Redeemed

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

REDEEMED

Eph 1:3-10

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

NIV

We still need to explore every spiritual blessing in Christ. Of course, Christ is the spiritual blessing and because we are in Christ and He is in us, we have every spiritual blessing which means there are no other spiritual blessing then Christ. However, this passage does give us some aspects of this spiritual blessing. One of those aspects is his glories grace which he freely gave us in the one he loves, which is Jesus. It seems that when we think about Jesus, we are reminded of how he suffered on the cross. In some of the churches we have been in Good Friday is presented as the darkness day because of the death of Jesus. But this is the grace of God who freely gives us. No one took the life of Jesus, but he gave his life freely out of his love for us, so that we could be redeemed and with his blood, we have the forgiveness of our sins. Man did nothing but the will of God concerning Jesus on the cross. Everything that happened that day was in accordance with his glorious grace. He was not coerced to go to the cross, he went to the grace freely according to the will of the Father, which would have been the will Of Jesus since he is God. Therefore, in him we have been redeemed because Jesus paid the price for our sins, so that we do not need to pay the price of death, for the wages of sin is death. Our debt has been paid; God freely paid our debt. How can we not praise his name forever? How can we ever be so sedate about our redemption? How can we be so ho-hum in our praise? We should be rejoicing in praise, both verbally and physically. How can we just stand or sit still in our worship? Our debt has been paid, what a relief that is. We do not and cannot do anything that affects our redemption other than faith in Jesus, because it is only by his blood that the price for our sins can be paid. So let us live with joy. Let us live praising our Lord! Let us live full of worship, openly displaying our love for him. This is not about doing good deeds, although that can be a result of our love for him, as long as we do not do good deeds for the praise of men. Let us live with rejoicing both in our heart and in our body, living as an image bearer of Christ. Let us joyfully praise him for we have been redeemed.