SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/21/2018 10:25 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Human Perspective”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 1:12a,
13a
Message of the
verses: “to the end we who were
first to hope in Christ…In Him, you also, after listening to the message of
truth, the gospel of you salvation—having also believed,”
In this SD we move from the divine perspective of
inheritance to the human perspective of inheritance. Once again I need to quote from John
MacArthur for us to understand the Greek in this section: “In the Greek text this passage is continuous,
the last part of verse 12 leading directly into verse 13. Here we see the believer’s divine inheritance
in Jesus Christ from our own human perspective.
In
earlier SD’s I have mentioned the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s
will and we come upon this tension more than once in this book of Ephesians. I have stated that early on in my Christian
life that I felt that it was man who was the one to determine whether or not he
becomes a believer in Jesus Christ for salvation, and then a bit later I began
reading books on the sovereignty of God and then totally believed that it was
all up to God who would be saved. Now
later on in my walk with the Lord I began to believe both views, that is that
God chose me before the earth was formed, and that I was the one who had to
accept the effectual call of the Holy Spirit in order to be saved. Yes both are true, and yes we will never be
able to understand it while we are in our earthly bodies. John MacArthur writes “We know the truths are
in perfect accord in God’s mind, and that knowledge should satisfy us.” He then tells the story of what someone
versioned when they got to heaven and saw a sign as then entered which read
“Whosoever will may come,” and after you enter heaven you look back to the same
sign and read on the other side, “Chosen in Him before the foundation of the
world.”
“Whatever God’s reasons for designing such humanly
irreconcilable truths, we should thank and praise Him for them. For the very reason that they are completely
true while seeming to be contradictory, we are humbled in His presence as we
stand in awe of that which to us is incomprehensible. To the trusting believer such truths are but further evidence that
Scripture is God’s doing, and not man’s.” I suppose this one truth among many which
shows that it was not man who wrote the Word of God, but that is that it was
not man’s idea as Peter tells us that men were moved along by the Spirit of God
to write His Word.
“To the end we who were first to hope in Christ” is the
first statement given here about the human side of our divine inheritance in
Christ. MacArthur writes that “The Greek
has a definite article before Christ, and a more literal translation is ‘hope
in the Christ.’ The meaning is not changed, but the definite
article emphasizes the uniqueness of our hope:
it is in the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ. It also stresses the idea that the apostles
and other first-generation Jewish believers were the first to receive the
Messiah.”
This is a very heavy portion of Scripture and so I think
that this is all that I can write about today and will hope to finish this
section in our next SD.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Jehu” (2 Kings 9:20).
Today’s Bible
question: “What does Matthew depict not
only as the greatest prophet and lawgiver, but also as fulfilling the Law and
the Prophets?
Answer in our next SD.
11/21/2018 11:02 AM
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