You Are Redeemed
Day 3 Who Are You — REALLY?: Ephesians 1:7–12
Introduction
You know the difference between being forgiven and being forgiven with strings. There’s a version where the words get said, but the receipt stays in a drawer. You’re technically off the hook, but the thing gets brought up again the next time it’s useful. Forgiveness on a short leash. Most of us have been on both ends of it.
So it’s easy to assume God forgives the same way. Really, but carefully. On a budget, with a ledger somewhere in the back, quietly tracking whether your balance is positive or negative.
Paul is about to describe forgiveness. But the word he reaches for isn’t careful. It’s the word you’d use for someone emptying the account on purpose — and he means it about you.
Scripture
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. — Ephesians 1:7–12
Reflection
What’s Happening in the Text
“Redemption” isn’t a soft word. In Paul’s world, it named the price paid to buy a person out of slavery. A real transaction, with a real cost. Paul names the cost in the same breath: “through his blood.” This isn’t a general amnesty announced from a safe distance. Someone paid for it.
Then watch the verb attached to grace. Paul doesn’t say God gave grace, or offered it. He says God lavished it — a word that means to overflow, to have more than enough and pour it out anyway. And he sets that lavishing inside something enormous: the “mystery of his will,” a secret God kept and has now let out. The secret turns out to be a plan — to bring everything in heaven and on earth together under Christ. Paul moves from your forgiveness to the whole of creation in a single sentence, as though they were the same project. They are.
What This Means for You
You carry a private sense of your account balance. Most of us do. Somewhere you’ve got a running estimate — how much grace you’ve used up, how much is left, whether you’re getting close to the limit. And you probably imagine God forgiving the way the most careful person you know forgives: real, but rationed. Pardon with a ledger behind it.
Paul hands you a different word. Lavished. Not measured, not doled out against a balance, not held back in case you need more of it later. Poured out past the point where counting is possible, and drawn from “riches” — not from a limited reserve God has to protect from overspending. There is no allotment. There was never a limit to run up against.
And here’s the part that’s easy to miss when you’re bent over your own account: your redemption isn’t a small private mercy God handles off to the side. He sets it down inside the largest thing he’s doing — gathering all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ. You are not a rounding error in that plan. Your being bought back is a thread running straight through the middle of it.
You were never forgiven on a budget. Grace wasn’t measured out to you. It was lavished, spent past all counting, because extravagance is the only way God knows how to give.
Grace Note
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:32
The logic runs one direction only. If the costliest thing was already spent on you, nothing cheaper is being held back now. Lavished was never going to stop at the cross.
Prayer Prompt
Jesus, I keep a ledger. I don’t mean to, but I do — some running count of how much I’ve cost you lately, how close I am to the limit, whether this is the time you finally decide I’m not worth it.
I don’t really know how to receive something poured out. It makes me nervous. Most days I’d almost rather be forgiven on a budget I could understand than lavished on in a way I can’t control or earn back down.
You didn’t hold anything back from me. Not even yourself. And I keep answering that by trying to make myself cheaper — easier to forgive, less of a cost to carry. Help me stop.
I don’t want to think of your grace as an account requiring reconciliation. Help me sit in awe and thankfulness and focus on your lavish gift, not me.
Amen.
Response
1. Kinesthetic: Write two words somewhere you’ll see them today — a sticky note, a card in your wallet, the back of your hand: Paid in full. Not by you. That’s the point. Every time you catch yourself starting to tally, look at the words instead of the math.
2. Written Reflection: Think of the most lavish gift you’ve ever given to someone else. What did it cost you? How did you feel giving it? How were you hoping they would respond?
3. Relational: Think of one person you’ve been forgiving on a short leash — pardoned, but with the receipt still in the drawer. Let it go the rest of the way today. Forgive them the way you were forgiven: without the ledger.
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© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way