Today, what I would like to do is to invite you to move away from a certain way of thinking; from a type of pro-active, always on the move, “
what do I do” mindset
that most of us have been brought up in. It is almost the case when people come to church they feel guilty when someone says sit, receive, Jesus has done everything for you.
The first part of Ephesians reminds us to receive the many spiritual blessings that God wants to give us.
Today, I want to repeat the truth that we cannot earn our salvation and we cannot please God more by doing.
Let’s go back to Watchman Nee’s metaphorical posture of the first three chapters in Ephesians as one of Sitting!
Sitting is the posture of rest and receiving. We rest to receive those many, many blessings from God. So, there is no guilt-ridden rest. That doesn’t mean we don’t serve but that comes later; service comes out of a grateful, filled heart. Just as vision gives rise to great projects, resting in Christ gives us a grateful, thankful spirit; and our service will flow naturally.
2.1.By Jesus’s Blood (2:13):
Remember the Q we posed last week about how can we be raised to sit with Christ in the heavenlies in the here and now when you and I are here, seated in this church building?
We dealt with the fact that he made it possible by his atoning death. His blood shed by that act of crucifixion stopped the process of law by satisfying the demands of justice.
Mercy and expiation enable the way and our acceptance of that act ushers a big and deep part of us into the presence of God. That’s what it means to be “brought near.”
A big part of us is in the heavenlies and not in some great out there but no, the kingdom of heaven is within you (Lk 17:21). Then we have been brought near to God in a dimension that the eye cannot see. I‘m not talking metaphorically but actually.
It should be said the blood of Jesus speaks mercy and justice.
Remember the words of God when he told Cain: “the voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10).
Hebrews 12:24 states “and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” What that means is there is a powerful appeal that the blood makes; and the life that is in the shed blood gives new life.
What God sees is the blood and the atonement that it brings, it covers the offence we commit.