Unified By His Blood

Ephesians 1:10

Today we look at verse ten in Ephesians chapter one. This article is going to be our eleventh article in Ephesians. We have been able to see a lot of great truths in these first nine verses so far, and I believe going through it slowly has been a benefactor of that.

In verse ten, Paul writes, “that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him.” This concludes Paul’s second sentence after his initial greeting.

We have seen His grace, salvation, and wisdom in these verses already. Now Paul concludes by telling us why God chose to bless us with the riches of His grace; why He chose to allow His Son to die on the cross for us; why He chose to redeem us with His blood. It was so we would be unified together, with other believers, in Christ.

I want to backtrack to show where we can draw these conclusions. “That” at the beginning of the verse is how we can see that everything previously said in this sentence culminates to this verse. I believe when you read through the prior three verses this becomes clear. You could read it as “so that”.

Dispensation is a word we don’t commonly use today (in fact I doubt I have ever used the word in a sentence outside of quoting Scripture). The Greek word is οἰκονομία (oikonomia) and means administration or a religious “economy.” HELPS Word-studies adds that this essentially means “where a person looks after another’s affairs.” This shows us that He is, once again, the One in charge, the one calling the shots. When we reach the end of time, He takes care of what comes next. He is in control. It is part of what happens when we get saved. We tell Him we are now His; we put our faith in what He has done for us, and we trust Him to take care of us, to lead us, and to bring us home with Him so that we can dwell together when our time on earth is ended.

Now we look at the unity that I mentioned earlier. God does not just save us and let us do whatever we want. If someone claims to be a believer and yet His actions show otherwise, (i.e. he curses, lusts, covets on a regular basis and has no guilt) then He is not a believer (James 1:14-24). A true believer desires to honor God because He has the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of Him, praying for us and poking and prodding at our heart. We are called to glorify Him (1 Corinthians 6:20).

God calls each and every believer together. Believers today are unified and known as “The Church” and we are the Bride of Christ (we will look at this more in Ephesians 5). But at the end times God will not just call the church together, but all believers, past and present. He calls us all to be unified together, and the One that unifies us is Him.

Again, we have already seen in the previous three verses how Jesus redeemed us by His blood. This is the unifier, the blood of Christ. We discusses the mystery in verse nine. The old testament believers got saved the exact same way as we do, i.e., the blood of Christ. This is how He unifies us. This is how we are all one in Him.

The salvation we experience is precious, and there is only one way that we can have it. It has been the same way since before time began. It has been His plan since before time began. That plan has always been the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the cross, saving us from being slaves to sin and eternal damnation in hell, giving us life, becoming slaves of righteousness, and spending an eternity with Him in heaven. The providence and sovereignty of God is otherworldly; it cannot be comprehended in full. But we can trust Him. He will look after us.

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