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“He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognised as finally annulled. A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death's defeat.” Athanasius
On the Incarnation 4th C.
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Of late, I've been struck (yet again!) by the overwhelming qualities of the opening of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. So, for this week, I'm sending you three different translations of vv. 3-10; I want these to be a reminder of how great are our privileges in this Kingdom!
NIV: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ." NKJV: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him." Phillips: "Praise be to God for giving us through Christ every possible spiritual benefit as citizens of Heaven! For consider what he has done—before the foundation of the world he chose us to become, in Christ, his holy and blameless children living within his constant care. He planned, in his purpose of love, that we should be adopted as his own children through Jesus Christ—that we might learn to praise that glorious generosity of his which has made us welcome in the everlasting love he bears towards the Son. It is through the Son, at the cost of his own blood, that we are redeemed, freely forgiven through that full and generous grace which has overflowed into our lives and opened our eyes to the truth. For God had allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: he purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth shall find its perfection and fulfilment in him." My friends, let's go LIVE this GLORY all week long! 58.68 Faith is our silent speech that yet speaks.
58.69 Faith is our deathlessness; our present immortality. 58.70 Faith is our pleasure—which pleases. 58.71 Faith is our exit out of fear. 58.72 Faith is our inheritance, today, of what shall be ours forever. 58.73 Faith is our life’s great fruitfulness. 58.74 Faith is our vision out beyond our days. 58.75 Faith is our citizenship, our passport, unto The Other Country. 58.76 Faith is the ending of our shame. 58.77 Faith is our radicalism: our “Permanent Revolution.” 58.78 Faith is seeing; sight. 58.79 Faith is blessing; blesses. 58.80 Faith is foretelling; yet finished. 58.81 Faith is fearing; yet unafraid. 58.82 Faith is, and knows, its own reward. 58.83 Faith makes visible what it knew was never invisible. 58.84 Faith is making its way through. 58.85 Faith, looking backward, perfects its present. And knows it has nothing to fear from the future. 58.86 Faith’s atmosphere is its lineage of embodied belief, eg. the men and women who’ve known this Jesus before us. 58.87 Today is the whole race of faith and obedience. 98 He sends out the Seventy to minister Luke 10:1-24 LATER ON THE LORD commissioned seventy other disciples and sent them off in twos as advance-parties into every town and district where he intended to go. “There is a great harvest,” he told them, “but only a few are working in it—which means you must pray to the Lord of the harvest that he will send out more reapers. “Now go on your way. I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Don’t carry a purse or a pair of shoes, and don’t stop to pass the time of day with anyone you meet on the road. When you go into a house, say first of all, ‘Peace be to this household!’ If there is a lover of peace there, he will accept your words of blessing, and if not, they will come back to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink whatever they put before you—a workman deserves his wages. But don’t move from one house to another. “Whatever town you go into and the people welcome you, eat the meals they give you and heal the people who are ill there. Tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is very near to you now.’ . . . * * * In the moment… IN A DISTANT WAY, he remembers (almost as if by some kind of second-sense) how it felt to create the entirety of the scene around him.
The composition of the water-molecules, infinite in their expansive lake-sized cohesion, lapping against the scraggly shoreline: he remembers making them. The heights of the opposite edge of the lake; the sloping-up and descending-down of their western fringe: he recalls shaping them with his own hand. The sound of the bird calls, the chirruping of the crickets, a distant howling of dogs, the wind, the rustling of the leaves—he thinks about his many conversations with his Father; how they’d compared and contrasted the strengths and weaknesses of attaching certain heavenly sounds to the earthly sounds bestowed on each. How the sea, the sky, the earth, the heights, the depths, the stars, the sun, the planets, the deserts, the forests all resounded with their component parts in the heavenly. How it all resides within his heart and mind—both then and now—as he sits by the sea and watches the way his friends all go out. He is watching these thirty-odd pairs of them walking away. He has placed the whole power of the Kingdom in their hands. He closes his eyes to take a nap in the sunshine. |
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Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.A.
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