Past Tense

Reading through Ephesians with The Good Morning Girls has been a nice change of pace. Small chunks of God's Word are absorbed slowly throughout the week. I've taken up the journal again and borrowing the SOAP idea this time.

I love it.

Ephesians 2:1-3 reminded me of my youngest son's English lesson of the day.

Crazy, but true.

Ethan and I were learning about verb tenses and how they determine how a paragraph is understood. His writing assignment for the day was to either be written in the past tense or the present tense and it had to be consistent throughout. The past tense could not be combined with the present tense; it was one way or the other.

In our reading this week, I noticed the verbs:

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

It is clear that these verbs are consistently in the past tense and it is a miraculous and beautiful thing that they are.

I was dead.

I walked in sin.

I followed the world.

I lived in the passions of my flesh.

I was a child of wrath.

Praise God, because of my Savior's sacrifice, this is no longer the case. My enemy would have me believe that these things are still true of me and he accuses me at every turn. (Rev. 12:10)

However, this is the truth of the matter: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come; the old has gone, the new is here!"2 Cor. 5: 17

If you have been rescued by God, rejoice and rest in this truth.