Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Many people say that what matters most is simply living a good and loving life. But the Bible says something very different: that the way we live flows directly from our beliefs about God. This summer and through the end of September, we're going through one of Tim Keller's most extensive sermon series, in which he teaches from the first three chapters of Ephesians, looking at how the Bible's central truths about salvation and grace will shape even the most practical parts of our everyday life.

Tim Keller: The Bible passage that we're looking at tonight in our teaching is printed in the bulletin. It's Ephesians 1, and I'm just going to read and make remarks tonight on these two verses, Ephesians 1, verses 13 and 14.

"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 our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory."

We've been looking at this chapter, Ephesians 1:3-14. We've said that the whole chapter is the gospel of your salvation. That's a term that's found in verse 13. It says, when you were included in Christ, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you heard that and you believed it, you were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.

The gospel of salvation, the word gospel means good news. This chapter is an inventory of all of the great things that when you become a Christian, you have. It's a little bit like buying a house and going through it to see what you bought, or buying a car and driving it to see what you really have there. You bought something, what's really under the hood?

In the first four verses, verses 4 to 8, the first thing God tells us that we have in Christ is adoption. We're brought into the family of God, and he becomes no longer our boss or our supervisor or a taskmaster, but our father. Then secondly, we looked at verses 9 to 12, and we see we not only get adoption, but we get a kingdom. We get a God who's in charge of our lives and all of history. He's sovereign, and we looked at that.

Thirdly, this is what we're looking at now for a few weeks. Starting at verse 13, we see that we get not just adoption and a kingdom, but we get an inheritance. It says, when you believe, you get the Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.

In the last 20 years, a term has come to be used which has never been used before. And that is that a healthy person is in touch with their feelings. You know who you are. There's nothing wrong with that, but being a Christian is a step further. A Christian is not only in touch with who you are, but also in touch with who you are in Christ, and who you will be inevitably in Christ. This passage is telling us that a Christian always lives in light of the inheritance.

I had a couple of friends who, though they did not have a lot of money now, knew that at some time, they were going to come into zillions of dollars. As a result, they didn't worry too much about paying for their children's education. They didn't worry too much about a lot of things. They knew that they were going to come into an incredible inheritance, and that affected the way they live now.

A Christian lives eschatologically. The word eschaton is the Greek word for the last things, the final state. A Christian lives in the future tense. Another way to put it is the center of gravity of a Christian is in the future. Just like that family I knew who, because of their great inheritance, had to live their life today in light of that.

They basically had a worry-free life. They did a lot of planning. They knew that this was going to happen someday. They were sure of it, and because of that, they made arrangements for it now. They did things that I would not be able to do, and most of you would not be able to do either. They were living on the basis of the future.

Most of you and I can't do that economically. You have to live for now. You have to say, I've got my income now and I hope to have it next year. But you can't live in light of the future the way they did. Move away from that for a moment and you'll see that is exactly what Paul's telling us that we have to do. You've been given an inheritance, and it's up to you now to live your whole life in light of it. Later on, it tells us the inheritance is an inheritance of glory. The word glory means solid. It means weighty. It means that which lasts.

This shows us the assumption of the whole Bible: history is not cyclical but linear. Many cultures and many philosophies, Western pagan philosophies, and Eastern religions believe that history is cyclical. That means it's not going anywhere. It's going around and around and around, and it's not going to anything. There's no purpose to history. There's no climax that it's moving to. It's just going to go on and on.

Eventually, for example, the Earth is going to burn up and die, and then time will still go on and on. If you believe that, then there is no glory because the word glory means that which lasts, that which matters. The word matter, of course, means that which is solid. Weight. If history is cyclical, if everything is relative, if nothing will last, if ultimately the way you live today will make no difference in the end, that means nothing matters.

If I come up to you and I say I love you and I care for you, or if I come up to you and shoot you through the head, if you have a cyclical view of history, you have to realize that those two actions ultimately are not different because nothing matters. In the end, it will not make any difference. Nothing lasts.

The Christian understanding of history is very different. The Christian understanding of history is linear. History is moving towards something, and eventually there will be a final state. In that final state, some things will last forever. Love. Hate will not. Friendship. Enmity will not. Beauty. Ugliness will not. Wisdom. Foolishness will not.

Beauty and love and wisdom, these things biblically, according to the Christian view, are glorious. These are things that are going to last forever. That's real reality. That's what life is going to be like in the end. And that's the reason why when you taste hate and foolishness and selfishness and ugliness, your life feels like it doesn't matter. Your life feels meaningless.

When you taste friendship and wisdom and beauty and love, your life seems to have meaning. With the cyclical view of nature, there's no way to explain that. The cyclical view of history says there is no glory and there is no future. We're not moving toward any kind of climax. In the end, nothing will matter.

The biblical understanding of history explains why you know instinctively, in spite of your intellectual objections, that some things do matter. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are about the only religions that grew out of the Bible. The Bible alone gives you a view of history that says history is moving to a climax.

At that climax, God will triumph and his character and his being will triumph. Good will triumph over evil, wisdom over foolishness, beauty over ugly, love over hatred, and so on. That's the reason you know right now some things are glorious and some things are straw and stubble. Some things are weighty and last, they're worth living for, they matter, and other things do not.

Living eschatologically means to know that all those things inevitably will triumph, and therefore you give yourself to those things. Truth is going to triumph over falsehood in the end. But today, if you tell truth, you might get fired and a falsehood might keep your job. What are you going to do? Are you going to live in the present? Are you going to live in the future? Are you going to live eschatologically, or temporarily? Are you going to vote for glory, or the ephemeral?

A Christian works eschatologically. The reason the Christian thinks like that is because when you become a Christian, you get a down payment on that glory that changes your life. We're entering this section. We're going to spend some weeks on it, so we don't have to cover it all now. A Christian is somebody who has tasted of the inheritance.

As one of my teachers used to say, Christianity does promise pie in the sky by and by. But it's a pie you can take a slice of right now. God always gives you one slice of the pie in the sky by and by to eat today. Christians understand that and they orient their whole life toward the future and toward the coming glory.

They realize ultimately that when you give in to temptation, to lie, to hold grudges, which is hatred, or to act toward people in an ugly way, you are putting yourself squarely into the realm that's going to perish. Those things have no glory, they're not going to last, they're going to be wiped away.

On the final day, everything that's opposed to the knowledge of God and to the character and being of God will be wiped away. That's our only hope. You either believe what Christianity says about a linear view of history or else you have to admit that nothing matters at all. In the end, nothing matters.

Everything is going to burn up, everything is relative, and you have no basis to make any distinction between beauty and ugliness. Who's to say what's beauty and what's ugly? Who's to say what's right and what's wrong? Nobody can say unless there's an inheritance at the end of history of glory, of God.

That is what Paul's saying. He says you were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth and believed and he sealed you then with a promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. I want to show you two things: how you get this down payment on glory, and then the nature of that glory.

How do you receive this? I've just told you that there's something waiting at the end of history which Christians know about because they get a slice of it now. It says you were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and having believed, you were marked.

It tells us that you have to do two things. You have to hear the word of truth and then you have to believe it. You're not included in Christ unless you've heard the word of truth and you believed it. This is something that modern people, especially modern Americans, don't like. People have all sorts of cute little sayings about it not mattering what you believe, but how you live.

That's completely opposed to what Paul says right here. He's saying truth matters. Truth is something of weight. It's going to last. And he says there is an irreducible minimum of truth that you have to understand if you're ever going to receive this down payment, this inheritance.

He doesn't say it here, but that's what the whole chapter's about. When I baptized Donna, I read a verse out of 1 Thessalonians 1:9. That's a perfect example of how Paul loves to put the gospel, the word of truth, in a single sentence. He said you turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and wait for his son Jesus Christ who has rescued us from the coming wrath.

There it is. Do you believe that there's one true God? Do you believe that Jesus is his son? Do you believe that he died to rescue you from wrath, that you deserved God's wrath because of your sins? And then have you seen that your real problem in life is that you were worshipping the wrong things? That's the real reason you're miserable, that everybody has to worship something and so we are all worshipping idols.

Did you turn and say, I see that you're the true God, I see that Jesus died for my sins to rescue me from the wrath that I deserve, and I turn from worshipping anything else and I commit myself to you. Have you ever done that? That's the word of truth. Paul can always put the gospel of salvation into a single verse just like that.

Hearing it is one thing, and really believing it is another. To believe it in the Bible means to rest and trust. Verse 12 says, in order that we who are the first to hope in Christ might live for the praise of his glory. For Paul, to put your hope in something and to believe in something is the same thing.

Belief is not simply an intellectual assent. Belief is putting your hope. Belief is putting all of your hopes and dreams on somebody. What it means to be a Christian is to say my only hope for the past, present, and the future is Jesus. My only hope for my past is Jesus, he's covered my sins. My only hope for the present is Jesus, he guides me. My only hope for the future is Jesus, he's going to bring me home.

So it's not enough just to hear the word of truth, you have to believe it, you have to rest in it. And when you do that, then you're included in Christ. That word included is great. What does it mean to be a Christian? It means to be included in Christ. Once you believe you're included, you're brought in.

If you adopt a child, you put your name on that child and that child has been brought in. That child gets a new status. That child is now brought into your social and emotional and economic being. If you have adopted a child and you have a party, and all of them break all the rules and disobey you in a flagrant way, and you say the party's over, you don't send all three of them away. You only send two of them away because one of them is yours. In spite of the behavior, that child has a new status, that child is in you.

Guest (Female): 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: Do you see why I like to say, and I'll keep on saying it, that when I ask somebody, are you a Christian, and they say, I'm trying to be, I know immediately they don't understand what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is not an effort, it's a status. It's not a process, it's a standing. It's a position.

A child is either adopted or he's not. A child doesn't try to get adopted. Either the child's been adopted because the father and mother have adopted him, or else he's not. It's a status, it's a legal standing. Either you have believed in Christ and your sins are forgiven, or you're not. And that's why it's so important to see this.

What it means to be a Christian is to realize who you are in Christ, to tell yourself who you are in Christ, to remind yourself every day. If you know that you're anxious, if you know that you're fearful, if you know that you're bitter, how does a Christian deal with that? A Christian says I shouldn't be angry, bitter, or worried, and I don't have to be if I remember who I am.

If I remember what's coming to me, if I remember what God has said to me, if I realize who he is to me and who I am to him, I won't have to be. And it's very different than a religious person who is struggling all the time saying I shouldn't be worried or bitter or I shouldn't do this or that wrong or God may reject me. One kind of person is struggling to try to be what he is. The other person is struggling and wrestling to try to be what he isn't.

A moralist is someone saying I'm trying very hard to be a Christian. A real Christian is somebody who says I know who I am in Christ. I've been included. Being a Christian is passing over the line, passing from death to life in a moment when you believe. It's not a process of moral reformation.

Two people can both be seeking so hard to be moral and decent. But one of them thinks that their efforts will bring them in. The other one knows that they're in through faith in Christ and is simply seeking to realize who he is in Christ. So one is struggling to be what he isn't. The other one is struggling to be what he is. And that latter is the way a Christian's supposed to live.

If you read the book of Romans, you'll see Paul is always saying, since you died with Christ to sin, so count yourself dead to sin. Since you rose with Christ in his resurrection, so live raised in Christ. Paul always reasons this way. If you've got a problem in your life, you're not being what you are. If you've got trouble in your life, you're not realizing who you are. Be what you are.

That's a struggle, but it's a very different psychological dynamic than struggling to be what you're not. Some of you think that's what it means to be a Christian, trying to be better, trying to be more moral. A Christian is somebody who's always struggling to be what he or she is, included in Christ once you believed in the word of truth.

When you become a Christian, we're told having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory. Notice there's two things that the Holy Spirit is: a seal, and the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.

If I was a king and I lived a thousand years ago, I'd have a seal on my ring. When a king would write a letter and then decide to send it, how could he be sure that the person who received the letter would know it was authentic? Anybody could walk around, forge my handwriting, and say King Malcolm the first decrees this. How's Malcolm the first going to make sure that when he sends a letter, the people know that this is authentic?

He would have a seal on his ring, some kind of insignia. When he would close up a letter, he'd stick some soft wax on the letter and he'd put his ring insignia on it. The insignia would always be something that was hard to counterfeit. When the person received the letter and saw the seal, that person could immediately have assurance that this is really from the king.

How do you know you're a Christian? How do you know that the feelings you have, that the beliefs you have, that what's going on in your life is from God? All honest people admit that in the center of their soul there's a howling emptiness. Therefore everybody has to go find something to live for.

What happens? You get into the Bible and the classic Christian faith. You find all kinds of great things happening. You get wonderful feelings when you pray. You believe the things that you read in the scripture. Your life is being changed. But over here somebody else is going and getting his ozones cleared through this particular cult, and somebody else is over here chanting.

The real question is, how do you know if what you're feeling and what you believe is really authentic? Paul says the Holy Spirit. First of all, the Holy Spirit renovates your character. The Holy Spirit is a seal. It assures you that you're really a Christian, and that the king is dealing with you because it renovates your character.

That doesn't happen overnight. But one of the most important parts of assurance of salvation is hard and fast and permanent progress in character. You really do get less nervous. You really do become less selfish. You really do find more joy. You really find yourself able to love people that you couldn't love before.

You really find the power to forgive. You really find yourself being able to be patient with people because you're turning into Jesus. Not literally, but you are included in Christ, which means the Spirit of God has grafted into your heart the very nature of Jesus. Look at the courage that he has, and the tenderness he has when he's dealing with broken people.

Wouldn't you like to be like that? If you're a Christian, you will be, and you'll begin to see pieces of it growing in your life. If you don't see over a long period of time yourself changing, it might put some of you into despair. But you have to see this over time. If you stand and watch the clock to see it move, you'll never see it move.

Every time I go into the room the clock has moved, so it must be moving, but I can't see it move. It just amazed me as a little kid that anything would really be moving but moving so slowly that I couldn't see it move. And yet I could know it was moving inferentially. It was obvious that it was moving, but when I actually looked at it I couldn't see it move.

Frankly, your own heart's like that. You will be changing. If you sit and stare and say why am I not better than I was last week, you can be a little bit disappointed. But the fact is that the Spirit of God is renovating your character. Unless you actually see the changes in your life through your disciplines of Bible study and prayer, through good fellowship with other Christians, and through seeking his help and trusting him, you won't know that you're a Christian.

The Spirit gives you assurance inferentially by changing your character. But then secondly, the Spirit also is a seal by letting you sense the presence of God. When you sit down and begin to read about the fact that God loves you as father, and that truth really dawns on you and pierces you like a needle, that's the Spirit of God doing that.

Character renovation is inferential assurance. You see the changes and you infer from it. The changes of character are gradual, but they're there, and your friends see them and you see them, and that is one of the ways in which the Spirit is a seal through which the king is saying authentically you are mine.

But there's intuitive assurance. The Spirit of God also works in our heart to make us able to sense his presence. Romans 8 says the Spirit bears witness with our spirit. The Spirit helps us cry, Abba Father. That means when you say the Lord is my father and he loves me and accepts me in spite of all of my faults and childishness, if that truth melts your heart and gives you joy, that's the Spirit of God giving you assurance.

Intuitive assurance and inferential assurance go together. Those of you who are married, how do you know you're married? Sometimes you can only go on the inference. Sometimes you know you're married because you've got a marriage certificate there and you've got the pictures, but your relationship isn't very great. You know you're married but you don't feel married.

Other times you have intuitive assurance. You're enjoying the marriage relationship, you're touching each other, you're connecting. And so your assurance that you're married is both intuitive and inferential. You need both. Your assurance that you're a Christian is both internal and external, intuitive and inferential.

The Spirit of God's job is to put a seal on you. It's absolutely critical that you grow and it's absolutely critical that you pray. If you don't sense his presence sometimes through prayer and if you don't see yourself growing, you're not going to know that you're a Christian because that is how God gives you that assurance.

There is no other religion that gives you assurance. Even the Orthodox Roman Catholic Church is not big on assurance. Other religions will say you have to be good, you have to make sacrifices, you have to live by these rules, and so you try and you try, but you never can be sure you're being good enough.

Christianity alone says the Holy Spirit is here so that you can be certain. Do you realize what an engine that is? To know that he loves you? To know that this inheritance is guaranteed? Assurance is subject to degrees. If you want that assurance to keep burning bright in the center of your life, you've got to both spend the time in prayer and discipline yourself so the Spirit of God can give you that intuitive assurance.

You've also got to obey and work to change your life in accordance with his will so that you can see the Spirit of God change you, and that just builds you up and says I know that I belong to the king. The king looks at you and he says I want you to know that you're mine.

It all comes down to this: you are God's possession. Until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his own glory. Possession means wealth. When God looks at you, he feels wealthy. Occasionally I have known what it's like to look at your children sleeping in bed and feeling very wealthy. I can't believe that God's given me this.

When God looks at you, he feels wealthy, and he wants you to know his love for you. That's astonishing. You are his cherished possession, his special treasure. When he looks at you, he gets joy in his heart. How could he love you like that? It's a great mystery, but that's what the Christian faith is all about.

Because of the joy he gets when he looks at you, he wants you to have the joy of knowing that you belong to him. The Spirit will give you that. Go to the Spirit and say if that's your job, I need to cooperate with you so that you can do it the way you need to do it in my life. The Spirit can't wait for you to turn to him like that.

Father, we pray that you'd help us learn to live in the future, and learn to see that we've got glory coming. Learn to live with the hope that you have given us here in this passage. Would you help everybody here to know through the word of truth that your Spirit's been given to them and that they are your cherished possession, your special treasure. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelonlife.com. There you can subscribe to the Life in the Gospel quarterly journal.

When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelonlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. 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 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.