Ephesians 1:1-5 (NIV):
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3Praise 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. 4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will…
I’m not rejected. I don’t have to earn my way back into God’s good graces (as if I could!). God has blessed me with every spiritual blessing. God chose me before the creation of the world – before I ever rejected him, before I was even born, or anybody else was born either – to be holy and blameless in his sight. Did he know when he chose me what I would do? Of course he did! He’s always known. And he still chose me. Me. To be holy and blameless in his sight. To be adopted as his son.
I spent years walking away; sometimes drifting, sometimes running full speed away from God. And at the end of it, I found that I didn’t have to walk back. All I had to do was turn around, and he was right there, where he’d been the whole time. Even when I abandoned God, he never left me. And he calls me holy and blameless in his sight.
I have sensed for a while now that God is saying to me, “remember who you are,” and now he has brought me to this passage. Who am I? I am an adopted son of God, chosen before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
I don’t have to do anything to be holy and blameless in the sight of God. It’s his choice, not mine. No wonder the apostles turned the world upside down (really, right side up) in the first century! They knew who they were.
