Sealed By The King
Ray Jensen
Ephesians 1:13-14 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 is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory. How great it is that the Lord will seal us for salvation upon our belief in Jesus Christ. I have found that the idea of this seal is not often understood by many. Back in the day when this passage was written, people understood what a seal was and what it meant. If a king wanted to send a private message to someone, he would seal the letter with his own royal signet ring. This was done by closing the letter, dropping hot wax where the letter closes, and imprinting the seal from the signet ring into the wax to seal it shut. This seal guaranteed that the contents inside had not been tampered with or altered from the author’s original writing. A similar thing we have in today’s world is when you have to break the seal on canned food – you know the contents within are not spoiled, not changed. A royal seal was a mark that says by the supreme authority of the king the content within was to be preserved and unchanged until it arrived at its intended recipient. This guaranteed that the letter would remain intact in the original content of its author, and would also have safe passage through rugged country until it reached its final destination.
What a signet ring looks like.
When I teach about the seal of salvation in Ephesians 1:13-14, I illustrate it by explaining a sealed letter. Upon belief in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Father God in heaven authors a new spirit within you and seals it by His authority as guaranteed for salvation. God’s seal isn’t one of wax, but of a spiritual seal which is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within you. When you believe in Jesus Christ, your seal of salvation is the Holy Spirit taking residence within you together with your newly created spirit. Like a letter to be delivered, you are now given a protected passage through the rugged country of earthly living knowing that the guarantee of salvation within you will remain intact and unchanged until you reach your final destination with the Father in heaven. 1 Peter 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. The scripture gives us a where and a when: in heaven, and in the last time which is in the future but not right now. The passage says that we have reservations until salvation is revealed. Have you ever made reservations for a hotel room? You’re not at the hotel yet, but you have to put down a deposit of payment so that the room will be available for you when you finally arrive. When you believe in Jesus, you don’t get salvation itself just quite yet because it hasn’t even been revealed yet. Often you hear people say, “are you saved?” asking as if they are thinking you have salvation right now. Salvation verses in the bible say that upon belief then you will be saved. “Will be” is set in a future tense, not a present tense. You can’t get salvation right now, because it’s not even known what it is yet. If you got salvation right now upon belief in Jesus Christ, then you’d know what salvation is. 1 Corinthians 2:9 However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" That’s just too great of a passage to not get excited about it! But since we don’t get salvation itself yet, we do have the assurance from God that we do get a seal, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that guarantees that we will get salvation in the future– a reservation. If you go back to Ephesians 1:13 again, you’ll see that it says the Holy Spirit is our deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. Jesus Christ paid for that deposit for us. Without the deposit from Him, you can have no reservation set for you. I have found that many do not buy into this biblical idea that salvation is sealed upon belief. Some skeptics allow their logic to intervene into the sound promise of what God tells us in His word. They think that sealed salvation condones a sin license. To them, this is a dangerous doctrine that promotes sinful living, and they’ll dismiss it as, “well that’s just your interpretation.” Correct interpretation never came about by the opinions of men, but by God’s Word. I’ve often found that when you show the skeptics a sealed salvation verse, they’ll either dismiss the verse by ignoring it, or by trying to make another verse seem to contradict it…or both. The word of the Lord is flawless, there are no contradictions. You cannot pit one verse against another. If you try to do this then you’re only demonstrating that you do not fully believe in the entirety of the bible, but only in the plucked segments of scripture that seem to fit your own perception so long as you keep them pulled out of their context. Psalm 12:6 And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. One of my professors at the bible college told me that I have a tendency to write myself into debate. It’s not my intention to write debate, but to further the explanation towards those who share in the generalized doubts that I often hear about. In this case I want to propose a point for those who think that sealed salvation promotes a sin license. This is all too often a point that clouds understanding for those who need to understand God’s gift.
First I want to scripturally set the tone for how we are told to hear and trust what God says. Understand that whatever God promises - stays promised. What God says – is. God must honor what He promises, or else He would not be God. Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? I’m hearing more and more in today’s preaching that we can get God to change His mind by exercising faith to alter God’s direction. This is not Godly preaching because it goes against Numbers 23:19.
Secondly, the understanding of God’s word can be blocked to us if we abandon pure trust for our own logic. Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
In other words, don’t try to figure it all out on your own because you don’t have the ability to comprehend it. The bible is stacked full of stories about people who tried to do things their own way and failed because they didn’t just trust God’s divine providence. It’s ok to ask questions and then research them biblically, but don’t allow your logic to undo a direct truth written in God’s word. Just trust Him.
Eliminating the sin license
Sin is wrong, no doubt about it. No scripture EVER states that it is ok to go on sinning. In fact, the number one verse that is used to undo the idea of sealed salvation is Hebrews 10:26. I will show you Hebrews 10:26 and then show you Ephesians 1:13 again right behind it so that you can easily see the likenesses and differences between the two:
Hebrews 10:26-27 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
Ephesians 1:13-14 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 is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.
These two verses start off the same because they both speak of one that the truth came to. The difference is that in Ephesians 1:13 the hearer believed it, therefore he was sealed upon his belief in Jesus Christ. The hearer in Hebrews 10:26 did not believe it but only heard the knowledge of it. Belief is not stated in this verse, therefore the hearer was not sealed. I’ve told many people about salvation in Jesus Christ who did not believe in it, but they did hear it. Hebrews 10:26 does not say that you can actually lose salvation. If it did, then it would be in conflict with Ephesians 1:13-14 and then the word of God would be flawed. What Hebrews 10:26 does state, is that if you go on sinning after you heard the truth – and rejected it - then there is no other sacrifice but Jesus that can save you. Of course Hebrews 10:26-27 does not say that the hearer actually rejected the truth, so how can I claim that this is what it meant? I keep verses in their context and carry on into verse 28 and beyond where it goes on to talk about the rejection. Keep verses in context, or else you can make a verse say anything you want it to say.
The opposite of sinning is obeying, that’s pretty obvious. Have you considered that sealed salvation really means an “obeying license.” When you come to a fork in the road then you are presented with two options: left or right. Those who claim that sealed salvation is a sin license will “expose their scale,” how they weigh things, by claiming that there is only one turn at this fork; sinning at will. Those who see sealed salvation as the way to enhance and mature their relationship with Jesus will see that they have two options: to sin or obey. They expose their scale to others around them by making disciplined choices towards obedience, thereby showing Jesus to others in how they live their lives. Guaranteed salvation should make one appreciative enough to the Lord to be an obedient and willing servant. Those who think this condones a sin license do not realize that sinning brings about painful consequences upon themselves and others which are designed to make them obedient again. Hopefully the willful sinner’s pain will eventually draw him to surrendering into a new life in Jesus Christ that has been exemplified before him through the obedient lives of believers.
“But if I have my seal, then why should I care if I sin or not?”
If you have your seal of salvation, which is the Holy Spirit within you, then you will feel the influence of the Holy Spirit upon you to stop sinning. You will be inclined to obey and to reject sin, not to sin all you want. But when you sin it will hurt, because you have conviction by the Spirit that what you did was wrong and to make a better choice the next time you are tempted. That’s what the very job of the Holy Spirit is, to convict us of sin. It’s important to understand that your flesh is of a sinful nature. Adam’s sin tainted the entire line of human flesh. Sin is passed down from your earthly father’s seed. Jesus’ flesh was conceived by the Holy Spirit instead of Joseph, so that Adam’s tainted line would bypass Jesus. This made Jesus to be the only sinless man in history because he had no earthly father, but only the Father in heaven. Our flesh wages war on our mind to make sinful choices . The flesh can’t wage war on your spirit because it is sealed and held sinless by God upon your point of belief in Jesus. However if the flesh can win over the mind then the mind will make a choice that brings the pleasure that the body desires. This is our inner battle; to listen to the Holy Spirit’s influence within us to make disciplined choices that rival the body’s desires. Do not think that salvation is not sealed, because if you do then you are disbelieving the very purpose of the Holy Spirit Himself.
John 16:8 When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:
“Your explanation of a seal sounds convincing, but how can you prove biblically that this seal you speak of is actually intended to mean an unchanging guarantee?”
The other day I was reading in the book of Daniel, and I found a verse in chapter 6 that leapt off the page at me because it put sealed salvation into a great picture that illustrated how and why a king’s seal is used. Daniel 6:17 A stone was brought and laid over the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the signet rings of his nobles, so that nothing would be changed in regard to Daniel. “So that nothing would be changed,” it says. That is profound! I thought to myself, this is a biblical verse that explains how and why a seal is used! Now I don’t have to just tell people that “back in the day, people understood seals.” I mean, I could talk to them about why food is sealed in containers to preserve its state of freshness, but this was a biblical passage! Scripture interprets scripture, not men, so this was just what I needed to help me illustrate the purpose of sealing. Take a look at this picture in the verse from Daniel. Daniel was placed in the hostile environment of a lion’s den, and the passage says a large stone was placed over him which was to prevent anyone from being able to change his situation. He had to be in Godly trust and obedience to get through the night. The king sealed it with his signet ring so that nobody else could change Daniel’s situation, just like sealing a letter so that its contents would remain intact. The next morning, the king hurried to the den to see if Daniel was ok because he had been tricked into adhering to a law that sentenced Daniel to the den. He commanded that the sealed stone be removed and found Daniel alive. By his royal authority he had Daniel lifted up to himself and out of the hostile environment that he was in.We who believe in Jesus Christ who still live on earth are likewise in a hostile environment, but we have been given a spiritual seal “so that nothing would change” in regard to our salvation. We can get through the dangerous time by trusting and obeying the Lord, just as Daniel did. Then when it is time, the KING shall come for us who believe, and by His authority He will reach down to us through His seal and lift us up to Himself, redeeming us who are His possession. Praise God for His incredible gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. May God bless the reading of His Word. Amen.
Ray Jensen
Ephesians 1:13-14 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 is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory. How great it is that the Lord will seal us for salvation upon our belief in Jesus Christ. I have found that the idea of this seal is not often understood by many. Back in the day when this passage was written, people understood what a seal was and what it meant. If a king wanted to send a private message to someone, he would seal the letter with his own royal signet ring. This was done by closing the letter, dropping hot wax where the letter closes, and imprinting the seal from the signet ring into the wax to seal it shut. This seal guaranteed that the contents inside had not been tampered with or altered from the author’s original writing. A similar thing we have in today’s world is when you have to break the seal on canned food – you know the contents within are not spoiled, not changed. A royal seal was a mark that says by the supreme authority of the king the content within was to be preserved and unchanged until it arrived at its intended recipient. This guaranteed that the letter would remain intact in the original content of its author, and would also have safe passage through rugged country until it reached its final destination.
What a signet ring looks like.
When I teach about the seal of salvation in Ephesians 1:13-14, I illustrate it by explaining a sealed letter. Upon belief in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Father God in heaven authors a new spirit within you and seals it by His authority as guaranteed for salvation. God’s seal isn’t one of wax, but of a spiritual seal which is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within you. When you believe in Jesus Christ, your seal of salvation is the Holy Spirit taking residence within you together with your newly created spirit. Like a letter to be delivered, you are now given a protected passage through the rugged country of earthly living knowing that the guarantee of salvation within you will remain intact and unchanged until you reach your final destination with the Father in heaven. 1 Peter 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. The scripture gives us a where and a when: in heaven, and in the last time which is in the future but not right now. The passage says that we have reservations until salvation is revealed. Have you ever made reservations for a hotel room? You’re not at the hotel yet, but you have to put down a deposit of payment so that the room will be available for you when you finally arrive. When you believe in Jesus, you don’t get salvation itself just quite yet because it hasn’t even been revealed yet. Often you hear people say, “are you saved?” asking as if they are thinking you have salvation right now. Salvation verses in the bible say that upon belief then you will be saved. “Will be” is set in a future tense, not a present tense. You can’t get salvation right now, because it’s not even known what it is yet. If you got salvation right now upon belief in Jesus Christ, then you’d know what salvation is. 1 Corinthians 2:9 However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" That’s just too great of a passage to not get excited about it! But since we don’t get salvation itself yet, we do have the assurance from God that we do get a seal, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that guarantees that we will get salvation in the future– a reservation. If you go back to Ephesians 1:13 again, you’ll see that it says the Holy Spirit is our deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. Jesus Christ paid for that deposit for us. Without the deposit from Him, you can have no reservation set for you. I have found that many do not buy into this biblical idea that salvation is sealed upon belief. Some skeptics allow their logic to intervene into the sound promise of what God tells us in His word. They think that sealed salvation condones a sin license. To them, this is a dangerous doctrine that promotes sinful living, and they’ll dismiss it as, “well that’s just your interpretation.” Correct interpretation never came about by the opinions of men, but by God’s Word. I’ve often found that when you show the skeptics a sealed salvation verse, they’ll either dismiss the verse by ignoring it, or by trying to make another verse seem to contradict it…or both. The word of the Lord is flawless, there are no contradictions. You cannot pit one verse against another. If you try to do this then you’re only demonstrating that you do not fully believe in the entirety of the bible, but only in the plucked segments of scripture that seem to fit your own perception so long as you keep them pulled out of their context. Psalm 12:6 And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. One of my professors at the bible college told me that I have a tendency to write myself into debate. It’s not my intention to write debate, but to further the explanation towards those who share in the generalized doubts that I often hear about. In this case I want to propose a point for those who think that sealed salvation promotes a sin license. This is all too often a point that clouds understanding for those who need to understand God’s gift.
First I want to scripturally set the tone for how we are told to hear and trust what God says. Understand that whatever God promises - stays promised. What God says – is. God must honor what He promises, or else He would not be God. Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? I’m hearing more and more in today’s preaching that we can get God to change His mind by exercising faith to alter God’s direction. This is not Godly preaching because it goes against Numbers 23:19.
Secondly, the understanding of God’s word can be blocked to us if we abandon pure trust for our own logic. Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
In other words, don’t try to figure it all out on your own because you don’t have the ability to comprehend it. The bible is stacked full of stories about people who tried to do things their own way and failed because they didn’t just trust God’s divine providence. It’s ok to ask questions and then research them biblically, but don’t allow your logic to undo a direct truth written in God’s word. Just trust Him.
Eliminating the sin license
Sin is wrong, no doubt about it. No scripture EVER states that it is ok to go on sinning. In fact, the number one verse that is used to undo the idea of sealed salvation is Hebrews 10:26. I will show you Hebrews 10:26 and then show you Ephesians 1:13 again right behind it so that you can easily see the likenesses and differences between the two:
Hebrews 10:26-27 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
Ephesians 1:13-14 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 is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.
These two verses start off the same because they both speak of one that the truth came to. The difference is that in Ephesians 1:13 the hearer believed it, therefore he was sealed upon his belief in Jesus Christ. The hearer in Hebrews 10:26 did not believe it but only heard the knowledge of it. Belief is not stated in this verse, therefore the hearer was not sealed. I’ve told many people about salvation in Jesus Christ who did not believe in it, but they did hear it. Hebrews 10:26 does not say that you can actually lose salvation. If it did, then it would be in conflict with Ephesians 1:13-14 and then the word of God would be flawed. What Hebrews 10:26 does state, is that if you go on sinning after you heard the truth – and rejected it - then there is no other sacrifice but Jesus that can save you. Of course Hebrews 10:26-27 does not say that the hearer actually rejected the truth, so how can I claim that this is what it meant? I keep verses in their context and carry on into verse 28 and beyond where it goes on to talk about the rejection. Keep verses in context, or else you can make a verse say anything you want it to say.
The opposite of sinning is obeying, that’s pretty obvious. Have you considered that sealed salvation really means an “obeying license.” When you come to a fork in the road then you are presented with two options: left or right. Those who claim that sealed salvation is a sin license will “expose their scale,” how they weigh things, by claiming that there is only one turn at this fork; sinning at will. Those who see sealed salvation as the way to enhance and mature their relationship with Jesus will see that they have two options: to sin or obey. They expose their scale to others around them by making disciplined choices towards obedience, thereby showing Jesus to others in how they live their lives. Guaranteed salvation should make one appreciative enough to the Lord to be an obedient and willing servant. Those who think this condones a sin license do not realize that sinning brings about painful consequences upon themselves and others which are designed to make them obedient again. Hopefully the willful sinner’s pain will eventually draw him to surrendering into a new life in Jesus Christ that has been exemplified before him through the obedient lives of believers.
“But if I have my seal, then why should I care if I sin or not?”
If you have your seal of salvation, which is the Holy Spirit within you, then you will feel the influence of the Holy Spirit upon you to stop sinning. You will be inclined to obey and to reject sin, not to sin all you want. But when you sin it will hurt, because you have conviction by the Spirit that what you did was wrong and to make a better choice the next time you are tempted. That’s what the very job of the Holy Spirit is, to convict us of sin. It’s important to understand that your flesh is of a sinful nature. Adam’s sin tainted the entire line of human flesh. Sin is passed down from your earthly father’s seed. Jesus’ flesh was conceived by the Holy Spirit instead of Joseph, so that Adam’s tainted line would bypass Jesus. This made Jesus to be the only sinless man in history because he had no earthly father, but only the Father in heaven. Our flesh wages war on our mind to make sinful choices . The flesh can’t wage war on your spirit because it is sealed and held sinless by God upon your point of belief in Jesus. However if the flesh can win over the mind then the mind will make a choice that brings the pleasure that the body desires. This is our inner battle; to listen to the Holy Spirit’s influence within us to make disciplined choices that rival the body’s desires. Do not think that salvation is not sealed, because if you do then you are disbelieving the very purpose of the Holy Spirit Himself.
John 16:8 When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:
“Your explanation of a seal sounds convincing, but how can you prove biblically that this seal you speak of is actually intended to mean an unchanging guarantee?”
The other day I was reading in the book of Daniel, and I found a verse in chapter 6 that leapt off the page at me because it put sealed salvation into a great picture that illustrated how and why a king’s seal is used. Daniel 6:17 A stone was brought and laid over the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the signet rings of his nobles, so that nothing would be changed in regard to Daniel. “So that nothing would be changed,” it says. That is profound! I thought to myself, this is a biblical verse that explains how and why a seal is used! Now I don’t have to just tell people that “back in the day, people understood seals.” I mean, I could talk to them about why food is sealed in containers to preserve its state of freshness, but this was a biblical passage! Scripture interprets scripture, not men, so this was just what I needed to help me illustrate the purpose of sealing. Take a look at this picture in the verse from Daniel. Daniel was placed in the hostile environment of a lion’s den, and the passage says a large stone was placed over him which was to prevent anyone from being able to change his situation. He had to be in Godly trust and obedience to get through the night. The king sealed it with his signet ring so that nobody else could change Daniel’s situation, just like sealing a letter so that its contents would remain intact. The next morning, the king hurried to the den to see if Daniel was ok because he had been tricked into adhering to a law that sentenced Daniel to the den. He commanded that the sealed stone be removed and found Daniel alive. By his royal authority he had Daniel lifted up to himself and out of the hostile environment that he was in.We who believe in Jesus Christ who still live on earth are likewise in a hostile environment, but we have been given a spiritual seal “so that nothing would change” in regard to our salvation. We can get through the dangerous time by trusting and obeying the Lord, just as Daniel did. Then when it is time, the KING shall come for us who believe, and by His authority He will reach down to us through His seal and lift us up to Himself, redeeming us who are His possession. Praise God for His incredible gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. May God bless the reading of His Word. Amen.
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