EPHESIANS 1:3-4 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

THEME OF THE DAY. SALVATION’S GOALS. Goals in life are important. To have our eyes set on achievements and accomplishments gives us direction and purpose. And in the spiritual realm, this equally applies. We even find our God establishes spiritual goals. One is found in the work of salvation. Pause for a moment and consider what goal He has in mind for us who are recipients of His work of salvation. The Apostle Paul defines it in today’s scripture . . . “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” The end of our salvation is not simply forgiveness of our sins and escaping God’s wrath. Those are certainly benefits of salvation, but not the ends. God intends the end of our salvation to be the creation of a people “holy and blameless” before Him. And this end will occur either at our death or Christ’s second coming. However, before either of those events occur in our lives, we are called to be actively involved in pursuing these end goals of salvation. We hear again from the Apostle Paul, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).

So, if our salvation has the end goals of being “holy and blameless before the Lord” and we are required to cooperate with this work of God in us, what would that look like in the daily living out of the Christian life? Two things.

First, in striving to be “holy and blameless before God”, we are to learn glad submission to His sovereign working of all things. Yes, all things. Yes, hard things. Yes, suffering things. Yes, irritating things. Yes, challenging things. Yes, unpleasant things. Yes, painful things. The familiar verse in the eighth chapter of Romans is to be our attitude as God does His work of making us like Jesus in and through all things – “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). And that proper attitude is our submission, without complaining, to the things God chooses to allow and direct in our lives to reach salvation’s goals.

The second thing we are responsible for as God works in us to make us holy and blameless is active obedience. Conformity to Christ requires faithful obedience to Christ. God does not “zap” us into holiness. We grow as we obey. We become spiritually stagnant when willful disobedience or passive indifference to obedience is in our lives. The Apostle Peter closes his second letter with the command – “But grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). The growth he describes requires time in the Word leading to a life obeying the Word. Conformity comes from wholehearted obedience to the Word of God. To “work out our salvation” implies action; action of putting the Word into our lives.

Our God is a God of order and goals. And when it comes to our salvation, He has a goal – conformity to His Son in presenting us to Himself “holy and blameless”. In the working toward this goal, He has enlisted our cooperation – glad submission to His providence and active obedience to His Word. May we “team up” with our God as this work unfolds daily in our lives.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to renew my mind to see all of life through the lens of You making me like Jesus.”

QUOTE: “Our role in God’s sanctifying work of making us like Christ is not passive but active obedience”