God's grace is lavished upon us. Its a good thing it doesn't depend on mood, cause I am just enveloped by my busy-ness today. In fact, I got two words wrong in my memory verse. I think I need to spend my blog time today trying to recapture all the verses I've memorized so far.
Here are the first 8 verses from memory:
1Paul and apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. 2Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purposes of his will, 6to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight...
only by the will of God,
Jonathan
P.S. I just had a final exam today for my research class. If you know anything about research, you know that in most experiments there are independent variables and dependent variables. The independent variable is what the experimenter controls. In social science research, this is often an intervention of some sort. The dependent variable is the result of the independent variable on the participants.
If I were to describe the first 8 verses of Ephesians in terms of a Godly experiment, the independent variable would be God's grace offered to us. We are the participants in God's grand experiment.
To describe the independent variable-- God's treatment-- Paul uses words like predestined, chosen, glorious, redemption, riches, and lavish.
In God's grand experiment, some people respond to the intervention, but most do not. So my question is this: what are the characteristics of the people who do respond? Paul lays out faithfulness from the start of this book. But let's forget the variations between the two groups (those who respond to God's grace and those who do not) and look at the variations within the faithful group. How is it that one day I am open and receptive to God's grace and the next day I am not? What are the factors?
It's actually kind of helpful to think about it this way. Can anyone extend the metaphor for me?
3 comments:
All respond to the intervention in varying degrees because all have been given a measure of faith (Rom. 12:3), but the response is not always observable by human standards. Only God knows the heart.
The factors to our receptivity to God's grace are too numerous to count. Some days I may be a wonderful servant to those around me and yet still be not open to His grace or even obstruct and obfuscate His grace through pride.
Thanks for mentioning about the different measures of faith. But surely different measures of faith do not effect how faithful you can be (i.e. the women with the two coins).
And I am definitely guilty of obfuscating God's grace. It's so humbling that He predestined us for adoption, even knowing us completely.
Thanks for journeying with me, Philly.
I think applying the women with the two coins is mixing terms. Just because she did not have much material things does not mean she was not given much faith. Often the poor possess much faith because it requires much faith.
In the end, even the effect of faith (or dependent variable) is still a grace from God.
Isn't this wonderful, a Catholic emphasizing grace and protestant emphasizing faithfulness.
I'm of course not disagreeing with you but rather trying to be a ying to your yang.
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