbed with it. In every other culture, you tend to get your meaning in life out of the relationships you have to institutions, to your family, to the church, to the state, to the community, and so forth.

You're born into certain positions and you get your meaning in life by living out those positions. You're a citizen, a son or a daughter, a husband, a wife. You're a man or a woman, and those always had assigned places and roles and positions and functions in these institutions. Anywhere else in the world, that's how you get fulfillment. We, however, live in an individualistic society that is completely focused on the individual. Unless we are free to pursue what fulfills us, we don't have meaning in life. Americans, especially young Americans, have a completely microscopic attitude toward themselves.

Almost every other culture, you get your meaning in life by how you fit into the larger picture: how you fit into your family, the extended family, your tribe, the neighborhood. Those of you whose parents are from another country and yet have been raised up in American culture, you know what it's like to be caught between cultures in which you find your meaning by being part of the big picture and this culture in which you're supposed to find your own meaning in yourself.

Because we live in such a microscopically oriented culture, when we come to Christianity, we immediately get obsessed with what God can do for me. People don't really ever seem to ask me whether it's true. They want to ask me whether it'll make them happy. They don't care about whether it's true, they care about whether it works. That's a unique cultural mindset. But we've got it, so let's admit it.

Let's admit that when we first get into Christianity, our first concern is still obsessed with "me." You tend to be obsessed with your hurts and needs. We just dote on and we love to talk about and read and study all of the doctrines that have to do with what God is doing in us individually. He is regenerating us, filling our hearts with love, adopting us, and re-parenting us. He is building us up. We love all that stuff.

The first part of this sentence is all about it. It says he chose us to make us holy and blameless to cleanse us. In love, he adopted us as his sons. In him, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. That's all wonderful. But in verse nine, he says, "Okay, you've been up real close to the glass and you've been looking at the beauty of what I'm doing for you. It's time to step back and see where you fit into the big picture or you do not understand Christianity at all and you won't even understand yourself at all."

He says, "And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when all the times have reached their fulfillment to bring all things together in heaven and in earth together under one head, even Christ." He's doing this as one who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.

It's an involved sentence. Let me break it down. Paul says you can now see something that God has revealed: he has a plan for the universe. This word "will" is the word 'boule', which means the plan. God has a plan for the universe and now he is revealing it. It was a mystery, it was hidden, but now it's been revealed. It's going to be that in Christ he is going to reunite things that have split apart. He's going to heal the decay, the disintegration, and the disharmony of things by uniting everything underneath the headship of Christ. He's going to appoint all of you to live for the praise of his glory.

At some point, God says, "Grow up." The irony of your nature is you will never really be happy if you're focused on your little kingdom and whether or not I am fulfilling your goals. Until you get lost in the splendor of my kingdom, until you get your heart captivated by, until you submit to, until you start to live for the glory and the spread of my kingdom and all that that means, you will never actually find the happiness that you've ever wanted.

Grow up. I have done all these wonderful things in you. Why? I've made you happy. I'm going to make you even happier. Why? So that you will be for the praise of my glory. Because that is the way in which I'm going to heal the universe of all of its hurts. God is making you stand back and look at the big picture and there's a lot of us that just will not come.

Every year we go down to a place on the Blue Ridge Parkway called the Peaks of Otter. There are three mountains: Sharp Top, Flat Top, and Harkening Hill. For years, people thought that Sharp Top was the tallest peak in Virginia because it has a very sharp top and looks much taller than the other mountains. In fact, in the Washington Monument, there are pieces of granite from Sharp Top with an insignia that says, "This is stone from the highest peak in Virginia." But it's not. Flat Top is higher.

The problem is that when you're on Sharp Top, Flat Top looks smaller. When you go to Flat Top, you actually realize that it's the tallest and you can see the entire mountain range far better from up there. It's an optical illusion. From down in the valley, Sharp Top looks higher. But not until you get over to Flat Top do you realize that it's the only place where you can really see things as they really are.

It's the same thing here. Until you get a grip on this mystery of his will, you will live in a very little individualistic, private-istic kind of faith that God exists to make me happy or to get rid of my guilt feelings—which he does. But it's a mistake to look at that and to be absorbed in that. You will not understand until you understand what he's really about and what your place is. Until you look at life from this peak, you will not see things properly.

He says three things here. First, God reveals his plan. Second, he tells what the plan is. And third, he shows us how he works his plan out through his sovereignty. He reveals his plan, and he tells us in verse 11 and 12 that God is able to work his plan because he's completely in charge of history and he works all things together according to the counsel of his will.

It's kind of breathtaking and it's not that easy to understand. The first part of this passage is much easier and a lot more fun. The second part is high doctrine. The first thing is he made known to us the mystery. God is somebody who makes mysteries known. You live in a culture that believes that you can't be sure about anything religious. As soon as you start to let people know you're a Christian in a place like New York, people say, "Who do you think you are? You got a pipeline to God? How arrogant! You seem to think you know just what God thinks. How do you know that?"

It is a rule in our modern culture that you can't be sure about anything pertaining to God. The trouble with that is that that is actually an incoherent and self-destructive way of thinking. If it's arrogant to insist that you know anything about God, it must be arrogant to insist you know that you can't know anything about God. Today we're supposed to be skeptic about everything religious except religious skepticism. By your own definition, you're being rigid to say such a thing.

Everybody's going to tell you that if there is a God, he doesn't make things known or reveal mysteries. They say he's an incomprehensible force and you can experience him, but you can't tell people what he teaches or says. And yet Jesus Christ says heaven and earth may pass away, but not a jot or tittle from the word of God will pass away till all be fulfilled. He says the mountains are temporary, but this is permanent. The Christian religion is a religion that says God makes things known. God gives us truth. God talks to us.

If a person supposedly is your father but never talks to you, writes to you, or says anything intelligible to you, then he's not your father. The essence of the Christian religion is through Christ, God becomes your father. If he doesn't reveal things in propositions to you that you can understand and read and think of and discuss and take in, then he's not a father.

This God makes things known. People say to me, "You have an education and you really believe the Bible? Isn't it full of contradictions? How can you know anything about God?" And then they turn around and say, "I think that you're rigid and intolerant in your views." Tolerance is a truth. That's a proposition you're laying on me. By your own definition, you can't do that. You're going to tell me that truth is incoherent and then tell me that toleration is good. I think toleration's bad. I think I'll burn you at the stake. On what basis will you call me wrong or immoral if truth is incoherent?

The idea that says you can't know anything about God destroys itself. A much more coherent view is the one that has come down to us from Jesus. Heaven and earth may pass away, but not a jot or tittle of the word of God will pass away till all is fulfilled.

Guest (Male): Do you struggle to find the words to share your faith effectively with others? Most Christians, pastors included, have moments where we have trouble articulating what we believe and why our faith matters. In his book, *Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism*, Tim Keller shows how to communicate the Christian message in a way that's clear, compassionate, and accessible, whether you're speaking to a group or having a casual conversation with a friend.

Drawing from his decades of experience connecting the gospel to real-life circumstances, Dr. Keller shows how the gospel message can speak even to the most skeptical or spiritually curious people. During the month of July, we'll send you a copy of *Preaching* as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: Okay, now that's the first thing we learn in this passage, that he makes the plan known. But now what's the plan? The plan is this: to bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head, even Christ. The one thing that has always bothered me about most translations is the word "unite" is always there. But in the Greek, there's a little prefix to it, 'ana'. And it means to reunite, to unite again. I think it's absolutely critical to understanding what Paul is talking about here. He says God has got a plan to reunite all things under one head, even Christ.

This is such an important verse. Number one, reunite means that originally the universe was united and has disintegrated. Only in Christ will it be reunited. A system is something in which all the components enhance one another rather than destroy one another. Systems don't happen by accident; they've got to be designed. A clock is a system. Open up the back of your wristwatch and look at the system. Systems are such in which there's many components interacting with each other but they enhance one another rather than destroy one another.

But it doesn't take very much to destroy a system if one component is out of alignment or ripped out of the place it's designed to be. In a way, one of the most beautiful systems is the way your lungs work. You breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Green leafy things around you do the opposite: they breathe in the carbon monoxide and they expel the oxygen and it works out beautifully.

If you go to Mars in a spaceship and take in a nice big deep breath of that Martian atmosphere, your lungs immediately experience alienation. Your lungs don't fit in that system. All the ammonia gas doesn't really work in your lung very well and you will die because you're out of alignment. Alienation, decay, and things fall apart. Your body as long as you're alive is a system. The moment you die, it starts to go to pieces. It disintegrates and goes back into constituent chemicals. It's disunited.

Minivans don't have a full-size spare. Underneath the van there is a little tiny mini-spare. When you have a flat tire you stick the thing on there and then you're supposed to go find a gas station. I remember being ignorant about the thing; I didn't realize that you can't really go very fast on it. It's built to go 40 miles an hour. And what I did was I used it out of alignment. It would have fit in wonderfully if I'd kept it under 45 miles an hour. Pretty soon the little tire began to experience alienation.

When the tire experienced alienation, my car experienced alienation. Then I experienced alienation. The whole system fell apart. When it says here God's plan is to reunite all things in Christ, what he's saying implicitly is what is said explicitly in Romans 8. And that is simply this. Originally the world was built to be under one head: Christ. Anything that's under his lordship—whether it's your life, your friendship, a neighborhood, or a country—any system began to work with the ultimate component being the headship of Christ.

When the headship of Christ is taken away from a life, from a country, or even from a physical body, disintegration and alienation happen. We see that in Genesis 3. In Romans 8, it says all of creation has been subjected to decay. Back in Genesis 3, God set up all the systems and they were all in perfect harmony. There was no death, no war, no poverty, and no disease. Those are alienations of systems. There was no family strife because everything was under the lordship of Christ.

God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. When Adam and Eve decided they were going to be their own masters, they pulled themselves out of alignment. Adam and Eve said, "We're going to be our own masters," and the Scripture tells us when that happened, every system began to experience alienation and breakdown and decay. Look at it. First of all, if you live for yourself instead of under the headship and lordship of Christ, you're spiritually alienated. You're cut off from God.

When you're born again, part of that alienation is gone. He loves you and puts your sins behind you. But I've been realizing that you spend all the rest of your life dealing with the fact that deep inside because of our sin we continually get mad at God and demand things of him. There continually is a kind of encroaching alienation that still clings to us because of our sin. As a result, we never experience the love and joy we could experience. There's spiritual alienation.

Not only that, sin causes psychological alienation. Freud used to talk about the fact that you have an 'id', a libido, which meant you had all these desires for self-gratification. And then you had your 'superego', which was your conscience. And then you had your 'ego'. Your poor ego was sort of like a battleground. Here's the id and here's the superego and the ego somehow has to keep them together.

I'm not saying that I'm baptizing everything Freud said, but he recognized that there is psychological disintegration. There's no unity in us. There are wars going on inside there. Biblically the answer is because if you're spiritually alienated, you will be psychologically alienated. You will not know who you are or that you're valuable and loved. You will not know what your direction is. Spiritual alienation leads to psychological breakdown, which also leads to social breakdown.

Why do people oppress each other? Why is there war, injustice, and family breakdowns? Why is there crime, class struggle, and management-labor struggle? The psychological alienation inside us—the unhappiness we experience—leads to social alienation. That's why all of our political and social systems don't work right.

If you read back in Genesis 3, as soon as Adam and Eve decided they were going to be their own masters, they felt cut off from God. Then they felt anxiety and fear—that's psychological alienation. Then they had to get away from each other—they couldn't be naked with each other anymore. That's social alienation. Then God shows up and saysnature isn't going to work right. You are out of alignment. Nature is going to be subject to natural disasters and to disease and even to death.

But then in Genesis 3 and in Romans 8 and here, God makes a promise. He says someday I'm coming back. I'm going to find a way, in spite of your sin, to deal with your sins and bring the lordship back over every system in the universe until finally in the fullness of time everything will be healed. Physically, there won't be any more disease or death or natural disasters. This natural creation is nothing like what it's going to be when the kingdom of God is completely fulfilled. When Jesus is Lord, there is blossoming and fulfillment.

Jesus is going to be Lord over all the social systems. There will not be war, crime, class warfare, or racial oppression. Psychologically, your psychological system will finally work. There won't be this disunity. The components will not grind against each other; they will enhance each other because the spiritual alienation will be gone.

In the original language, it says he has a plan for the fullness of time. In the Bible, the fullness of time is the entire period between Christ's first coming and his second coming. That means God is already working out his kingdom work now. What is God's plan? Just to save your little soul or get rid of your guilt feelings? That's just the beginning.

When you give yourself to him, you have just begun to see a few of the systems begin to work right. You see some of the psychological and spiritual alienation go, but it's your job by banding together in the church and by seeking to obey God to heal more and more of the results of sin in every area of life. Christians who really understand what God is after get pretty excited. We are here to share the gospel so people move from death to life. To some degree, some of the systems of their life begin to get healed. But the job of the church is to bring the kingdom power of Jesus Christ into every area of life.

We can bring our neighborhoods, our political systems, our social systems, our families, and our country under the lordship of Christ. To the degree that he is Lord of an area of reality, to that degree there is a unifying going on. The disintegration is getting healed. It won't be complete until the end, but even now this healing begins.

Everyone should be able to look into the church and begin to see the administration of this mystery. The word administration is the word 'oikonomia' from which we get our word "economic." It means a blueprint. Christ has shown the blueprint of this mystery. It's inside the church that we have got to show people how race relations, how mental health, how things heal up when they're brought in under the headship of Jesus Christ.

At the very end of the *Les Mis* musical, they sing, "Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?" There are only two kinds of people who can sing like that and have their lives galvanized with a vision like that: crazy ideological visionary people who think that if we have a revolution we can bring in Utopia, and the other kind of person who can say, "Is there a vision of the future that energizes and galvanizes everything?"

If all that you think Christianity is is a way for God to make you happier, you're just missing the big picture. Stand back and see what God is going to do. He is going to unite all things in heaven and earth. He is going to destroy all the effects of sin in every area of life. Right now through the church, the power to see many of those effects healed exists. It's Jesus who says, "Will you join in our crusade? Is there a world you long to see? My world."

To the degree you obey me and work for my kingdom, there's an adventure that you begin on that is inevitably going to be a victorious one. "I'm going to bring you to victory," he says. Christians know that the world you long to see is inevitable. Stop living for your own kingdom. Stop living just for yourself and your own happiness and begin to say, "Lord, show me what it really means to work for your kingdom and live for your kingdom."

Remade in the image of Christ because you submit your entire life to his lordship, you become an agent for the spread of that health and that power throughout the world, throughout the universe, and for all eternity. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, help us to see that we really live to praise your glory. We exist to make you happy. And the irony of it is that to work for your pleasure and for your kingdom will bring us a satisfaction that we couldn't know anywhere else. Father, help us to lose ourselves to find ourselves. Help us to find out what it will mean as a body, as a church, to bring your kingdom power to a place like New York City.

It will mean bringing salvation to an entire community. Help us to see that it's a great adventure to find how to bring every area in under the sovereignty of the King. Now Father, we ask that you would excite us with this, but at the same time convict and humble us. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelinlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 1992. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 when Dr. Keller was Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.