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“God… has given us a position in Heaven with [Jesus]” (Ephesians 2:6, GWT).
For many years Dr Donald Grey Barnhouse pastored Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church. One Sunday morning a twelve-year-old boy was transfixed after hearing him speak about the length and breadth and depth of God’s amazing grace.
Barnhouse closed his sermon by summarising many of the great promises from Scripture in one impressive sentence: “Our sins are forgiven, forgotten, cleansed, pardoned…covered…blotted out as a thick cloud, removed as far as the east is from the west…cast behind God’s back.”
At the end of the service when Barnhouse went to the back to greet people, the boy approached him, tugged at his sleeve, and said, ‘Good sermon, Doc! We’re sure sittin’ pretty, aren’t we?’
Read this phrase slowly: “God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love…raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-6, NKJV).
Note that we’re seated together in heavenly places in Jesus, not beside him. And it gets even better! We’re seated there so closely identified with Jesus that we’re inseparably and eternally one with him!
That glorious phrase ‘in Christ’ speaks to the redemptive miracle God performed for us through his Son (see Romans 8:1; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Corinthians 1:15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:6-13).
The word ‘in’ assures us that just as our natural birth positioned us in Adam, our forefather, at the new birth God deliberately and precisely positions us in Jesus, our Redeemer. Now if that’s not sitting pretty, tell us what is!
By Alfred Nyamekye
