MI NI S T RY
Made for VISIONS and DREAMS Pastor Nick Quient For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
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Ephesians 2:8-10 (NRSV)
An integral aspect of the New Testament vision of Christ is their view of him as our creator. This idea is woven throughout the Pauline and Johannine corpus and features Christ as, perhaps, the very hands of God who fashioned us for a specific purpose. God has a purpose for our lives and that requires us to live into that specific calling—both as the church and as the individual. Here in Ephesians, Paul is taking great pastoral and theological strides to emphasize the greatness of God’s generosity to us. He will go on and write about how God has united both Jew and Gentile together through the body of the Messiah, but here his focus is more personal. The emphasis is on the goodness of the greatness of God, who is rich in mercy (2:4). It is because of God’s mercy, expressed for us for the sake of others, that we find ourselves with our mission. This is why we dream, because God has a purpose for us—good works already prepared for us before we were even born. God has been dreaming about us and for us for a long time. Part of living in good works is sharing in God’s own dream for the world: to see all things reconciled together, bringing everything and everyone into the kingdom of God. The mission of the church is to participate in that grand cosmic dream We aren’t created to be prideful in our mission—who would indeed brag about doing hard work? Our dreams aren’t what make us special: it is The One who gives us our mission that makes us special. May we continue to dream about our calling and may our dreams come to reality in light of Christ’s work.
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