Dear Friends,

When we think of redemption our minds usually and quite properly turn to Calvary. Today’s devotional, however, take us back into eternity and gives a whole new perspective to the purchase of our salvation. God bless you as you consider what Christ did for you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Ephesians 1:3-7

  Ephesians 1:3-7  English Standard Version (ESV)
  Spiritual Blessings in Christ
  3 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, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us[a] for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

“Ages upon ages ago, or ever the earth was, Christ had conceived in his heart the purpose to redeem from among men a people that should be precious in his sight forever and ever. Through the glass of divine foreknowledge, he looked at his people, he recognized the person of every one of them, he saw them all ruined in the Fall, all stained with sin, all contaminated in nature by our first parents’ disobedience and rebellion. As he looked at them, with a steady resolve that he would rescue them, and perfect them, and lift them up to a level with himself, and make them into a race that should praise God forever in heaven with hallelujahs and hosannas beyond all the harmonies of angels, his heart so moved towards them that he longed for the time when he should enter upon the great work of their redemption…. His heart was always projecting itself forward in anticipation of that happy yet dreadful day when he should be called upon to redeem his people.”
[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1896), p. 482]