Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” vss. 3-4
Ephesians 1:3-10
Early Christians continued to use the language of election to describe their relationship to God, but now, instead of linking it to Abraham, as the Jews had done, they taught that it happened “before the foundation of the world.” With that understanding believers began to think of themselves as part of a universal movement, and not a narrow nationalistic religion. As the gospel writer John put it, all things have their beginning in the Word and all humans have a common origin in Christ. The writer to the Ephesians links this common origin to the spiritual blessings that belong to us as the children of God, and says further that we have been destined to be God’s holy and blameless presence in the world. At the very least we can conclude from this that our prime duty and delight in life will be to love the world and one another with all of our heart, mind, and soul. There is no higher calling than to love, not because we have to, but because this is what we have been created to do. How beautiful it is when humans actually live together in such holy harmony!
Thought for the Day: How can broken people love one another?
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