“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” (Eph 1:4 AV)
The certainty of the promise is a blessing to the heart. Those who wish to love the LORD struggle with the presence of sin in the life. We confess. We forsake. This is a regular practice. We hate sin because He hates sin. Above, Paul reminds us of a promise. The purpose of salvation is to be perfectly holy and love the LORD with our whole hearts. This does not come naturally. We need the blood of Christ to cleanse us from all our sin, and we need the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to keep us from sin. The Holy Spirit is our seal unto perfection. According to his letter to the Ephesians, Paul shows us that God has chosen His saints to be holy and without blame. He has chosen His saints to reside with Him forever in perfect love. This promise is certain. The transformation, which the bible refers to as our glorification, is an absolute certainty. One day, we will graduate from this corrupt world. We will leave behind the body of sin, which we have inhabited since our conception. We will be clothed with the perfection of Christ, never to sin again. What a day that will be!
It is interesting that when a debutante is depicted on film, he or she always resents the foregone conclusion of their success. They resent their insanely wealthy father for choosing the life they will live. Usually, as the story goes, they strike out on their own to make their own way and end up less than a common person. They deliberately choose a career of life that embarrasses their wealthy benefactor. The storyline often depicts the heir as extremely happy to have left what could have been theirs to make it completely on their own and independent of the smallest of assistance. Rarely do you see life as it is. Many children of highly successful people tend to take advantage of the choices afforded them and make a success of their lives. The heir often continues is the family business and develops it even further. How do I know this? Because I caddied for many of them. They are called ‘old money’. These very successful people had life handed to them on a silver platter. Many went on to increase the estate. Some did not. Some squandered their opportunity and made shipwreck of the success of previous generations. However, it was not uncommon to caddy for someone whose grandfather was a founder of a specific sector of business. His children and grandchildren took that success and ran with it. What made the difference? Those who used what they were given to increase the estate were grateful people who had discipline deep in their bones. They saw the world as a small place and their place in the world as a big one. They could see the bigger picture before it became a reality and used their resources to make what they saw a reality. They were given the opportunity to become what would be rather than to squander it away and waste what was given.
In many ways, that is what our walk with God represents. We have been given the foregone conclusion of sinless perfection. We have been given the resources in this present life to make headway to that eventuality. The Holy Spirit resides within to convict, teach, and empower. We have been given the example and fellowship of Jesus Christ, our big brother, to help us and show us the way. We have been given the love of the Father that will never fade. We are eternally affirmed in Christ. There is nothing to prove. We can live holy and without blame, not to be thus, but because in Christ we have already been made thus. The promise of holiness and blamelessness is absolute and will never be rescinded. We fail in part because we forget this promise. We fail to live in the reality that is coming rather than the reality that is. Temptation is always around us. But it won’t be forever. There is coming a day when the temptations of the flesh are no more. We will be preserved blameless. We will be like Christ. Nothing will change that. So why not live that way now?