Andres, the owner of an electronics company, was giving employees with outstanding sales records a day trip to a beach resort. Andres was also taking his seven-year-old son Jimmy. Before departure, he excitedly held his dad’s hand as everyone boarded the van. “You’re joining us? How many sales have you made?” one employee jokingly asked Jimmy. “None!” he replied, motioning to his dad. “He’s letting me join!”
Jimmy didn’t have to work to earn his inclusion on the trip because his dad was paying his way. As believers in Jesus, we also don’t rely on our good works as the basis of our inclusion in heaven. We’re granted access because of Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and Jesus’ own blood was the “payment,” releasing us from our debt to Him. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7). He opened the way for whoever believes in Him to “not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Christ’s work and our trust in that work allows us to be with Him for eternity.
When we believe in Jesus as Savior, we become God’s children. Such is His “glorious grace, which he has freely given us” (Ephesians 1:6). Like Jimmy, we can look to our heavenly Father and say with confidence, “He’s letting me join!”
How does knowing that Jesus died for you make you feel? How does this truth impact your life?
Dear Jesus, thank You for dying for me. Because of Your grace and love, I’m forgiven. I can look forward to being with You forever.
Learn more about having a personal relationship with God.
Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus is a monument to God’s love for the church—His beloved children. The idea the apostle introduces in Ephesians 1:5-7 is unpacked more thoroughly in chapter 2. There, he not only explains the magnificent process that made our rescue possible but reminds us that we’re entrusted with great responsibility: “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (v. 10). As God’s children, we’re given high purpose—to serve Him and others in His strength and grace. That grand idea is explored more fully in chapters 4-6, where Paul describes what the good works of God’s adopted children are to look like—works that impact our relationships at church, in our families, and in our work relationships. All of life is to look different because He has made us His children.
