ICS Daily Devotions
Being Confident In Christ
Ephesians 1:3-7 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.7 IN HIM we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.
The important thing is to understand and know how God looks at us in Christ. This truth will bring (rest, peace and faith) faith, peace and rest into our hearts. Verse 3 gives all the glory to God, God is to be blessed! The reason for this is that it is God who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly realm in Christ! It has nothing to do with us but it has everything to do with God when it comes to approaching God.
We can approach God based on the finished work of Christ rather than our own strength in doing or performing to please God. God has chosen to bless us, therefore we worship Him for all the work that He has done for us. Our identity and confidence needs to be in Christ. Our identity should not be in our achievements or works. Neither shall we think of those days when we were in Adam, condemned, filled with unwholesome thoughts and sinful.
We as the Christians are no longer in Adam or the Kingdom of darkness but in the Kingdom of light. We have been transferred into the new Kingdom of His dear Son! We are the ones who are so richly blessed spiritually that we should be shouting at the top of our voice for all that He has done for us. What are these spiritual blessing in the heavenly places that we are blessed with in Christ? We are blessed, we are chosen, we are adopted as sons, we are without blame, we are righteous, we are holy, we are accepted, we are redeemed by His blood, we have the forgiveness of sins and the riches of His grace is towards us! Glory be to God. All these belong to us in Christ. We can boast in the Lord about what he has done for us.
Did you do anything to receive these spiritual blessings? Did you earn it through works? Absolutely not. It is purely the grace of God because of the redemptive work of Christ. Our resources in Christ are beyond what we can comprehend. Every Christian has what Paul speaks of in Ephesians 1:3. God cannot give us any more that He has already given us in Christ Jesus. Outside of Him there is nothing.
If you try to add anything to Jesus, you subtract from Him because you can’t add anything to Him. Everything is resident in Him. That’s why we preach Christ. When you come to know Christ, He is your life, and in Him is resident every spiritual blessing that God could ever give you. In fact, our position and our possessions are so secure that Paul says in Eph 2:6 that He has raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now as far as God’s concerned, it’s a done deal. This is a positional truth which means this is how God looks at you now! We should understand it and try to appropriate it in our life. As far as God is concerned, it is already done. We’ve already been raised and seated with Christ in the heavenlies.
Series: Our Identity in Christ (Part 3)
