Devotion • May 19
Today’s Scripture Reading
Ephesians 2:1–10
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (NRSV)
Reflection
There is a time before and a time after in our life with God. There is the now and the before now. There is the not yet. Life in God looks backward, down, and forward in a regular rhythm of discerning where God has brought us and where God is leading us, as well as where God has us right now.
These verses from Ephesians contain some of the cornerstone words of the New Testament, namely the ones about having been saved by grace through faith. The core insight for us to appropriate in those words is that we occupy a time that has changed — that has been changed, by God. God has moved us from point A to point B, and we’re not stopping at point B. Because “even when we were dead” (verse 5), God made us alive. We were and now we’re not: the timeline of grace.
This is not as simple as a saved/unsaved dichotomy, for our life in God is speckled with expeditions backward into what we were, to traffic in those things that were trying to kill us. Yet, over and over again, the rich mercy of God saves us, continually converting us to the good-works pattern of Jesus’ life God created us to embody.
I think what I’m saying is that to have faith at all is to apprehend that something has been done on our behalf that we did not (that we could not) do for ourselves, and that is that we have been delivered from lifeless nothingness to a life of vital purpose for the kingdom of heaven. We probably weren’t even seeking it, and yet there it is. Apprehending the truth of it, faith then turns to trust that it will happen again. God will never not be saving us.
Prayer
God of all salvation, our gratitude abounds for the life we have as a gift from you, created as we have been in Christ Jesus for good works. May those works bear fruit for kindness and compassion, beauty, justice, and truth, so that your Easter victory of life over death would dawn evermore in the life of the world. Amen.
Written by Rocky Supinger, Associate Pastor for Youth and Worship
Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church
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