Guarentee

We are reluctant to trust.  We have so many experiences of broken promises.  In many work situations we can’t do anything without special measures to ensure that everyone does what they have said they will do.  Unfortunately most of us know of situations where agreements haven’t worked.  People are betrayed often, and usually it is the weaker one that loses out.  We can find ourselves among those helpless against the powerful.  We can find that we are one of the strong, dominating and destroying the weak.

So what happens when God promises things?  Are his promises worth anything?

The answer to this question is multifaceted; but here we are told one part of the answer:

God doesn't just promise to do things for us in the future; he does things in our lives now.  God doesn't just promise to give us an “inheritance” one day when we die, or in the next “age” of the universe; he gives us a security, a sort of down payment that is part of our lives now.  This plays a triple role: it changes our lives right now, it is the guarantee that there is more to come, and it gives us some idea what the ‘more to come’ is going to be like.

So what is it that we are given now?  Our writer tell us that when we put our hope in Jesus we are given the Holy Spirit.  When we talk about someone’s spirit, we mean their very self, the part of them that is most deeply them, the thing that represents who they really are.  The Holy Spirit is God’s spirit, God’s very self. 

So we are ‘marked’, tattooed if you like, as belonging to God – not by some kind of ink, or some artefact or piece of jewellery, but by God himself being with us. 

This is an astonishing thing to even begin to take in.  More about what it means as we read further!

The Bible: Ephesians 1:13-14

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=ephesians&chapter=1