"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Friday, 10 July 2009 | |||
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Your Destiny | |||
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"Who would have known?" That's what my wife keeps
saying as our youngest daughter is travelling half-way across the world
on a mission trip. What she means is, who would have known, when this
young woman was only a squalling, puking, pooping little bundle of joys
(my description, not my wife's), that she would one day be having such an
adventure? Of course, a simple Christian answer might me that God would have known. I'm one of those traditional theists who still believe that God has known all the future in detail from eternity, including everything you and I and everyone does freely. In some complicated sense, I would even maintain that He has planned it all and that it is all working out according to His will. Such a traditional view of God's foreknowledge and divine plan is certainly implied in our text for this week, Ephesians 1:3-14, especially in verse 11. Yet the focus of this great passage is not so much God's pre-planning of every minute detail of our lives. Instead Paul is talking more about God's foreordaining of our inclusion in salvation and grace through His Son. What we are especially and clearly "predestined" to, according to Paul, is the "spiritual blessings" of being in Christ: holiness, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and the lavish richness of grace. So when Paul speaks about God revealing to us the mystery of his will (verse 9), it's not a revelation of the future minute details of our lives as we would so much like to know. Christian faith does not provide a clear, marked pathway into the days, weeks or years ahead. Just as the unfolding of our baby daughter's life was, like the course of every human life, including one's own, remains mostly a mystery. What we are given, what is revealed, is a clear and beautiful image of our destiny to be in Christ, to enter into His Father's great unification of all creation in Him (verse 10), and to be made people who will always live "unto the praise of his glory" (a phrase appearing both in verse 12 and in verse 14). One detail of God's plan to unify His creation is clearly revealed in His intent to bring together all people in Christ. This comes more into focus next week as we then move into chapter 2. But we still see it here as Paul considers first God's plan to redeem his own Jewish people as they receive Christ and then to also bring into His plan all others who, like the Ephesians, believe in Jesus. So we have a grand destiny. It's not laid out for us in clear steps like a journey planned on Mapquest. But it's guaranteed by God's own Spirit, as Paul assures us in verses 13 and 14. May we live in this larger sense of destiny, though the details and events of our lives fall where they may. | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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