The Passion Conferences blew my mind. Passion brought renewal to my relationship with Christ. It also brought knowledge, hope and fear. All good things, things that I will write about in the near future.
But first let’s talk about Ephesians 5:14
“ Awake, O Sleeper
and arise for the dead,
And CHRIST will shine on you”
Passion’s main focus was Ephesians this year, which I thought was beautiful and needed.
I constantly notice that many scriptures that speak truth about how sinful and dead humans are get looked over so easily. Mainly because people don’t want to recognize how bad we really are. Humans want to be looked at as good, not sinful or evil at all. Truth is we all are, we all have a sinful nature due to the fall. We are slaves of sin. (Romans 7:14-25)
Now here is the beautiful part.
Look at Ephesians 2:1-10
4 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved-”
Only one could reconcile us back to God and that is Jesus Christ. We have no part in it. It is a gift from God. I love how Piper described it. We aren’t half alive, were dead, completely dead. That means we can’t change ourselves or choose God.We are sinful, we wouldn't choose God anyway. We are dead, we need a resurrection and Christ tells us to rise up and we live! It is a gift, it is grace.
Beautiful. Wonderful. Miraculous Grace.
And by this grace we are no longer slaves to sin, but we are slaves of righteousness.
Romans 6: 17-18
“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves slaves of righeousness.”
Now instead of receiving death, we receive life and eternity with the one who made it all.
23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God receives all the glory!
