Lent Day Nineteen
“Ephesians 2:1-7 The Passion Translation ”
Taken from The Passion Translation
1 And his fullness fills you, even though you were once like corpses, dead in your sins and offenses.
2 It wasn’t that long ago that you lived in the religion, customs, and values of this world, obeying the dark ruler of the earthly realm who fills the atmosphere with his authority, and works diligently in the hearts of those who are disobedient to the truth of God.
3 The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life. We lived by whatever our natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else.
4 But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy.
5 Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!
6 He raised us up with Christ the exalted One, and we ascended with him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm, for we are now joined as one with Christ!
7 Throughout the coming ages we will be the visible display of the infinite, limitless riches of his grace and kindness, which was showered upon us in Jesus Christ.
Grammar and I have never been the best of friends, or at least not knowingly. I never consciously learnt English grammar until I started to ‘reverse-engineer’ it from the complexities of its French cousin and the intricacies of its German one. Nouns, declensions, tenses and participles were all instinctive to me in my native tongue until I had to reluctantly wrestle with them in other languages. With all of that put behind me, I then had to don the ‘grammar-glasses’ all over again when I learnt New Testament Greek to train as a Baptist minister.
The net result of all this is that when I read this passage from Ephesians there is one word which stands out to me as surely as if it were highlighted in gaudy day-glow pink: ‘ascended’. Why is that word in the past (aorist) tense? Why is Paul saying that we have ascended (past tense) into the heavenly realm when I am reading these words on earth? Is he somehow deluded? Of course, ‘ascended’ is not the only verb in the past tense here. God loved us, he united us, he saved us, and he raised us. These past actions of God all have both present and future consequences. Those who trust in Jesus have ascended into heaven as surely as if they were there already, because God guarantees it.
Until the end of our days, we are dwellers on earth whilst being citizens of heaven. In a sense, we have dual citizenship, though heaven issues no passports. Lent is a great opportunity to ‘turn down the volume’ a bit on the noise of earth whilst we allow our hearts and souls to savour the delicious prospects of heaven. Despite the old warning that Christians should not be ‘so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good’ my experience over many years as a pastor was that many of our problems are caused by not being heavenly minded enough. The prospect of heaven is held out to us with such certainty in passages like this that we would be foolish not to dwell on it once in a while.
I have always been an unmitigated disaster at giving things up for Lent, often falling at the first hurdle. Maybe this year I will try to give up being too earthly-minded. Care to join me?
Richard Littledale
ichard is an author, broadcaster and speaker, having spent 35 years as a Baptist Minister.and has always had an interest in innovative and creative communication. Richard has been a regular contributor to Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2 and Prayer for the Day, Daily Service and Sunday Worship on BBC Radio 4.