Paul wants us to recognize how blessed we truly are as believers. Paul provides some foundational truths about our faith and works to help us understand how these truths can help us grow stronger as disciples of Jesus Christ. God has blessed us with our salvation through Jesus Christ. He has blessed us in our relationships. He has blessed us in our families, both at home and in our churches. He has blessed us with a new identity in Christ. He has blessed us with an eternal inheritance. Paul wants us to follow his lead and give praises to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He “has blesses us in Christ with every blessing in the heavenly places”.

We need to look at salvation and what it really means for the person who chooses God over self. Our salvation has more to do with Him than it does with who we are. Yes, we are special and the greatest of His creation, but our salvation demonstrates the mercy and grace of a loving God.

The world around us will know that we belong to Jesus through the way we love them. The words of Jesus found in John 13:34 are not words of impossibility but are words of encouragement to go and walk in his ways rather than our own. It is an invitation to love beyond us, and to focus on the interests of others.

God did not simply tell us that He loves us. Instead, he used an action, not an emotion, or a feeling, or a fleeting sentiment, but a sacrificial act on the cross. Your access to God’s love and to His eternal Kingdom rests on your decision to accept Jesus and the power of His reconciliation.

We live in a world where the true meaning of love has been distorted. Mankind has taken a gift from God, which He intended as special and meaningful, and turned it into something manufactured and artificial. Love by the standards of our world has been reduced to something pleasing to the eye and purely physical in nature. Real love, according to the manner in which God intended, is so much more and carries a much deeper purpose for our lives.