Simple words; simple phrases. That is what I found in Ephesians this week. We “were included in Christ.” We were “marked in him with a seal.”
And there was a third phrase I spotted as I read the first three chapters. This one in Chapter 2:13, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”
We “have been brought near.”
One of the things I hate most about my life is that a part of my family is far away. They live in California and while we used to be able to make several trips a year to visit our son, daughter-in-love, and two grandsons, we are limited now to seeing them only when they can come in our direction. I hate being a faraway grandmother and not being able to visit when I want to.
Paul reminds us that as Gentiles, as people not part of the covenant of Israel, we were very far away from God. We were outside the circle of fellowship, outside the promises, without hope and without God in this world. But now all that has changed. In Christ Jesus, through the blood He offered at Calvary, we are no longer far away. We have been brought near.
Nearness means we are close to Him. We are in fellowship with Him. We have a relationship, we have a hope, we have the promise that as we abide in Him, and that He and the Father will abide in us.
We have been brought near. Wow. That’s a very simple statement, a simple thought, yet within those few words is a truth that boggles the imagination. We have been brought near to God. Near to God!