Ephesians 2:4-7 – But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— [6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Why has God lavished His grace on me? Ephesians 2:7 tells me why. So that He can show me the magnitude of His immeasurable grace in the ages to come. There may be much that is amazing about the grace of God that we are able to glean from the Scriptures and from our experiences on this side of glory. But there is so much more that we shall not, because we cannot, ever come to understand about what God, in Christ, has done for us, until we pass into the next life. God shows His love to us in His desire and plan to demonstrate to us in the ages to come the most glorious truth in all the created order. God plans to show us wonders beyond our imagining.
What would you think you were going to be shown if you were told that God was going to show you wonders beyond your wildest dreams? Stars being formed. Planets exploding. Strange acts of “nature” brought into being by God. The mind cannot comprehend the wonders that exist in a universe this immense. I think that for eternity we will be discovering things that right now we simply cannot handle and can’t begin to imagine. But do you know what God is going to show us that is more spectacular than that? He is going to show us the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. He is going to show us Himself at work in us in grace.
Maybe He is going to show us just how sinful we really were in thought and word and deed and then maybe He’ll ask us what someone who has transgressed that much should get from the God who was transgressed against. And we, with our faces in our hands and with tears in our eyes, will answer that such rebellion should get wrath poured out without mercy. And He will then show us the cross and say that that is exactly what He did. Maybe He will show us just how dirty and rotten our sins made us and then show us how He saw us after we had put our faith in Jesus – as pure and as holy as Jesus Himself. Maybe He’ll take us to the heavenly movie theatre and replay the times we knew to do the good yet chose to do evil instead. And maybe He’ll show us just what our hearts really looked like while such decisions were being made. And then he’ll show us the heart he replaced it with – and it will look exactly like Christ’s. And seeing all this will make us bow and cry and worship and thank Him for the wonder of grace. And then maybe He’ll show us what we will be for eternity now that we have been permanently rescued from the power and bent to sin. We cannot rightly imagine it now because all our imaginings are happening from a mind and heart still stained by the fruit of the fall (pun completely intended).
If I were to tell you that I had marvelous and stunning things to show you and then proceeded to show you something I had made or written and kept on babbling on about how wonderful it was, you could be excused for thinking that I had a bit of a problem with pride. But that is not true of God. It is not true of Him because nothing can be as great or as magnificent as anything that He does. Nothing can come close to being as glorious as He is. For God to be really kind to us and truly show us wonders beyond our wildest dreams, He must demonstrate Himself. And the greatest thing He can demonstrate about Himself to us will be the cross. It currently stuns angels. It ought to stun us and as much as we are amazed by grace now, one day it will make our hearts explode. God saved us to do the greatest thing He could possibly do – explain grace to us. And that is an indescribably great thing to look forward to.
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