Devotionals

A Calvary-Focused Faith

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“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; [And] having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” (Col 2:13-15 AV)

During a recent discussion of the relevance of the resurrection with regard to Christ’s crucifixion at Calvary, this passage from Paul’s epistle to the Colossians came to mind. There is a thought I want to touch on dealing with the sufficiency of Christ’s finished work at Calvary.

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Ephesians 2:1-2; A Devotional

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And you were dead because of the transgressions and sins in which you once walked, as the world has through the ages according to the ruler of domain of the air ; the spirit now working in the unyielding6 sons.

A major aspect of Christian life is remembering where you came from. Christianity is fundamentally a faith of redemption. Part of redemption is being redeemed from something.

There are two common problems we encounter when dealing with our sinful past.

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Ephesians 1:7-10; A Devotional

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Because this is all one sentence in the Greek, I wanted to go back and treat it the way it deserves: as one thought.

[It is in the Beloved that] we have redemption through His blood: the excusing of sins according to the abundance of His grace which He teemed into us in all wisdom and understanding having revealed to us the secret of His will, according to His good judgment, which, through Christ, was preplanned for managing the fulfillment of times in order to coalesce all things in Christ throughout the heavens and the earth.

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Ephesians 1:3-6; A Devotional

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, for we are the blessed in all spiritual blessings, in the heavenly things, in Christ, seeing that He chose us in Him before the inception of the world to be holy and unblemished within His presence in love, thus predestining us into adoption to Him through Jesus Christ, according to the good judgement of His will in praise of His glory and His grace by which He favoured us in love.

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Ephesians 1:1-2; A Devotional

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Paul, and apostle of Jesus Christ through God’s will. To the saints: the residents in Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul uses three terms to denote the recipants of his letter: saints, residents, and faithful. I found it very difficult to determine the exact relationship between these three denotations, and I found that most translations simply skipped the second (residents). But I feel that this misses the relationship between being ‘in Ephesus’ and ‘in Christ Jesus’ which is a bit more obvious in the Greek, and I wanted to tease this out.

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I John 5:21; A Devotional

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Little children, guard yourselves from idols. -NAS

I have always thought that this sentence felt out of place in the letter. I mean, Jonah ends on a more satisfying note. It’s seems like the last thing John does is introduce a new topic, and then stop before he develops it at all. It most certainly doesn’t seem like an ending to a letter.

But it is not nearly as out of place as it may seem. I John overall is about Christian living, especially on what marks one as Christian as opposed to one of the world. This final instruction can be seen in that light: obstain from the gods of the world.

It is also important to follow the thoughts starting in verse 18. As a quick review, here again is the flow of John’s final argument:

  1. We know we are protected
  2. We know that the world is dominated by evil
  3. But we also know that Jesus is here now

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I John 5:20; A Devotional

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But we also know that the Son of God is now here and has given us acuity so that we learn the truth and so that we are in the truth; in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. -MGV

The beginning of the verse differs from verses 18 and 19 with the addition of the conjunction ‘de’. ‘de’ is most often translated ‘but’, and here I translate it as ‘but also’ to link it to the two proceeding verses. This indicates that this is the principle point that John has been building up to through 18 and 19. Using ‘but’ instead of ‘therefore’ shows that this thought doesn’t flow out of the proceeding thoughts, but takes the context of the proceeding thoughts and goes far beyond it to something greater.

So let us look at this line of thought:

  1. We know we are protected
  2. We know that the world is dominated by evil
  3. But we also know that Jesus is here now

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I John 5:19; A Devotional

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I John 5:19: We fully know that we are from God and that the world is laid out along the ground by evil. -MGV

Starting in the same way as verse 18, verse 19 speaks of something that we fully and completely know, being in the perfect tense. This verse is also carrying the same though as verse 18, for when is says “from God” or more literally “out of God”, it is referring to us being born of God, the quality that verse 18 is talking about. However, while that verse is talking about how we are protected by God, here it is talking about how the rest of the world is not.

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