Ephesians 1:6 - The Almighty Why, Part 1

-’...unto the praise of the glory of His grace which He graciously gave us in the [One] having been beloved.’

-Here is the why, the why behind why our Heavenly Father adopted us, and the ultimate why behind why Almighty God ultimately does all that He does.  Paul will refer to this why again in verse 12 and we will come back to it there, but here Paul is seizing on one facet of God’s glory, and that is His grace.

-Grace.  Wonderful, amazing grace.  Marvelous.  Matchless.  Glorious.  Breathtakingly good.  How sweet that word does sound to those who have received it.  Grace goes where no man can tread, where you would least expect, going after the despised and the wretched, the least and the rejected, to the helpless and the hopeless and the least of these, to all those who have no hope of rescuing themselves.  Which happens to include pretty much everyone who is honest and humble enough to admit it.  God’s great favor, so rich, so free, undeserved and unearned - the sublime supreme game-changer, this.  No longer must I labor for a lifetime (or even one day!) to curry favor with the Divine.  Never again need I work to try and gain right standing before my Maker.  Grace does what I cannot do, what I can never hope to do even on my best day.  Grace reaches down and rescues me from the most dire of straits.  Grace is the Heavenly Father reaching down towards the struggling child - and a disobedient one at that - and saying, ‘Here, I got this.’  Grace provides and secures our salvation and gives us our daily bread.  We receive no dash of favor or blessing of His that we ever deserve - it is all by grace, and one day, when I stand faultless before the throne, holy and blameless face-to-face with my Maker, the One thrice-holy, it will be abundantly clear to all that only by the grace of God am I there.  And then the chorus of praise, the cheers will erupt!  (or rather continue, as those have been going on for quite some time now...)  Cheers not for me, of course, but for the glorious grace of God.

-And to be sure, this saving grace is found only in the Beloved, God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Whom He loves and Whom He sent into the world to save the world, to save sinners, to save a wretch like me...  And for those who choke on calling themselves a wretch, if that word gets stuck in throat of your soul like some horrid oversized pill, it probably means you are sadly in no place to receive this grace.  Which means you are on your own, and good luck with that, cuz really, apart from grace life is just a grim game of roulette, and the house always wins... (no need to play by house rules, tho - God has rigged the results in our favor in the Beloved!)