Day 28

We are built together to be a dwelling in which God lives by His Holy Spirit.

‘In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.’ (EPHESIANS 1:11)

Suppose I have a beaded necklace in my hand. It is held together by a string that unites all the individual beads together to make it a necklace. If I take a pair of scissors and cut the string, the beads will lose their united identity and go all over the place. The beads are no longer a necklace; they have lost their common identity.

When the Fall took place, the string that held humanity together and gave us our identity was cut. Humanity was created to express the image of God by the actual presence of God within us. But the day we disobeyed, we became separated from God – somebody cut the string, and men and women no longer had the corporate identity we were designed for. We have been born into that broken condition, for ‘in Adam all die’ (1 Corinthians 15:22) and we are, by nature, ‘dead in our transgressions and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1). The result of the fall is that we are distant, divided and alienated, which is the condition Paul describes in Ephesians Chapter 2. We are like beads all over the place with no common unity and identity.

Becoming reconciled to God is to be re-threaded in our union with Him. Paul concludes Ephesians 2 with the statement, ‘And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.’ The beads are back on the string!

What is your relationship to others around you?