July 2, 2025 -- Ephesians 2:12 -- Remembering our past so that we rejoice at our present and future in Christ
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…remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the promise, having no hope and without God in the word.
Ephesians 2:12 ESV
The great reformer, Martin Luther (1483 - 1546), who defied the Roman Catholic Pope and called for the whole church to reform once spoke of another pope. It was quite telling. “I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all of his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.” (I am not sure where that quotation is drawn from, I heard A. Begg quote it in a podcast.)
Recently I have been reading Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in its Fourfold State. The section where he describes the misery of our natural state, as fallen creatures, before Christ took hold of us is devastating and helpful. Devastating because focusing on it reminds us of our utter wretched poverty, our lifelessness before Jesus brought us to life. The fact that we served the Pope of Self. After a believer is united to Christ, it is helpful to remember the former state. The Pope of Self has been deposed, and Christ is seated in his place. Remembering this leads to appropriate humility, thankfulness and warmly welcoming others who are being received by Christ. Here are Boston’s five memorials.
Remember, that in the day our Lord first took you by the hand, you were in no better condition than others. O! What moved Him to take you when He passed by your neighbours? He found you children of wrath, even as others; but He did not leave you so.
Remember there was nothing in you to engage Him to love you, in the day He appeared, for your deliverance. You were children of wrath, even as others, fit for hell, and altogether unfit for Heaven; yet the King brought into the palace…
Remember, you were fitter to be loathed than loved in that day.
Remember, you are decked with borrowed feathers. It is His comeliness [definition: quality of being attractive or pleasing in appearance] which is upon you…It was He that took off your prison garments, and clothed you with robes of righteousness, garments of salvation, garments wherewith you are arrayed as the lilies, which toil not, neither do they spin…
Remember your faults this day…Mind how you have forgotten, and how unkindly you have treated Him who remembered you in your low estate.
Boston, page 179
Why is such holy memory important? When we remember the extravagant love of God towards us, love and mercy that are unmerited (or as I heard one preacher state it, we’d demerited His love, we were actually in a debt-hole so great there should have been no way God would show us love) our hearts soar and we rejoice in the lovingkindness of our King. When we remember how unworthy we were, we welcome others, knowing they, like us, are equally unworthy, but are debtors to the love of God. When we remember we were suited only for the wrath of God, and in Christ we are given the high title, son or daughter of the Living God, we can not help but praise Him and desire to serve Him with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
O HEAVENLY FATHER,
Teach me to see
that if Christ has pacified thee
and satisfied divine justice
He can also deliver me from my sins;
that Christ does not desire me, now justified,
to live in self-confidence in my own strength,
but gives me the law of the Spirit of life
to enable me to obey thee;
that the Spirit and his power are mine
by resting on Christ’s death;
that the Spirit of life within answers to
the law without;
that if I sin not I should thank thee for it;
that if I sin I should be humbled daily under it;
that I should mourn for sin more than other men do,
for when I see I shall die because of sin,
that makes me mourn;
when I see how sin strikes at thee,
that makes me mourn;
when I see that sin caused Christ’s death,
that makes me mourn;
that sanctification is the evidence of reconciliation,
proving that faith has truly apprehended Christ;
Thou hast taught me
that faith is nothing else than receiving thy kindness;
that it is an adherence to Christ, a resting on him,
love clinging to him as a branch to the tree,
to seek life and vigour from him.
I thank thee for showing me the vast difference
between knowing things by reason,
and knowing them by the spirit of faith.
By reason I see a thing is so;
by faith I know it as it is.
I have seen thee by reason
and have not been amazed,
I have seen thee as thou art in thy Son
and have been ravished to behold thee.
I bless thee that I am thine in my Saviour, Jesus.
Valley of Vision: Puritan Prayers and Deovtions. “Belonging to Jesus”, page 102
https://youtu.be/A3U0G7OiKJw?si=7uSYw2vsV_QIUrCu And Can It Be?
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