Well, if you will take your copy of the Scriptures and if you're able, stand with me as we turn to the letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 3 today. Our sermon text is really one verse, verse 12, but I'm going to be reading verses 8 through 12 for the context. Some of you were at the recent breakfast where our brother Ryan led us in a study of Ephesians 3. That was very edifying, and I want to build on some of his good work this morning by diving deeper into verse 12 with you today. Hear now God's Word from Ephesians 3, beginning at verse 8. To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him." Congregation, this is the Word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated. Well, Paul's letter to the Ephesians is a brilliant work that has fascinated Christians ever since it was first penned 2,000 years ago. We have argued in previous studies that Ephesians is the most theologically dense of all of Paul's letters. And that comment often gets kind of a sideways glance, a second look. Didn't you mean to say Romans? But I would argue that no, in fact, as wonderful and as theologically profound as Paul's letter to the Romans is, Ephesians is even more compact, even more concentrated in the theology that it presents every line, every phrase, is pregnant with theological implications. And indeed, the theology of this letter, and especially of the first three chapters of it, is so profound that we could never explore the entirety of it if we had many lifetimes to do so. I believe that the presentation that Paul makes in this letter to the Ephesian church, the way that he treats salvation in terms of union with Christ, that all of the blessings and benefits of salvation are found in Christ and that we are hidden with Christ in God, that is a helpful perspective for correcting our too often narrow and myopic vision of the gospel. Many evangelical Christians, even many Reformed Christians, think of the Gospel and of salvation only in terms, or primarily in terms, of what Jesus has done for us, and the benefits that we receive from Him. And of course, there are many things that Jesus has done for us, and many blessings that we receive from Him, but Paul's presentation in Ephesians makes it clear that is not the center of the Gospel. It is not the sum and substance of the Gospel. Rather, Christ Himself is. Salvation is not merely a transaction. And yet that's often how we think about and even sometimes present the Gospel in an evangelistic context. We'll say God is holy, and you are a sinner, but Jesus died for your sins so that if you believe in Him, your sins will be forgiven and you'll go to heaven when you die. And every part of that presentation is true, And yet it is not the way that the Bible presents the Gospel at any point. It doesn't describe God's work and gift of salvation in that way. It is a presentation that while factually accurate, is nonetheless reductionistic and simplistic. It is a reduction of this far more organic and covenantal and relational work that God has revealed, this work of salvation that He has revealed in the story of human history. And yet we might say, so what? So what if the Gospel summary that is popular and familiar to us all, as long as it's true, so what if it doesn't really plumb the depths of the theological riches of the New Testament? Why not simply be content? Why not simply let the gospel stand as it is, as many of us have heard it? But I think there are several reasons to go beyond just that bare presentation. First of all, it not only fails to reveal the greater grandeur of God's glorious grace, I think in many ways it obscures it. Because when you hear the Gospel and you believe the Gospel in merely a transactional way, at a transactional level, you're thinking primarily about yourself and what God has done for you. We might think little of what God has actually accomplished and doing in us by His Son and through His Spirit, because we only think about what we get out of it. Secondly, I think this characterization of the gospel tends to repackage God's revelation in man-centered terms. The gospel comes more about my condition. I'm a sinner, and I need salvation, and now I am looking for that salvation wherever I can find it. And of course, I have to cooperate. God has his part, but I have my part, and I need to be sure that I have done my part. And if we work together, then we will be able to accomplish the salvation that I desire. It's as if we simply feed people the facts and then point them to a response. Well, there is a response to make to the gospel, but the gospel is hardly just a how-to-get-saved instructional. It's not a recipe that we're supposed to take into the kitchen and follow the steps and out pops heaven at the end of your life. Instead, the Bible presents the gospel as a proclamation about the King. as a declaration about what God has done in Christ to redeem and rescue and recreate a new people. To make the two groups, the Jews and the Gentiles, one in Christ. To create a new humanity. And that new humanity composed of people from every tribe and tongue and nation and language. The gospel is not about me. And it's not about what I can do to get to heaven. It is ultimately about Christ. It's about God's sovereign, righteous Son. And yes, part of the work of God's Son is to redeem a people, and that includes you and me. But the focus always needs to be upon the King. Now today what I want to do is highlight Paul's statement in Ephesians 3.12 and suggest that this means more than many of you might have realized. And that's due in part to the way that this verse is translated in most of your Bibles. But this is not just a translation issue. I want to talk to you some about theological presuppositions, because the truth is, every Reformed theologian knows everything that I'm about to show you in the text, and yet most theologians, most Reformed theologians at least, are going to still defend the reading, the translation that you have in your Bibles in front of you, not so much on textual grounds, but more on broader theological grounds. Because the reality is, all of us read the Scriptures through a theological lens. That's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. You can't read any other way. Everything that you read is based upon what you already know. But I want to argue that the way that many people read Ephesians 3 and verse 12 reflects a more man-centered conception of the gospel than a Christ-centered conception, as I think Paul is presenting throughout this letter. Now before we dive into the study, I need to offer some important qualifications and disclaimers, lest my words be taken in ways or to an extent that are not intended. And you've seen over the last few years how brilliantly these kind of qualifications have worked for us. First of all, this is not a theological or academic lecture. It's a sermon that is meant to edify and encourage you as the people of God. And so, we are inevitably going to simplify some of the conversation that could be had. If we were talking to a room of seminary students, if we were talking to a room of people, that could work exegetically in the Greek text, then there's more of the conversation that we might have. We are touching upon a big conversation in New Testament studies, in New Testament scholarship, and there is a lot of that debate that we're going to simply leave out today. But I want you to know that we're leaving it out on purpose. We're not unaware of the broader conversation, but it just doesn't suit the purpose of a sermon on the Lord's Day. A second, I want to say that I happily and wholeheartedly subscribe to and affirm the Reformed confessions, including their statements on justification by faith alone, which is really not what we're talking about today, but I'm going to have to say this anyway. I've taught those doctrines carefully and repeatedly over many years here. I haven't changed my mind about any of those things, and so nothing that I'm about to say should be taken as a departure from or a correction to any of those confessional summaries. Third, I'll be claiming that the grammar in Ephesians 3.12 has an ambiguity in it that is rarely recognized in popular English translations, and that there might be another way, a better way, to translate what Paul is saying here. But that is not a claim that your Bible is in any way defective or wrong or incapable of being understood. And it's not to suggest that you have to be able to read Greek to know what the Bible actually says. It's not a claim to suggest that I think I know Greek better than the many translators who've worked on the passage. I'm sure I don't. But while the way the verse is translated in your Bibles is true, it's accurate, it's perfectly acceptable, I believe that Paul regularly, in his letters actually, uses intentional ambiguities to show you a broader point. And that's what I want to try to do today. And fourth and finally, As I'm suggesting another way of looking at this phrase here in Ephesians 3 and a couple of other passages, I'm not trying to settle the larger conversation about how to understand this kind of phrase everywhere that it occurs, because literature is not math. In math, 2 plus 2 always equals 4. But literature doesn't work that way. Language uses the same words and phrases different ways in different contexts. And I think that sometimes the ambiguity that we find in the scriptures is there on purpose because the same phrase might be taken in more than one way that would be true and that would be faithful to all that the scriptures have to teach us. So while I'm going to commend a reading in Ephesians 3.12 that suggests Paul is talking about Christ's faith and faithfulness, not yours, that is not to suggest that your faith doesn't have any connection to your union with Christ. Because obviously it does. We're united to Jesus through faith. What Paul says in Ephesians 3.12 is beautiful and powerful and seemingly straightforward. You might wonder, why in the world are we spending an entire lesson on one verse of the Bible that a third grader could read and understand? "...in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him." The whom at the beginning of that verse is our Lord Jesus Christ you see in verse 11. So it's in Christ that we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him. Yes and amen. Yes and amen. That's absolutely true, but I think there's more to say. I don't want to sound disrespectful when I say that this phrase might seem a little bit clunky to you. Did you notice that as we read it? In Christ we have boldness and confident access through trusting in Christ. Well, I mean, that's true, but it does seem a little bit clunky, doesn't it? In Christ, we have boldness and access through faith in Christ. But this is Paul, and we're accustomed to this kind of clunkiness. He writes a lot of long, drawn-out, somewhat clunky sentences. But there is more to see. Most modern Protestant English translations will render the verse in the very same way, and you'll have one of these variations sitting in front of you almost certainly. The English Standard Version says, "...in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him." The New American Standard, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. The Christian Standard Bible says, in Him we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. And the NIV says, in Him, and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. But some of you might have another reading, especially if you've got the old King James in your lap right now, because in the King James Bible, this verse is translated, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him. And you might not have noticed that difference, but it's rather significant. By the faith of him. And that's actually a much more literal translation of the underlying text. Similarly, the International Standard Version renders it that way. "...in whom we have boldness and confident access through His faithfulness." The Net Bible, which is a more modern English translation of the text. "...in whom we have boldness and confident access to God because of Christ's faithfulness." Or Young's literal translation, "...in whom we have the freedom and the access and confidence through the faith of him." Now you might ask, what's going on here? The difference is based on how translators interpret the last few words in the sentence. There's not any textual variation in the manuscripts here. This is not an issue of text criticism. It's simply a question of how you understand the last clause in this line. Is it an objective genitive, through faith in him, or a subjective genitive, through the faith of him? Now Paul is saying something here that would be true either way that you take it. And so there are some scholars who will say, that's the whole point. We are not going to try to settle this question. You could read it either way, and it's absolutely true in either case. And yes, indeed, we would admit as much. But I want to suggest that there's a particular way of reading this verse that agrees really well with the context of the letter. Now, it's not necessary to know Greek to understand today's lesson, but I do think a summary of some of the grammar that I'm going to refer to would be helpful here. In English, the function of a word is determined by where it appears in the sentence. Everybody remembers that, hopefully, from elementary school. And if you didn't get it in elementary school, hopefully you got it by junior high. But in Greek, the function of a word is determined by how it's spelled. The words can be in a number of different orders, and sometimes that order reflects emphasis, or there might be other reasons that the order is arranged in different ways, but it's the spelling of the word that actually indicates the role that the word is playing in a particular sentence. And that's because Greek is an inflected language. Now, most languages are inflected at some level, but Greek is a highly inflected language, kind of like Latin. And so when we're talking about nouns and adjectives in Greek, we're thinking normally about five cases. Or if you took Greek a long time ago, you might have learned eight cases, but five cases normally. The vocative, which is the case of address. The nominative, which is your subject. The dative, which can function like an indirect object in a few different ways. The accusative, which is your direct object. And then this case that we're dealing with today, the genitive. And the genitive is by far the most complicated case in Greek. It's used in so many different ways in your New Testament and in the Greek Old Testament. It's used to show possession, or origin, or to describe relationships of various kinds. But basically, the genitive case in Greek is used to describe something. Now what's interesting, when you study New Testament Greek, you will have all of these books that describe many, many different kinds of genitives. One of the standard tools that I have lists 27 different kinds of genitives in the New Testament. You might say, 27 different kinds? How does anybody ever learn that? But what you have to know is that every single one of those words is spelled exactly the same way. Because those different kinds are just descriptions of the ways that the very same word functions. The very same word with the very same spelling might be used in many, many different ways depending on where it appears in a sentence or in a particular paragraph. The key issue here is that you cannot know what kind of genitive. This is, simply by looking at the text. You have to read it in its context. So here at the end of Ephesians 3.12, you have four words in Greek. You've got the preposition, thea, then the noun faith or faithfulness with the article, tis pistios, and then a singular masculine pronoun, aftou, which means of him or his. Now the article, faith, and pronoun are all in this same genitive case. And if we translate it in the most basic word-for-word way, we would simply have, through the faith of him. Or you could say, through his faith. But that's not what is in most of your Bibles. And again, that doesn't mean your Bible is wrong. But it's not what's in most of your Bibles. Because most of you, as you're reading Ephesians 3.12, you're looking at that text and you're saying, it's obviously through my faith. I have boldness and access with confidence through my faith. Well, you do. That would be true. But is Paul pointing to something more substantial? Now, many New Testament scholars debate how to translate this passage, but many of them end up where you see your own Bible landing. And that's because they're interpreting the phrase. They're interpreting the phrase, in this case, as an objective genitive. They're saying that the genitive is indicating that this faith is related to Christ. Christ is the object of that faith. So it is faith in Him, not the faith of Him. And you might say, well isn't that wrong for someone to interpret the passage when they're translating it? The reality is, as you know if you've ever studied a second language to any degree of competence, you can't translate anything without interpreting. It's not possible. Literature is not math. And so it's not simply a matter of exchanging one word in this language for another word in another language. You have to read the text and understand what is it saying and then decide how do we most literally, most accurately, most faithfully render that in another language. And so interpretation is a part of every translation. No matter how careful you are, you can't avoid it. And that's because words don't have meaning. Words have semantic range. If you look up a word in a dictionary, you don't see what the word means. You see a list of what the word could mean. And you say, how do I decide? This particular word could mean six or seven or eight different things. How do you know which one is the correct meaning? You know it based upon the context. Again, hopefully you learned this in junior high. If you didn't, you're learning it today. Words don't have meaning. Words have semantic range. Terms have meaning. A term is a word in context. So when you're reading the terms in Ephesians 3.12, what exactly is Paul saying? How are you going to know? You're going to have to look at the context. And so let's do that. There's no question that we have boldness and confident access through trusting in Christ. That should be obvious. It's taught in so many places in your Bible that I hope I don't need to convince you of that. But is that what Paul is saying here? If he says it here, great! Wonderful! We can always use another proof text. But is it possible that he's making a different point? Is it my faith in Christ, or is it Christ's faith and faithfulness that is the means by which I gain access to God? Now again, maybe Paul is being deliberately ambiguous because both of the statements are true, but I don't get access to God if I don't believe in Christ. But even if I believe in Christ, I wouldn't get access to God unless something else had happened first. And you know this because you know that faith, no matter how great, in any other savior or mediator, is of no value or efficacy at all. If you're trusting in another Jesus, if you're trusting in another God, if you're trusting in yourself, it doesn't matter how confident you are, no matter how much you believe that that one you're trusting in can ultimately save you, if you're trusting in anyone or anything other than Christ, you won't be saved. All the faith in the world will not give me access unless Christ is first faithful to His Father's plan and provides redemption and atonement for me. And that is what Paul has been arguing since literally the very beginning of this letter. Look back at chapter 1 for just a minute. Notice how Paul begins extolling the glorious grace of God. I'm going to read a good bit of this. Blessed, verse 3 of chapter 1, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. Where's the emphasis in that opening paragraph? All of it is on what God has accomplished in Christ. What God has done in Christ. And He's chosen you, and He's adopted you, and He's predestinated you in Christ. But it's all grounded in and rests upon the work of Christ. Notice as he continues, "...in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him." In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory." Finally, verse 12, finally, what do we get? We get a reference to our believing in Jesus. Finally, we get to what I get to do. I get to believe in Jesus, and it's tacked on right at the end. And then he goes on. We who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory in Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory. Do you see what Paul's doing here? He's pointing to the fact that you believed in Jesus, but what is He pointing you to in terms of the assurance of your salvation? Not the strength of your faith. Not the consistency of your faith. Not the adequacy of your faith. But to the objective realities of Christ's work, and God's promises, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. What is the guarantee of our redemption? It's not our faith. It's the Holy Spirit who has come to dwell within us through faith. He'll say this a little later in the same section. Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints? And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe? According to the working of His mighty power, which He worked in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come." What does Paul say he is praying for here? He is praying for them to understand more deeply and more fully what Christ has accomplished on our behalf. That's what he's praying. He's not just saying, Lord increase their faith. Now we all pray that. We all want to pray that. We all need to pray that. But that's not what Paul's praying here. He's not just saying, Lord, increase their faith. Help them to know what Christ has done. Help them to know the power of God by which it was done, so that you can know that glorious power that He worked in Christ is now at work in you. You can see the same thing in chapter 2. We won't read all of it, but just a few sections. God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Where is the emphasis here? Is it on our faith? Or is it on Christ's faithfulness? Now obviously our faith is part of this equation. It's part of this experience. It's part of this gift of salvation. But what does our faith rest upon? What does our faith look to? What is it that we have confidence in? A lot of Christians seem to have faith in their faith. I know that I'm a believer. I know that I'm a member of the church. I know that I try to live a good life. Therefore, I know that I'm saved. But that's not the place that Paul is resting our faith. He's resting it wholly on Christ and what He has done. Notice down in verse 14 of chapter 2. He himself is our peace. who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity." Now if you've drifted off, come back. Because chapter 2, verse 18, is the key to understanding chapter 3, verse 12. Chapter 2, verse 18, if you've got your Bible open, look at it. He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near, for through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Through Him, we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. And yes, you're wondering, is it the same word, access, in the original? It is. Chapter 3, verse 12. Chapter 2, verse 18. Same word. But in chapter 2, Paul tells us what that access is based upon. And it's not your faith. You receive access through faith. But that axis is based upon Christ's faithfulness. Now, I've been indicating this already in my comments, but let me make it clear here. The word translated faith in Ephesians 3.12 can also mean faithfulness. It's used that way in the New Testament a number of times. It means belief, strong conviction, but sometimes faithfulness, sometimes trustworthiness. For example, Romans 3 and verse 3. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Same word. Or Titus 2 verse 10, not pilfering, speaking about Christian slaves, but showing all good fidelity. that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things." He's talking about their pattern of faithfulness, their trustworthiness. Or Revelation 13, 10. He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity. He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. But what does faith mean there? It's not just the confession of faith, it's the faithfulness of those saints who become martyrs. They're loyal to Christ. Now, which is it? Is our access and boldness the result of our faith in Christ or of Christ's faithfulness to His Father? And let me be clear, you don't actually have to choose between those two. You don't have to decide, well, my Bible is wrong. Let me pencil in the margins. No, you don't have to decide between these two because both are true. But let me ask you, which one agrees better with the argument in the letter up to this point? Let me ask it another way. Can you only be bold and confident of your access to God when your faith is strong? Because it seems to me that the very point at which we doubt and despair of being heard by God and received with favor is the very moment when our faith is at the weakest When trials and tribulations have come into our lives and we are afraid that our faith is about to collapse, and now, will God hear me? Because I'm not a very strong believer at this point. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. I don't know where I stand. What is Paul saying? He's saying you have boldness and confidence in coming before God because of what Christ has done. Now, Charles Hodge does not address this issue in his commentary. It really kind of hit the academic community after his lifetime. He takes for granted that this is an objective genitive, such as you see in most of your Bibles. But when he then goes on to expound the passage, he hits the proper note. Listen to what he says. Quote, we come with the assurance of being accepted because our confidence does not rest on our own merit, but on the infinite merit of an infinite Savior. It is in Him we have this liberty. We have this free access to God. We are believers, not any particular class, a priesthood among Christians to whom alone access is permitted, but all believers without any priestly intervention other than that of the one great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. Hodges says that's the point, is that you have this confident, this joyful, this bold access to God because of the work of your mediator. Now it might be helpful to revisit some other verses with these points in mind. This construction appears seven times in your New Testament. I'm just going to mention two. One is in Galatians chapter 2 and verse 16. Galatians chapter 2 and verse 16 says, knowing that a man, Paul here is talking to Peter, you might recall, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. Now here we have twice the same construction. In fact, this may be the most important text for the broader conversation. It's possible that in Galatians 2.16, what Paul is saying is just he's repeating himself three times in a row. Men are justified by faith, so we've put our faith in Jesus so that we can be justified by faith. And that's perfectly fine. But there is another way to read it. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of law but by Jesus Christ's faith or faithfulness, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by Christ's faithfulness and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. And it's interesting here that Paul uses a different, he uses a verb in the middle section to describe our believing in Jesus, but he brackets that with references to Christ's faithfulness. As Peter Lightheart explains it, quote, we are justified by the faithful work of Jesus, so we have trusted Christ Jesus in order to be justified by his faithfulness. The other passage I would mention is Philippians chapter 3 and verse 9. There Paul expresses his desire to be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. But it's the same construction. And so would there be another layer of significance if we understood Paul to be saying that he desires a righteousness that comes from God through the faithfulness of Christ? I've trusted in Jesus. I've left everything behind so that my righteousness can be based on what? My faith? Or on Christ's faithfulness? After all, which righteousness is it that is our comfort, our hope, our claim before God? It is a righteousness not my own, but a righteousness that has been accounted to me, the righteousness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Now, there's a lot more we could say about this. It could be its own sermon series. Don't worry, it won't be. But I do want to meditate for just a moment as we close on the significance of this. You might feel lost. You might say, man, this felt like a grammar lesson. I have no idea what we're even talking about at this point. But here is the point. We lay hold of Christ by faith. It is through faith that we receive the blessings of salvation and the promises of God. You've heard me use the analogy before, if salvation is the milkshake, then faith is the straw that gets it into your mouth. And the straw has no inherent value, especially if it's a paper straw. I mean, it doesn't even work as a straw most of the time. Like the straw is nothing but a conduit for getting the goodness of that grace into our mouths. So it's through faith that we receive Christ and all of his benefits. But in Ephesians 3, there is a stronger assurance that Paul is giving you. Because some days your faith is going to be weak. And you are going to wonder if your relationship with God depends on what kind of a day you're having as a believer. And one day you're feeling good, you got your Bible reading done, you said your prayers, you haven't used any cuss words, you're saying, I feel pretty good, I think God is pretty pleased with me today. And another day, you missed your Bible reading, you haven't prayed, you're dealing with five different dumpster fires, and you are just, you're discouraged. And you're wondering, you're wondering if you can raise your voice to God. And Paul says that our access to the Father and our salvation rests not just on our personal trust in Jesus, but on the objective work of Jesus, on the accomplished work of Christ, on the righteousness and faithfulness of another whose faith has fulfilled that which we could not. Through Him, we have access to the Father, because He is the way, the truth, and the life. As one theologian describes it, quote, the faithfulness of God, in fact, is one of Paul's great themes throughout his writing. He has a good deal to say about the gospel message concerning Jesus the Messiah, but the most significant thing about Jesus is that in Him, the living God has put into effect His faithfulness to the entire creation, to Israel, and to each member of the human race. Paul has a good deal to say about the life of the church, its unity, its suffering, and its witness before the world. But the most significant thing about the church is that it is the company of people held in existence and maintained in truth, not by human will or effort, but by the sheer faithfulness of God. Paul also has a lot to say about the calling of the individual Christian to be holy in body, soul, and spirit. But this never degenerates into a sense of the Christian simply trying hard to behave and hoping for the best. It is always backed up by the faithfulness of God." That's exactly right. That is what you cling to. Not your righteousness, but Christ's righteousness. Not your faithfulness, but Christ's faithfulness. and that Jesus has gone before us and opened the way into the presence of God. God's faithfulness is our hope. It gives us confident and joyful access to the Father. When we come before God, we never have to doubt if He is willing to hear us. Even though our faith may be weak, though our obedience may be inadequate in many ways, though our strength may be small, our salvation is assured by the work of another the righteous Son of God, who is our faithful Savior. And listen to the comments that R.C. Sproul in his expository commentary on Ephesians makes at this point. He says this, quote, God's purpose, like His decree, stands from all eternity. In the covenant of redemption made by the Father and the Son, the plan for the elect's salvation was ratified. Throughout all subsequent history, there has not been nor could there be a shadow of turning or an alteration, no matter how slight. God was well pleased with the faithful obedience unto death of Jesus Christ. His pleasure is so full that nothing we do can add or detract from it. Jesus testified to this completed work when upon the cross he cried out, "'It is finished.'" And that is a great comfort and a great hope. The Son of God became man so that He might become the Lamb of God and take away the sin of the world. And because of that, we have boldness and confidence before God every day. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's bow together. Gracious God and Father, we are thankful that Your Word challenges us, stretches us, and surprises us. That You have revealed Yourself and Your faithfulness and Your glory in ways that we have not even perceived yet and never will perhaps in this lifetime. But we are thankful, O God, for what you have shown us, and even this day, we pray that you would stretch our minds and open our hearts and increase our faith, that we might know our faith rests upon the faithfulness of another, even the righteous Son, to whom you have united us and in whom we receive all the blessings and benefits of our salvation. Encourage and comfort your people this week, O God, when their faith is weak, when the way is hard. Let them come confidently and boldly before your throne, knowing that they will find their grace and mercy to help in time of need, because their access is assured by the faithful work of our Savior and Mediator, in whose name we do pray. Amen.