#DailyDevotion We Are Given Life To Reign With Christ Jesus
Eph. 2:6-10 6And since we are in Christ Jesus, He raised us with Him and had us sit with Him in heaven 7to show in the coming ages the immeasurable riches of His grace by being kind to us in Christ Jesus. 8Yes, by His grace you are saved through faith. It was not your own doing; it is God’s gift. 9It is not the result of anything you have done; and so no one may boast. 10He has made us what we are, creating us in Christ Jesus to do good works, in which God long ago planned for us to live.
Before we came to faith in Christ Jesus and have life in him we were corpses in our trespasses and since. But now that we have been baptized into Christ Jesus (that is how we know we are in Christ Jesus) and have his life, we have been raised with him. Paul shows us this in Romans 6:3“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4Now when we were baptized into His death, we were buried with Him so that as the Father’s glory raised Christ from the dead we, too, will live a new life. 5If we were united with Him in this likeness of His death, then we will be united with Him also in the likeness of His resurrection.”
Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father where he reigns in glory. Having been joined to him in baptism, we are also seated with him in the heavenly realms. Your prayers go from the heart of Jesus, where you are, to his mouth, right into his Father’s ears. Indeed you are reigning with him right now. Right now you are seated with him in glory, though you don’t see it yet. Jesus tells the Church of Laodicea in Rev. 3, 21“ ‘Be victorious, and I will have you sit with Me on My throne, as I have won the victory and have sat down with My Father on His throne.” Paul says this is “to show in the coming ages the immeasurable riches of His grace by being kind to us in Christ Jesus.”
It’s no wonder Paul starts off chapter 2 with us being corpses. It is so we may rightly understand verse 8, “Yes, by His grace you are saved through faith. It was not your own doing; it is God’s gift.” Corpses don’t do anything but rot. We could not have accomplished this salvation. Jesus had to do it. We are given life purely as a gift from God for the sake of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Grace is gift. It is most certainly not anything we earn. We are not given grace because of anything we have done. We also do not earn more of God’s grace by what we have done with the grace he has given us either. This is so no one may boast but in Christ Jesus the LORD. You might remember that was the lesson from last Sunday’s epistles lesson (3 Lent b).
Yet our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ did not save us to sit on our hands and do nothing with the faith and salvation he has gifted us with. Our Father created us in “Christ Jesus to do good works, in which God long ago planned for us to live.” We are called to live out our faith and work out with our salvation with fear and trembling. We are called to trust the one who our Father has sent, Jesus Christ and to love our neighbor as ourselves, yes even our enemies. We are to seek how we may best serve the people around us even as Jesus Christ came and served us. We are to be graceful to the people our Father puts in our paths even as he has shown us his grace in Jesus Christ his son.
Heavenly Father, we cannot fully comprehend the riches of the glory you have in store for us purely by your grace in Christ Jesus. Continually give us the gift of faith so we may live in the good works you planned for us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.