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, 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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