Our Incredible Salvation - 7

This episode features more incredible truths from Ephesians 2 and 3!  It really is an incredible salvation!

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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Jeff's Bible Track. We are still in our fourth season entitled Our Incredible Salvation. And this is episode seven of the season. In this episode, we're going to dig into Ephesians chapter 2, where we will uncover more incredible truths about this salvation of ours. So let's begin with verse 5, which begins like this. Even when we were dead and doomed, wow, dead and doomed. That sounds bad. In our many sins, excuse me, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace. And of course, this is the hard concept for us to grasp with our finite minds. This is a truth that lives in the realm of eternity, outside of the constraints of earthly time. As we've talked about before, it is the foreknowledge of God which allows him to look down through time to see who will choose him, and so he chooses us. Paul has already told us in chapter one that God chose us before the foundation of the earth was laid. Mind boggling for sure. But I love the wording here. He united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace. It's like he enfolds us into Christ. This reminds me of when I'm making meatloaf. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. What? Yeah, meatloaf. The process begins with taking a bunch of ingredients and in a large bowl enfolding them into the ground beef before shaping the loaf and putting it into a hot oven. So the ingredients become one with the meat. Now, besides possibly making you hungry right now, this is a great illustration of the phrase, he, the Father, united us into the very life of Christ. You know what this makes me think of is the accounts of near-death experiences, where someone passes away for a time and goes to heaven to spend a little time with Jesus and then comes back. Oftentimes he will give the person a big hug, but it's not like the hugs we give, where we are two independent bodies hugging each other. When he hugs you in heaven, it's like two bodies merging together, enfolding together. Our incredible salvation has made this a reality right now on this side of heaven. Our life is enfolded, united with Christ. In verse six, it says, He raised us up with Christ, the exalted one, and we ascended with him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm. For we are now co-seated as one with Christ. Now, I must confess I don't know what that looks like. I mean, he's up there and we're down here. Yet Paul says we are seated with him up there in heaven. The best statement I can make on the subject is more of a theological one, that it's more of a positional thing than a physical one. I had a thought the other day on this. It's the first time I've thunked this, so you'll all have to weigh this in your own spirit and see if it rings true. When Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me, I don't think he was talking about buying a cross at the local Christian bookstore and hanging it around your neck, as I thought it was as a brand new Christian 49 years ago. And I don't think it means just going out and dying on a cross, and that's it. I think he was referring to following him on his path to the throne in heaven. And the cross was just the first step on the way. Think about this. Jesus died on the cross, descended into the earthly regions to disarm all the powers of darkness. Sorry, that's kind of a preview of Colossians. That's the next episode. Was raised from the dead, walked out of the tomb, and ascended to the throne. Well, he says here in verse 6 that we have been raised from the dead, which in my opinion is a reference to being born again. We ascended with him, and now we are co-ceded with him. So we have in our incredible salvation already died with Christ, there's the cross, and taken the same path to the throne. We even descended with him to disarm the powers of darkness, for we have been given the same authority to take dominion over them. I don't know. It's an interesting thought to me. Verse seven is a phenomenal verse containing a truth brought to you by our incredible salvation. And I quote, Throughout the coming ages we will be the visible display of the infinite riches of his grace and kindness, which was showered upon us in Jesus Christ. Now I hope we can all pardon God for wanting to show us off, but that's exactly what he's doing. What an amazing thought. Verse eight is a rather famous verse, and of course, sounds awesome in the Passion Translation. Here it is. For by grace we have been saved by faith. Nothing you did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the love gift from God that brought us to Christ. Now we talked about the definition of grace in a previous episode. It is that which brings delight, joy, pleasure, and sweetness. And I likened it to a big pitcher of sparkling honey that is filled with the sweetness of God, and which he poured out upon us in abundance. And he still does pour it out on us. This sweetness, this grace is a love gift from God. It's like he picked up the pitcher, walked toward us, and poured it out on us while he said, Would you be my Valentine? Yeah. Verse 10 contains another beautiful thought. We have, and I quote, we have become his poetry. Well, let me read that again. We have become his poetry, a recreated people that will fulfill the destiny he has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the anointed one. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works that we would do to fulfill it. Now there's several great thoughts here. First, we have become his poetry. This Greek word poema literally means poem. The King James has it as workmanship, but poetry reflects the fact that we are his lovers. It kind of makes me think of the Song of Solomon, which is a beautiful love song between Christ and his church, or Jesus and his bride. And by the way, shameless plug, the Song of Solomon is going to be the subject of next season on Jeff's Bible Track. Verse 10 says each of us has a destiny given by God to accomplish with this grace and this life. And I personally am honored to have been given a destiny in this life, and I'm honored to fulfill it. And once again, the verse says this destiny was planned before we were born. Again, my mind is completely blown by this. Dropping down to verse 13, Paul says, Yet look at you now. Everything is new. Although you were once distant and far away from God, now you have been brought delightfully close to him through the sacred blood of Jesus. You have actually been united to Christ. Now he's he has said that united or one with him two or three different ways in this chapter. I think he's trying to make a point. Well, we have not just been drawn close to Christ, but delightfully close. So close we are part of him. I ask you, is not this salvation totally incredible? Yes, yes, I think it is. Verses 14 to 18 make the point that in the kingdom of God, Jews and Gentiles are equal, and there are no longer any walls between them. And this is true of all races of people. Ethnic hatred has been dissolved in Christ. Verses nineteen and twenty read as follows. So you are not foreigners or guests, but rather you are the children of the city of the Holy Ones, with all the rights as family members of the household of God. You are rising like the perfectly fitted stones of the temple, and your lives have been built up together upon the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets. And best of all, you are connected to the head cornerstone of the building, the anointed one, Jesus Christ Himself. The most important sentence in those verses with respect to our incredible salvation is the one in verse 19 that says we are the children of the city of the Holy Ones. There will be no outcasts in heaven. No one in heaven will be ostracized from the general population. All of us have equal rights in the kingdom as members of Almighty God's family. And that emphasizes the fact that we are not a club, association, society, etc. But we are a family. No one will feel like they don't belong or don't fit in. We're all in the same glorious family, all because of our incredible salvation. Oh, I just hit a button and it went back a page or two. All right, here we are. Verse 22 is an amazing verse given the way it appears in the Passion translation. And here it is. This means that God is transforming each one of you. I can't believe this verse. This this means that God is transforming each one of you into the Holy of Holies, his dwelling place through the power of the Holy Spirit living in you. Unquote. Wow. Now the Holy of Holies is also referred to as the most holy place in the tabernacle and later the temple in Jerusalem. This is where the Ark of the Covenant sat, with a solid gold lid known as the mercy seat. The high priest would go into this place on a single day, the Day of Atonement, each year, to spread a cloud of incense and sprinkle blood on that mercy seat, to atone for his own sins first, and then the sins of all the people. Now many people feel the ark originally sat in the tent of meeting, before the tabernacle was even constructed in the wilderness. This tent of meeting is where Moses frequently went in and met with God, speaking with him face to face as a man speaks with his friend. So when Jesus died, the curtain leading into the most holy place was torn in two in the temple, signifying that the most holy place was open to all. But now Paul is saying here that the most holy place is no longer a room, it is your body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. God meets with us there, and in the same way God and Moses converse together as friends. Well, Jesus now calls us his friends, and we can converse with him anytime, anywhere, because we carry the most holy place around with us, inside of us. This to me is one of the most significant aspects of our incredible salvation, an intimate relationship with the God of heaven who dwells in our hearts. Now let's move into chapter three. Remember that these letters did not have chapter separations any more than we use chapters in the letters we write to people. Well, some of you might do that, I don't know. In chapter three, Paul begins talking about a divine mystery, beginning in verse five, and I quote, there has never been a generation that has been given the detailed understanding of this glorious and divine mystery until now. He kept it a secret until this generation. God is revealing it only now to his sacred apostles and prophets by the Holy Spirit. And here's the secret. Now stop there. Paul then explains that this mystery is that God is saving and bringing Gentiles into his family as well as Jews. Gentiles are basically non-Jews. Paul says that this generation, his generation, is the first in which this happened. And it was a huge deal in those days. Jews and Gentiles hated each other, and now they're being told to love each other? We're talking about extreme prejudice and hatred that existed between these two races. Can you imagine what it was like for Jews and Gentiles to step into a church building together for the very first time? You know, today we likely don't know who are Jews and who are Gentiles in our churches. Things have changed. Our incredible salvation has done that. Well, at the end of chapter three is another prayer for the Ephesians. And by extension, it's a prayer for you. So I encourage you to take the time to read through this prayer, inserting me, my, and I as appropriate. Well, this concludes our verses in Ephesians. It really is an incredible salvation that we have experienced. And I'll be back soon with our next episode on Colossians. So until then, God bless you greatly.