“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
Ephesians 2:4-5 (NIV)
Hosea 3 records that Hosea searched his wife out and paid her owner her purchase price, as an act of his love for her. “Go and show your love to your wife again.” Love is the motivator, and love is revealed through the action of purchasing her back. We don’t know if she saw the actual purchase being made, but we know that she experienced the result for she came back into his home and lived with him for many days.
This passage in Hosea foretells the gospel according to Paul, and our verses in Ephesians reveal this so clearly. It is His great love for us that brought our Lord to this earth (for God so loved the world) to purchase us from judgement and spiritual death. We deserved nothing from God except wrath, and yet God who is rich in mercy brought us into the earshot of the gospel, gave us the faith to believe and when we exercised that faith, God brought us from spiritual death to spiritual life.
It is especially amazing as a Gentile to read the Words of Ephesians 2 and realize that we were far away and have now been brought near by the blood of Christ. We have brought near- into intimacy with Christ – members of God’s household, part of one single spiritual structure in which God lives by His Spirit.
Do you know His love or do you feel alone and unloved by God?
There are times in our lives when we are overwhelmed by His love, we believe it, we can feel it, we can taste it, and we see His love all around us. There also times when we doubt His love, and in those times we should cast our minds back to the day that the purchase price was paid on a cross far away. We were purchased by His blood and brought into His house, and that truth by itself should chase the doubts away, and yet sometimes we need more than our own thoughts. There is something wonderful that occurs when we gather in our local household of God called Parkdale. There is something about being in the midst of our brothers and sisters that reveals God’s love for us in a way that we don’t experience on our own.
May we be overwhelmed by the love of God today!
No comments:
Post a Comment