An Ordinary Union

You know, there is one type of movie genre that is just so fun to watch. Heist movie’s. There are some great one’s, Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, The Italian Job, Gone in Sixty Seconds. It is fun to see the planning and preparation that goes into pulling off a good heist. What really makes a good heist movie, though, is not just that they have a plan, and not just that they know something will go wrong, but that in the worst case scenario they can learn to use it for their own advantage. Like in Ocean’s Eleven, they are trying to steal money from a Casino Vault, and they have a plan to get the money from the vault, but when the Casino Owner calls in SWAT to remove the money from the vault he thinks he has them, he thinks that he has won. Until he realizes that they had planned for that the whole time and that the thieves were dressed in SWAT gear and he had given the opportunity to walk right into the vault.

See, oftentimes for us what seems like an inconvenience can be part of the greater plan. We can think this about God’s plan for humanity. We can think “Why did God put the tree in the Garden? Why did God allow sin to enter the world? Why do we have to suffer so much?” All of these questions can enter our mind and cause us to question the story of God’s Word. But these very legitimate questions can lose sight of the bigger picture, the picture of God’s incredible plan of redemption through Christ. God had planned from the beginning for us to be chosen through and in Christ to God. God had planned from the beginning for us to be saved through Christ. This wasn’t a last ditch effort, it was a perfectly prepared plan. It isn’t like God saw the Adam and Eve ate the apple and said “oh, um…well I didn’t plan for that. I thought they would just not eat it…and that Serpent! Where did that come from? He is pretty sneaky so he must of snuck by me.” No, not at all. In fact what Paul tells us is that He “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” that He “predestined us for adoption” and that Christ coming to earth was “a plan for the right time to bring everything together in Christ.” What Paul wants us to see is this plan, to have the Savior come as a baby was prepared from the beginning and that we were called to be in Christ before God created all things.

Because In the birth of Christ God reveals His plan for all believers

God knew from the beginning that Christ would come as a human and that He would die on the cross and rise again. He was preparing for us to be made perfect in Christ and His life. So on that night, when Mary laid Jesus in the manger, God was revealing to us His plan for humanity. That there was purpose for what seemed like just a normal night to everyone else. That out of what just seemed ordinary, came the greatest news the world will ever know. That He always intended for us to have union with Him so that we may have the benefit of being children of God.

Our union with Christ is by God’s grace

Paul says that He purposed us in Christ “to the praise of His glorious grace, that He lavished on us in the Beloved One.” What does it mean that God’s grace was “lavished” on us? Paul is describing that God has “blessed us” with this gift. It means that it comes with no caveat, that nothing is expected in return to pay to Christ. Because in the time of the New Testament a gift was not “free”, it was expected that something would be given in return. Think about when someone gives you a gift during Christmas, you in some way feel obligated to give a gift back to them. Oftentimes there is the assumption that this giving will be reciprocated. That if you give to them that they will give back. Maybe not immediately. But if we give someone a birthday gift, we want to receive on back. If we invite someone over for dinner, we want them to invite us over next time. We like reciprocal relationships with people. But God does not expect us to give anything to Him, only that we believe in His Son and live obediently in Him. It is like if someone gave you a gift and said “I don’t want you to give me anything back, I just want you to enjoy using the gift that I have given you.” And through that they will be blessed if you use their gift.

So what is the gift that we have received? Redemption through Christ. To be redeemed means to be released from a debt. It was used to describe a slave being able to free themselves from slavery or someone paying for them to be released. And what we need to be released from is the chains of sin. Romans 8:23 tells us that we “eagerly wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” This reveals to us the eagerness by which we should desire to be redeemed so that we may be released from the bondage of sin and corruption. We were a slave to our sin and Jesus “bought” us so that we could be made free from our sin.

God’s Word makes clear that there “is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:15-28). But what was our reasons for needing to be redeemed? It says next because of our trespasses. We had gone against the character of God’s and His desire for us. We had acted in a way that Had caused a break in our relationship to Him. But by the “riches of His grace”, that is the abundance of grace that He holds, far outweighs our trespass because of the blood of Christ Jesus. It is because of the character of the one who died on our behalf that such grace is extended. John 1:16 “Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness,” It is from the fullness of Christ, His perfect character, that we find redemption. It is only our union with Christ, where Christ goes before us and we find ourselves in Him, that we are able to receive this redemption.

But on the night of Christ’s birth not even the shepherds or the wise men truly understood how incredible this child was. They knew that there was something extraordinary in this manger, in this little town of Bethlehem. But they did not fully comprehend the nature of the gift that they would receive in Christ. Because it was only through the life of this child that we could be redeemed, and it is only in Christ and through His blood that we have redemption. But this means that we must be found in Christ. This is why it is so important that we die to ourselves and to say “to live is Christ”. Because if we have not died to ourselves than the one who goes before the Father is us and our sins against God, our imperfect lives. But if we are willing to remove all of our “accolades”, if we are willing to let go of whatever possessions we think we have earned, then we are found in Christ and His perfect life. Which is difficult, but that is why we are given confidence through Spiritual blessings in Christ as it says.

In Christ we receive every spiritual blessing

Paul says that in Christ we have received every spiritual blessing. This is not just any blessing, it is a spiritual blessing, that is blessings necessary for our benefit as believers. Paul places these blessings in heaven, the place where Jesus now sits. This is why Jesus needed to come, so that through Him we may be blessed. And not just one type of blessing, there are many benefits that come to children of God. These are blessings in the heaven, blessings that we have already received through Christ, and others that we are still waiting to receive.

It is because Christ is in heaven, and that we are in Him that we are able to receive these benefits. Without our union with Christ we would not have access to them. When we think of blessings we usually think of physical things. Money, resources, power. But these are blessings that are not located in earth but in heaven. These are benefits that help us to live as believers on earth, it says that we receive “every blessing”. So what are these blessings?

Paul says that through Christ all “wisdom and understanding” is revealed to us. The wisdom described here is godly wisdom, a wisdom that seems foolish to a sinful world. Wisdom that comes from the revelation of God’s Word and in the character of Christ.

Understanding refers to right action, describing our deeds. It describes how wisdom leads to action. So the grace of God lavishes on us not only knowledge of Him but the strength to live in obedience. . “One must have not only the benefits of grace but also the benefits of insight and discretion in order to live wisely.”

The mystery of the Lord’s will was also revealed to us. This means the purpose of God’s will from the beginning has been revealed in Christ. Within the pagan culture of the bible this “mystery” was often a secret doctrine that one had to have a special relationship with God to receive. This is what the gnostics believed. A group of people who believed there was a hidden meaning behind passages of Scripture to which only a select few had the ability to possess. But this mystery here is one available to all believers to know the power of salvation the the life that God desires for those who believe in Him.

It can be easy to see this plan and say “well this seems terrible, and honestly, I’m not happy with my life.” or you can say “look at the world around us, does this really seem like it is beneficial for us? But this is why God gave us Christ, so that we may know that God’s plan is perfect and it is for us. Christ reveals to us these blessings through His life. Because Jesus was no less God as a baby, or as a teenager, or at 29 years old right before His ministry.

There is a book called the Gospel of Thomas. It is a fictional writing from the 2nd or 3rd century that details certain events of Jesus childhood. Stories that include Jesus striking down a boy because he took his stick. And killing a woman because she bumped him. The writers of these stories sought to see something extraordinary in Christ’s life before His 3 years of earthly ministry. But everything we know tells us that Jesus was ordinary. In fact, the people that knew Jesus, including his family, said “Jesus of Nazareth is the one calling Himself Messiah? No, it can’t be him. He is just an ordinary carpenter!” He was just that guy down the street to them, he was their brother and son, He wasn’t anything impressive. In fact Isaiah tells us Isaiah 53:2 “He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.” He was just a normal guy. But we want him to be more we want him to be this larger-than-life figure. But that would be untrue to His nature as a human, as to the life that He lived. And it removes an incredible truth that we get from His early life. That it is okay to be ordinary, in fact, God loves the ordinary.

In fact, hear what Charles Spurgeon says about the ordinary life of Jesus

300 Quotations and Prayers for Christmas Jesus More Completely Man than Adam

Our Lord Jesus Christ is, in some senses, more completely man than Adam ever was. Adam was not born; he was created as a man. Adam never had to struggle through the risks and weaknesses of infancy; he knew not the littlenesses of childhood—he was full-grown at once. Father Adam could not sympathize with me as a babe and a child. But how manlike is Jesus! He does not begin with us in midlife, as Adam did; but He is cradled with us, He accompanies us in the pains, and feebleness, and infirmities of infancy, and He continues with us even to the grave.

Christ’s life gives us the confidence and the strength we need to live obediently to the Father. It gives us the awareness that each day, throughout our ordinary lives that we can still glorify the Lord in the way that we live. Because think about this, Jesus wasn’t deemed as the greatest carpenter who ever lived, He wasn’t considered the smartest kid on the block, it was that Jesus knew the will of His Father that made Him wise. It was that He served others that He did many miracles in the name of the Father. This means that God desires to bless even our ordinary lives. Blaise Pascal says this “Do little things as though they were great, because of the majesty of Jesus Christ who does them in us, and who lives our life; and do the greatest things as though they were little and easy, because of His omnipotence.” Therefore in all of our actions we can honor the Lord because Christ does the work in us through His power as God who came as a man, and as the God of the universe who gives us His Spirit.

What we can know is this. If God’s plan was perfect from the beginning that means that our lives in no way complicated the plans of God, it means that our actions and our character is not a surprise, it means that God made us according to His plan and that He desired for us to be found in His Son. The question is, are you willing to accept His plan or do you desire to go in your own way? A great example is Pharaoh. See, God’s plan was always to redeem His people from Egypt, nothing would stop that plan. But God was able to use Pharaoh as an example of stubbornness towards His plans. Because Pharaoh could have been obedient to the Lord’s plan and saved himself a lot of heartache, but He brought upon Himself the forceful wrath of God rather than the gentle nudge towards obedience that He desires to give us.

As believers, to be in Christ means that we don’t see humility as a character flaw. We don’t see riches as a sign of status. We don’t see incredible talent as a sign of spiritual blessing. To be in Christ means that like Christ we are willing to go unnoticed sometimes, that we don’t have to have the last word. It means that just because we aren’t where we would like to be now doesn’t mean God can’t use us for His glory. That He can use us at any point in our lives. Christ’s birth gives us confidence that our lives can be lived out to God’s glory here in our community, in the lives of our family, and through doing the little things as though they were great.