Dave's Diary

In the course of this week we have taken in a huge sweep of God’s “salvation plan” for humanity. To summarise it, we could say that when anyone looks to the crucified and risen Jesus with genuine repentance of sin and wholehearted faith, trusting entirely in Him for our salvation (Numbers 21 and John 3) we are given a whole new life by God Himself who stoops to breathe His life-giving Holy Spirit into us (Genesis 2 and John 3). The Holy Spirit then goes to work in us to recreate us into a whole new person, by transforming our character from the inside out and leading us daily in the ways of the Lord (Galatians 5).

Today’s daily reading Ephesians 2:1-10 revisits these great themes of our salvation, reminding us that before we knew Christ we were “dead in our transgressions and sins”, we were people who “followed the ways of this world”, we lived our own lives “gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts”, and ultimately we were “by nature deserving of wrath”. It is easy to forget that this was our miserable spiritual condition before we met Christ, but it’s the truth.

Then, into our mess stepped God in His great love and mercy. Purely by His grace being poured into our lives through the channel of our faith in Jesus, God “made us alive with Christ” and He “raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”. What a profound and beautiful picture. Spiritually we have been made alive, and we have been brought into a depth of fellowship with God in which we can be described as “seated with Him”. We are no longer strangers and aliens to God’s household, we have a seat at His table! Truly God has put on display the “incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus”. We have been recipients of the unspeakable grace and kindness of God.

How should we respond to all this? Our closing verse makes it clear that we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God has prepared the work He wants us to do today for His Kingdom and glory in this world, and our responsibility is to step out in obedience and surrender to the Spirit of Jesus – trusting Him to empower us to accomplish everything out Lord sets before us to do for His glory. This is the only appropriate response to the glorious and unspeakable kindness of God.

May it be so. Amen!