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 “Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us

in Christ Jesus before time began.”

2Timothy 1:9

Father Matta El-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor)


 

 

 

CHRIST following His fulfillment of our salvation on the cross and through resurrection openly revealed that He had gone through death for our sakes and resurrected a victorious resurrection to donate it to us as the greatest existing grace. He considered His cross and resurrection a free holy calling to us. The shed blood of Christ was the greatest sacrifice offered to the High Priests due to ignorance, anger and vengeance although it is considered a very holy offering extremely able to remove the sins of those for whose sake it was offered from the beginning of the world till the end. It is an everlasting and eternal offering because it was already in God’s plan since the beginning. It is eternal because it is living and was never spoiled at any moment by iniquity. It will remain alive before God for ever and ever, unceasingly interceding and exuding of its holiness and intercession before God to all those who hold on to Him no matter their sin and guilt.1

Here, man’s works were never included no matter their purity and holiness as it would negate the condition of the grace of Christ being absolutely free of cost. For no matter how numerous and ugly are our sins before people and angels they are not so before Christ the Redeemer, because the greatest truth is that Christ’s shed blood was the price for all sins of the world indiscriminately. Man’s sins were completely washed away and he became whiter than snow when he was washed with the blood of Christ the Redeemer for no sin to appear in his life. Instead of which sin became a grace, and instead of transgressions and evil it became light, glory and acclamations. Humanity thus received its new creation, pure and full of light through the blood of Christ. While the first old creation of dust which was sullied by the devil, it disappeared for ever and will no more exist.

At this point we must alert the reader that the new humanity God created through the blood, flesh and bones2 of Christ was completed before the beginning of time according to God’s absolute will and plan for humankind to become a heavenly creation to be presented before God in the state of holiness and righteousness of Christ3 including the love of the Father and of the Son. The Divine love will thus encompass it for it to be illuminated with the light of Christ more than any of the other heavenly creatures.

Man’s distinction is due to him receiving his new being from the flesh and bones of Christ. Even man’s renewed image God fashioned it to be in the image of Christ His beloved Son4.

Man wonders and is amazed at God’s love that made Him appoint His Son to fulfill that Divine task and return to His glory without sin or man’s ugly transgressions touching and leaving any trace on the purity of His only Son. For He was wrapped in glory justifying us from His heavenly glory thus making us enter among the groups of heavenly creatures: “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels (due to death), and You have crowned him with (Divine) glory and honor5”. It was to that much an extent that the writer of the Psalms in the Old Testament was amazed as he examined the planning for man. To what extent therefore is our amazement we in whom God accomplished His will and fulfilled His grace, not recently, but since the beginning?

We are all called by God to ask for our rights with Him, because they are rights offered to us as a grace previous to our existence and at no cost.

Having known therefore the scope of God’s love which He gave us since the beginning how do we not run after our eternal heritage freely offered to us?

How can there still exist a man that bows to the bondage of the devil selling his eternal kingdom? Because the Bible has stipulated that Christ “has made us kings and priests to His God and Father.”6 Who is it who will sell his inheritance for the sake of an ephemeral pleasure and the devil’s deception that deprives God’s children their right and inheritance in Christ? The opposite might be right: that man sells his earthly kingdom for the kingdom of heaven.

The Bible in the Old Testament offers us a very sad example which is Esau who sold his right as the eldest son and his inheritance for the sake of a meal of lentils. But when he came to his senses “you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.”7

30 June, 2005

1 Cf. Heb 7:25; 1John 2:1.

2 Cf. Eph 5:30

3 Cf. Eph 1:4

4 Cf. Rom 8:29.

5 Ps 7:4, 5.

6 Rev 1:6.

7 Heb 12:17.

 

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