Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
Ephesians 1:3-4
St. Paul’s New Testament letters are full of hope and life, gratitude and grace, maturity and truth. Profound change—total transformation really—characterized his life. He consistently calls us to that same perspective and practice.
One might think that if we live accordingly, life will be happier, safer, and more fulfilling. Yet Paul himself spent a good portion of his influential life in prison, unjustly shackled for the sake of Jesus. Lest we forget, this apostle whom we dare to believe and emulate did not live to a ripe old age with his children at his knee. He was martyred. What a dead end!
Or was it? Haddon Robinson was known to say that today people name their dogs after Nero and their sons after Paul.
A person of deep conviction, energy, and perseverance, St. Paul literally changed the world because he was a grateful man, a thankful man, a joy-filled man, a grace-made man. F. F. Bruce called him an “apostle of the heart set free.” Free from the bondage of sin. Free from condemnation of the law. Free to be a servant of Christ.
Throughout the prologue to his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul keeps reminding us that all of God’s decisions and actions on our behalf are to “the praise of his glorious grace” that we “might live to the praise of his glory…as God’s own people to the praise of his glory.” This apostle to the Gentiles knew at his core that for all God’s children grace invites gratitude in our worship and in our service in Christ’s name.
Michael Denham
Reverberating Word 