Do we really act like we understand the magnitude of our blessing in the privilege of salvation? Do we take our privilege for granted?
Learning to Praise God For The Blessings of His Grace
Ephesians 1:3-14 a of (a-e)
Please turn to Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1:3-14 is our text for this morning. I think I want to start out this morning by reminding us, that as people, we have many different privileges in this life. Actually it all starts with being alive in the first place. Just being someone is a privilege. It is the great privilege of experience, and being, and thought, and emotion, and determination, and on, and on. You are someone, which means you exist, and it is a privilege to exist. There are other privileges too. It's a privilege to be able to have adequate medical care. It's a privilege to be well fed; to have enough food to eat. It's a privilege to not be oppressed by tyranny. We have privileges that are so numerous that it is almost too great a task to name them all. But sometimes we take our privileges for granted. In other words, we become so used to all the privileges that we have, that we don't think about them in that way anymore. Instead of appreciating them, we think of such things as rightful expectations that are naturally due us, as part of the package of the way things are. They are part of us; part of our culture; part of our lives. They are part of us to such a degree that we can hardly imagine it any other way. In fact, often times we take our privileges for granted in such a way that we don't even recognize that we are privileged at all. We become spoiled. We become blinded to what we have in apparent ignorance of what we don't have in comparison. We are not starving in a famine. We are not stuck in an area where there are no emergency rooms to be taken to in time of physical trauma. We are not stuck in some political prison among some oppressive government. We are not in a city that is absent of a serious body of believers who study the scriptures in verse to verse exposition, and is not a body of believers that is held in mind control by ancient creeds, traditions of men, and things like that. But listen, our whole viewpoint, and our whole consciousness changes when a privilege is suddenly taken away. We quickly realize how privileged our life really was beforehand. But, there is another way to recognize our privileges, and that is to go through the exercise of stepping back and taking another look at our lives and rethinking our lives from God's point of view.
This morning, we are continuing to work through Paul's letter to the Christians in the Ephesus region. As we dig into the riches of God's New Covenant truth, we need to be mindful that God is speaking to us concerning our privileges as Christians. We need to be mindful of what God calls our privileges. He calls them blessings. He is the blesser according to His kind intention, and we are the objects of His kind intention. We need to be mindful of this so that we don't become spoiled, or if we are spoiled we will make an attitude adjustment. But most importantly, we need to be mindful of God, as the blesser. We don't want to make God out to be smaller than He should be in our lives, in all that He has done, and is doing in our lives. When we don't recognize that He has blessed us in an amazingly wonderful way, we are acting spoiled; we have become blinded to what we have in apparent ignorance of what we don't have in comparison. It's the attitude, where you don't bring praise and glory to God in all that He has done, and yet, that praise and glory is exactly what God wants. It's the primary reason why God has blessed us. Keep these things in mind as we partake in the sacred preaching of God's word this morning in this sermon titled,
"Learning to Praise God For The Blessings of His Grace" [prayer]
Let's read our text together at this time,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He elected us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be set apart and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His determination, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His determination, according to His kind intention which He set forth in Christ 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His determination, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory." Ephesians 1:3-14
Paul is so overwhelmed by the immense beauty of what God has revealed to him, that we can easily sense the excitement pressed into the papyrus scroll as he expresses these words. Actually, what we are reading in Paul's words, is a bursting forth in praise of our amazing and magnificent God. Having received so much revelation from the very Creator of the universe over the years, Paul, by the Spirit, wants to share the greatness of our relationship with God so that we can feel both privileged and secure with our Creator. God wants us to know what's going on with God's big plan that we are privileged to be in, called Christianity. It's doctrinal, it's theological, and as such it is relevant and practical. To say otherwise, is to feebly attempt to attack God with our own personal views of what we think is important concerning what we think we need. It is sad, because there are many people who call themselves Christians, who have looked over these Scriptures a few times in the past, and they decide that when it comes to their own lives, they don't really need to continue to study, and dig, and learn from them anymore. For some reason they think they've heard it all, and they've got it all. They've arrived, so to speak. I love those people, but I also feel sorry for them, because I see where they are headed in their know-it-all attitudes of smug complacent contentment with mediocrity. They remind me of a term I became familiar with some years ago in business management. We had people in the company I worked with who would be subtly aggressive in their behavior toward management, or even toward a fellow employee. When their behavior was discerned, it would be called passive aggression. I hate the term because it seems like a self stultifying statement, but nevertheless, such people's attitudes and actions would be labeled with the term. Subsequently, they would be labeled passive aggressive. They are not the only kinds I worry about, and feel sorry for. There are Christians who are passive know-it-alls. They have a subtle know-it-all aggression about continuing to learn from a passage they've learned from before. Sometimes they are driven by their own traditions according to some doctrinal scheme, or some ancient creed, and so they don't like it when a closer look at God's word throws a wrench in their traditional machinery. My heart goes out to these people because I know what's going on inside of them, and I know where they are headed. Fear and a subtle kind of dishonesty is what usually drives this type of persons beliefs and actions. They fear that if they are wrong, then somehow their Christianity has been compromised, so they would rather not try and figure out if they were wrong about something they believed beforehand. Being wrong hurts. Why hurt, when it is so much easier to stick with the soft pillow of tradition? Or, they are dishonest. They are dishonest when they see new insights from scripture that they didn't realize were there before--insights that clearly contradict their set-traditions. It takes them off guard, and so they become passive aggressive toward a true revelation of God's word by ignoring the facts. The traditionalist thinks they are spiritually mature. They want so much to believe they are spiritually mature because they want to be secure, but the reality is that they are immature. They don't allow their traditions to be confronted, tested, challenged, and stretched under the scrutiny of other godly men and women who have wisdom and insights into God's word. Subsequently, they cling to error in an attempt to feel secure in what they believe. Folks, you need to love those kinds of people, because you just might find out one day that you are those kinds of people. Then, there are many people who call themselves Christians, who think that these kinds of Bible passages are just a bunch of deep and heavy concepts that we don't really understand, and so they ignore what God has preserved, and given to them for their practical edification. Then there are the folks who are always learning, but never coming to the full knowledge of the truths they are exposed to. Usually they are caught up in a sinful world of self centered drama. Their goals are carnal. Their Christianity is a degraded mediocrity. They are superficial, futile, and ineffective for Christ. They don't act as if they truly understand the grandeur, beauty, and intense importance of their endearing relationship with their creator. They may be eternally saved, but their relationship with God rarely manifests the fruits of eternity. They say their relationship with God is meaningful, but the meaning is based upon what they want, with only a slight coloring of what God wants. They are a paint job, but there is no car underneath the paint. There are so many people who are missing it, because they are missing out on the depths of doctrine and theology that God wants them to feed upon, digest, and assimilate as their very life in God's endearing relationship. They are missing out because they have called what is rich and beautiful, something bothersome and irrelevant. At the worst level, they call it boring, yet all such anti-fullness-of-God's-word declarations are evil. Yes, evil. Bothersome, irrelevant, and boring, are the words that describe their complacent hearts as being raised up in living profanity against the all wise God they claim is the author of the Bible passages they loathe. Another extreme is the self proclaimed, self made expert. This person is all over our contemporary cultural church. They are know-it-alls who are unteachable. They loath sermons preached around God's doctrinal and theological word for the sole reason that they already think they know it all--or they know more than everyone else. This kind of person is in sin. I wish I could help such people, but why should they listen to me if they already think they already know it all? Nevertheless, in spite of all the unteachables of our day, God wants us to keep learning deeper and higher insights concerning His word, His will, and His way. It's what sharpens us. It's what frees us from being bogged down in the superficial issues of daily life. For example, people are always talking about having meaningful relationships. Have you noticed that? It is a buzzword of our culture--meaningful relationships. I have yet to hear a clear and sensible definition of a relationship that has no meaning whatsoever, but nevertheless, people are into wanting what are called meaningful relationships. Well, this beautifully deep, and rich passage that we just read through is about illuminating the awe inspiring facts of an endearing relationship that God created, with you in mind for His own good pleasure. We see the beauty flowing like a glistening river as Paul starts out with the endearing relationship;
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," Ephesians 1:3
OK, this statement demonstrates what I am talking about in one important respect. For example, there are some scholars that see the Greek construction, and context, here, as indicating that God is blessed, like I just read from the NASB. The NASB, the ESV, NKJV, NET, translate the Greek as,
"Blessed be the God ..."
Now we certainly know that this statement is true according to the rest of the Bible. We know that God is blessed. It is a great attribute of our holy, loving God. Paul writes to Timothy and states simply, that God is
"... the blessed God," in 1 Timothy 1:11
God is blessed, which in language that we can relate to, means: God is happy, God is content, and God is satisfied. It is all part of His intrinsic being. Nevertheless, there is no soft pillow for us to rest upon, because other scholars see the difficult Greek construction here as Paul honoring God in giving praise to God, and at the same time, urging praise to God from everyone influenced by this letter. This is why you will find the NIV team translating Paul's introductory comment as,
"3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ..." Ephesians 1:3
According to other scriptures, this is also a true statement. We know that God should be praised. In Hebrews we read that,
"15 Through Him [which is Christ] then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name." Hebrews 13:15
So, what we see is that no matter what interpretation one comes up with here, God is blessed, and God is to be praised. What I want us to notice, though, is that Hebrews reveals that we praise our God "through" Christ. How many of you realize that we praise God because God wants to be praised? God desires praise. He wants it. He wants it, and He gets it by saving people in Christ. Through us, he gets the praise the He wants by the power of His own Spirit, according to His own doctrinal truth. When you praise God through Christ, it is not something that you came up with, though it may seem like it. It is something that God came up with, and so we praise Him as He urges us to do so by His Spirit through His truth. We should feel privileged that God brings praise back to Himself through Himself as Holy Spirit, and in the process, He uses us, His creations, to accomplish it. We should feel privileged, and we should also be humbled to know that we are being used by God in this way. It is almost too difficult to express in words; we were sin bound, hell bound, lost people. Now we are saved by God. We are free, and yet we are His slaves. He has saved you and me to do His will. It is a privileged blessing that we must not take for granted. There are people with sin filled minds who complain about this relationship as if it is somehow oppressive. But, where are all the saved people who are complaining about being slaves of God? We count it a privilege, don't we? It is a humble position, yet it is an exalted position. What an endearing relationship to be a slave, but at the same time to be richer and more important than the wealthiest lost person on earth. Lost people don't have the privilege to worship their creator, unless the Creator blesses them to do so in salvation. So, we look closely at Paul's glistening river of exaltation, and though the Greek is difficult on the opening words, we recognize that either way, exalting God is the foundational essence of what Paul is doing, and what we should be doing too. God is blessed--yes. Praise be to God--certainly. But the big question is "Why?" Why is Paul saying this? Paul says,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," Ephesians 1:3
OK, there are many spiritual blessings, and Paul is about to launch into listing the huge blessings that you and I possess solely by God's grace. What I want us to notice right here is that Paul says that God "has blessed" us already. All these things already apply to you (cf. v. 13) if you have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. God has already blessed you, his child, with every spiritual blessing. We also need to understand that this is true because God loves us according to grace. In other words, God is not looking at you, and scrutinizing you every single moment of your life, and then with piercing, all-seeing, eyes that scan all your junk, He is steadfast on identifying every sinful fault that you have, and then deciding, based on your works, whether or not He is going to bless you with every spiritual blessing in Christ. God is not saying He is doing those kinds of things. That's what someone else is saying. God's not looking at your life at every single moment and deciding how much quantity of every spiritual blessing in Christ He is going to bless you with. The Scripture says that God has already blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Christ. It's already happened. And listen, the scripture says that God has already blessed you with the full amount. "Every" means "every" when it comes to how much of the heavenly spiritual blessing you have. The same quantity, in Christ, that every other frail, weak, mistake prone Christian receives, is the same quantity we all receive. Now there is a reason for this, and we absolutely must understand what it is. You see, the reason is because, in our humanity, we are all imperfect, but though we are imperfect in our humanity, God blesses us all with the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. It is a past tense action. It happened in the past when you were saved, and it applies to you both now and forever. This is your spiritual blessing in Him. You see, if God looked at your old sorry self and examined every thought, every motive, every action, and every mistake that you make, and then made His decision of whether He will bless you with every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly places, based upon all those failure things, and sin things that He sees, then you would be cursed forever. You would be lost. Folks, when we are completely honest with ourselves, then we must admit that we are just a mess. So this beautiful declaration that Paul is making (of which he is about to continue with in detail over the next 14 verses) has to do with a huge area of the blessing. It has to do with your salvation. So, right now, keep in mind that God has already blessed you with complete salvation; his child, with every spiritual blessing, and He does this because He loves you according to grace. Now let's look at the place that our blessing is derived,
"... God ... has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," Ephesians 1:3
All spiritual blessings were planned before the foundation of the world to be lavished upon God's people at a particular time in history, in a particular covenant that God made, and in a particular person. All of your blessing is summed up in Christ who is in the heavenly places right now. Yes, we are a mess. Our job drives us crazy sometimes. School is racking our brains. We get sick. We sin. We get depressed. We doubt. We sin again. We grieve, and we complain, and we sin again, but we are saved. And what that means is that this world is not our home. This place is only temporary. Soon, we are going to be living there in the heavenly places, with Christ, in our resurrected state, but right now we exist in the blessing of salvation where Christ is our life. Right now we hold on because we know that Christ is living here with us because we are the body of Christ. It is a privilege that we can not, and should not, take for granted, and so we find all of our spiritual blessings being from Him, and in Him. This is why we need to understand the great doctrine of what is typically called our position and identification in Christ. Let me repeat that. It is the great doctrine of your position and identification in Christ. Before you can understand your position and identity in Him, you've got to understand His position and identity as Himself. This is where all of your every blessing comes from. All our blessing is summed in Him. It is God's huge plan. God's plan for our endearing relationship with Him has Christ coming and dying for you and resurrecting for you, and so now in His resurrected state, He is in the heavenly places, seated at the the right hand of the Father, as we read in this chapter concerning What God has done,
"He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places," 1:20
His position and identity is as the great sacrificial Lamb, the great promised Messiah, the great eternal Son who is God, the great King of kings and Lord of lords who is seated on the royal throne at His Father's right hand. Listen to me folks, right now you may sit in an office with a boss who treats you like a complete moron. You may be slaving away at a job, laboring for people that you know are not honoring God with their lives and their money. I had that happen to me in my past. I labored away all day long for a man who was not honoring God with his life, and his money. He was wealthy, and the bottom line on everything with him was how to get more and more money. It is all he cared about. He didn't care about others. All he cared about was money. Often, I would be oppressed in my Christianity in my work environment. Often times I would forget my privilege. I would forget my blessing. Sure I knew I was saved, but I would start to lose the sense of the riches I have inherited in my position and identity in Christ. I would forget that the greed that consumed the man I worked for was puny compared to the satisfaction I should have because I am already blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. So, I know what it's like. I remember being in work situations where people just didn't like me, and so they would treat me like a moron. They would treat me like they despised me. Maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you are physically handicapped compared to other people in this world, and so somehow you are constantly battling a sense of inferiority. It doesn't matter who you are, or even what position you have in the world, you may be experiencing thoughts, and feelings that the whole world is against you at every turn. The standards of the world are telling you that you are a failure, and so you believe you are a failure. Maybe you even say it to yourself; "I'm a failure." These are common thoughts: "I'm a loser" "I'm worthless." "I'm a loser." The bottom line is that you may be nothing in the world's eyes. All your experience with this lost world that is passing away may be one relentless hard hit after hard hit, and so you are worn out. This is why you absolutely need to bathe yourself in this doctrine and theology. Though the world treats you like dirt, God treats you as if your position and identification is not some loser you, that you are faced with every single day by a cursed and dying world. God treats you as if your position and identification is the winner that you are because you are in Christ who is seated in heavenly places. Let's look at how Paul explains how this happens,
"4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, [Paul is talking about loving His elect ones who are saved] 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), [Now here comes that great endearing relationship of positional identification] 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," Ephesians 2:4
Wow, who is the loser now? It certainly is not you! Folks, don't take your privilege for granted. You, see, this is what Paul means at the beginning of chapter one when he bursts out, declaring,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," Ephesians 1:3
My dear brothers and sisters, once we really get this, we should be motivated, just like Paul, to burst out in joy at the revelation of just how special, loved, and blessed we are in Christ! All of the plan; all the blood and gut wrenching pain and rejection of the cross; all the history of waiting from Adam and Eve to the coming of Messiah; all the history of people being conceived, born, and being rescued by God in salvation since the cross and resurrection; all of our individual histories that we will experience forever and ever, and ever; all of our blessing--all of it is summed up in Christ--Christ, who is seated right now in royal majesty, at the right hand of the Father in the heavenlies. And you and I are seated there too, in Him! It is all according to God's eternal purpose for us in this endearing relationship. We continue reading about our "every blessing" where it is,
"4 just as He [God] elected us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we would be set apart and blameless [faultless] before Him."
God's word is beautiful. God's word is deep and sometimes its beauty shakes us up. This is what I meant at the beginning of this sermon. We look at this declaration in verse 4, and we notice that our election in the sphere of Christ was before the foundation of the world. This means that your salvation was not a surprise. It was not random. It was preordained, predetermined, predestined, to happen according God's hard determination. In these details, we see that God had a plan, and He implemented it for you whom He has predestined, but what I want us to notice is the blessing that is part of our "every" blessing in Him. The election and the blessing is,
"that we would be set apart and blameless before Him."
This is you. This is blessing, and this is the great work of God in Christ. In a few more chapters, in Ephesians 5:25, we get more details of how all our wonderful blessing is summed up in Christ,
"... Christ ... loved the church ...
[That means He loved you in the past. The church exists as all the called out Christians of the universal community of the saved. Now the second half of verse 25,]
... and gave Himself up for her, ...
[why is that?; verse 26]
... 26 so that He would set her apart, ...
[which is one of those aspects of our blessing we are elected to in this endearing relationship according to 1:4. Paul continues,]
... having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ...
[He cleansed her already. He did this through giving Himself up, and He did this through the institution of the word of the gospel of salvation in Him. Now why is that?; verse 27]
"27 that He would present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be set apart and blameless." Ephesians 5:25-27
Brand those last eight words in your heart. Christ did all that for you,
"... that she [which is you my dear Christian] would be set apart and blameless."
Now don't forget our verse. Remember the election and the blessing we experience in Christ in 1:4. Paul is repeating it again in 5:27. Remember when he mentioned it in our text. He said that the blessing is for the elect, so
"that we would be set apart and blameless [faultless] before Him." 1:4
Folks, this is the Creator's eternal spiritual plan of privilege for you, and it happened as part of His complete predetermination of all things. And, we read what we were predestined to, and why, going into verse 5,
"In love He predestined us to adoption ...
[This is what we who are saved, and all who will be saved, are predestined to--"adoption." There was a time when you and I were not God's children. We were outside of His New Covenant in Christ. We were roaming the streets of the world in spiritual destitution according to the futility of the Gentile mind driven by a hardened heart (cf. Ephesians 4). We were, at one time, not "sons." So Paul says, in verse 5 here,]
"In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself,"
OK, keep with the details of your privilege. The Holy Spirit moved Paul to use the male child as the reference for what you are, in adoption. If you are a female, you need to rejoice in this male child reference. If you are a male, you need to be humble in this. You see, you and I are sons, because, and only because, we have been adopted in the only begotten Son, who, in His Godhead is the eternal Son. This is your position and identification. This is what we were predestined to--adoption as sons in Christ. Now, the question is why? Paul gives the answer. He says, "in love," so the answer is that God loves particular people, and in His love, Paul says that those particular people were predestined to be adopted by Him in His Son to be His sons--look at the end of verse 5,
"... according to the kind intention [good pleasure] of His determination," verse 5
Isn't that beautiful? Don't you feel special, secure, and loved? Don't you feel privileged? This is why we need to learn to praise God for the blessings of His grace. But there is something in the forefront of all of this that should not be pushed to the background of all of this. It can be pushed to the back, and it often is. What I am talking about is that God's predetermined plan of blessing us with every spiritual blessing in Christ is primarily for blessing Himself. This is why Paul continues explaining more of why we are saved in Christ, and why it is the plan. Paul says in verse 6, that it is,
"6 to the praise [which is the exalting honor] of the glory [which is the excellent value and splendor] of His grace, ..."
It is great to be blessed. It is great to feel special, secure, and loved by God in being lavished with all the spiritual blessings, isn't it? After all, it is the endearing relationship. But, all of that is really the overflow of God planning to bless Himself since before the foundation of the world, and then blessing Himself during the foundation of the world. In other words, folks, we can not, and we must not miss the fact that God predestines us to adoption for the hugely important reason of getting praise of the glory, excellent value, and splendor, of His own kind grace. God is primary, and His glory is primary. We are secondary, but this is why our endearing relationship is so beautiful. This is hard to comprehend, but it really is very beautiful. God's love and kind intention on us, (His creations), which is to bring back to Him all praise concerning the wonderful value and splendor of His grace, is still a gift that we partake in. We can not forget that. It is still a gift that we partake in, as Paul says, continuing with the last part of verse 6,
"... which He freely bestowed on us in the Loved One." Ephesians 1:6
It is free, right? It is free as a complete gift given with no meritorious earning on our part, but notice that God still gets all the glory. That is what God wants out of it all. All of God's plan is summed in Christ, which means that all of the endearing relationship that we have is summed in Christ for His glory. We didn't add any action on our part to God's plan for our salvation. We didn't add any action on our part for God's purchase of our salvation. We didn't add any action on our part for God's perfection of our salvation. We didn't add any action on our part to make our salvation permanent. All is summed in the Loved One. And so God gets all the glory for it. It is all His grace. It is all His action. It is all free--right? Well, that's the bigger part Paul is getting at, because we were predestined to adoption, but adoption is not free! This is why there is no boasting unless it is boasting in God, and this is why there is no praise for our own accomplishments. There should be nothing but praise for what we experience freely, but was something that was not free for God to get, even though He is sovereign and fully able to get whatever He wants. The huge price is that in the eternal Son, as Christ the only begotten Son, the "Beloved" paid the life for life price for our predestined adoption that gives us our precious holiness and blamelessness, as we see in the next verse. Listen to it and notice the first two words,
"7 In Him ...
[Your blessing is always in Him. Remember that doctrine? In Him is always pointed out by Paul as your positional identification. It is where you are crucified and resurrected with Christ. It is where you are blessed with every spiritual blessing, where you are seated with Christ on the royal throne, and where you stand from day to day. So, Paul says that]
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, ..."
which means you were bought. That is what redemption means. We were paid for with the costly price of the Son's very own blood, which does something for you,
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,"
OK, now we are getting into understanding more and more of the depth of what all has happened in this endearing relationship. You see folks, the forgiveness of our trespasses wasn't free for Christ. He endured grueling, humbling, horrifying works for your salvation. Yes, your salvation is salvation by works, but all of it is Christ's work alone. The high price He paid is the redemption in His blood--not redemption in our blood. Get this because this showcases just how much we are blessed in our privilege. So we praise the glory of His grace when we realize that God's determination before the foundation of the world was to be the great martyr unto Himself, manifested in flesh. There had to be a price to pay for sinful humanity, and God determined it all, and in His attribute of predestination, He determined that He would be the price. In His all knowing intelligence, He determined that He is the only one valuable enough to pay for the expensive horribleness of sin. It is all, as Paul continues,
"... according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us.
The riches of God's grace on you are valuable beyond compare, and they are the riches of God's grace that relate directly to the expense of the debt of sin. John reminds us of the riches of His grace,
"1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and He Himself is the {wrath absorber} for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." 1 John 2:1-2
I encourage you to be overwhelmed, like Paul is overwhelmed, by the huge realization of the riches of God's grace that He has lavished upon you. I encourage you to be mindful of the fact that you really do have a great relationship with God. Check yourself. Are you overflowing with joy concerning the fact that you have a friendship with your Creator as an adopted child? Or are you looking at yourself through the lens of the world? Are you finding your value in the eyes of people, or in the eyes of your heavenly Father? Are you appreciating the endearing relationship God predetermined for you to the point that you praise God for it often, and give Him glory, honor, and praise for His grace? I wear a hat that says "Life Is Good" on the front. But it doesn't stop there, because life isn't good. It continues with what makes life good. It says, "Life is Good in Christ." That hat is a reminder of the privilege I often take for granted. Folks, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and yet we are always wanting something else to bring us satisfaction. I encourage you turn your back on that trend. Instead, begin basking in His grace from day to day and moment to moment, and continually praise Him for it. You are saved to do this. Delight yourself in His election of you, and continually praise Him for it. Start thinking in terms of your position and identification in Christ, and continually praise Him for it. As you do, you bring glory to His grace, which ultimately brings glory to Him, which is what He wants from you in the fist place. It is your great and wonderful privilege.
