By Scott Brown
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Waverly.
Focal Passage: Ephesians 1:3-14
This passage is a beautiful statement revealing each member of the perichoresis of God at work in salvation and our blessed receipt of that work. This beginning passage of Ephesians establishes that each person of the Triune Godhead is fluidly and actively working interdependently in our salvation.
The Father, having predestined the gift of salvation according to His good pleasure, established the plan before the foundation of the world that all who would come to Him would do so only through His Son.
Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection was not a panicked back-up plan but God’s perfect, forever plan. Before creation, before the fall, and before the law God’s plan of redemption was settled in heaven that the way to God would be found only in His Son.
The Father predestined redemption, but the Son purchased it. We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Jesus paid the price to ransom us from death and redeem us to Himself as He freely chose to submit Himself to the command of the Father and the cruelty of man at the cross.
Scott Brown
There at the cross the justice of God was satisfied as His wrath was poured out on sin. Jesus, who never knew sin, became sin for us and bore the wrath we earned that we might become the righteousness of God only in Him.
The Son purchased our salvation, then the Spirit applies it. By grace, all who hear the gospel and respond in faith by repenting of sin and trusting in Jesus, are saved and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
He is our comforter and our conviction, our seal and our security, our hope and our help as He applies the finished work of Christ to us, in us, and through us.
God does all this beautifully and wonderfully as an expression of His grace and glory. That word “perichoresis” is one of those old words to describe the Trinity which has, sadly, fallen out of our regular vocabulary.
It gives the picture of Father, Son, and Spirit moving fluidly throughout eternity as an interdependent three in one. It paints a picture of the Godhead in a blessed choreography, moving so smoothly together in His work that it is nearly impossible to describe where One ends and the Other begins.
This also paints a grander picture to salvation of this God lovingly reaching His hand out to us and inviting us to dance.
We don’t know the steps and can’t feel the rhythm but He invites us simply to trust Him as He leads us in this blessed and beautiful adventure of knowing Him and making Him known.
Rejoice in Him, rejoice! B&R — Brown is pastor of First Baptist Church, Waverly.
