by Melanie van den Berg
When I started reading Ephesians recently, I didn’t get very far. Not because I lost interest, but because I was so moved by the start of the book. There is so much in just a tiny extract from the Bible, and it can change your life, and mine.
Since I am a very visual person – I find it easier to learn and memorise things through visual representations – I will focus in this blogpost, on briefly and concisely highlighting a few points about how Jesus sees you and me.
If we don’t pay attention to this in everyday life, we can easily accept unfiltered statements or opinions from others about ourselves, and even act accordingly. Of course, humanly speaking, many of these statements are very superficial and are based on past experiences or events. “Oh, you’ve always been like that…”, or “let someone else do it, they can do it better”, or “that’s how I know you, you’ll never make it ….”. I’m sure you can quickly think of similar statements about yourself.
Here is the good news: this is not how Jesus sees you! Not because Jesus wears rose-coloured glasses or sugarcoats things. No, on the contrary. He clearly sees our faults and shortcomings, BUT He sees us through His shed blood for us. HE has already paid for all our guilt, everything we have “messed up” in life.
Now it’s up to you and me to accept it. I don’t know how you feel about accepting gifts, but I sometimes find it difficult to simply say‚ “thank you”, and not immediately feel like I have to give something back, or that I don’t really deserve it. We don’t deserve Jesus’ love and forgiveness, but we can accept it as a gift.
Have a look here at how Jesus sees you
and thinks about you:
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes (Ephesians 1:4)
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 (Ephesians 1:5)
He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins (Ephesians 1:7)
He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding (Ephesians 1:8)
Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan (Ephesians 1:11)
And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him (Ephesians 1:13b-14)
As we read here in verse 14, Jesus doesn’t give us all this good stuff to make us feel better or perhaps lead a better life – it’s much more than that. HE leads us back to our heavenly Father. Through the Holy Spirit we can understand more and more how much Jesus loves us, His plan from the beginning, that we are not lost, but can entrust ourselves completely to Him.
Trust HIM and believe that HE is enough.
I want to put this into practice more and more in everyday life – do you?
Bible Reference: New Living Translation (NLT)