Are You Still TRAINing?

Hope you're keeping up with a spiritual training program! Some of you have asked for the schedule to be posted again on the blog, so we're going to do that every time I post my devotions. We also had a request to put them up here in MS Word format.

So here you go!

• Spiritual Fitness Schedule (MS Word)

• Spiritual Fitness Schedule (PDF)

• My Day 8 Devotions (MS Word)

• My Day 8 Devotions (PDF)

Love ya, Tim

Comments

[SteveT]

Eph 1
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his spirit. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure. … In him we were also chosen, having been predestined…in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also where included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promise of the Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance….

I believe that the change in person from 1st person plural (us) and (we) to 2nd person plural (you) is significant in interpreting the word “predestined”. It seems to me that “we” and “us” refer to the apostles or at most, the first level disciples and leaders of the early church. “you” on the other hand, refers to the church in Ephesus and by extension, to the rest of the body of Christ. Using that interpretation, it’s fairly simple to conclude that the first leaders were predestined to be in that position, but that later followers “heard the word, believed, and were marked”, rather than having been predestined.

Paul also speaks of predestiny in Romans 8:29-30. Curiously, Romans begins with the salutation “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God… Through him (Jesus Christ) and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people … and you also are among those who are called to belong… This salutation seems to be clear that there is a difference, somehow, between apostles who are “set apart” and ‘you’ who are called (by the apostles in Christ’s name). If that is a correct interpretation of the salutation, then in Rom 8:29 and 30, the flipping between “those God foreknew” and “those he called” may carry that same dichotomy. Verses 29 and 30 don’t stand out when read by themselves with such clear division, but reading them with the idea of separation, they don’t seem to deny such.