The word “glory” and variations of it are seen well over 500 times in the Bible. In this series, I’d like to look at a handful of those uses. For example, we looked at how Paul used the word one Colossians:

To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27 | TNIV)

This “hope of glory” is something Christians have been looking forward to since the time Paul first used the phrase. The “hope of glory” is the hope of a glorious future in Jesus Christ. Your present is probably like mine: Less than glorious! There’s no glory in taking out the trash in the rain, or driving to work on pothole-laden roads, or pumping your own gas. There’s no glory in dealing with lazy, incompetent employees or getting chewed out by the boss for your incompetence. But, that our glorious future is assured in Jesus Christ is the hope we all have. One day, our faith will become sight and our beliefs will be vindicated.

Paul used the word again in his letter to the Philippians:

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3:20, 21 | TNIV)

Most people see verse 21 and get excited because they see the promise of a “glorified body,” which means no more pain or suffering or any kind of physical shortcomings. But Paul’s meaning is much deeper than that. In the body, you can never please the Lord completely. You can never “measure up” to God’s righteous demands as long as you are living in your body. But one day, you old body of flesh, which is so easily led astray by sin, will be done away with – transformed in the twinkling of an eye – so that you will be actually like Jesus Christ.

In writing to the Ephesian church, the apostle Paul used the word again like this:

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:18, 19a | TNIV)

There’s plenty going on in those verses, so let’s read it from another version of Scripture:

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can see something of the future he has called you to share. I want you to realize that God has been made rich because we who are Christ’s have been given to him! I pray that you will begin to understand how incredibly great his power is to help those who believe him. (Ephesians 1:18, 19a | TLB)

That may help a little, and hopefully you will see your significance in God’s sight. “God has been made rich because” we belong to Him. Bet you don’t think about that much, do you? Too often, you hear and sing phrases like this:

Would He devote that sacred head, for such a worm as I?

Isaac Watts wrote than in 1885 of Christ dying for sinners. But a Christian isn’t a worm anymore; he’s been changed. Yet so many Christians cling to that “I am a worm” theology. You’re not! A worm isn’t valuable; you are! You have made God rich because you belong to Him. God has benefitted in some way because you have become His child.

The letter

The letter Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus has been called “sublime” and “grand” by Bible scholars for centuries. John Chrysostom (345-407) had this to say about Ephesians:

This Epistle is full to the brim of thoughts and doctrines sublime and momentous. For the things which scarcely anywhere else he utters, there he makes manifest.

Chrysostom is right. Paul covers ideas and notions in Ephesians he doesn’t mention elsewhere.

Ephesus was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world during Paul’s day, and the church there attracted some pretty big name preachers. Paul was the first Christian preacher to bring the Gospel to its half-million citizens during his second missionary journey. After Paul, the very eloquent and refined Apollos took over the church for a while until Paul returned during his third missionary journey. Eventually, young Timothy assumed the pulpit in Ephesus, and near the end of the first century, John, the last surviving apostle, lived in Ephesus and preached in the church there.

Ephesus, with its large population, it’s bustling economy, it’s arts and culture, it’s medicine, and its great church would eventually vanish off the face of the earth. Nothing lasts forever; kingdoms, and great cities, rise and fall and sometimes disappear. Archaeologist’s have discovered the ruins of this once great metropolis, but today in the 21st century, we know about Ephesus and its great pagan temple and its glorious history largely because it was mentioned in the Bible.

Paul wrote this letter while he was under house arrest in Rome around 60 AD. In all, the apostle wrote three letters from Rome while awaiting news from Caesar about his release. Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians were delivered to their respective destinations by the greatest mailman who ever lived, a fellow named Tychicus.

A powerful opening

The first few verses of this letter are among the most glorious doxologies found in Scripture.

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 for adoption to sonship 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. (Ephesians 1:3 – 6 | TNIV)

We learn something of great significance in that first sentence. Let’s look at it the KJV:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ…. (Ephesians 1:3 | KJV)

God has blessed us. We bless God because He first blessed us. As one Bible scholar noted:

Our blessing is a declaration. His blessings are deeds.

To be “blessed” in the Bible means to be filled with a sense of joy or happiness. We cause God to rejoice because He saved us and because He blesses us. We don’t often think of it that way. But God causes us to rejoice because we receive so much from Him and He rejoices when we turn around and bless Him on account of His blessings to us! That’s some power you have there, my friend! The power to bring a smile to your Heavenly Father’s face.

You’ll notice, though, that the blessings to which Paul is referring are not the temporal blessings you are given here – like the blessings of a good job or a family. These blessings are “in the heavenly realms” and are “spiritual” in nature. They are special blessings we receive because we are “in Christ,” because we are born again. Among those blessings would be things like: salvation, justification, sanctification, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and so on. When you pause in your busy day to bless the Lord for those kinds of gifts, you’re making God’s day.

Verse 4 is one of those verses nobody really understands or likes. The sinner hates this verse because it speaks of being “chosen by God,” and that’s a repulsive thought to people who either don’t believe in God or think more of themselves than they do of God. The Christian usually gets it wrong because they don’t read every word, stopping after being told they were “chosen by God.” What Paul is saying here really is quite phenomenal. God’s way of salvation was planned in eternity past. God chose believers in Christ before He created the world, which means you and I didn’t do the choosing, God did the choosing. He didn’t choose us because we were worthy or because we were good. He chose us because we couldn’t choose Him. He chose us so we could do good in this world. The always quotable Charles Spurgeon wrote this:

God chose me before I was born into this world because if He’d waited until I got here, He never would have chosen me.

The point of verse 4 is simply this: We were chosen by God in Christ. That was the plan and God is sticking to it. There’s no other way to be chosen by God except to be in Christ. But the plan has a purpose, in addition to the obvious: To be holy and blameless in His sight. God chose us in order to sanctify us – to make us holy people – to separate us from the rest of the world. And God chose us to be “blameless.” Think about that for a moment. God sees us in Christ as being without blame. This means it’s God’s choice to change you, and that choice was made before He made anything else – including you, by the way.

Of course, that means if you’re a Christian, you have to manifest that change; you have to demonstrate that you are “in Christ,” that you are different person. If there’s no evidence that God has chosen you – if you haven’t changed – then you can’t be one of the elect. John, in a letter he wrote, put it this way:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Those who say, “I know him,” but do not do what he commands are liars, and the truth is not in them. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. (1 John 2:1 – 6 | TNIV)

Succinct and to the point. Who says the Bible is hard to understand? “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”

God’s glorious inheritance

It’s obvious that we, Christians, have been blessed in, as President Trump may say, “an incredibly huge way” by God. He has given us so much and done so much for us. And yet, in verse 18, out of the blue we read this:

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people… (Ephesians 1:18 | TNIV)

There’s a lot to digest in that verse. The thing that jumps off the page is that we, Christians, are “the riches of God’s glorious inheritance.” Have you ever thought of yourself in that way before? You, like me, have always been taught that we bring nothing to God. That’s true, there’s nothing we have that God wants or needs. However, in Christ, we become valuable to God; we are worth something to Him, as long as we remain in Christ.

That concept is so deep and so profound, that Paul tells his friends in Ephesus that he will “pray that the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened” so that they may understand their worth in Christ. In the Bible, the heart is the seat of the intelligence and will. Paul prays that their minds and wills may be “enlightened” so as to grasp what he’s telling them. You, my friend, are extremely valuable to God. You may wonder what your value is. It’s simply this: As you live right; as you live like the changed person you are in Christ, you will begin to reflect God’s glory in the world around you. You see, nobody can see God. But they can see you. You become valuable to God because you become His reflection on earth, pointing the lost to Him.

That’s a big deal, and hard to do. That’s why Paul went on to write this:

…and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:19a | TNIV)

You have a power deep down inside of you, put there by God, to help you become the changed person He had made you to be. That power is “incomparable,” that is, you can’t compare it to any power on earth; there’s nothing in all the world like the power you hold. It’s the power to become the person God wants you to become; a person who reflects the light of His glory.

Now that is, as Chrysostom might have said, a “sublime and momentous” thought to consider!