Ephesians 1:7 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ephesians 1:7

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This is a very costly adoption. Adoption even in the world costs you something. It costs you money, you have got to provide for an adopted child. It costs you emotional energy and love and affection and care and attention. Adoption is a very costly business.‘Redemption’, what a word! I was a slave. I had to be bought out of slavery, redeemed. I was a prisoner. I had to be purchased – in olden times under some circumstances you could purchase the release of a prisoner. A debtor, being delivered from the consequences of my debt. It is a very costly redemption. Christ came, my life was bought and acquired by him. Redemption through his blood, his suffering and death on Calvary. And the first thing he does when he adopts this waif and stray is to wash us clean from our sins, to bring us in to the family and to give us a bath and to give us new clothing, a new character, a new nature, a new disposition, a new outlook. It is all there in the analogy of adoption. The ransom price is the riches of his grace. Christ weighed it up and declared himself ready to pay it before the foundation of the world. A wonderful passage that we often read at the Lord’s table, 1 Peter 1:18 – ‘For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.’

Application

This is a realised childhood you are adopted into. You are conscious of being children of the Most High God. We read in Romans 8:15, ‘For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’ We know our Father. There is intimacy there. ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’ And we are assured of salvation. We could go on and read verse 17 about being heirs of God and having an inheritance. Galatians 4:4 makes precisely the same point, ‘When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.’ Listen to this: ‘That we might receive the adoption of sons,’ and daughters. ‘And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son, into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’ Not a servant, declares the apostle, but a son and an heir. These are tremendous things. This is a realised childhood. ‘To them that received him,’ says John, ‘gave he power,’ right, entitlement, ‘to become the sons of God.’ It is a felt sonship, daughterhood.

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Ephesians 1:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of Ephesians 1:7