Love Before the World (Part 2)

Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Tim Keller

Timothy Keller explores Ephesians 1–2, revealing how God’s grace reshapes our view of salvation, identity, and purpose. He emphasizes that true faith is rooted in God’s perspective, not human effort or merit.

Key takeaways

• Salvation is God’s work, not human achievement.
• God chooses the weak to display His strength.
• Our identity is found only in Christ.

Transcript preview

Does what you believe about God really matter? Many people say that what matters most is simply living a good and loving life. But the Bible says something very different, that the way we live flows directly from our beliefs about God. Starting this month and extending through the end of September, we're going to go through one of Tim Keller's most extensive sermon series in which he explores the core of the Christian faith. Keller will teach from the first two chapters of Ephesians to look at how the Bible's central truths about salvation and grace are meant to shape even the most practical parts of our everyday life. be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to the good pleasure which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head even Christ. In him we were chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the price to Christ might be for the price of his glory and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation having believed you were marked in him with a seal the promised holy spirit who was a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. This is God's word. Now When we began chapter one we said that Ephesians, chapter one, two and three, is about salvation. We said last week that in New York City you talk about being saved, or if you ask somebody else if they're saved, the average New Yorker gets very creeped out by that kind of language because it's considered a narrow and a shallow person who talks about being saved. And yet the Bible tells us that rather than being a narrow and shallow concept, it's the deepest and richest and broadest and most multifarious concept a mind can conceive of. And in a sense, Paul, in chapter one and two, is taking the concept of salvation, which we've heard the name, the word so often, and he's running it like white light through a prism and breaking it down into its constituent rainbow. It's so beautiful. a beam of light through the prism and the prism breaks it down to show you all of the rich glories that are inside there. That's what Paul is doing in Ephesians, chapter one and two. But especially chapter one, he is trying to show us salvation from God's point of view. And we have said that one of the good things about college education today is that college generally, college educators are down on ethnocentrism. And they know that all human beings have a tendency to be ethnocentric, which means we have a tendency to look at everything as if our ethnic group is the center of the universe. And all other ethnic groups are marginal or peripheral. That our way of doing things must be the right one. That our way of thinking must be the right one. And the good thing about college education today is they pound on that. And they say you mustn't think that your culture is the pivot on which everything else rests. and everything else orbits around you. You mustn't think like that. We must get rid of ethnocentric thinking. Now, Christians agree. Christians go one step further. The Bible goes one step further. It's not enough just to get rid of ethnocentric thinking. You have to get rid of anthropocentric thinking. Human-centered thinking. It's easy for us to decide that the human point of view that our particular view of things is the central view of things is the central thing is the sense. thing. You see, if you read the scripture, you see that God makes everything orbit and everything turn around what is just, what is true, and what is right, and what is holy. Everything turns on that. What is just, what is true, what is righteous, what is holy. Everything turns on that. Now look at you and me. Everything turns on our happiness, on our comfort. Everything turns on that. Now look at you and me. Everything turns on our happiness, on our comfort. on our joy. Well what about righteousness and truth and justice and and holiness? Oh we'll take that into consideration. Well you see it's not the thing that everything is turning on in our lives. What we turn on our lives orbit around and turn on the joy. Justice and righteousness and holiness is out there on the margins. We try to work it in if we can. Yeah, it'd be wonderful if we could be just and righteous but the important thing is to be happy. that to turn everything on the human point of view, to turn everything like that is worse than ethnocentrism. It's human centeredness. God's perspective is the only one that's realistic. I remember some years ago I was in a car and I didn't own the car, I borrowed the car and I was trying to get home at a certain time and I was on a long trip and the gas gauge was getting lower and lower and lower. And I was looking at the gas gauge and I had a passenger and the passenger says, you know, the little pointer is below empty. And I looked at it and I said, no, no, it's at it, one-eight full. No, it's below empty. Now it's one-eight full. Next thing, you know, almost within a second after that argument, the car shuttered and came to a halt. And you know, I'm 6-4 and my passenger was about 5-2. So I came on down and took a 5-2 perspective on the gas gauge. Sure enough, you know, it was empty. I was looking at it like this. My passenger was looking at it like this. Now the point is, those are two different perspectives, two different angles, and they can't both be right. But I didn't know which one it was. I said, well, maybe it was made to be looked at like this. The passenger was saying, oh, of course not. It is made to be looked at like this. Well, of course, that's because my passenger always looked at everything from there, and so do I look at everything from there. Only one can be right. The Bible says that your life and the life of this world is like a gas gauge, but it's meant to be looked at. It can only truly be understood if it's looked at from God's angle. That's hard. It's just as hard for white Americans. to try to not look at everything from the white American angle and to be totally centered on that. You think that's hard? It is far harder because it takes the word of God and it takes the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to stop looking at everything from the human angle. From the human angle things don't make sense. Here's Joseph in the pit. His brothers jealous of him and have stripped him, thrown him in the pit and they're about to sell him under slavery and he's he says Lord you've got to help me so how does God answer his prayer he's sold into slavery for years his life is ruined not only is he sold into slavery but at one point he's framed by the wife of his employer and then he's put into prison and any day he might be executed what is God doing you see Joseph was looking at the gas gauge from down here somebody else was looking at the gas gauge from up here but only God can see things the true perspective. And later on in Genesis chapter 50 verse 20 he says to his brothers who had sold him into slavery and now he saw the purpose of it because as time went on he began to see things from God's point of view and he says you meant it for evil God meant it for good. Now right now you can look at your life and you can decide whether you're going to stand up on Genesis 50 verse 20. It says, other people mean it for evil, this person has hurt you, this person has hurt you, God means it for good. Look at Revelation, Romans 828, all things work together for good to those who love God. You look at this passage, God has chosen you to be holy and blameless in his sight. He is destined you, he has secured it, he is guaranteed it. He is taking everything and working it, of his will it says in verse 10 and 11 so that you can eventually be a great and glorious person. Now you can either stand up and look at your life on the platform of Ephesians 111, Ephesians 1-18, Romans 828, Genesis 5020, it's up to you or else you can continue to look at it from the human point of you and say I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get