All for Naught?

Dearly beloved, did the Lord Jesus offer up himself for naught? Did he submit to the beatings and torture, humiliation, and shame that he endured without victory? Far from it; this was the purpose for which he was reserved! He fulfilled God’s plan of redemption as our Passover Lamb, and redeemed us so that we could be God’s beloved. He achieved God’s justice by his believing.

Consider some of what he accomplished.

God justified us freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God set Jesus Christ before Himself to be the mercy seat, the place of reconciliation, expiation and conciliation by his blood through believing. Because of this sacrifice, God passed over our previously committed sins in His forbearance.

Therefore, being justified before God by believing in the Lord Jesus, we have peace with God through him. We are justified beloved! Now we have peace with God! Through believing in him we were given access into this grace wherein we stand, and we boast in hope of receiving the glory of God. In fact, our hope is to be glorified with the Christ! We will obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Justified, reconciled, forgiven, made us the righteousness of God in Christ, peace with God, given access, a standing in grace, and hope of receiving the glory of God are good for starters, wouldn’t you agree? In Christ, there is no more condemnation and nothing can separate us from the love of God in him.

God baptized us in Jesus’ death and buried us with him. Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, now we can walk in newness of life, that of the spirit. He freed us from the condemnation and guilt of sin, and the day is coming that we will be freed from the presence of sin at his coming when he gives us glorious new bodies fashioned after his!

Now we are free to live as dead men raised to life and walk in the spirit. Now we can offer our members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

In fact, we not only died and were buried with him, we were made alive with Christ, raised with him, and were seated together in the heavenlies in him as members of his body. Beloved, we are members of his body. Christ and the church are one as the husband and wife are one flesh. We are one new man!

God blessed every member with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. For starters, He gave us sonship and God became our Father. In Christ, He made us holy and as blameless as the Lamb who died for us. He sealed us with the promised holy spirit, giving it to us as a down payment of the future glory of the inheritance that is ours in Christ.

Beloved, the Father of glory has enlightened the eyes of our understanding so that we can know what is the hope of our calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power to us who believe, the power that He demonstrated when He raised Christ from the dead and caused him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly realm far above all power and made Christ the head of the church, his body, the fullness of him who fills all things in all of his people.

God did all of this in Christ and so much more, and He did all of it by the good pleasure of His will, according to the riches of His grace, according to His own purpose, which He worked out after the counsel of His own will.

Yes, I would say we are His dearly beloved. We have identification with Christ, we are seated with him, and it will take our Father the ages to come to fully display the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Peace and access now and exceeding riches of His grace and glory to come. Such grace.

No beloved, it was not all for naught.