Truth On Tough Texts
ISSUE 40 - November
2008
The
Sealing of the Holy Spirit (2)
Ephesians
1:13–14
LAST MONTH WE BEGAN A STUDY OF ONE of the
most important doctrines of what theologians call
“Soteriology,” that is, the doctrine of salvation. As
mentioned there, this doctrine is sadly neglected, both
in theology books and the pulpit, and the tragic result
is a misunderstanding of what the Holy Spirit actually
accomplishes at salvation and the security that
therefore results. We began our first division (The
Reality of Sealing) of two by discussing
the meaning of sealing—ye were sealed with
that holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13). We conclude
with three other principles and then our second division
(The Results of
Sealing).
The Method
of Sealing
By this we mean who
exactly is the one who seals us. All three of the
passages we have mentioned make it clear that sealing is
accomplished entirely by God. Just like the Baptism of
the Spirit, we are never exhorted to be sealed.
sealing is the work of God from start to
finish.
It is also important
to note that the verse reads “with the Holy
Spirit, not “by the Holy
Spirit.” This indicates that the Holy Spirit is the seal not the sealer. It is God the Father who does the sealing. He
is the “lumber merchant,” while the Holy Spirit is the
“merchant’s signet.” Second Corinthians 1:21-22 bears
this out:
Now he which stablisheth
us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who
hath also sealed us,
and given the earnest
[guarantee] of the Spirit in our hearts.
We also should note
that the definite article (“the”) appears before
promise, so the idea is that we were sealed with that
holy Spirit of [the] promise. This, of course, refers to
the Lord Jesus’ promise to send His Spirit (Jn. 14:16;
Jn. 16:7-14; Acts 1:4, 8). So the Holy Spirit was
sent; He was sent to do
certain tasks that would glorify Christ. One of
those tasks was to be God’s Seal upon the purchased
possession.
To illustrate, I
recall the days when my father-in-law owned and operated
a little country store where he would buy food items in
bulk and package them for resale. One item he carried
was cheese, in various varieties, which he would buy in
large blocks and then cut to a customer’s wishes. To
preserve some blocks for aging purposes (and, oh, how
good is a 12-year-old sharp cheddar!) he would seal a
block in wax. So in that case the substance of
the seal was wax, and it was my father-in-law who did
the actual act of sealing.
Likewise, God the Father has done the sealing with
(or, by means of) the Spirit.
Another modern
illustration is when you go down to the store and buy a
large item, such as an appliance, you receive a piece of
paper called a “Guarantee.” This is the manufacture’s
promise of quality. Infinitely deeper, the Holy Spirit
is God’s guarantee of quality. And we can also be
thankful that God’s guarantee is not just 90 days parts
and labor, but is forever.
To summarize: First,
the Father is the Sealer; second, the Holy
Spirit is the Seal; third, Christ is the
Strength of the seal (as He is the One who sent
the Spirit and the One whose work made the Spirit’s
indwelling possible); fourth, the believer is the
Sealed.
The Measure of Sealing
The main point we
need to make here is that the sealing of the Holy Spirit
is universal among believers. Some claim that
they have had “an experience” that confirmed their
sealing and that sealing is not necessarily true of
every Christian. But there are three very plain proofs
that all believers are
sealed.
First, II
Corinthians 1:21–22 declares that even the Corinthians
were sealed. The Corinthians were not as carnal when
Paul wrote his second letter as they were when he wrote
his first, but they were still a carnal lot indeed.
Paul, however, makes no exception; even in their
carnality, the Corinthians were sealed. The same thing
is true of the “baptism of the Spirit;” the
Corinthians were not exempt from this either, as we
noted earlier.
How we need to grasp the
truth that the acts of sealing and baptism are the work
of God! It is tragic, indeed, that so many Christians
today live in a constant need of “experience.” Our
salvation is not based on how we feel or what we have
experienced, rather on what God has done. It is based
upon the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on
Calvary, and the assurance of that is based upon the
indwelling, sealing power of the Holy Spirit.
Second, there
is no Scripture
exhortation to be sealed. This is a strong
indication that sealing is universal. If sealing were
not universal, then surely God would command us to seek
it. There is no believer who knows how to go about
“getting sealed” simply because there is no instruction
on how to do it. Sealing has nothing to do with
experience; it is a work that God accomplishes. In
contrast, we are commanded to be “filled”
(controlled) by the Holy Spirit
(Eph. 5:18), as this is a repeated experience.
But we
are never told to be either
sealed or baptized.
Third, Ephesians
4:30 exhorts us not to grieve the Holy Spirit by whom we
are sealed. It is obvious here that Paul’s attitude is
that he assumes all believers are sealed. Remember, Paul
is writing to all believers, so he says here to all
those sealed believers that they should not grieve
(sadden) the Holy Spirit. If only “spiritual people”
were sealed, Paul’s exhortation would make no sense. He
would then be saying “do not grieve the Holy Spirit” to
people who were already grieving the Holy
Spirit.
We say
again, all believers are sealed. Right in
line with this is our fourth
principle.
The Moment
of Sealing
It is essential to
recognize that sealing occurs at the
moment of salvation. Again, there are those
who maintain that sealing occurs sometime after
salvation. This view, in fact, is quite troubling. The
great expositor Martyn Lloyd-Jones is one of my personal
heroes. His book on preaching (Preaching and
Preachers) is unmatched on that subject and is
greatly needed in our day. In my humble opinion,
however, his otherwise stellar teaching was marred by
his weakness on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. With
the deepest respect, I must say that his muddled
(sometimes almost mystical) views on sealing,
indwelling, infilling, and baptism (God’s Ultimate
Purpose, pp. 243-311 and other
works) opened the door wide for errant charismatic
teaching. It’s undoubtedly significant that soon after
his departure from Westminster Chapel in London, that
church went the way of the charismatic Vineyard
Movement.
Mystical ideas about
sealing violate the simple purpose of this act, which is
to be a guarantee. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee that
we are genuine. Further, there are no New Testament
examples of a person being sealed at some time
subsequent to salvation. There are instances of people
being filled,
but not sealed. While Lloyd-Jones, for example,
discusses several Scriptures as “proof” (pp. 250-254),
not one of them mentions sealing by
name. It’s amazing and tragic
that one so solid in his overall Theology was so
confused about the work of the Holy Spirit. For example,
the statement, “I am suggesting therefore that the
‘baptism of the Spirit’ is the same as the ‘sealing with
the Spirit’” (p. 264), reveals some very serious
misunderstanding.
The main cause of
this misunderstanding is the failure to examine the
Greek text (again,
something that Lloyd-Jones usually did not fail to do).
The construction of the verb believed is the
aorist participle in the Greek.[i] This
actually shows cause more than it does
time.
In
other words, believing is what caused the
sealing. Therefore, both
happened at the same time. The literal
translation of this is, “in
whom also having believed, ye were
sealed.”
This is not an
isolated case of this Greek construction. Another
example appears in Acts 1:8: “Ye shall receive power,
after the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” Again, “is
come” is the aorist participle showing cause; that is,
receiving power is caused by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Literally the verse reads, “Ye shall receive power, the
Holy Spirit coming upon you.”
We must also
add, not only does sealing occur at the moment of
salvation, it also happens once-for-all and forever. For
example, a letter is designed to be sealed only
once. Likewise, down through the centuries a seal of any
kind was designed to be used only once. This has always
been the value of a seal and is the case with God’s
seal; it has been given once-for-all. As mentioned
earlier, all three references to sealing in the New
Testament are aorist tense (punctiliar action in the
past). But, in addition, Ephesians 4:30 says we are
sealed (once-for-all) “unto the day of redemption.”
This refers to our final redemption, which is yet
future. What redemption is this? Romans 8:23 tells us:
“We ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the
adoption, that is, the redemption of our body.”
Back in verse 5 we learn that we are
“predestined” to final adoption, which is yet future.
Now we see that redemption not only involves the present
(in that Christ’s blood was the purchase price for our
redemption), but that redemption also involves our going
to be with the Lord in glory.
II. The Results of Sealing (v.
14)
Who is the earnest of our
inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession, unto the praise of His glory.
How marvelous verse
14 is! We’ve seen that sealing pictures acquisition,
absolute ownership, and authenticity. But the most
significant picture of sealing is
assurance (security). If I
may, I say again that I have found no other principle
more assuring to salvation than this doctrine. Verse 14
teaches two results of sealing, both of which having to
do with security.
Sealing Secures Our Inheritance
One of the saddest
realities in Christianity today is the fact that many
deny the Biblical doctrine of the security of the
believer. This doctrine has been called “that
damnable doctrine that gives people license to
sin.” It is argued, “If you are eternally secure, you
can go out and live any way you want to and just ask God
to forgive you.” But this doctrine says no such thing,
for anyone who has that idea of salvation cannot
possibly be a Christian. Salvation involves a new
person, a new creature in Christ (II Cor. 5:17). We no
longer live the way we once did.
But this verse tells
us exactly where our security lies—in the Holy
Spirit. We might be forced to agree with those who
deny security if it were not for the Holy Spirit. But
our text tells us that He is the earnest of our
inheritance. That wonderful word earnest is
arrabon, a word that came into the Greek from Phoenician
traders and means “first installment, down payment,
deposit.”
It’s interesting to note
that this was more than just a mere “pledge,” as it is
translated in the Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims
translation and the Revised Standard Version. That
mistranslation was the result of the inaccurate and
often corrupt Latin Vulgate’s use of the word pignus (pledge),[ii] which is not the
equivalent of the Greek arrabon.
This earnest is not just a pledge or
promise; it’s actually a
portion of the inheritance,
the first installment. As one commentator puts it, “The
earnest, in short, is the inheritance in
miniature.”[iii]
So it was that this term
was used in secular Greek as a legal term in business
and trade; it was with this advance payment that a
contract became lawfully valid and binding. In fact, we
have this term “earnest money” even today. The same
Greek word is used in modern Greek for an engagement
ring; it is more than just a promise to marry; it is the
first installment of the coming marriage.
Now let us couple
this thought with a deeper look at the word inheritance.
This is the same basic word as back in verse 11—“In
[Christ] also we have obtained an inheritance.” The
literal sense of the Greek kleros is “a lot” (as
in “casting lots”). The word then came to mean “a
share,” “a plot of land,” and finally “an inheritance.”
What then is our inheritance?—the salvation described
in verses 3–14. Most of us have viewed our future
inheritance as pots of gold sitting in various places
throughout our heavenly mansion, but that is because our
minds have been polluted by the world’s ideas of wealth.
Our true inheritance is the salvation Paul has been
describing, and the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of
that salvation. Just as “earnest money” is
binding and not returnable, the Holy Spirit is not
withdrawn from the believer; He is God’s deposit, God’s
first installment of eternal
salvation.
There has been much
confusion and question about the sealing of the Holy
Spirit in past years, but we must honestly ask, “Why?”
How could anything be clearer? We first see all we have
in Christ in verses 3–14, and then we see that the Holy
Spirit is the promise, the guarantee, and the first
installment of that salvation. What more could Paul
have said to make it plainer? Those who reject the
security of the believer must either ignore or willingly
reject the plain analogy that Paul gives here. If
someone can see that God has given us the first
installment of our inheritance, that He has given us the
down payment of glory, that He has given us the deposit
of what is to come, but still think that we can lose all
that, they are to be pitied indeed.
We, of course, are the
purchased possession (v. 7), and our final redemption is
yet future (Rom. 8:23). Therefore, we are
absolutely secure in the knowledge of our future home in
heaven. We not only have eternal salvation in the
here and now, but this salvation is also going to usher
us right into the redemption of the body, the final
redemption of the purchased possession.
Dear Christian, can we ever lose our salvation?
Absolutely not! Why? Because we have been sealed with
“God’s earnest money”—His indwelling Holy Spirit. Does
that thought cause us to clap our hands in glee that we
can now live any way we want? On the contrary, it
ignites a humble submission and holiness of
life.
Sealing Secures God’s
Possession
Not only is our
inheritance in view in verse 14, but so is God’s
possession. Paul declares, until the redemption of
the purchased possession. The word possession translates
the Greek peripoiesis, which speaks of gaining possession of property
for one’s self. To review one of our earlier
illustrations (Part 1), when the lumber merchant
went to Ephesus, he purchased his timber and placed his
seal upon it so that it would come directly to him and
no one else. Likewise, we are God’s purchased possession
and His Seal (the Holy Spirit) secures that purchase and
brings it directly to Him.
Finally, Paul closes by
reminding us once again of God’s ultimate purpose. While
the spiritual riches God has given us are awesome,
indeed, and while it is all guaranteed by God’s down
payment in the person of the Holy Spirit, that is not
the primary purpose. Why is God bringing us to Himself?
The answer is: it is all unto the praise of his glory.
There is that marvelous phrase once again; this is the
third and the most glorious usage in this passage; it
culminates the entire passage. As Isaiah declared: “My
people, my chosen. This people have I formed for myself;
they shall show forth my praise” (Is. 43:20-21). Yes,
that speaks specifically of Israel, but God also “did
visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his
name” (Acts 15:14), and so we too are His elect, His
chosen, and we shall “show forth His praise.”
We are reminded here
of God’s ultimate purpose as outlined in Ephesians 1:
to restore the unity between God and man so that man
can glorify Him. God did not
save us primarily for our benefit, but rather saved us
so we could praise Him. Let us never forget that
truth!
Oh, is it not wonderful to
know we are sealed? Man’s seals can be broken. I used to
hear my father say, “Locks only keep the honest people
out.” How true, for if someone wants into a place bad
enough he will get in. But God’s Seal will not and
cannot be broken.
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible
Church
NOTES
[i] For a detailed explanation, see
A. T. Roberson, A Grammar of the Greek
New Testament in the Light of Historical Research
(Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934), pp. 520-525. We would
briefly mention the Greek case “locative of sphere.”
Basically, “locative” (Latin locus) speaks of
“local” or “location.” The “locative of sphere” then
indicates the sphere, realm, or location in which
something or some one exists. So, the words “in
Whom . . . ye believed” show the location of
belief.
[ii]
John Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek
Text of the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians (Wipf
and Stock Publishers, 1998; reprint of 2nd Edition,
1861), p. 67.
