Christadelphian thoughts from the Bible readings for April 5th ” …“MADE US ALIVE””
“MADE US ALIVE” D.Caudery
Do you feel you have been “made … alive“? Or do you sense the need to be so “made”? We started reading Paul’s letter to the Ephesians today: it needs to be read carefully, thoroughly, because it is ‘rich’ with a personal message for us. We learn of “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” [1 v.19]
Can we sense this “power”? It is not “power” as humans think of it. We note Paul’s next words that this ‘power’ is “according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand…” [v.20]
What remarkable “power” accomplished that! Divine power! How soon now before this is again in evidence to an utterly astonished, indeed, bewildered world!
Paul tells the Ephesians that “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ …” [2 v.4,5] This is expressed in the present tense – it is the situation now!
We meditate further on the phrase, “made us alive”! We see several meanings – that he “made us alive” to all that life really means, when today, more than ever, the world is blind – nearly all people thinking (if they think at all) that life is meaningless – it just evolved by pure chance!
Paul then unfolds another vital point – our situation now! That it is “by grace you have been saved” and God has “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ageshe might show the immeasurable riches of his grace …” [v.6,7] In that age (how soon now?) we will be “made … alive” to see life as God and His Son see life.
As our ‘minds open’ – seeking to embrace this ‘vision’ to an ever greater degree, we learn to more fully appreciate the “immeasurable” wonder of it all. We become more and more “alive” to the fact that this is all God’s doing – and all who have sought to have “the eyes of” their “hearts enlightened”- more fully “know what is the hope to which he has called (them)” and ‘see’ more clearly “the riches of his glorious inheritance” [1 v.18]. The sight of this overwhelms us! But this ‘sight’ becomes ever clearer to those who use the “eyes” that their “hearts” have developed.
Let us all constantly feed on His word – and really digest it – so that we are “made .. alive” today and every day” until we are physically with Christ.” How “alive” do you feel today?
