Ephesians 1:11
"In Whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him Who worketh all things after the Counsel of His own Will."
A more accurate translation of the expression "we have obtained an inheritance" would be "in whom we were also made an inheritance." Whose inheritance are we if God has predestined us to salvation according to the Counsel of His will? We are God's! The whole number of God's elect in Christ are His possession.
What then is the possession of the elect? Since they are God's possession in Christ, God is also their Inheritance in Christ. As the Lord Jesus prayed in His High Priestly Prayer, "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us" (John 17:21). How beautiful the view of God's purpose in Christ when seen through the prism of the Sonlight. Just like a diamond flashes many colors as its facets catch the light, so here we see the different angles of being the inheritance as God's elect, redeemed ones, but also inheriting the Lord Jesus Christ Himself according to the Father's purpose.
If we inherit Eternal Life, that life is in God's Son. "And this is Life Eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3). To know Christ and be found in Him is as much a part of being heirs of God as it is for us to inherit Eternal Life. God-given Faith is God's Gift to His elect because of His faithfulness to honor His Son with those elect sinners that He gave Him before the foundation of the world. The elect are nothing and have nothing to commend them to God, but their nothingness is replenished with the Fullness of God in Christ. That's why the apostle Paul declared elsewhere, "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power" (Colossians 2:9-10).
Blessed Comfort! To know Him is to have Eternal Life, and to be found in Him is to have my emptiness fully replenished in His fullness. We possess God in Christ, and God possesses us in Him. "We were made His inheritance" ... "And He is the earnest of our inheritance."
As the children of God in Christ, we are His heirs, chosen in eternity but purchased in time in the coming, doing, dying, rising again, and ascension into the glory of the Lord Jesus. The Scriptures are the legal document, God's testament of redemption for those that He gave to His Son before the foundation of the world, and for whom He came into the world to pay their complete sin debt. It says that when Christ died, His heirs inherited all that He is, as promised. "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29). It is not by our works but by His. Christ is the Promise given to every one of God's chosen children.
Everything about this physical world and our earthly lives is, at best, temporal. Our flesh and blood, our possessions, our works—they are all temporal, which means temporary, and therefore all worthless and passing away. "And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever" (1 John 2:17). Only the heirs of Jesus Christ will live forever. Anything that we forsake in this life, for Christ's sake, is not to be compared to the Life Eternal that is in Christ, and to live in His presence forever. "But he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come Eternal Life " (Mark 10:30).
Christ is that Hundredfold Who bequeathed Himself to His chosen children. He is the Reward, the Righteous One given by His death to unworthy sinners. "Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the Reward of the Inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:24).
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