Ephesians 1:3-14
January 4, 2026
3Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4just as
he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and
blameless before him in love. 5He destined us for adoption as
his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his
will, 6to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely
bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7In him we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches
of his grace 8that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and
insight 9he has made known to us the mystery of his will,
according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10as
a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth. 11In Christ we have also obtained
an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who
accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12so
that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the
praise of his glory. 13In him you also, when you had heard the
word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were
marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14this is the
pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise
of his glory.
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I
hope it’s not too late to talk about New Year’s. My general thinking is that it should be
alright to do that up to either January 7th or the second time you
catch yourself writing last year’s date on something. Either way, it seems like it may still be a
good time to look at one little phrase that comes up at the start of Ephesians
but that you’ll find in quite a few places in the Bible, especially the New
Testament. That phrase is “in the
fullness of time”.
It
presupposes a belief that is there in the Old Testament as well, and that is
most clearly expressed in Ecclesiastes 3:1 –
“For everything there is a season, and a
time for every matter under heaven.”
Life is not static.
The world does not stay the same.
Change comes – some of it for the better and some of it for the worse –
and what seems like loss to one person is gain to another. Trying to keep up with everything is both
necessary and futile. The sage who wrote
Ecclesiastes admits,
“I saw all the deeds that are done under
the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” [Ecclesiastes
3:14]
I know that feeling.
It hits me every time Microsoft decides to update. It comes along every time Facebook changes
its analytics system to make its numbers more obscure. It stares me in the face every time some sort
of awards program announces the year’s winners and I haven’t seen the movie,
heard the song, and have no idea who that person is holding the trophy and
thanking her hairdresser.
It is
easy to get the feeling that the world is totally out of control, because it
is. Yet at the same time, there remains
a sense that
“For everything there is a season, and a
time for every matter under heaven.”
If only we knew what season comes when, and whether we
are doing things in the right way at the right time.
Back around
2014 or 2015, David Stauffer and I spent three or four days attending a program
at Princeton called a “Ministry Incubator” where we refined and presented our
plans to develop an online church. We envisioned
a web site with streaming on Sunday mornings and chat rooms (this was before
Zoom took off) for Sunday School classes and prayer groups. We wanted a phone-friendly app version. The earliest way we figured to introduce new
people to the site was to put up posters with a QR code in coffee shops. At the end of the week, the funders chose to
back a group in South Jersey that was doing outreach through food trucks and
some other project I don’t remember.
Then came 2020. What were we doing? What was everyone doing? A version of what we had tried to do, but
with better technology. What had we
learned? That we could do much of what
we do online – if we must. Administrative
functions might actually be more efficient, but even those are lacking without
one-on-one relationships. More than
that, very few people want to, and some people cannot, do church activities
online. As for study, there are now all
sorts of places online with resources that are better-produced than we would
have been able to provide, but that lack real interpersonal connection and may
or may not present content drawn from reputable sources. Nor does a random “influencer” know what’s
going on in the viewers’ lives or what approach or topic would be most helpful
to whoever stumbles on their “product”.
Did we learn too soon or
too late? Maybe it was a little of
both. Or maybe it was just in time. Maybe it was in the fullness of time.
Ephesians says that we
can entrust those types of questions to God.
It isn’t that we are doing anything wrong when we ask them. It’s inevitable. When someone loses their job because someone
far away made bad decisions or when somebody dies young or when a friendship
ends or when the insurance company denies a claim or anything like that happens,
there will always be what-ifs. The same
is true when things go unexpectedly well, but we tend not to ask about why
somebody is naturally optimistic or unusually talented or born into a good
situation. There we just sort of take things
for granted and say, “Thank you.”
Ephesians holds to the assertion
that God has an ultimate purpose. We
only see pieces of a great mosaic that he is putting together and we cannot
make out the overall design because we stand too close to it. More than that, we are actually a part of it,
so our own vision is even more limited than we think. Yet even so, we have been given a glimpse
into what is happening beyond our awareness, and it is something creative and
beautiful, and all held together by Christ, who is the one, essential piece in
the mystery of the universe.
“With all wisdom and insight he has
made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that
he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up
all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” [Ephesians
1:8-10]
Moreover, he has chosen
the rest of us to be part of it all along with him.
“In Christ we have also obtained an
inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who
accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will…” [Ephesians
1:11]
Where and how and when we best fit into the picture,
God knows. But that we fit, and that all
people have a place and a role, that can itself be a great consolation and is
in fact a great honor.
A
long tradition among Wesleyan denominations, whether United Methodists or
A.M.E. or A.M.E. Zion or the Methodist Church of the Caribbean and Americas or
the Peruvian Methodist Church or so forth, has been to share together at the
start of each year with a prayer of renewed commitment to taking our place with
one another and with all God’s people within the framework of God’s plans
rather than our own, trusting everything to him and finding our purpose in
his. Called a “Covenant Prayer” and
written by John Wesley, you’ll find it in our Hymnal at #607. I invite everyone now to take a moment and
read it over and consider it.
After
a few moments to read it and to reflect, I will invite everyone who is ready to
do so to pray it silently while I pray it aloud, so that there is no
pressure. There is a time to prepare, as
there is a time to commit, a time to ponder and a time to move forward. Nobody can determine that time but each
person listening to God in their own heart.
Let the timing for all things be God’s, whose help and whose love is
available in each moment.
[Silent
prayer, concluding as follows:]
“I am no longer my own,
but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”
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