There was a season of my life where I worked as a web developer for an agency based out of Kamloops. And while I was there I got to work with some amazingly talented people. One in particular always stands out to me; her name was Lea, and she was one of the greatest designers I have ever had the privilege to work with. Now, she and I improved things over time, but suffice it to say that when I started there, our tools… needed improvement. This deficiency led to a lot of “eyeballing it” and doing things by hand that machines could—and eventually would—be doing for us.
Because she did design and I wrote code, it was customary for her to take the first look at my work before I sent it over to QA for full testing. And the sheer number of times that Lea would send back scathing notes! Even when I was confident I had nailed it, she would call me over to her side of the desk clump to ask, “Conrad—no offence—but are you colourblind?” It was nothing short of embarrassing. And it would always be these teeny, tiny little differences—often in shades of gray.
And so I thought it might be fun to see how you all might do in such a scenario. So we’re going to play a little game. I will show you a slide with somewhere between 1–4 shades of gray and you all have to guess, and we’ll see how you do.
[Go through the slides asking for a show of hands and revealing the answers. When you get to the final test, do not reveal the answer. That will be revealed at the end, so let’s put it in our POCKET.]
Reading of the Text
We’re going to continue our study in Ephesians this morning, picking up in chapter 1 and verse 4:
Ephesians 1:4–6
4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will,
6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Prayer for Illumination
Father, as we open Your Word, open our eyes. Let Your Spirit give us clarity where life feels gray, humility where pride resists, and joy where fear has settled in. Show us Christ in this text—Your plan, Your heart, Your grace—and shape us into a people who hear and obey. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Exposition of Verse 4 — Chosen: The How, When, Why, and Heart
Again, verse 4 says:
4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
“Just as” comes off the heels of Paul saying that God the Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. And so Paul goes on to highlight some of the most important blessings we have received.
For example, He chose us. He—being God the Father—chose us. But what, exactly, did He choose?
- He chose us in Christ—this shows us the how.
- He chose us before the foundation of the world—this shows us the when.
- He chose us to be holy and blameless before Him—this shows us the why.
- He chose us in love—this shows us His heart.
Let’s take a few moments to unpack the how, when, why, and heart of God’s choice—and then we’ll consider why these truths matter so deeply for us today.
“In Christ” — The How
What does it mean that God chose us “in Christ”? That little word “in” means “by way of.” Remember last week when we said that Christ is the conduit through which the blessings of the Father flow? This is that same truth. This is the “how” of God’s choice. Because Jesus took the penalty for sin and died in the place of all who would put their faith in Him, those people are now counted among the chosen. In doing so, Jesus broke down every barrier of contention, discord, and hostility that once stood between us and God—so that we could stand, unhindered, in His presence.
“Before the Foundation of the World” — The When
And when did God choose us? Before the foundation of the world. We’ll talk more about that in the next verse, but here’s Paul’s main point: we had absolutely no influence on God’s choosing. Long before the first human drew breath, before the first plant broke through the soil, before light was separated from darkness—even before darkness hovered over the formless deep of Genesis 1:1—God had already formed His plan: a plan that is righteous, just, true, and pure—untouched by human interference and untainted by human failure.
“To Be Holy and Blameless” — The Why
And why did God choose us—for what purpose? To be holy and blameless before Him! Here is the truth: one day each of us will stand before our Creator to be judged. And without Jesus’ sacrifice to erase our sin, we will be guilty and separated from every good and perfect thing for all eternity. Because in order to even exist in the presence of God we must be holy—set apart totally for God and His purposes—and we must be blameless—perfect without the smallest mark or scar or stain.
The bad news? We can’t do anything about this. Unless… is anyone here perfect? If you raised your hand, you just disqualified yourself: pride. But there’s good news! Jesus has us covered! This is a doctrine—a fancy word for belief—that we call sanctification, which means “made pure” or “made holy.”
Sanctification — Status and Process
Sanctification is both a status and a process. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we already stand before God as holy and pure. If I died right now, God wouldn’t see me—He would see Christ in me.
But does that mean we can live however we want? No! Since the Holy Spirit lives within us, we should never be content with where we are. Every day should move us closer to Jesus—following His lead, reflecting His character, becoming more like Him.
If we truly believe that His love, joy, and peace are life’s greatest good, then we should want as much of them as possible. We know perfection is out of reach—that’s why we need Jesus—but we still strive toward it, pressing forward to become clearer reflections of His image.
And sanctification isn’t just personal—it’s missional. If we believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life, then our lives should point others toward Him. People should look at us and see something different—something that makes them ask why.
Ultimately, we pursue holiness not for pragmatism but for love. Because this is God’s heart for us—and our only right response to His love is to love Him back.
Exposition of Verse 5 — Destined for Adoption
That love at the end of verse four informs God’s choice there, but also informs His plan in verse 5. The Apostle Paul writes:
5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will,
“He destined us.” That phrase carries the idea of being predestined—and for many Christians it immediately lights up words like Calvinism, Arminianism, Providence, Sovereignty, and Election.
I’ll be honest—that was my first instinct too. It’s what I planned to focus on this week. But the more I read, the more convinced I am that Paul isn’t centering this sentence on destined at all, but on the phrase “through Jesus Christ.”
Understanding election matters. It shapes how we see God’s grace. But that’s not Paul’s spotlight here. Our problem is that we tend to read this passage through twenty-first-century, Western, individualistic eyes. When we see “us,” we picture a crowd of me’s—a collection of personal salvations. But Paul’s readers in Ephesus would’ve heard it very differently. They weren’t rugged individualists. They were communal thinkers.
When they heard “He chose us,” they thought the people of God. The Church. The Bride of Christ. One body, not a thousand isolated stories.
So Paul isn’t telling us who was chosen; he’s showing us when and how the plan was set in motion. Before light ever split the darkness, God had already conceived a plan to redeem a rebellious people.
And that plan would unfold through Jesus Christ—the Son through whom we would become sons and daughters. It’s not just rescue; it’s relationship. God didn’t simply want to pardon criminals; He wanted to adopt children.
Adoption Then and There
But adoption in Paul’s day? It was nothing like ours. When we think of adoption, we picture babies wrapped in blankets, new parents in happy tears. That’s our world.
In their world, it was something entirely different.
In Jewish culture, formal adoption didn’t really exist. There was no law to move a child into a new household. If tragedy struck, a relative stepped in—but that child stayed within the original family line. Heritage mattered, bloodlines mattered, inheritance mattered. That’s how they knew who they were.
But Ephesus wasn’t a Jewish city. It was a Roman city—a provincial capital, humming with imperial power. And in the Roman world, adoption was common among the wealthy and powerful—but not the way you think.
Nobody adopted babies. You can’t take that kind of risk. What if the kid grew up to be lazy or foolish or weak? No—in Rome, adoption usually happened when the candidate was a young man who had proven himself—strong, smart, disciplined, worthy of carrying the family name. Adoption wasn’t mercy; it was strategy.
Octavius to Augustus — The Famous Adoption
One of the most famous adoptions in history was Julius Caesar adopting his great-nephew, Octavius. Octavius wasn’t a toddler—he was nineteen years old. And here’s the kicker: Caesar was dead when it happened!
His will declared the adoption posthumously. And when that will was read, Octavius inherited Caesar’s name, his wealth, his power. And with that name, he rose to become Caesar Augustus—yes, that Caesar Augustus—the emperor from Luke chapter two!
The adopted son of a murdered ruler became the so-called son of a god.
And here’s where it gets wild: in Paul’s day, in Ephesus, there stood a temple dedicated to Augustus himself. The city literally worshiped the adopted son of Caesar as a divine being. The Ephesians knew that story backward and forward.
So when Paul says, “He destined us for adoption through Jesus Christ,” he is throwing a grenade into Roman theology. He’s flipping the entire imperial narrative on its head!
- Rome said: only the best, the brightest, the strongest, the most impressive young men could be adopted into glory.
- Paul says: God looked at a world of sinners and said, “I’ll take them.”
- Rome said: only the worthy earn the family name.
- Paul says: none of you are worthy—and God gave you His name anyway.
- Rome said: adoption is for a few.
- Paul says: adoption is for all who come through Jesus Christ.
Men, women, Jew, Gentile, slave, free—all included. Paul takes something that was exclusive for elites and opens the door to everyone to become heirs of not just a king and not just a god, but the King of kings and the Lord of lords! That’s more than rescue; that’s a revolution!
And why? Paul says, “according to the good pleasure of His will.” Because it made God happy to save you. It delighted Him. Not out of obligation. Not out of pity. Out of sheer joy and overflowing love.
As Peter wrote, “He is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).
This is the heartbeat behind Romans 8:28—that God is orchestrating all things toward our ultimate good. And what’s the greatest good? Eternal life with our Creator and Saviour.
God has arranged the world—time, history, opportunity—to bring the maximum number of people into His family without violating the freedom He gave us. And our choice is simple: to love God because He first loved us.
As those great philosophers of old—the Backstreet Boys—said, “I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me.”
As long as you love me. God desires both our love and our praise, which is an interesting concept. Let’s read our final verse for this morning and unpack it a little.
Exposition of Verse 6 — To the Praise of His Glorious Grace
6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
I think this raises a question that has been asked by people for years. One that I myself have asked in the past. Why does God want us to praise Him?
Is God insecure? Is He egotistical? Competitive? No. The truth of the matter is that praising God is mostly for our benefit. Yes, God deserves our praise, and yes, God is rightly due our praise, but He doesn’t want it for some kind of external validation—He designed us to flourish when we praise.
I want to explain how, but first let’s look at what Paul says God desires us to praise: His glorious grace that He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
What is “grace”? The Greek word is charis and it means “gift” or “favour.”
Grace is another word—like “gospel”—that we see as a mostly Christian word today. And that’s because the message of the Gospel of Christ and His gift of grace for our salvation changed the world. So it has become a Christian word, but not so back then. Christianity was in the habit of stealing words and concepts from the culture and radically redefining them. And grace is no different!
In the Roman Empire grace was the prerogative of the elites. It was offered not for the benefit of the receiver, but for the benefit of the giver. It’s not so different from modern politicians trying to buy our votes with new government programs on the left or tax cuts on the right: I’ll give you this thing you want, if you give me that thing I want. You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours.
I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like “grace” to me! That doesn’t sound like a gift either. I suppose you could say it’s a favour… in the mafia sense of the word! This ancient grace demanded something in return. It was not at all “freely bestowed.”
“Now hold on a minute, Pastor,” I hear you object, “doesn’t God demand our loyalty? Doesn’t this very verse say that He desires our praise? How is this different?” That is a very perceptive question! And there are two critical distinctions, one on the part of the giver and the other on the part of the receiver.
1) In the Roman Empire the giver’s motive was strategic—to secure influence, reputation, and reciprocal loyalty. What’s in it for me? God is different. His motive is to bring us to salvation, to rescue, to bring us into a loving, family relationship with Him.
2) In the Roman Empire the recipient had to be qualified; a worthy person of some status who had the ability and capacity to reciprocate. The first question by the giver was, “Are you good enough for my gift?” God—again—is different. He doesn’t care about our status or ability or capacity, and He already knows that we are not worthy. The only question asked by God is, “Will you let Me save you?”
And that simple question redefined grace forever. And now grace—a grace that shattered the whole Roman system of calculated giving—redefines us every single day. And that is something for which God deserves our praise.
Why Praise Benefits Us — Three Effects
That said, we still need to answer the question, “Why does God want us to praise Him?” God deserves our praise, but He doesn’t want it as some kind of quid pro quo transaction—He isn’t trading grace for praise. Church, hear me when I say this: Praising the Lord is for our benefit, not His!
How does praising God benefit us? So glad you asked! There might be more reasons we could think of, but these are the three that came to me while I was in study and prayer this week.
1) Praise shifts our Perspective — from problem to Presence.
In Psalm 73 Asaph writes:
But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.
The worry and fear and frustration and anxiety that our problems bring can become overwhelming, but a quick prayer of gratitude and a moment of praise for who God is and what He has done eviscerates the dominance of anxiety and re-calibrates our hearts on God’s power and purpose and plan.
Friday evening Kelly and I got some worrying news about a repair issue on the house we are supposed to close on this Wednesday! So stressful! And we let that stress have its way with us. But Saturday morning when we went for a walk, we agreed that we should take a moment and pray and thank God for His faithfulness and how He has so consistently taken care of us. Then we talked to a trade about getting the work done and—you won’t believe this—they asked for the address of the work, and they told us they had already completed the work and that the seller had paid for it! Praise the Lord!
And our moment of simple praise re-calibrated our perspective so that we could have peace about an outcome that God had already taken care of! No matter how big your problem is, I promise you our God is bigger.
2) Praise re-orders our Priorities — curing disordered loves.
Augustine of Hippo talked about “disordered loves” this way:
Living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order.
Who here has heard the saying that “familiarity breeds contempt”? The idea is that overexposure to a thing will drive us to hate that thing. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon.
But growing up, my mother would always say, “familiarity breeds fondness.” The idea here is that the things that we most expose ourselves to will become the things we love the most. And this is also a well-known psychological phenomenon!
This might have you scratching your head and thinking… wait… so the exact same input can result in two nearly opposite outcomes? How does that work?
There is one key factor: affection. Emotion. Love.
Don’t miss this: the difference between contempt and fondness is affection. If you “go to church” but don’t actually love the Lord then you are setting yourself up for overexposure, apathy, and eventually contempt. This will lead you out of these walls to chase Riches, Recognition, and Relationship that will ultimately destroy you.
Praise is the affection that breeds fondness and leads us deeper into the love that saves us.
3) Praise gives us Pleasure — joy that follows, not precedes.
See, we often get it twisted and we start thinking that the joy of the Lord leads us to praise. That is exactly backwards! The joy of the Lord comes from praise.
When we open the blinds in the morning we don’t create the sun! It was always there; we just removed what was blocking its effects from coming into our home!
In the same way, praise increases our peace, hope, and resilience—it changes our emotional chemistry by opening our soul to God’s presence! It allows the joy of the Lord to flood our hearts and spill out of our lives. It gives us a pleasure no earthly counterfeit can match!
Praising God gives us Perspective, rightly orders our Priorities, and offers a Pleasure that sustains us in the valley.
Bringing the Gray Back Out of Our Pocket — Discernment and the Call
If we look back at this passage, we can see how holiness shows us what is right, how adoption shows us where we belong, and how praise keeps our hearts correctly aligned. Like a camera lens shrply focused on it’s subject, this framework allows us to see every fine detail of God’s truth with clarity.
And this brings us back to the gray game we put in our pocket at the beginning. How many shades of gray are on this slide? There are two. I can see it clear as day. And all those years I spent being held to an incredible standard of precision have paid off. I can see and even feel aesthetics and colour and texture in a way I was blind to before.
It reminds me of the 1984 film The Karate Kid. You remember Daniel goes to Mr. Miyagi for training in karate, but what does Miyagi do? “Wax on. Wax off.” “Paint the fence. Up. Down. Up. Down.” Eventually Daniel blows his top and yells at the old man, “You never taught me! You told me to wax on, wax off, paint the fence… you never taught me!” Then Miyagi says, “Show me ‘wax on,’” and proceeds to throw a punch at the young man’s face. Daniel uses the muscle memory from all of these seemingly innocuous chores to defend himself from every attack by Mr. Miyagi. He had been training the whole time.
It’s the same with the shades of gray I spent years being chastised about. I was actually learning design by trying to decipher those microtones.
And it’s the same with Christian discernment. Church—God is goodness and light; the world is evil and dark. Most of what we see every day—what we buy, watch, click, or vote for—lives somewhere in the gray. Not one of these things is God, and not one is Satan.
The truth is, discernment isn’t something you switch on—it’s something you train. Just like Daniel didn’t realize he was learning karate while waxing a car, we don’t always see that holiness, adoption, and praise are God’s way of training our spiritual senses. Every time we say no to sin and yes to obedience, every time we rest in the security of our adoption instead of chasing approval, every time we choose praise instead of panic—we’re sharpening our vision. We’re learning to tell light from darkness, truth from almost-truth.
So as Christians, when we’re presented with choices, we need to discern which one draws us closer to God and which one draws us farther from Him. If you’re choosing between charcoal and ivory—that’s clear. But if it’s between Cultured Gray and White Smoke? You’d better be praised up, close to the heart of your Father, and listening for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
So Church, the question isn’t actually whether you can tell gray from gray. The question is: Are you walking in the light? Because every next step needs to draw us closer to Jesus. That choice God made to make us holy and blameless happens “in Christ.” And the destiny God gave us to be adopted also happens “in Christ.” And the grace He freely bestowed? Yep, also “in Christ.” And if all that happened “in Christ,” then we had better be “in Christ” as well!
If you are here today and you do not know Jesus, please, please come talk to me before you leave today. I would be thrilled to introduce you.
For those of us who call ourselves Christians? Let’s practice praise until we can wield it like an Old West gunslinger. And we’ll start right now by worshipping our God in song and asking Him to draw us tightly to His heart.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for Your plan that chose us, Your love that adopted us, and Your grace that teaches our hearts to praise. Sharpen our discernment in a world of gray. Guard our steps, align our loves, and fill us with the joy that flows from Your presence. For those who don’t yet know Jesus, draw them today. For those who do, make us a praising, holy, and courageous people. We offer our songs and our lives to You now. In Jesus’ name, amen.