Today’s reading: Exodus 29; Ephesians 1
I don’t know if there is any passage of Scripture that should give us more confident assurance of our salvation and future hope than Ephesians 1. Why do I say that? Because I don’t think there is any other passage that goes to such lengths to communicate so clearly and so many times that all that we have now from the Lord, and all that we are promised in the future, is not ours and is not promised to us, and as I’ve commented on before, that should give us an immense amount of comfort.
What do I mean that it is not ours and is not promised to us? I mean that it is all Christ’s, and it is always and only as we are “in Christ“ that we can claim these promises as our own. This is a truth you will find everywhere in the New Testament scriptures, so Ephesians chapter 1 is far from the only place you are going to bump into this, but I don’t think the point is driven home more forcefully anywhere else than here.
Paul goes on and on here, listing blessing after blessing and truth after truth, painting an incredible and exciting picture of the Christian life and future, but there is not a single promise he lays out that is not “in Christ” or “in Him.” Go ahead, go look down through the chapter and count how many times Paul says one of those phrases.
This is one chapter I will recommend checking out my translation of it (Ephesians (JBT)). I don’t suggest this because I think other English translations get anything obviously wrong, but because Ephesians 1 is hard to translate. It is essentially a single run-on sentence that goes all the way up through the beginning of chapter 2. In breaking it up into sentences to try to make it more nicely readable, a lot of “in him” and “in whom” get dropped. This isn’t anything wrong or nefarious, its mostly that Paul uses “in him in whom” as a connector a lot so those are the places sentences are broken apart and one “set” gets dropped. But I tried to keep it mostly as one sentence to try to keep the feeling of what Paul wrote, and that also let me keep all the references to us being in Christ, and it is honestly a little ridiculous how many times Paul says it…
Take time to read through Ephesians 1 and pay attention to all that God promises us in Christ. It is an incredible, exciting, and hugely encouraging list. But the greatest comfort, for me, is that none of it is my own, so none of it is dependent on me. It is not my righteousness that earns it, it is not my performance that achieves it, it is not my progress or growth that maintains it. It is all in Christ. All of these promises belong to Jesus, not to me, and it is only in Christ that I can claim them. I am in Christ by faith apart from works and that means that none of these truths, none of these promises, none of my standing before the Lord, none of my expectation of life to come in eternity has the slightest thing to do with my works. If I am in Christ by faith, these promises are assigned to me because they were made to Him.
The anchor of my soul is the eternal Son of God. The assurance of my salvation is the unchanging second person of the Trinity. The basis of every promise and inheritance I can claim is the perfect Messiah, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Nothing in all creation could possibly be more certain than that!
Praise God for this incredible gift in Christ!
God, open our eyes more every day to the glorious reality of what you have done for us in Christ, and lead us live this life out of the immense gratitude that is rightly due this amazing gift.
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