Good morning,
The perfect lover
Shopping last week was a wonderful adventure as we walked through isles of flowers, most of them red roses, and all kinds of heart shaped cards and gifts that we could buy for the people we loved. As usual, most of us men tended to wait until just before Valentines day to make our decisions and get what we hoped would say ‘I Love You’ in the right way. While we as humans have to wonder about the best or right gift for one another, God has a whole different approach to giving each one of us the perfect gift that will work for each of us any time of the year. When Paul was writing to God’s children in Ephesians, he told them and us, Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.(Eph.1:4) God knew who would be alive on His earth during all the time that the earth would last. God also knew who would believe in who he was and would see their need to repent of their sin and trust the God of the Bible and the Savior that he would send. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.(v.5)
Did God know what this wonderful gift would cost? In Colossians we read, For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross.(1:19,20) And then in Ephesians, Paul tells us, He (God) is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.(1:7) When Jesus was living here on earth, the people around him and the people who came to be healed and taught, and the religious leaders of that day who hated him, could only see him as the carpenter from a little village with a bad reputation. Jesus knew who he was. He told them, However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them. For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will.(Jn.6:37,38) Then he said something that was so important to any of us in God’s family. And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me,(v.39)
God knew that every one of us would be a sinner. God knew that his arch enemy, Satan, would try to do all that he could to lie to us and bully us and gift us with his wicked gifts to turn us away from our perfect lover.
Our Accuser would do his best to keep throwing our sins back in our faces. But God also knew us. This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. (Col.1:21) So what does God have in mind for us now and in eternity? Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ - - he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.(v.22) Just think, when we leave earth for Heaven and see our Savior, we will see our eternal Lover, and never hear another accusation again.
Ephesians 1: 6 So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.
Roy Wisner
