Read: Ephesians 2:1-10

For study, I try and wrap my brain around scripture word for word, thought for thought by reading a variety of translations. From there, I love to dip my toe into a paraphrase which is more of a conversational, devotional reading. In this vein, I find this paraphrase from The Message of the very familiar Ephesians 2:1-10 to be hope-filled and refreshing. So I offer it for quiet, devotional reading. What do you notice? Where does the Spirit show you hope?

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.
You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.
You willed your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.
We all did it,
all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat.
It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.
Instead,
immense in mercy and with an incredible love,
he embraced us.
He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.
He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.
Saving is all his idea, and all his work.
All we do is trust him enough to let him do it.
It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Lord, thank you that “Instead… you embraced us” and it’s all you. Help me obediently join you in what you’re up to. Amen.
-Nicole Smith