Eph 2 :5-7 (God) made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in 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, (vs 7) 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.

Did you know that God has big plans for the universe AFTER this present age?  What exactly is this present age?  It’s the time between when Jesus was resurrected and when He comes back.  Upon His return to Earth, Jesus will inaugurate the period called the ‘coming ages’.  Looking at just verse 7 – the truths one can pull out of those words are astounding.  Here are some:

  • God loves to express/communicate/show off/display His grace to the universe
  • The best way He has conceived of to show this grace is to have His son, Jesus, die on the cross as a substitute for us – the Messiah undergoes the punishment we deserve and we receive His righteousness as a credit on our balance sheet
  • Someone/something in the future will be WOWed by this out-of-proportion displace of grace  (that pitiful creature was worth dying for?!!!)

Therefore, God has chosen certain totally undeserving humans to be the recipients of this grace.  I wonder how incomparable these riches are.  The implication is that we haven’t seen anything this kind of grace during our present age – (The old ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet!’)

Paul expresses the difference between our experiences now and in the future in his letter to the Romans when he writes in Chapter 8, “… but I consider our present suffering not worth comparing to the glory that is about to be revealed to us, in us and on us…”.  Even though he mentions the concept of glory, in my mind, glory and grace all blend together in something unimaginably wonderful.

The next time you are feeling the blahs of ordinary life, allow your thoughts to play and be encouraged by imagining your future.  In a paraphrase of Jonathan Edwards:  a) our suffering is being fashioned to benefit us    b) what is truly good in this life will remain   c) the best is yet to be.