The biblical view of the doctrine of salvation is that salvation grants the believer everything. In Christ, and there is no need for a search for something more. In fact, such a search Really is an undermining of the essence of the doctrine of salvation. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
In November 1992, a farmer named Peter Watling lost a hammer somewhere on his farm near Suffolk, England, and to find it, Peter asked a friend to bring his metal detector over. While searching for the tool, the two men discovered an ancient treasure, gold coins, Roman jewelry, silver. silver spoons, nearly 15,000 artifacts. Peter's reward for the find? Over £1.75 million.
At the time it's about three million US dollars Peter's life was forever changed that day, not because he acquired something he didn't previously own, but because he found what was already on his property, what was already in his possession. There's a spiritual lesson there, if you're a Christian, and today on Grace to You, John MacArthur helps you unearth the spiritual treasure trove that's yours in Christ, as he continues his study called Richer Than You Think. Here's John with today's lesson. Take your Bible, if you will, and let's look at Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1, and we're examining verses 15 to 23 in our current study.
and looking at the resources that the believer possesses in Christ. the resources of the believer. Let me introduce this subject by Telling you of a concern that I have expressed in some other uh circumstances to you. There is a trend in Christianity. In America today, and perhaps in other places as well, that burdens my heart, that disturbs me.
I often have called it the quest for something more. It's the prevalent idea that being in Christ is not sufficient. That being in Christ It does not give you all there is to get, and so you have to seek something else. We hear people talking often of getting more of Christ. getting more of Jesus.
getting more of the Holy Spirit, getting more power. This is rather common, as if the resources of Jesus Christ. Were sort of doled out to you like a pharmaceutical prescription one dose at a time.
Well, the implication of such a thing is that when you got saved, you didn't get all of Jesus that there is. It's sort of like getting the right to it all, but not really getting any of it in their hearts, in their minds. Is that true? Is that good theology or bad theology? Do we need to get more of Jesus, more of God, more of the Holy Spirit, more power?
Or do we have everything in salvation? That's a very important issue. And for at least the beginning, look at the answer. Turn with me for a moment before we consider Ephesians to 2 Peter 1 and verse 3. This is what the Word of God says.
According as his divine power. hath given unto us All things That pertains unto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him. And you can stop right there. That's a pretty clear verse. According to His divine power, we have already been given all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ.
In other words, listen to this: the biblical view of the doctrine of salvation is that salvation grants the believer everything. In Christ, and there is no need for a search for something more. In fact, such a search Really, although not admittedly on the part of those who do it, really is an undermining of the essence of the doctrine of salvation. You really are undoing what Jesus said when he said, Te telestai, it is completed, or finished, or done, or accomplished, or fulfilled. And you are saying there is something missing that must be sought.
A good way to illustrate this particular conflict is to have you look also for a moment by way of introduction to Colossians chapter 2.
Now, the Colossian church was like so many of those early churches in. In the Roman world, It was exposed to all kinds of heresies. And there was a prevalent heresy in the Colossian situation, which probably could be traced back to the Essenes, because they seem to match it the most closely. But there was a heresy then that basically said this. Christ is not enough.
You've got to get something more.
So, really, it's the very same thing we see today. It had its roots way back in the second chapter of Colossians.
Now, the Apostle Paul writes this. Letter to Colossi to try to remind them that Jesus Christ is absolutely, totally, completely sufficient. And back in chapter one, he intimated it. When he said, We have been delivered from the power of darkness, translated into the kingdom of his dear son. And then he goes on to describe the son as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation.
By him all things are created. He is the head of his church, and in him, verse 19, all fullness dwells. In other words, you see, Paul is trying to say that fullness is in Christ. As we'll see in Ephesians 1, it is Christ really that is everything. It is Christ that fills everything, and in him is all fullness.
And when we are in Him, in us is all fullness. That's the message of Ephesians as well as Colossians. Also, when you come to chapter 2, you see the same thing again. And I'll show you what I mean. The Colossian church was exposed to these people who were saying you need Christ plus other things.
And the plus is what makes you spiritual. The plus is what elevates you. The plus is what gets you on to the really good stuff. And here are the pluses they offered. Number one, they said you need Christ plus philosophy.
And what happened in that situation was they had their own human wisdom to add to the reality of Christ. It was Christ plus human philosophy. And that would be a very good picture of what we know today as liberalism. Neo-Orthodoxy. Modernism.
They start out with Christ, but it's Christ plus human wisdom. human reason, human logic, human philosophy. And that's exactly what Paul warns them against in verse 8 of chapter 2. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world. And those two phrases mean the ABCs of human religion.
which is philosophical rather than theological. And not after Christ. In other words, Christ is sufficient. Don't let anybody say you must have Christ plus philosophy. Secondly, These errorists were suggesting that you not only needed Christ plus human wisdom to be spiritual, but you needed Christ plus legalism.
Verse 16. He says again, let no man therefore judge you in food or drink or in respect of a feast day, a new moon, or a Sabbath. In other words, don't let anybody evaluate your spirituality on the basis of the rituals that you keep. Because in verse 17, those are a shadow of the things to come. But that which is to come is Christ, and He is here.
So it isn't Christ plus philosophy, and it isn't Christ plus legalism. Thirdly, The errorists facing the Colossian church were saying that it was Christ plus mystical experiences. Mysticism. Look at verse 18. He further says, Don't let these false teachers beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility, really means a false humility, that comes from worshiping angels and having visions.
The Greek text says, intruding into things which he hath seen. The word not should not be there.
Now, there are some people who say, well, it's not enough to have Christ. You've got to have a vision. You've got to talk to an angel. You've got to have a deeper experience, a far-out experience, a heavenly vision. And it gives them a sense of false humility that really turns out, according to the end of verse 18, to be a puffed-up, fleshly mind.
And then fourthly, he says there's even asceticism. Then he talks about that from verse 20 to 23. The people, the kind of earthly religion, the rudiments of the world again, that same phrase, meaning the basics of human religion, which say touch not, taste not, handle not. And it goes on to talk about the fact that you neglect the body at the end of verse 23 and so forth. And here is like flagellation and anything you do to deprive your body.
This is. asceticism, monkish kind of life, monastic, self-denial, deprivation. But the point is this: there have always been, since Colossians 2 and all through the church, and there always will be, people who want to say that having Jesus Christ through his marvelous act of salvation is not enough. You've got to do this to get it all. And the answer of the Apostle Paul to that is: don't let anybody mess up your mind with that kind of stuff.
And the key to the whole thing is in 2, 9, and 10 of Colossians. This is what he says: For in him, and the hymn modifies Christ in verse 8, in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Is there anything missing in Christ? Is there? Yeah.
There is nothing missing in Christ. Verse 10, and ye are what? Complete in Him.
Now the essence of what Paul is saying is this, you don't need anything else. You don't need anything else. It's done. It's taken. It's already settled.
You have been buried with Him in baptism. You have been raised with Him from the dead. You're complete in Christ. That is the doctrine of salvation that the New Testament teaches. Beloved, There is no reason to chase something more.
It's not a question of finding something more. It's just a question of using the available resources already resident in the believer in Christ. That's the issue. And that's what Paul is saying in Ephesians 1. Let's go back to it.
Now in verses 3 through 14 of Ephesians 1. Paul has very carefully outlined the believers' resources and position in Christ. He has told us who we are and what we possess, and there's nothing missing. In fact, in verse 3, it starts out making that clear because it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with what? All spiritual blessings.
Past tense, done. He has already done it in Christ.
Now, after presenting all of the great truths of our position in Christ, our resources in Christ through verse 14, he stops in verse 15 and he begins to pray that the reader will understand the reality of what he's just said because it's beyond the human mind to conceive. And that's why in Acts 6 it says that a good man of God gives himself to the study of the word and prayer. He studies the word to teach the truths to his people, and he prays that God will release his spirit to help them to understand it. Because the human mind can't comprehend it. Not even a regenerated human mind.
It must have a special work done in it by the Spirit of God. And that's why 1 John 2:27 says, God has given us an anointing. And that anointing is the Spirit of God who teaches us all these things so that we don't depend on what man teaches. Even the best of men. And so Paul stops after this great statement of position and resource and says, I pray for you that God would grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
That's what He says in verse 17. That you would understand these things. Beloved, I'm telling you this. I'll say it all my life till I die. You will never be able to live out principles you do not understand.
God wants you to learn the truths, and the Spirit is the teacher who takes the Word of God and makes it live. In your understanding. And so Paul stops his message and starts his prayer in verse 15. Wherefore, let's look at it. I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all saints, ceased not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.
And what do I pray for you? That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Stop right there. I'm praying for you, he says.
I'm not praying for anything more than I'm praying for this, that you would just be able to understand. And I'm asking God to release the Holy Spirit to work on your human spirit to produce a spirit of wisdom. A spirit of revelation in the knowledge of him. This is a work of the Holy Spirit. Look with me at 1 Corinthians chapter 1.
two, for just a moment. First Corinthians chapter two And in verse 9, it says this. But as it is written, and he quotes out of Isaiah here. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. In other words, this is not available.
To human perception externally. You can't see it, you can't hear it. Neither has it entered the heart of man. It isn't even available to intuition. You can't even know it rationally.
The things which God has prepared for them that love Him. Listen, the things that God has given to us in Christ are beyond the human mind to think and beyond the human sight and sound to hear and touch and see. See, how do you get him? Verse 10, God has revealed them to us by his Spirit. But the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep.
things of God. That's the only way we'll ever know them. And so we have received, verse 12 says, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Listen to me. There are some people who want to tell us that when you become a Christian, you don't receive the Holy Spirit.
If that's true, you will never understand any of the principles you're supposed to be living. That's why Paul says in Romans 8:9, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he's none of his. All Christians possess the Spirit. He's the resonant truth teacher, the resonant anointer, the one who touches the mind to conceive the things that are beyond conception, humanly speaking. He is the only one, verse 11 says.
who knows the things of God. And so Paul prays, Oh God. May your spirit work on their human spirit to produce a spirit of understanding. That they may know what their position is. Beloved, I'm telling you, if we really ever get the grip on this, boy, it's life-changing.
I can only tell you, when this first came and dawned in my life, when the Spirit of God really, and He's still teaching me because I still am not there, but when I first began to realize what was mine in Christ, it literally changed my entire perspective in life. dramatically.
Now, Paul's got three things in mind that he wants us to understand. Three magnificent incomparable truths. One, that we would understand the greatness of his plan. 2. The greatness of his power.
3. The greatness of his person. There's no way that I could ever begin to even scratch the surface of these realities, and this will introduce it to you. You take it from there. First of all, Paul prays, Oh God.
May they understand the greatness of your plan. Your plan. for them. Verse 18. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
That's it. The calling before the world began, the hope after the world has ended, the whole plan is in that one verse. And he says, I pray that they would understand the plan. Boy, it's so important we know who we are and what God's prepared for us. Let's look at verse 18.
First phrase. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Now this introduces us to a very important thought. The word here in the Greek for understanding is the word cardios. From which we get Cardiac, the word means what?
Heart. Literally, the Greek says, the eyes of your heart being enlightened.
Now that's most interesting. The source of spiritual enlightenment is God. We know that in verse 15 to 17, because that's. Paul's prayer to God. He knows God is the source of this understanding.
The channel of that understanding to us is whom? The Holy Spirit. The object of it is at the end of verse 17: the knowledge of Him. Paul is saying, God, you do it through the Holy Spirit that they may have the knowledge of Him. that you may really know God.
And now here is the organ of that understanding. The source is God, the channel, the Spirit, the object that we may know Him, the organ of it, is the heart. It is the heart that must have understanding.
Now, we've got a problem with this term, so I have to explain it to you. Because for us, the heart refers to emotions. American culture has so designated the heart to refer to emotions. how we feel. But that is not the way the ancients looked at it, and that is not the way the Jews approached it at all.
Let me show you. The Jews spoke about feelings, not in terms of the heart, but by using the word splenkna, the Greek word, and the word translates bowels.
Okay.
Now we have a different significance for that word. We don't think of that word today. We don't say to our wife, I love you with all my bowels. That just, you know.
Something definitely missing. and such a designation. But that is precisely the way the Hebrews would have spoken, and that is why that word appears so very, very frequently in the Bible. Why? Because the Hebrew always associated feelings with his Basically, his organs right here in his stomach.
We say we have a gut feeling. When you get nervous, you get an upset stomach. You get pain and anxiety right here. You feel things here. This is the area feeling.
You don't feel in your heart, you feel here. And the Hebrews saw things that way. For example, in the Song of Solomon, when the bride and the bridegroom see one another, it says, My bowels were moved. In other words, there was a feeling of anticipation and excitement right in here. And it talks about that throughout the Old Testament.
Even in Psalm 22, Christ is dying on the cross, and he talks about his bowels suffering agony and pain. And in Lamentations 2:11, when Jeremiah is crying over the destruction of his people, it says that he hurts in his inward organs, right in here in the bowels. It even uses the word liver. My liver is distressed. Because this is where they feel it.
And in 1 John 3:17, even in the New Testament, it says: if you see somebody who has need, how could you shut up your bowels of compassion? See, they felt it right here in the stomach. And the heart, you see, to the Hebrew mind, did not mean feeling, it meant thinking. Thinking. That's why the word cardias can be translated either heart or understanding.
As a man thinketh in his what? Heart, so is he. Out of the abundance of the Heart, what? The mouth speaks. The heart is the thinking process.
The heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked, and who can know it? It's the thinking, it's the will, the thinking, the understanding part. And that's true all through the scripture.
So Watch this. The organ of comprehension for the believer is the thinking process, not the emotions. God is not trying to appeal to the emotion. He's trying to appeal to the mind and the will and the thinking, and that's what the term cardios means. Christianity is not designed to appeal to the emotions.
Emotions are designed to do this. They are to respond to the mind. And when your emotions get in front of your mind, you're going to run wild. And any brand of Christianity that appeals at the emotional level and bypasses the mind is only asking for trouble. Because it generates responses apart from truth.
Let me give you an illustration. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 6. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 11. O ye Corinthians.
Sort of a sighing introduction there. Our speech to you is candid. Our heart is wide open. He says, I got an open mind before using the word mind. My mind is so open to you.
Oh, everything that's in my mind to say to you, my will, all that I know, I want to convey to you. But look to verse 13. I speak as unto my children in fair exchange, he says, Open wide your mind to us. In other words, hey, I got some things I want to teach you, and we need to get our minds together on this thing. There needs to be some learning, some understanding, but you've got something in the way, and that's verse 12 in the middle.
On our part, there's no constraint, but there is constraint in your bowels. Splank knot. He's saying, I can't take God's truth from my mind and give it to your mind because your emotions are in the way. Literally, the Greek says, they were tightened in their bowels. We would say today they were emotionally uptight.
And you see what he's saying? The work of God in the lives of the Corinthians is hindered because they have their emotions in the way of the truth. Whenever you put your feelings in front of God's truth. You short-circuit the truth. and emotion will run wild.
The heart comes first.
So I'm just pointing out that when Ephesians 1 says, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, it means exactly what it says. It's talking about the understanding of the thinking process. Paul prays, oh God. May their minds Know these things. It's so important.
Let's bow together. My prayer, Father, for these people and for myself as well. is not that we would find something more. That's Foolish, there is nothing more. but that we would understand the everything we already have.
And I pray with the Apostle Paul, O God, May there's these dear people. Your people. Called by your name. redeemed by your blood. Indwell by your Spirit.
May these people have the spirit of wisdom. The Spirit of Revelation. in the knowledge of your Son. that they may live with confidence. that they may live with power.
that they may live with a secure faith, that literally transforms their life to the praise of your glory. We offer ourselves. As an act of worship. to you. to so live, that you are made manifest through us.
and receive all the glory. In Jesus' name. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current series is showing you why, if you're a Christian, you have treasure beyond compare. It's titled Richer Than You Think.
Well, something John pointed out today: people have always wanted to add to the work of Christ. that was true even in a church taught by the Apostle Paul himself.
Now, if a church with such great leadership and teaching had such serious problems, you might wonder: is that cause for discouragement? or a cause for encouragement? Here's how John answered that question.
Well, I think it's a motivation for work. Look, I'm a pastor of a church. I can look at my congregation and I can see some who are mature, faithful, strong in the Lord. Useful diligent, disciplined, living godly lives, proclaiming the gospel, and then you can back up from those folks and you can find people at all levels of the process. brand new baby Christians struggling to grasp the foundations of the faith, struggling to overcome the sins of the past, struggling to clear their mind of the vivid evil memories.
Battling to yield to the Word of God and the Spirit of God. And that's what ministry is. It's all about people in process. It's all about longing that Christ would fully be formed in them. that they would come to the fulness of the stature or the measure of Christ.
You know, um We want to see people grow, and they grow based on the Word of God. Let me give you the best tool that we have to offer. the New Testament Commentary Series. And the next best would be the MacArthur Study Bible. and you will find a wealth of material that'll move you along the path.
That's right, friend. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series and the MacArthur Study Bible are great resources for pastors, Sunday school teachers, really anyone who wants to dive deeper into God's Word. To get these study tools, contact us today. Call 8005 GRACE or visit our website gty.org. Each volume in the MacArthur New Testament commentary series costs $19 and shipping is free.
And if you want to complete your collection at once and purchase the entire MacArthur New Testament commentary series, there are 33 volumes in this set and if you buy them all you'll receive a discount on each volume. And for the MacArthur Study Bible, it comes in the New King James, New American Standard, and English Standard and Legacy Standard versions. And whatever version you get, there are 25,000 footnotes that explain each portion of the Bible, helping you know what Scripture means by what it says. Again, to order the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series and the MacArthur Study Bible, call 855 Grace. And you can also order online at gty.org.
While you're at the website, remember you can download any of John's sermons for free. Our web address again, gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Join us tomorrow when John looks at what spiritual resources, if any, you are missing when you first become a Christian. Be here for the next half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
