Ephesians 2:18: What Does It Mean to Have Access to the Father?

Every Christian has, at some point, wondered whether their salvation is really as settled as it sounds. Forgiveness feels like a beginning. But forgiveness of what, exactly, and for what purpose? People who search out the meaning of Ephesians 2:18 are usually not asking a grammar question. They are asking whether the distance between themselves and God has actually closed, or whether they have simply been granted a truce.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached on this single verse, "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father," and treated it not as one more line in a long argument, but as its summit. In his sermon "Access to the Father," part of his exposition of Ephesians, he called this eighteenth verse of the second chapter the point at which the whole letter, and in a sense the whole of Christian doctrine, reaches its highest ground.

The Climax of an Argument

To understand why Dr. Lloyd-Jones treats this verse with such weight, it helps to see where it sits. Paul has spent the second chapter of Ephesians establishing that Jews and Gentiles, once estranged from one another and from God, have been brought together in Christ. He has described the dividing wall broken down, the old enmity slain, both parties reconciled to God in one body by the cross. It is already an astonishing claim. And then, Dr. Lloyd-Jones argues, Paul goes further still.

Reconciliation, he insists, is not the final word. "Is there anything beyond reconciliation? There is." Reconciliation, though amazing, is not the end of what Christ accomplished. A person can be reconciled to another and still hold them at arm's length — the hostility gone, but the relationship thin. Access is something more. It is the difference between a grievance settled and a door thrown open.

Three Persons, One Salvation

Dr. Lloyd-Jones does not let the doctrinal density of the verse pass unnoticed. In a single sentence, all three persons of the Godhead appear: access through the Son, by the Spirit, unto the Father. He treats this as more than incidental theology. It is a statement that the entire Trinity is personally engaged in the salvation of the individual believer and that the plan originates with the Father, is executed by the Son, and is applied within the believer by the Holy Spirit. Nothing less than the coordinated work of all three persons, he argues, was sufficient to deal with the true depth of human sin.

This matters for how the verse is read. Access to the Father is not a technicality tacked onto an otherwise private transaction between the believer and Christ. It is the Trinity's own stated purpose in redemption.

What "Access" Actually Means

The word itself carries the weight of the verse, and Dr. Lloyd-Jones spends real time on it. He offers a more precise rendering than the English word "access" alone communicates: "if you like, you can translate it by the word approach, or better, I think, is the word introduction". It signals a restored relationship: the assurance that God is no longer positioned against the believer but is, in Dr. Lloyd-Jones's own phrase, friendly disposed toward them.

But the detail he presses hardest is agency. Christ does not merely clear a path and leave the believer to walk it alone. "The Lord Jesus Christ doesn't merely prepare or open the way to this, he actually does it. He actually produces it." The image Dr. Lloyd-Jones draws out is almost domestic in its intimacy: "It is he who introduces us to the Father, brings us, takes us by the hand and presents us." This is not a legal category so much as a relational one. It is one person personally bringing another into the presence of a third.

He draws the same picture from the book of Hebrews, where the writer describes believers having boldness to enter the holiest of all, the place under the old covenant only the high priest could enter, and only once a year, and never without blood. Dr. Lloyd-Jones uses that Old Testament restriction to sharpen the contrast: under Christ, there is "no longer in the outer courts, no longer merely amongst the priests. The veil has been rent. We go right in."

Why "the Father," Not "God"

One detail in the verse that a casual reading might pass over, Dr. Lloyd-Jones treats as deliberate and significant. Paul had just used the word "God" two verses earlier, describing reconciliation "unto God." Here, in verse 18, he changes his term to "the Father." Dr. Lloyd-Jones does not regard that shift as incidental phrasing. It signals, he argues, that the destination of salvation is not merely restored standing before a deity, but adoption into the Father's own household — the same relationship of sonship the Lord Jesus Christ himself possessed.

"A Christian is one who is brought into the same relationship with God as the Lord Jesus Christ himself had. That's Christianity, that's salvation." This is why the Lord taught His disciples to pray "our Father," and why the apostle John could describe the believer's fellowship as fellowship "with the Father." The end of salvation, on this reading, is not information about God's disposition. It is filial intimacy with Him.

The Difference Access Makes

Dr. Lloyd-Jones does not leave the verse in the abstract. He turns it, characteristically, into a direct question for the listener. Salvation, he warns, is too often reduced to subjective relief. A testimony that God has "made me happy" or "taken away this or that" and stops there. But the object of salvation, he insists, is not a feeling managed. It is a Person known.

"The grand object of salvation is to bring us into the presence of God. Nothing less, nothing shorter." And so he presses the question home, again and again, in the sermon's closing movement: do you approach God with the confidence of a child running to a parent with a problem, certain of being heard? Do you actually know this access, or only affirm it as doctrine?

He closes with the question the whole sermon has been building toward: "Are we enjoying God?" And his answer is not hedged. "It's all possible. It's open through him by the Holy Spirit."

Listen to Dr. Lloyd-Jones Preach on Ephesians 2:18

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's full sermon on this verse, "Access to the Father," is part of his complete exposition of Ephesians and is freely available at MLJTrust.org:

"Access to the Father" — Ephesians 2:18. What "access" actually means, why the Trinity is engaged in this one act of salvation, and why Paul deliberately writes "the Father" rather than "God."

Listen to the full sermon free

Over 1,600 sermons by Dr. Lloyd-Jones are freely available to listen to, download, and share at mljtrust.org.