An Exercise in Personal Lectio Divina: Read, Reflect, Respond, Rest.

In reading St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians I have been listening with my heart for the voice of God. In reading the first ten verses of Ephesians Chapter One, the first thing that I hear is that it is not just God, but God the Father, Who is at work. The text says,

 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he [God the Father] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love” [Ephesians 1:3-4].

The introduction is Christ centered. It is Jesus the Christ who brings us to the Father, and the Father who adopts us in Christ, as His own. This, for me as one who was literally disinherited by my father and mother, is intensely personal. By the redemptive work of Christ, God the Father has adopted me.

Now I know that the pronoun in Ephesians is plural, not singular; it is not me alone who has been adopted, it is me, as a member of the Body of Christ, who has been adopted. Nevertheless, in Christ, it is God my father who has called me also “son,” and in awe I call Him Father. “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” was never meant to exclude me as an individual.

“In love the Father predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of the Father’s will, to the praise of the Father’s glorious grace, with which the Father has blessed us in the Beloved” [Ephesians 1:5].

A number of translations render the Greek word for “adoption as sons,” as “adoption as children,” or even more simply just as “adoption.” But the word for adoption means “adoption as sons.” There is a concern today to neuter texts and make them politically correct; but that is not the same thing as the realization that even the daughters are sons of God.

In love I have been predestined to adoption as a son through Jesus Christ, according the purpose of the Father’s will. The Psalmist says, “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands” [Psalm 138:8].

It is the Father’s will that has called me forth out of my family background, with its pains and joys, and adopted me as His son, one son out of many sons and daughters. God the Father, being infinite, has personal private time for me and for each of his children; time bound as we are. To which, my prayer response is very simply, “Father, thank you!”