Spirit of Promise

“In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, Who is the guarantee of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:13-14).

Paul, the human author of these words, is saying that when you listened to the gospel and believed, God assured you of His promise by giving you the promised Holy Spirit, who promises to you God’s inheritance.

I want you to notice three things in particular: the hearing, the believing, and the assurance.

The Hearing

It is a blessing of God to be able to hear the truth; not only to simply hear it proclaimed, but to be able to really hear it with understanding. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in the Parable of The Sower and The Soils, makes it clear that not everyone who comes in contact with the word of God really hears it and understands it and embraces it. In fact, in most of the soils there is a rejection of that word, but Paul is saying to these Ephesian Christians, ‘You heard the truth. When you heard the gospel proclaimed, you understood that it was true. You really listened to it.’ Let me stop and ask you today: have you heard with attentiveness the word of truth, the only gospel of salvation?

The Believing

If we are to be saved, the gospel must not only be heard, it must be believed. There’s only one saving response to the gospel, and that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as He is offered in that gospel as the only way of salvation, as the One who purchased for us the forgiveness of sins, who cleanses us, who gives us the blessings of being adopted into God’s family and eternal life forevermore. Paul is saying to these Ephesians (and us), ‘You need to understand that God has sealed you with His Holy Spirit. He has marked you out as His own possession, and thereby He has assured you of receiving His inheritance, and He has assured you of His love for you.’

The Assurance of the Spirit

From Old Testament times, as a way of assuring God’s people, He often gave them signs or marks whereby they would know of His love for them, and they could be reminded and brought back to obedience by living a life of faith and faithfulness. So, for instance, to the children of Israel He gave the signs of circumcision, and Passover, and the Sabbath Day—and to Christians He has given the signs of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But isn’t it beautiful that the Apostle Paul here does not say that God has given us a “thing” or a “right” as the sign of His ownership, but He has given an awesome, divine, most powerful Person: the third Person of the Trinity. Salvation is by faith alone, and all those who trust in Christ alone are marked out as God’s, and are assured by the Holy Spirit.

Paul calls the Spirit the promised Spirit, or the Spirit of the promise. Now this means a lot of things, but one thing it means is that this Holy Spirit being given was prophesied of by the prophets in the Old Testament. “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28). This was fulfilled at Pentecost (see Acts 2:14-21).

He also says that we were sealed. The Holy Spirit is the seal; He is God’s mark of ownership. You know that a brand is often put on an animal to indicate who owns it, and very often stamps or seals are affixed to official documents to indicate our ownership of them. Knowing that we are owned by God produces assurance; and, so, the very purpose of being sealed with the Holy Spirit is that we might be assured that God’s promises to us will come to pass.

Paul also says the Spirit is given as a pledge of our inheritance. The Spirit is a pledge, or a down payment, guaranteeing us that we will receive God’s inheritance, and guaranteeing us that we are God’s inheritance. Just as an engagement ring is a pledge of marriage, just as a deposit on a house is a partial payment indicating that the fullness of the amount will be paid to the owner or to the bank eventually, so also the Spirit is given to us as a deposit, as a down payment, by God, indicating to us that He will give us the fullness of His blessing.

My friends, to realize that we belong to God, that we are God’s special possession, changes the way that we approach life. We’ve been chosen as God’s unique treasure in Jesus Christ. We’ve been called to live for His glory. This is a life re-orienting truth. He has provided for us richly beyond all that we could ask or think.

—Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III, condensed