Ephesians 1:3–6 [NKJV]: 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, 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, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

In the book of Judges, we see how men went on and off from God’s relationship radar because they kept sinning and then repenting. Man’s inconsistency is littered across the Old Testament. Our unwavering nature created an epileptic mechanism of God’s love that made God look wicked.

God is the Father of spirits and the master of all. To occupy that seat, He has to uphold values like impartiality, holiness, and righteousness. So when a man sinned, He had to be punished. If God wavered or flickered or was inconsistent in His judgement, then He is not God. He had a law, and He upheld that law above His name. (This gives an insight on how to build sustainable communities).

So God’s ultimate plan was to keep the flow constant and stop the breaks and intermittence. He wanted to create a mechanism that keeps seeing man as up to par, measuring up with what God can give.

Enter Christ. Christ is God’s full-stack solution; the concept of Christ includes the Anointed One; His Anointing comprises Jesus and all Jesus represents, but it also includes the Holy Ghost. Understanding the concept of The Christ is stepping into the reality of Jesus, His coming, His dying and His resurrection and then continuing beyond that into the ministry of the Holy Ghost. Jesus pleased the Father, and only in Christ do we fulfil all the criteria to be recipients of God’s love, His grace and His mercy.

Christ is God’s scalable solution. In Him, we receive, that we may become and give. When we step into Christ and remain in Him, we enjoy God’s lavish, continuous, and persistent flow of love and spiritual gifts. What happens when we are in Christ is not just benefits but also transformation through commitment. God wrapped us in Christ to create an everlasting culture of relationship and communion, and God is blessed by having sons return to glory, back to the garden, to the cool of evening meetings.

In Christ, God has adopted us. Our adoption in God is a forethought and not a curative strategy or an afterthought. One of the mentalities that plague children in orphanage homes is the thought of not being wanted or rejected. You might be reading this today and feel like you have been abandoned, hurt at your parents for dying and leaving you alone, angry with your mum or dad for not staying and fighting to keep you.

That singular mindset has formed a stronghold that has snowballed into different reactions that you don’t even like but you feel like you can’t stop. I’m here to tell you that God chose you in Christ. He reviewed your profile and said He wants you! You are His choice in Christ. What an invitation, what a privilege. You are God’s choice, not as an afterthought but as a forethought. You were part of His plan all along, you are not a knee jerk reaction.

In Christ, God has blessed us with spiritual gifts, and spiritual gifts are exactly what they are — spiritual gifts: incorruptible, undefiled, reserved in heaven for us. Anything earthly and earth-bound is not a spiritual gift. Not cars, not houses, not jobs, not clothes.

Spiritual gifts do not respond to earth laws, not the law of diminishing returns, not the law of gravity. They are not subject to decay. Spiritual gifts are resident in our spirits and find expression in our flesh. So, if you are not in touch with your inner core and your real essence, then you can’t access them.

God is Spirit; He gives spiritual gifts, and they are accessed by our spirit. Spiritual gifts are agnostic; there is no male or female, no slave, no free. No distance, no barriers. In fact, if you are bound and you interact and engage with your gifts, it would make a slave free. Spiritual gifts are superior: they have pre-eminence because they are the progenitor of all things natural.

Christ is a wearable phenomenon and technology. We have to put Him on, but He is incompatible with dirty drawers. While God has instituted Christ to create the phenomenon of blamelessness before Him, God’s choice doesn’t diminish our responsibility of godliness; rather, it compels and commands it.

Once you put on Christ, you do not make any provisions for the flesh. One of the functionalities of wearable technologies is information access, and that lends its huge relevance to the renewal of the mind in Christ.

In Him, we have the capacity to access and understand the vast collection of God’s knowledge, insights, and thinking patterns, but we must wear Him; we must put in the time.

In Christ, you also step into the universality concept; like God, you have become a brother to all. You cannot be an effective believer and still operate along ethnic, religious, or any other form of divide. The Spirit in you is transcendent beyond these things.

Lastly, in Christ, you also transition from being a receiver of spiritual gifts to a giver of intangible but invaluable spiritual gifts: loving genuinely, forgiving truly, pursuing unity, contributing joy to every space, and following peace with all men.

Have a blessed and productive week ahead.

For His glory and His renown,

Olayinka Adebayo

Instagram / X (Twitter): @layinkadebayo