The lavish grace of God

When I became a Christian I did what I supposed Christians do: I started to read the Bible. I bought a pocket version of the Bible to read. But where do you start?

Over the years I have heard that some people start with the first book in the Bible, Genesis. However, while the first few chapters are sometimes familiar and interesting after not many chapters in and people get lost in old Sunday school stories, and they lose interest.

One of the Gospels should be a good place to start. John certainly gives us the story, Mark is shorter and to the point, Matthew gives the whole story but starts with lengthy genealogies.

Without having been given advice where to start I began by reading the letter to the Ephesians. I simply read it and since then re-read it and read it again.

It starts very simply.  It was written by a man called Paul who had, or at least claimed to have authoritative advice to give Christian people who lived in a place called Ephesus. In other words the letter contained valuable advice and teaching for a new Christian..

I had listened to the Christian hypothesis, that God was the absolute creator who rightly claimed our submission to him as King and ruler but all of us since the first humans had rebelled against his authority and were cut off from God’s design for living, from a relationship with him.

Rather than let us miss out on what he really wanted for us God had taken human form in Jesus.  Part of the plan was for Jesus to take the blame and punishment for our rebellion by having him crucified in our place.

We are called on to respond to this is and make our whole being a living sacrifice to him to do as he wants with us. But how am I to manage such a commitment? 

I decided that I couldn’t; not on my own. So I decided to attempt this but asking God to give me the strength to keep the commitment.  If he wants me as his living sacrifice I would need his help, his strength.

I realised from the start that I was asking for this help from a spiritual being. If it worked then I would know this spiritual being was real.

As I read it very soon the letter to the Ephesians told me that an overwhelming, astounding deal had been enacted. As I made my attempt at being a living sacrifice this meant obedience and submission on my part. There followed thankfulness and praise because on accepting Jesus as my saviour and Lord I had been given and blessed with every spiritual blessing!.

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.

The extent, the range and power of these blessings is so great that they extend from the limited physical reality of the created universe to include everything that is good enough to have a place in heaven.  They are blessings, they are all things that are good. They are better in nature than anything else we might think are good.  They are spiritual but nonetheless real.  

Suddenly I had been given blessings that I should have hoped for should I ever actually get to heaven! Now I am told they are mine already.  I have been blessed in the same way that Jesus is blessed and he is already in heaven! I am still alive in this world but already I am beginning to learn what it is like in God’s perfect heaven.

Yes, it’s not easy to grasp the enormity or the meaning of this truth, of these totally undeserved blessings.

Even without even beginning to understand what these blessings are I cannot do otherwise than begin with praising God who has been so generous to me. It’s not that I have been good enough to deserve these miracles.  I don’t deserve them, of course, but God out of his own generosity, his love, his grace, gave them to me. 

And this goodness is no accident.  God decided to bless me this way as part of his plan for me and my place in eternity. 

4-5 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will

This goodness, this grace becomes even more amazing when we are told this.

There are no accidents, no coincidences, no luck involved here. The great creator God had me lined up from before time began, before the creation of the universe, before I was conceived, from before I was born. What an incredibly personal, individual interest God has had in me so long before I had shown any interest in him.

He had chosen me to be born again, to become an adopted son of Father God. Jesus is the only begotten son of God and I am Jesus’ brother by adoption. Adopted but no less a child of God.

It was always meant to be!

Once again I have no right to claim or expect such blessing. It very right that I should submit to God acknowledging his total right to rule and reign over his own universe. It is clear o us all that I cannot claim any credit for the supreme authority he exercised when he swept me up into his plans to include me (of all people) in them.

Look what Jesus achieved first before I could receive these blessings, this adoption by God the Father. Jesus died for my sins.  Jesus was crucified by evil men but in so doing he took the penalty and blame for my sin, my failure, my imperfection, my every shortcoming.

That is how I became good enough to be so blessed! Because of the gift of Jesus God the Father now sees me as holy and blameless. While Jesus took on what I deserved to pay the cost for God now sees me as forgiven, cleansed and acceptable as Jesus himself. That one thing  makes me good enough to be so blessed! I have been blessed in this wonderful way because Jesus died for me! Yes, indeed, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 

It’s not that I can say that God has blessed me because he is pleased with me but it is true that God is pleased to be so good to me! It’s what he wanted and it’s what he wants! It is simply in accordance with his pleasure and his will.  God is so pleased with Jesus, his obedience to the father, his death and resurrection that he sweeps up others like me through Jesus Christ himself.

It all happens thanks to the perfect work of Jesus who himself did all things in accordance with the pleasure and will of the Father. All these blessings are ours only because Jesus earned them.  All this goodness is.…

6-8 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.

Now we begin to see what these blessings include.

He has chosen me.  It all starts with the will of God.  He initiated my blessings when he chose me, of all people. Indeed, he did so before he did anything else: he predestined me and for no small thing.  It was in order to adopt me as his child, an heir and co-heir with Christ himself. 

He did this so that I will first be born and then to be born again, a new beginning as a new creature.

This happened because first Christ died for me and now lives forever. His death blessed me, purchasing me back to my Father, redeeming me at the great cost of Jesus’ blood.

He has done this totally as an act of love for me and so completely that I have a forgiveness so complete that he regards me as blameless, to be as good and loved as Jesus is.

This is called grace. God’s great gift so freely given, so undeserved, so powerful, so empowering. Grace comes with a Godly blend of mercy, forgiveness, cleansing, newness, love and with an unmistakable sense of power.

He has lavished grace on us! He has been gracious but not with just tad, just a snippet, just a sliver, just a smear. God has lavished his grace, his favour in such generous quantity that it overflows, it cannot be contained or even measured.

In addition, it cannot be lost or stolen.

These blessings are made by God himself. Who can take them from me? He gave every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places to me. They cannot be in a safer place! And they are mine!

I had come to discover the reality of Jesus who is the King of kings, Lord of lords and to have received from him the gift of faith and his Holy Spirit who enabled me to submit to him as I should and now that I had read this much of the Bible I found that in coming to Jesus I had received so much more that I could not earn or pay for.

Knowing this I find a wonderful mix of exhilaration, amazement, comfort and peace.  I have found my place in the universe!

What a wonderful place to start reading the Bible, to start as a new Christian.