Sunday Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14
Key Verse: Ephesians 1:13
13 in whom also you, hearing the Word of Truth, the gospel of our salvation, in whom also believing, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Devotion:
Although I do love the way that this passage I have chosen today starts (3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ;) I also praise God for the simple fact that He has sealed us with the Holy Spirit. I can remember the days when I would be helping out my Grandmother in the back office of the shop and she would seal a letter with wax and a stamp. That was to make sure that the person receiving that letter would know that it was from her and know whether anyone along the line had tampered with it. What a wonderful thought it is that Christ made sure that we were sealed with His seal so that we would be able to be presented to God in the exact same manner as which we were when He cleansed us from our sin!
Each time I think about something I have done in my past I am also reminded that Christ has paid for my misgivings; because that is what He said He would do when I brought them up before Him, asking for forgiveness. I am not proud of many of the things I have done and most often refuse to be drawn into describing them to the youth that I teach – why should they be exposed to something that Christ has already taken and buried?
Christ does not only bury those sins that we have brought before Him, but He separates us totally from them before we are sealed and marked as having to be delivered to God. What an awesome thought that we cannot be tampered with without God knowing about it. No matter what Satan could get up to, God has got the final say and it is His way that will be and is the ultimate way. It is Christ who gave us the means to be able to be presented before God; without that means we would never be able to approach God at all because He cannot abide with sin. God continues to remind us that we have a problem when we sin and that the only way to get around that problem is to bring Christ back into our lives.
Points to Ponder:
Do you realise how ‘forgiven’ you are?
Do you realise your seal is permanent?