Ephesians 2:8

Ephesians 2:8

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—

Here we have one of those intense and pivotal verses that are scattered throughout the Scriptures. The ones that precisely and concisely express giant chunks of doctrine in their uncomplicated phraseology. Like Jesus did when asked how to attain eternal life He mystifyingly and lucidly compressed all of Scripture down to one statement. Which of course turns out to be the chief of these pivotal verses, “Love God with all your heart, soul mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” There is great wisdom in being able to take a complex subject matter and distill it down to it essential elements and then carefully and clearly express it.

I believe it was Albert Einstein who so perfectly summed up this principle with this luminous statement:

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

The same can be said for our own understanding of our relationship with God and others. Our tendency is to make things more and more complicated, when all the while Heaven is speaking truth in its most simplest of forms.

Also brilliantly stated by Einstein:

“When the solution is simple God is speaking”

application

Today I will seek the Lord to show me ways to uncomplicate my life.

To see my wife Margaret's insight on this very same verse visit here: 

Margaret's Eph. 2:8 devo

Ephesians 2:7

Ephesians 2:7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

The incomparable riches of His Grace. Incomparable, certainly there is absolutely no other individual person who has expressed as much kindness to others as the Lord has. That is why God the Father is a Supreme being. He is resolutely without peer in every and all categories. So when the Scripture states that  His kindness toward us is incomparable it means that it is so great and so vast that nothing can even be compared to it. For example it would be like taking a Maui sunset and trying to find a post it note using crayons to duplicate it, even a master artist could not create anything comparable. It just becomes laughable and pointless to even try. That is the beginning of the depth of the riches of God's kindness toward us. His kindness toward us is so lavish and abundant that  it should cause in us who are recipients of such great grace to be eternally grateful and willing to serve in whatever capacity He sees fit for us. Our only proper response to such great kindness is to offer ourselves afresh as living sacrifices to our benevolent God.

application

Today I will let this interpretation serve as a reminder of the kindness of God toward me and to allow it to have its full work in me. It is His kindness that leads to repentance. Ro. 2:4

To see my wife Margaret's insight on this very same verse visit here: 

Margaret's Eph. 2:7 devo

Ephesians 2:6

Ephesians 2:6

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

I’m like,  “Wha wha…” we are raised up and seated in the heavens with Jesus? present tense? like now? There is some explaining to do. Perhaps just the same way that we receive the Holy Spirit in us and He indwells our physical bodies as exemplified here in John 20 when Jesus appeared to the disciples after the crucifixion.

Jn. 20:22

And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

He, God, in the form of the Holy Spirit of Christ lives inside of us believers in the same way as Jesus abides in the Heavenly realms and is seated at the right hand of the Father we are in Him. In Christ we are spiritually united with Jesus as we occupy a part of His heart. As humans we can only be in one place at a time but is it possible that as we are united with Christ here on earth we are also united with Him in heaven? Perhaps this is possible as we see here in the book of proverbs that as we use our mouths to say what is right it touches the inmost part of God’s heart…

Proverbs 23

15My son, if your heart is wise,

then my heart will be glad indeed;

16my inmost being will rejoice

when your lips speak what is right.

To think that somehow we here on earth can affect the very heart of God in heaven by doing something like speaking the truth is mind boggling except for the possibility that when we are in Christ we are already near to His heart.

application

To be mindful of not only the presence of the Holy Spirit in me but that I am united with Christ in Heaven.

To see my wife Margaret's insight on this very same verse visit here: 

Margaret's Eph. 2:6 devo

Ephesians 2:5

Ephesians 2:5

made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved..

Just the same way that God breathed life into the nostrils of Adam, he makes us alive with Christ. Adam’s physical body was intact before life just as our bodies exist before God makes us alive to Christ. It is His work, that He does, it is initiated my Him and brought on to completion by Him. Our part is to agree and to make way for Him to flourish in us, by decreasing so that He can increase.

application

Today I will check myself, my comedy, my words and my attitude to be in harmony with Christ and to bear fruit.

Ephesians 2:4

Ephesians 2:4

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy

This is why we give our lives to Jesus. To understand the fullness of the love of God takes a lifetime. The danger along the way to fully understanding His love for us is to dwell for a great period of time not truly grasping the fullness of His love and limping along with an imperfect picture of it, or better stated a mis-understanding of the Love of God. For example; we can easily mistake the love of God and His richness of mercy toward us as some sort of license to sin. When it would actually be His great love for us that is at the heart of the correction or discipline we may find ourselves walking through. A hypothetical example is when little 3 year old Johnny runs into the street he is oblivious of the danger he has put himself in and since he is incapable of understanding traffic laws because they are higher than his capacity to comprehend the best thing a parent can do is to give little Johnny a wallop on the backside to instill the fear of Daddy into him, so that his behaviour changes. That wallop is given out of love for Johnny. Now later on when Johnny is 11 or 12 years old he can then realize that it was his fathers love for him that motivated the discipline. It is the same for us, we find ourselves in a difficulty somehow designed and or filtered through the hand of God and it causes us to learn, in the future we will see that the lesson was for the greater good and that God had indeed ordained it specifically for us, and we are glad and blessed for it. There is where we understand a little bit more of the Love of God in our lives,

The love of God is not a hall pass but a fulfillment of the verse in

Philippians 1

6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

The love of God is the discipline of God which is at work guiding us to become conformed into the image of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

application

Today I will embrace the discipling of God, not shrinking from it as is my tendency

Ephesians 2:3

Ephesians 2:3

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

Oh yes we deserve hell. We have no argument. If we get to the pearly gates and Jesus says, “you know I can’t let you in here.” I actually have no reasonable retort at the ready. Except this one thing, this singular possibility, His mercy. Not my years of service, not my myriad decisions to deny the flesh, not my bold acts of heroic faith, neither my fortune of a tithe record. None of that matters one iota of relief from the immutable fact that if justice prevails what is absolutely the correct verdict is that I deserve Hell period. But what about the love of God, well that is important and wonderous but in the matter of justice it just does not change things, there will be many who are loved by God who will be found in Hell. No, the one singular absolute and narrow path to escape the eternal fire of Hell is the richness of God’s mercy.

Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary definition of:

MER'CY, noun [Latin misericordia.]

1. That benevolence, mildness or tenderness of heart which disposes a person to overlook injuries, or to treat an offender better than he deserves; the disposition that tempers justice, and induces an injured person to forgive trespasses and injuries, and to forbear punishment, or inflict less than law or justice will warrant. In this sense, there is perhaps no word in our language precisely synonymous with mercy That which comes nearest to it is grace. It implies benevolence, tenderness, mildness, pity or compassion, and clemency, but exercised only towards offenders. mercy is a distinguishing attribute of the Supreme Being.

The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty. Numbers 14:18.

2. An act or exercise of mercy or favor. It is a mercy that they escaped.

I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies. Genesis 32:1.

3. Pity; compassion manifested towards a person in distress.

And he said, he that showed mercy on him. Luke 10:37.

4. Clemency and bounty.

Mercy and truth preserve the king; and his throne is upheld by mercyProverbs 28:13.

5. Charity, or the duties of charity and benevolence.

I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Matthew 9:13.

6. Grace; favor. 1 Corinthians 7:25. Jude 1:2.

7. Eternal life, the fruit of mercy 2 Timothy 1:2.

8. Pardon.

I cry thee mercy with all my heart.

9. The act of sparing, or the forbearance of a violent act expected. The prisoner cried for mercy

To be or to lie at the mercy of, to have no means of self-defense, but to be dependent for safety on the mercy or compassion of another, or in the power of that which is irresistible; as, to be at the mercy of a foe, or of the waves.

application

To respect the mercy of God in my life today.



Ephesians 2:2

Ephesians 2:2

in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

The thing about “following the ruler of the kingdom of the air” that is so insidious is that it is natural. Before we are born again there is really no other way to be. Before we have our spirits become alive in Christ we have no other framework to have our existence except our baser instincts. Much like all the rest of the animals on earth we were motivated by our need for survival, unlike the rest of the animals we were originally created in the image of God, with the capacity to reason, choose, create, to learn, to repent and most of all the capacity to love. The animals have these attributes but to a lesser degree and theirs are more associated with instincts than volition as we humans do. Yet these attributes in the bodily form with an unregenerate spirit still bring us to a base existence for example without our spirit alive to Christ we do have the capacity to love another but the root of that love is going to have some sort of thread of motivation that is selfish. When this is unfettered it becomes full blown and easily expressed in the old adage of “giving love to get sex and giving sex to get love” syndrome which pretty much sums up the totality of what passes for relationships these days. True love as described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 does not naturally occur (except for the love of a mother for a child which I believe God granted to allow for the survival of the species.)

Therefore unless we are born again we have no hope of living in the most excellent way that will bring joy to the heart of God, being motivated by His pure love for his creation and have our being thrive on doing His will as it is nourishment for our souls.

Naturally we will be drawn to the influence of the kingdom of the air but in our spirit which is alive to God through Christ we yearn to be set free from captivity in this world of death and sin and be ultimately liberated to the paradise of God.

application

To denounce the natural and walk in the supernatural

Ephesians 2:1

Ephesians 2:1

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

So here is the pivotal point that clearly directs our worldview away from all other major religions on the planet. Simply put, everyone else believes that we are both good and bad within ourselves to begin with the classic yin and yang. We however know from this Scripture and others that in fact our origins our beginnings are rooted and established in evil with no hope of recovery apart from Christ. Oh Pastor Gennarino that is just too harsh, you might say. “How can an infant baby so pure and innocent be evil?” Good question first of all lets define evil. Evil is anything that is not of God.

Matthew 5:37 International Standard Version

Instead, let your message be 'Yes' for 'Yes' and 'No' for 'No.' Anything more than that comes from the evil one."

So even in this simple circumstance where a person’s word is considered to be faithfully held to if he renagues on his word it is considered evil.

Or how about Jesus and Peter when Jesus asked the disciples who do you say that I am and they said this and that but Peter said, “You are the Christ” Jesus replied that those words were indeed spoken through Peter’s mouth but were originated in Heaven from God, but in the very next moment Jesus says that He is going to Jerusalem to be killed, Peter replies, “no way” to which Jesus says the following:

Matthew 16:23

New International Version (NIV)

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

So even when we are capable of speaking on behalf of God in a most astounding way we are vulnerable to our thoughts being not centered on Heavenly things and therefore miss the mark and get cues from what is human concerns and though it seems harsh it is indeed evil.

Romans 14:23b

...and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

or misses the mark.

You see we are steeped in sin from the beginning, we are condemned even before we begin. Our being is ensnared in the sin of this world for apart from Christ this world and our bodies are all we are concerned about, and when that is the case we miss the mark. baby

Unfortunately it is just natural for us, there is no other way to be, apart from Christ. There is just no earthly reason to think any other way, to be concerned about what concerns God. For in order to truly have God’s concerns be our own we would need to deny ourselves and that just does not come naturally. It is always originated in Heaven. born again

application

Today I will seek to keep my mind on Heavenly things and not on earthly things.

Visit my wife Margaret's blog here to see her insight on this verse.


.

Ephesians 1:23

Ephesians 1:23

which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Here is the proof text of the body being complete, lacking nothing. Complete and lacking nothing? Lacking nothing to do what? Ah, that is the question. The body of Christ is full and complete lacking nothing to accomplish His perfect will for that body in that time and place. So for example there are a group of twelve believers and the perfect will of God is to evangelize the entire world, is that too hard for God? Within that group lies all of the various giftings, motivations, empowerment, talents developed or undeveloped are all there. All the raw materials are there in place waiting for the direction of the Holy Spirit to guide and direct the plan made in Heaven. So it is even today, The Lord provides every single thing necessary to carry out and accomplish His will. All the resources are provided for, the building space, the ingenuity, the manpower the dollars are all there in place and then He will grant the vision to a leader and then He will also grant the leadership gifting to administrate and orchestrate the project and solve the problems and encourage the players along the way and eventually bring it on to completion. That is if all concerned are walking in the Spirit, willingly using their giftings and talents and following after a leader who is full of the Spirit and led of God.

Whenever we find that there are people in the Body of Christ that are burned out or are bored or are fruitless it is inevitably due to some disorder or misguidance. Perhaps they are about a task that was not ordained from heaven and the resources were not provided by God and the leader proceeded anyway trying to accomplish his will in his own strength. There is where you find dryness, fruitless, graceless, service usually based on rote routine, compulsion, guilt, fear, manipulation and the like. This should not be so. Let us be careful to be motivated by a clear vision from Heaven, and under the authority of a leader who is filled with the Spirit and proceed to pour out our lives with all of its gifts and talents in accordance with the will of God to accomplish His Will His way. The result is found in how we find this yoke to be easy and the burden light and the spring of living water continuing to flow up and out of us is without scarcity or end. That is how we know it is led of God. Anything short of that is in need of adjustment, rethinking,  realignment or perhaps forgoing altogether.

application

Today I need to evaluate the way that I am serving in the Body of Christ and to make sure that it is led of the Spirit and not of the flesh.

To read my wife Margaret's thoughts on this verse go to her blog here:
Mrs D 4 HIM- blog

Ephesians 1:22

Ephesians 1:22

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church,

So the premise being that Jesus is the Sovereign head over everything. Meaning that all things are held together by Him and no detail escapes His watchful eye.

In fact it is this premise that becomes the bedrock of so many of the Bible’s great promises, we have come to rely upon and live our lives in light of.

Such as:

Philippians 4:13

New International Version (NIV)

13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Jeremiah 29:11

New International Version (NIV)

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Romans 8:31

New International Version (NIV)

More Than Conquerors

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Romans 8:28

New International Version (NIV)

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.

These are the most obvious and cherished of promises found in Scripture but the premise that Jesus is on the Throne and in active leadership over all of the intricacies of the church  gives the firm foundation of our ongoing active faith in building His Kingdom on earth as it is done in Heaven.

application

To walk today in complete trust that all things that come my way are ordained by Him who sits on the Throne.

To read what my wife Margaret mused about this verse click here.
Margaret's Blog - Mrs D 4 Him

Ephesians 1:21

Ephesians 1:21

far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Only God alone has such authority that even spans through this current age and into and beyond the age to come. We can barely fathom the fullness of who God is, not to mention how to relate to Him. Which brings us to the Lord Jesus. In Him we have a sympathetic High Priest who we can approach with boldness. In Jesus we see the Father in earthly form. In Jesus we learn the most excellent way to live and have our being. As we try to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect, we model our lives after Jesus. Without whom we would surely be amiss in our feeble attempt way to please God with our lives.

application

I just want to be grateful for the Lord Jesus today.