The List, Our Credentials

[HKHaugan]

The List, Our Credentials

When you get ready to travel to another country you have to have a passport to prove your nationality and identity. It speaks about your travel credentials and affirms who you are and why you are there. Your national identity defines the values of the country you are from and what the place you are visiting can expect when they admit you. Being disciples of Jesus means our citizenship is not in this world (Php.3:20, 1Pet.2:9). We are spiritual visitors whose citizenship is in Heaven. We may look like everyone else in a physical sense but there is something different about us, spiritually different, and we need to keep in our minds the credentials that make up our passport identity. Just what are those spiritual credentials? Ephesians 1 supplies a list for us. So read on in verse 3:

Vs.3 He blessed us---

What we want to see here is the word blessing which means, being touched by God. It’s a spiritual touch. If God has blessed us He has touched us. What we need to understand about being touched is that it starts spiritually. It’s the recognition of what He has already done for us. When we received Jesus as Savior and Lord vs.3 tells us it was “…with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” The list is a composition of the specifics. Therefore we have been touched personally, spiritually, intellectually, morally, emotionally and in ways that we may never know until we are in His presence. So what follows in this passage is a series of individual blessings that He wants us to log in our passport of faith, review them and rely on them as we meet every next moment.

2. Vs.4 He chose us in Jesus…to be holy and blameless before Creation!

Just think about that for a moment. We have been chosen by God, the Creator of the universe. Being chosen is a phenomenal blessing. Chosen personally by the Creator gives us a confidence in that we are personally special to Him. Being chosen gives us a sense of purpose, to be holy and blameless before God in the presence of others, “God first, others second, me third.” Rather than being proud it is a touch that humbles us before Him in the presence of others. That’s the whole idea! God’s idea of humility seen in Jesus is to be His conscious servant considering the needs of others before our own. That’s what being holy and blameless is all about. Jesus? He did that perfectly. He always put His Father’s will before everything. And to think, He chose all of this before time began!

3. Vs.5 He predestined us to be adopted as His sons in love.

Keep this ‘before time’ idea in front of you. God decided ahead of time, literally before time, that each human being would be an adopted child of His. Spiritually the choice to accept sonship is ours. The ability to make that decision was a gift of grace offered in His love. This is the same love that is eternal not temporary, which is seen in self-sacrifice, the kind Jesus showed on the Cross. Eternal love is God’s nature. It is quite different from human love which is more emotional than spiritual. God’s love is spiritual and shapes emotion. God is love.

4. Vs.6 He has ‘graced’ us--- see vs.8 as well--- to the praise of His glorious grace!

His adoption of us was a sign of His grace that even while we were sinners it was His will and pleasure to bring us back to Him that we might be ‘in Him’, Paul’s favorite phrase. So we praise Him as God and praise His grace. Grace is the nature of God accepting us, loving us and sending His Son to save us, making us one with Him (Jn.17). Grace works its way into our hearts and softens our pride until it is shifted to Him. This grace is praise magnified.

5. Vs.7 He has redeemed us, given us redemption through His blood.

Redeeming is bringing back, restoring and regaining what was lost, separated and broken. Sin did that to Adam and Eve and we inherited that condition. It is a condition that can only be cured by a perfect sacrifice, a blood sacrifice. It has to be a blood sacrifice because the symbol of life as the Bible defines it is in the blood (Lev.17:11). This is why Jesus came, to be the perfect blood sacrifice to cancel the power of sin. Since He satisfied the necessity for a perfect unblemished blood sacrifice we can receive Him by faith which is our personal sacrifice. His death in our place redeemed us. This is why the Cross is our central symbol. His blood sacrifice restored our eternal life and redeemed us to live with Him forever.

6. Vs.9 He has made known the mystery of His will…vs.10---to bring all things in Heaven and earth together under one Head, Jesus Christ.

Before the arrival of Jesus all existence was a mystery for religious and philosophical speculation, pondering and guessing. Not only did Jesus reveal the mystery of God and His will, He was the mystery and what He came to accomplish was made clear, that everything in Heaven and earth would be brought together by Him, a goal He would share with all who would follow Him by faith. Further, it would be accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit in and through redeemed believers.

7. Vs.11-12 He chose us to be for the praise of His glory.
Here again God’s choice. He chose us with a purpose; that believing Him, trusting Him and having faith to act for Him, we would show what His glory is all about. When others see our faith in action, that directs their gaze to see God and, as believers we that our faith praises His glory. It also shows the difference between what man calls glory; trophies, degrees, wealth and power, and what God’s glory really is, eternal life in Jesus Christ transforming the hearts and minds of people.

8. Vs.13 We were also chosen to be included in Christ when we heard the word of truth.

So to be chosen is also to be included in His Son, just another step closer to Him. The world chooses to exclude the unsuccessful by its standards of wealth, position, ethnicity, class, appearance and so on. The Lord includes everyone through faith. To be included is to be taken into His presence, His will, His purpose, His plan and His people. He has chosen us to live forever with Him. We are included in His plan to bring others to experience the love and fulfillment of our humanity---together.

9. Vs.13b We were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance---to the praise of His glory.

All that has been said up to this point is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, sealed by Him and registered by Him in the Book of Life. The Holy Spirit is the Person who enables us to be born into Jesus and restored to our Heavenly Father. The Holy Spirit brings Jesus into our hearts, helps us to grow in Him and works on the specifics of gifting us for ministry and mission, convicting us, prodding us to obedience, correcting us when we need it and empowering us to be the Lord’s witnesses wherever we are. John 16 is the best passage to give us an overall picture of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.

Our faith is our passport and these are our credentials. We carry them with us every day and everywhere we go. They are our guarantee that every next moment is a moment of opportunity to experience Him and to experience Him leading us as we relate in the world of people around us.