August 1 - Ephesians 1:7

August 1
Ephesians 1:7

Ephesians 1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.

As we walk our way through the first three chapters of the Book of Ephesians looking for the nineteen spiritual blessings that we have in Christ, it is important to keep in mind that it is only through Christ Jesus we have been set free.  Jesus paid the ransom, the price for our sins. The Hebrew word for redemption or ransom is “Pidyon”, meaning "an exchange – a substitute.” In the Torah (Hebrew Old Testament) -  if the Law of Ransom was put upon someone, that meant every firstborn male or donkey must be ransomed until death.  The Greek (Strongs: apolutrosis – NT 575), carried the meaning of "ransom as riddance or deliverance from," especially in reference to Christian salvation. Jesus was God’s firstborn and only Son. He became the physical ransom for the sins of the whole world, meaning Jesus became our substitute, the one ransomed for our sins unto death, so we wouldn’t have to pay our own penalty. What a blessing God gave to us.

This is important to understand. In this verse the Apostle Paul was counteracting the cultic belief regarding Gnosticism that had entered into the Lycos valley where the city of Ephesus rested. False teachers, mixing pagan belief with false teaching called Docetism, had entered into the Church at Ephesus, which was an early form of Gnosticism that was spreading throughout Ephesus and the valley. This belief nullified the physical life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The basic belief of Gnosticism is "knowledge" - claiming one gained salvation through a “special kind of knowledge” instead of rely upon the physical death, shed by blood, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Gnosticism claimed that Jesus never came to earth in a physical form, denying Jesus' bodily birth, death and resurrection.  This belief claim He came simply as a spirit, stating that what the people saw of Jesus on earth was simply a figment of their imagination because, as a spirit, He did not possess flesh and bone.  This belief was very much like that of the Gentile Roman/Greco pagan gods.  Considered spirits, these mystical gods lived in the spiritual realm and ruled and watched over the universe of people.  The people in turn worshipped these gods in a variety of ways. Thus this belief entered into Christianity heavily in the 2nd century, being called Gnosticism.

Whenever the blending of two of more cultures are joined together, the blending of religions often happen.  In this case, we are dealing with Jewish Law, Christianity and the paganism of the Gentiles. The cult of Docitism (later growing into Gnosticism) spread to the 2nd largest city in the Roman world of Ephesus and throughout the Lycos Valley and beyond.  Since they denied belief in the shedding of Christ's physical blood on the cross, that meant they had to discover a new way to claim entrance into heaven.  A "special kind of knowledge" became that entrance.  This then created an elitism amongst those who were practicing this cultic thought over the true Christians who maintained the apostles teaching on the physical birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul was emphasizing the importance of the physical blood of Jesus here in verse 7.  Because man was sinful and needed to be reconciled back to God, it was only through Jesus' physical blood shed on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins were our sins redeemed. It was only through Christ’s physical shed blood that we have been ransomed.  And because of Christ’s physical shed blood we also have forgiveness of our sins - in other words, in God's eyes, our sins are forgotten – they is gone.  The riches of God's grace, meaning God’s unending mercy, upon us has released us – delivered us from all sin. We stand holy and righteous before God.  Because of Jesus’ physical shed blood, we are holy.  We are righteous!  We are delivered!   We have been redeemed! We have been ransomed!  We are God’s children – we belong to His family.  The power is in the physical shed blood of Jesus.  Without Christ's physical blood shed for us, there can be no remission of sins.  Without His physical blood there can be no salvation – no eternal life.  It took the physical shed blood of Jesus – what He did for us that gives us that wonderful inheritance of eternal salvation.  

The United States today is a blend of many different cultures. As people come to Christ, they often bring remnants of their past beliefs into the Church - even today.  As such, we need to be careful so that we don't hang on to past beliefs and blend it into our faith in Christ Jesus. We can stretch that even to the hundreds of denominations that are out there even within Christianity. We must always, without exception, take Scripture literally for what it says - not rely upon past denominational beliefs that would violate the literal teachings of Scriptural as was written by the apostles of Christ. Knowing that this kind of cultic thinking entered into the Church as early as the 1st century, we know we have to be guarded on the many different beliefs that have entered into the Church over the past 2000 years. Nothing has changed over 2000 years. Salvation in Jesus Christ still means believing in our hearts that Jesus shed His physical blood for the remission of our sins and that God raised Jesus' physical body from the dead into eternal life. Without Jesus' blood there can be no salvation. Without God resurrecting Jesus physical body from the dead into eternal life, there can be no eternal life for us. 

To this, our hearts are grateful. We say, thank you Jesus for becoming the one eternal sacrifice for our sins. Thank you Jesus for shedding your physical blood for us on the cross of Calvary in our place. Thank you God for raising Jesus' physical body from the dead. Because of your love for mankind, we too can have eternal life forever with you. That's God's richest grace upon us!