s
blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of His
grace. 5. Then we have the knowledge of the mystery of His will,
according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself for the
administration of the fulness of times, to head up all things in the
Christ. 6. In Him we have obtained an inheritance; and then the last
step, the seventh, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, the
earnest of that inheritance which we have obtained.

Now let me just say this little word on the last great fact. The
authorized version reads "after that ye believed ye were sealed with
that holy Spirit of promise." This translation is misleading and gives
ground to an error which is becoming more and more widespread. It is
the error that the Holy Spirit is not given at once when the sinner
believes, but that the Holy Spirit is received in a definite experience
after we have believed. It is an error; the passage before us does not
teach this but the very opposite, for it reads, "in whom also
believing, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit." Every one who has
believed received in the act of believing the Holy Spirit. And this
blessed gift, not an influence, but the person of the Holy Spirit, is
both the seal and the earnest. A seal makes secure and denotes safety.
By that seal we are owned by God. We are His property, we belong to
Him. Then the Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, the
pledge of it. We give an earnest when we buy a property, it is an
advance payment, the first installment. So is the Holy Spirit from the
side of our God the earnest of the purchased possession. How happy and
full of joy we should be with the knowledge of all these precious
truths, with the seal and earnest of our possession.

But the earnest (not the seal) is up to a certain time and that time is
when we come into the full possession of our inheritance "until the
redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory."
This brings us to the whole matter before us.

1. In the first place what is "our inheritance" mentioned here? We
find the word inheritance three times in this chapter. "In whom we
have also obtained an inheritance" (verse 11). Then in the 14th verse,
"The earnest of our inheritance." We find it again in the 18th verse.
"So that ye should know what is the hope of His calling and what the
riches of the glory of His inheritance in the Saints." The inheritance
is, according to these