Every blessing in Christ

Praise 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. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
Ephesians 1:3‭-‬4 NIV

Recently I have been rereading Ephesians. The opening chapter is a breathless, heady race into Paul's theology - although theology feels far too dry a word for this letter. You can sense his excitement as he writes. Each phrase is practically tripping over its predecessor as he jumps from topic to topic. It's all in there. Predestination, adoption, grace, redemption, salvation, the sovereignty of Christ, revelation, and the Holy Spirit all to the praise of his glory.

Those opening two sentences alone are breathtaking. We have every blessing in Christ and our destination was determined before the beginning of creation. If ever we feel inadequate this is the place to come. Whatever our failings, or our regrets, in Christ we have the opportunity to be presented before God completely blameless guaranteed in advance.

All too often the pressure of life or the lies of the enemy cause us to think or behave as if this were not the case. To feel anything but blessed. To be so conscious of our sin we feel that we can never be worthy of him. Ephesians chapter one is a shot in our arm telling us this is not so. We may not be capable of drawing near to God, but, in Christ he has already done everything that was needed, just as he planned before the first star ever shone.

The sufficiency of grace

An out of the blue comment spurred me to look back at what I've written here. It's been a long time since my last post. That's not because the quest for the kingdom has been abandoned. It is just an increasing realisation that so much of the journey is intensely personal. My energies have been directed more toward private journal than public blog. So what has changed? In many ways not a great deal. I'm still in the same job. My mother still has Alzheimer's - she is now transitioning into full term care. I'm still searching for vision. I'm still shouting at God. He's still being gracious enough to whisper back occasionally. Health, stress and circumstances I don't like (but can't change) still cause me more worry than I believe that they should.

Some things, however, have changed. Just slightly. Perhaps even I've changed a bit. It feels like I've learned lots. My language has changed. It's almost as if I've run out of words. I no longer know what to say to God. That does not stop me going into his presence. If anything it spurs me to spend more time there. I cannot quite unpick whether this lack stems from the noise of the city and the cares of the world pushing them out - or a realisation that so many of my words of old were a futile attempt to control God rather than let him control me. Now when I find my prayers relating to my perception of my needs and the request for my solutions I feel this little voice in the back of my head saying "Do you trust me, Ian?" to which I can but reply "Yes Lord, I trust you. (Or at least I'd like to)". The other phrase which is resounding in my mind is that wonderful promise from 2 Corinthians. "My grace is sufficient for you." The only reply I can frame to that runs roughly thus: "Yes, Lord, but sometimes it really doesn't feel like it."

Grace

"A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him." Orson Scott Card - Speaker for the Dead.

Over the years I have wondered about the lists of the Bible. The fruit of the spirit for example. Is this an exhaustive list or some examples? Has Paul researched and distilled the fundamental attributes which spirit-filled life results in? Or take the beatitudes. Is Jesus giving a set of exhaustive statements that if you do A then you get B? Is it only the pure in heart who see God? Is it only the meek who inherit the earth?

With a modern mindset it is easy to approach the bible as a user guide for life. A systematic set of instructions with associated punishments and rewards. The style, however, is more poetic than that. Jesus expresses attitudes rather than rules; grace rather than judgement.

The structure of the beatitudes is interesting. Recently I heard a theologian say that the repeated refrain "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" is simply a literary convention of the day to indicate that this is a self-contained section. Possibly. I wonder, however, in parenthesising the statement with the refrain whether Jesus was not saying that all of these things are the kingdom of heaven. Seeing God, being comforted, being shown mercy...

For me the beatitudes represent a flavour of the kind of behaviours which characterise the kingdom. I doubt they are an exclusive set but they are, undoubtedly, a challenging set.