I was emailed by my mum about 5 days ago advising me to read Ephesians 1 and 2 and thought yeah will do once i have finished with my current study on Mark gospel .
What followed was really interesting. The study we did with the young people on the last Sunday morning was on Ephesians 1. This at first was like yeah cool but then realised that it was quite a coincidence that we were doing that in the group. Then last knight at CU (Christian Union) we had a talk on Ephesians 2 and 3 and that was really interesting again as twice we had been doing Ephesians.
I really feel that God has been on my case to do this and read Ephesians 1 and 2 and i have and the first bit is just amazing.
There is so much packed into this first verse so i am just going to take this first bit and break that down into two chunks
3Praise 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. 4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
The first thing that strikes me is the praising of the lord. Its so so important to do this and to really give God the Glory. The second thing is that we are given every spiritual blessing whilst living here on earth but operating in the spiritual realm. The key thing here being that its every not just one or two but every.
The other aspect is that we are predestined to be “holy and blameless in his sight.” which means that there is hope and we are meant to be striving for this and we don’t have to submit to the old saying that is “oh I’m only human”.
In love 5he[c] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Again its just puts the focus back to God and takes it away from us and not just our selfish ambition but in fact for his praise.
The wording is beautiful as it summarizes the Gospel so concisely. God has given us his one and only Son Jesus and he has done this freely for every one so that whoever believes in Him would have everlasting life.
