Ephesians 1:5

For Reading and Meditation:     Ephesians 1:1-14

What is it in the heart of most men and women that rejects the idea of God's free and generous offer of salvation? It is pride, the deadliest of all the deadly sins. Bernard Shaw, an example of a modern-day thinker, said: "Forgiveness is a beggar's refuge. We must pay our debts." But we cannot pay our debts. As our...

For Reading and Meditation:     Jeremiah 31:1-12

"How little real love there is for God," says theologian Arthur W. Pink. He suggests that this and the resulting low level of spirituality in today's Church are caused by our hearts being so little occupied with thoughts of the divine love. "The better we are acquainted with His love," he says, "- its character, its...

For Reading and Meditation:     2 Timothy 1:1-18

Several of the world's religions, when faced with the perplexing issue of Christ's return from the dead, explain it in terms of reincarnation. A proponent of one of the Eastern religions says: "Christ's resurrection was really a reincarnation - another soul in another body." I once heard a Christian minister declare...

For Reading and Meditation:     Colossians 1:1-20

Does salvation come up from mankind through striving, helped by the Divine, or does it come down to us from above, through the act of God and our receptivity of that act? Is it an attainment or an obtainment? The answers separate Christianity from all other religions. Non-Christian religions teach that salvation is...

If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! § Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. § [God] predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may...

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him! § How great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You.This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise. § Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved … That we who first trusted in Christ should be to the...

I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His...