Remembrance: Recounting Our Resurrection
Ephesians 2:1-10
Paul begins Ephesians with praise to God for His blessings to us in Christ, which are complete in every way (Ephesians 1:3-14). Our sins have been forgiven, as adopted children of God, and we are prime examples to all creatures in heaven and earth of God’s grace.
All that is lacking is a full understanding of these blessings, the mystery now revealed, so that through the Spirit’s operation, we will know God, and be clear about our destiny, identity, and the power with which God has made us His inheritance (Ephesians 1:15-23).
Now he calls on us to recall what has happened in our own experience. But why? Jesus reminds us in his parable of the two debtors (Matthew 18:21-35) that our own experience of grace must move us to show grace to others, to forgive as we’ve been forgiven.
And then there is the lesson Jesus taught Simon the Pharisee when the “sinful woman” wept at Christ’s feet. Those who are forgiven much, love much (Luke 7:36-50). So our love for God and others is weighed and mobilized to the extent we remember from what and to what we have been saved. And all of it has come by His grace.