The Saturday after the Sunday within the Octave of the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord
Posted on January 4, 2025 by under
Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-6 (NKJV)
1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
Devotion
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is acknowledged as blessed when people offer Him the praise that He deserves. He deserves praise and honor because He has chosen to redeem mankind from their sins even before He laid the foundations of the world. When people believe and confess this in faith in Him, the Lord God is blessed. If they, however, do not believe this, or reject it, they are rejecting the Lord God and do not bless Him, but curse Him.
These unbelievers curse themselves by cursing Him. They do not receive the adoption as sons by Jesus Christ. If someone believes He has been blessed by the Lord God, but despises the Christ, he is a liar. One cannot reject the Anointed One and be blessed by the Lord God. But all those who do cling to the Lord Jesus in faith have been adopted as sons through Jesus Christ to the heavenly Father, according to the pleasure of His good will.
We therefore enjoy all the spiritual blessings that our God and Father would bestow upon us. We are blessed when He gifts us with forgiveness, life, and salvation. We are blessed when He brings us into His Church to receive His Word and Sacraments. Through these means the Holy Ghost gifts us with faith in the Christ, so that we may obtain life everlasting, and be called by Him “My beloved.”
Collect: Almighty and Everlasting God, direct our actions according to Thy good pleasure, that in the Name of Thy beloved Son, we may be made to abound in good works; through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
