The Story of Love: Chosen in Christ
Nick Owens, February 1, 2026
The Story of Love: Chosen In Christ
Ephesians 1:1-6
Intro – This morning we jump into the first few verses of this marvelous letter called “Ephesians.” And to begin I’d like you to consider a question – “What’s something that you just can’t stop talking about, something that if you get going talking about this person, thing, this interest or hobby, there’s no stopping you?
We’re in this new phase of life together – a new chapter in our churches stories as we come together as Trinity Western Springs. I’m sure in the coming weeks and months there will be lots of needing to “get to know each other.” I hope this happens in all sorts of ways: talking over coffee, sharing stories in Sunday school, connecting in community groups: And a question like – “what’s something that you just can’t stop talking about? – is a fun way to learn about things that we love. It gives a window into what makes us tick – what gets us excited; what we are passionate about.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us in here can’t stop talking about sports – fantasy football is your passion, and the minute you’re around others who share your love of the game, it’s like you’re talking a different language – I know this, because football and fantasy football is not my thing and when I hear people throwing out names and talking short hand – it sounds like a foreign language.
I would imagine some of us can’t stop talking about people in our life that we deeply love – like maybe kids or grandkids. We love to share pictures, videos, stories, don’t we? It’s like we are lit up from the inside out as we share about them.
For me, one of the things, if you get me going and talking about, I will not stop…. is my love of jazz music. You have been warned….I could talk endlessly about bebop and post-bop, about the classic recordings of the late 50’s and early 60’s, about Wayne Shorter, and Herbie, Miles, Trane, Wes, and all the modern musicians that continue carrying the music forward.
In fact, there’s a funny story about this when my wife and I were first dating. Erin knew about my love of jazz and in many ways shared in my joy. Well one evening I was playing music with friends, during a set break we were hanging with those who had come out to hear us play and Erin was there with a friend. She leaned over to her friend and said – “watch this…” – then she got my attention and asked – “oh Nick, what’s that one song – ……………?”
I’m like – oh yeah, what is that – I’m totally drawn in, hmmmm is it this ?? Or maybe this ??? Then she cracks a smile – she’s totally messing with me.
In Ephesians ch. 1 – We see what Paul can’t stop talking about because – starting in v. 3 – Paul begins a sentence that will go on and on. Our English translations break it up – but in the original Greek text it is a 202 word sentence – that’s a long sentence! We will spend the next 3 Sundays thinking about and trying to unpack this massively long sentence – where Paul writes and writes about this God of love. Again and again he will burst into praise. Paul can’t stop talking about the Triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit – this God who is love, and who has acted toward us and the world in redemptive love.
Paul writes full of hope and joy in these verses we just read – because he writes about “The God who is Love, who loves us in his Son, and who will transform us by his love.”
This is what I’d like us to consider as we listen to God’s word this morning – “The God who is love, who loves us in his Son, and who will transform us by his love.”
Let’s begin with that first part – The God who is Love –
Before we talk about God – consider for a moment our lives and our experience – isn’t it true that love is central to life, to living the good life?
There’s actually a study that came out of Harvard that verifies this intuition that probably all of us have that Love is central to life.
The Harvard study of Adult Development is the world’s longest-running happiness study. It began in 1938 and followed 724 men from teen years to old age. It incorporated their spouses and 1300 of their descendants. The result of this study showed that Love – having loving relationships – is central to life. Having loving relationships is more important than your genetics; it’s more important than your social class; it’s more important than how smart you are. Those with loving relationships experienced lives that were not only happier, but healthier, and longer. We need love. It’s like we were built for love.
The Bible shows us why. The need for love and the centrality of love for life points back to the God who made this world. A world that can’t help but show the fingerprints of the God who made it. A God who doesn’t just do loving things, but who IS LOVE!
If you look at the text of Ephesians 1, v. 6 – Paul writes – with praise to God for his glorious grace that he has generously poured out on those who believe in Jesus. But I want you to look at the last 3 words – – God has done this – “in the Beloved.” There is someone who is the focal point, the supreme object of God’s love. The beloved of God, the one that God the Father deeply loves, is his Son.
God loves Jesus Christ, his Son. And this love is a love that has no beginning. Before the eternal Son took on flesh and came into this world, to bring about God’s gracious and loving redemptive plan, before the world was even created, God the Father loved the Son.
And here we see something that makes Christianity utterly unique. Because Christianity says Love isn’t just something God does, love is who God is.
You see, when we’re talking about the God who reveals himself in the Bible, we’re not just talking about a god who is just capable of loving. People throughout world history have believed in various gods, and according to their traditions and their beliefs many of those gods may do things that could be called love.
But this is completely different from a God who is LOVE. Because the Bible reveals to us a God who is Triune. One God, existing in 3 persons; 3 eternal relations, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
The God revealed in the Bible doesn’t need creation, or human beings, or anything outside of himself to be loving. Love isn‘t something that he can do once he creates and makes objects for his love.
This God is Love – it is who he is – who he has always been and will be.
The late 4th century North African theologian, Augustine, put it like this, “Love means someone loving and something loved with love.”
someone loving and something loved with love
God the Father loves God the Son, the object of the Father’s love, and the love between Father and Son is the Holy Spirit.
This is the Blessed God – who pours out his blessing and generous love on us. This is the God who made this world and so yes, of course, love is central to life.
This God who is Love –
Is the God who loves us in his Son –
Look with me at v. 3 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
To begin – I want you to notice just one very specific detail –
God hasn’t just blessed our lives and shown us love in general – like he did some nice or kind things to us; God hasn’t even merely shown us love by forgiving our sin, saving us from death and judgement…… God loves us….. in his Son – he has Blessed us – In Christ. Again and again in this text as well as throughout the rest of Ephesians you will see this language of “in Christ,” “in him.”
– v. 3 – God the Father has “blessed us in Christ.” V. 4 The Father “chose us” in Christ. V. 5 he “predestined us for adoption to himself though Jesus Christ.” V. 6 God has blessed us, he has been abundantly gracious to us, in Christ, in the Beloved.
God doesn’t love us in a general way or generic way, God loves us in his Son.
There’s this beautiful scene at the beginning of the NT gospels – John the Baptist is baptizing people in the river Jordan, and Jesus comes forward and is baptized and then we are told the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove and the Father speaks, and from heaven he says, “This is my Son, the beloved, the one whom I love, in you I take great pleasure, I delight in you. I am deeply satisfied in you.”
As we hear and listen to that voice, God the Father speaking these words of love and delight in his Son, nearly 2000 years ago, in space and history and time…… we can hear the echo of that same love that goes back into eternity. This person is the object of the Father’s love. And it is in this person, the Son, that every believer in Jesus has been chosen and has been loved; is loved now at this moment, and will be loved forever.
When Paul speaks of this Blessed God – this God who is overflowing with goodness – when he says he has blessed us in Christ, with every spiritual blessing – that phase – “every spiritual blessing” I think we tend to mis-hear – Paul doesn’t mean spiritual in the sense of non-physical blessings, he means Spiritual – capitol “S” – meaning from the Holy Spirit. The God who is overflowing with love and goodness – loves us and blesses us, he pours out his goodness and love upon us, in the one who is the object of his love, by means of the Spirit who is the love between Father and Son.
I realize this is a lot…. Let me try and give you an image to take this in….
When I was growing up I loved water parks. And pretty much every summer we would go to Magic Waters – they had the huge wave pool which made a Midwesterner kid like me feel like I was at the Ocean; they all kinds of fast water slides; and in this one area there was a ginormous bucket – it would fill and fill and fill with water – and every 15 or so mins it would get so full that it would start to move back and forth and then pour down – completely drenching anyone who was beneath it. And one those really hot and humid summer days – there was nothing more refreshing than getting caught under those waters.
The Blessed God, the one who is the source of all blessing, overflowing with goodness – The Father who loves the Son, that Love shared being the very Spirit of God – this love of God, like an ever flowing fountain of love, like a torrential downpour of love, comes to us in the Son.
God has purposed to put our lives in the person who is the object of his forever love – to connect our lives to this person who is the object of his forever love.
If you are a Christian, God set the course of your life to be found in Jesus, to be united to the Son, and by this to be caught up into the love between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
You see……..He doesn’t love you generically….. he connects you to the focal point of his love and delight that you might share in his love.
As we continue on in this passage – we will see language and words like chose, or election, or predestined – and these ideas might bother you, or give you a massive headache, but do you see that is not the intent.
It is of course inevitable that when we are talking about God – we will feel overwhelmed and our brains will hurt – for who can take in and know this God who is incomprehensible – – But the intent is not that this would be your primary feeling as you leave today – The intent is the you would feel overwhelmed by the grace and love God shows you.
We read v. 4
4 even as he chose us….. in him (that is, in Christ, in his Son) …..before the foundation of the world,
As far back as we can remember – if we belong to Jesus, if we believe – the story of love stretches back further, before the world was even made, before time existed – you were loved, the Father chose you in Christ…..
Let me say that if you’re here this morning, and let’s say you don’t yet believe in Jesus, these words are not written for you to try and figure out whether you’re chosen. God calls you through his word to believe in Jesus and receive his love. He’s not trying to trick you. In fact I would say to you – why do you think you’re here this morning hearing of this God and his love? Are you here because a friend brought you, or a family member? What if, even now, though you may not yet believe, God is at work in ways you can’t even fully see or understand – drawing you to himself?
About 25 years ago, I was a HS student. I didn’t grow up in the church; I didn’t believe any of this. I did all the things HS who aren’t Christians do – I think I was a freshman or sophomore in HS and one cold winter night, while standing outside, smoking a cigarette if I remember correctly, a friend said one of the most profound things to me, “Dude, you should believe in God.” And as I looked up at the stars, I thought, “yeah, that’s probably right.” And yet it wouldn’t be until 2-3 years later that I would actually come to believe in Jesus. But on that cold winter night looking up at the stars, God loved me – I didn’t know anything – I thought the book of Psalms was pronounced “Pa-Salms” – which was really embarrassing at one of the only youth group events I ever attended –
But God loved me, he brought that friend into my life…. And he brought others in my life – a pastor who cared and loved me, a hard, tough construction worker who taught Sunday school at the church I would begin attending who was both someone I would consider a friend, and yet he always made clear my need for Jesus.
God is working out this story of love – bringing people like me and like you to know Jesus – to be caught up in the love of God – Father, Son and Spirit.
We keep going into v. 5 and we come to that word – “predestined…” – In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
One of the things I was reading as I was thinking about this passage – the author – told a little story about the word we have translated here as “predestined.”
He and his wife were traveling in Europe and they were in the airport in Athens, Greece – so all the signs are in modern Greek. As they were getting on their fight to Rome, he noticed something that caught his eye – Above the gate entrance was a Greek word that was familiar to him, from the same root that Paul writes here, the sign said – proorismos roma – “destination Rome” – it’s sort of funny sometimes seeing something like this – a word that feels incredibly theologically heavy and even philosophical – “predestination” – not an everyday word – he got on that plane and as he put it, “mused with delight” thinking about this text. God has set our destination – before we were born, before we did anything, he set out where he was taking us – the destination was adoption – to be God’s sons – through THE SON.
Our lives can sometimes feel like the sequence of randomness and chaos don’t they? And it is easy to feel afraid, to fear all that could happen, all that might happen, or even feel torn apart by the things that do happen. And while often we can’t know why this happened….. if you know the Love of God in Jesus, the one who came and lived and died and rose again for you – you can rest in this God who is working out his redemptive plan in this world and in your life – this God who has put you on the path, set your destination to be his beloved child through union with his Son.
As we come forward for communion this morning – we’re going to sing about the Love of Jesus – which is really to say the Love of God – and one of the things this passage is trying to help us see and even feel is what we will sing in the first verse – “O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast unmeasured, boundless, free; rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me; underneath me, all around me is the current of thy love; leading onward, leading homeward, to thy glorious rest above.”
This God who is love, who loves us in his Son,
Will transform us by his love –
This Love Transforms – Think about Paul’s own story for a moment…
Paul, before he knew Jesus, hated Christians; He persecuted Christians – He was present when the first Christian martyr was killed and he approved of it.
And now what do we see? He can’t stop talking about Christ. In fact, throughout this letter and all his letters, he can’t stop talking about Jesus.
This love – the Love of God in Jesus Christ – can completely and utterly transform you – it can light you up from the inside out. It is meant to re-narrate your story- to transform how you see and view your own story. This love humbles us in all the ways we need it, it can lift us soaring in the midst of all the challenges and struggles of life. This love transforms.
Again, think of Paul – he was a Jewish Pharisee – one who followed the pharisaical interpretation of the law to the letter – And as Geoff mentioned last week – and we will see again later in Ephesians – the tension between Jews and Gentiles in the ancient world was tense; it went back centuries. Paul would not have been caught dead sharing meals with gentiles, he wouldn’t have been friends with Gentiles.
He comes to know Jesus and the love of God in Jesus – and for the rest of his life he goes around the Roman World, ministering to Gentiles. He plants churches among the Gentiles. He writes in his letters, largely to Gentile audiences, with incredible warmth and love. He calls them family, his brothers and sisters.
There’s this amazing thing that happens when we drink deeply from the fountain of God’s love
- We respond with praise and worship to this God. And as we praise this God it’s not just us – but all these other people too – people who may or may not be like us, may be different in all sorts of ways – people who apart from God’s love in Christ – we may not have anything in common with –
- but now in Christ our voices and lives are joined in praise and God by his love is making us family. God by his love is changing us, like he changed Paul, like he changed Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus to begin to truly love each other, to truly care for each other – as we are all caught up in the love of God.
You see – If you are a believer in Jesus – you have every reason to be hopeful in the powerful love of God.
The beginning of this letter, and as we’ll see in the coming weeks – really the whole first 3 chapters are really about God – this God who is love, who loves us in his Son, and how this God is working out his loving plan to transform the world.
This God will bring about his loving purpose and plan to make us whole and complete, holy and blameless before him.
This means – We can have great hope for ourselves – sometimes in the midst of how hard life can be we get disoriented and we can lose hope. Sometimes in the midst of our own sin and the ways we feel so stuck, we can lose hope.
Friends, if you are in Christ – You have hope, because the love of God is greater than your sin, it is greater than your struggles.
We can have great hope for our brothers and sisters and for the church – sometimes we get frustrated with others, we can be hurt by others – and we can lose hope; we can become cynical – we can think things like – people never change…. But that’s not true.
We don’t have to despair – because the most important actor in the story of our lives and in the story of the world is not us, it’s not others, it’s not chaotic forces, it’s not all the powers of evil –
It is God – the God of love, who loves us in his Son, and who will transform us and yes, even one day, the whole world – by his love.
It is to this God that I would like to invite us all now to turn to a time of prayer. We turn each week after hearing God’s word, to a time of confession and prayer. Our God graciously invites us to honestly name before him the ways we have resisted his love and goodness, the ways we have failed to live lives that respond to and flow from his love. He does this because he intends to refresh us, forgive us, and draw us deeper into communion with himself. So let’s take a few moments for silent confession and then I will close us in prayer.