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Ours is the beginning-to-end God. A God intimately acquainted with not only the ends of our redemption, but the individual means to each of our salvation, such that he can promise that He “knows what you need before you ask him.” (Mt. 6:8)
The reason revisiting redemption is important is because in the process of God saving His people, we can understand, not only His sovereign purpose for us, but also His fatherly affection and compassionate character. We use specific terms to describe the parts of the process and they often take many words to explain. This information, while good and necessary, can cause us, for the sake of explaining redemption, to lose sight of the center of redemption.
In our distinguishing between individual aspects of salvation, the cohesion of the parts forming one glorious whole can be obscured. Is it possible that by becoming experts on election, regeneration, faith, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification we have missed the burning center around which each of these treasured doctrines revolve? Could it be by being greater on the summaries of the parts, the parts have become greater than the whole?
Ephesians 1 provides a needed corrective for we who can miss the forest for the trees when it comes to redemption. In this introduction to Paul’s letter, he makes reference to the blessings every believer receives in the particular aspects of redemption, but he emphasizes or rather, if it is possible he overemphasizes, the center of that redemption which he identifies as the Lord Jesus Christ.
God chose us in (Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ…In (Christ) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses…according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Christ. (Eph. 1:3-10)
We all know the answer to every Sunday School question is Jesus. So it seems trite to say that the center of our redemption is Christ. However, when you see how all of our doctrines and all of our history and the whole plan for the world weaves together in a wonderful tapestry glorifying the son of God and uniting everything in Him, then the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our salvation, a fact that if only said tritely might evoke glassy-eyed, disinterested, “I-have-heard-this-all-before,” Sunday School answers, becomes to us, as it was for the apostle Paul, the burning center of lives transformed by God, even as they are united in His Son. |