[continued from last week’s e-newsletter, “The Most Wonderful Tomb” ]
Any of us can choose whether to hope that we have enough gold in the tomb to make ourselves comfortable in the coffin, or whether we have the vivifying Spirit of Christ filling the decayed parts of our lives now, and carrying us along with the promise of eternal life.
Look at this phrase: “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” The apostle Paul uses an adjective here (Ephesians 3:8), “unsearchable,” which means something so great you can’t track or trace it. You can’t really get your mind around it. It is unsearchable, untraceable, unfathomable, inexhaustible, inscrutable, incalculable, infinite. No matter how much gold you put in a tomb or in a bank account, there is always limit to its measure.
But the riches of Christ go beyond all measurement. There is no scale in the realm of human experience that can quantify it. Human love is only a hint of the love of God. Acts of mercy we read about in the newspaper are just a trickle compared to the flow of mercy that comes from God. Forgiveness is something that is so satisfying when we break open our clutches on someone else and are freed from resentment, but that is just a faint shadow of the forgiveness that God offers us in Christ.
In Ephesians 2 Paul also talks about riches:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Here’s the real promise: if you want to know treasure in life, then realize that it comes from being treasured by God.
Say, friends, could you help us by taking this 2-minute quiz on “spiritual influence”? You’ll learn interesting things!
Thanks, Mel Lawrenz
