Seeds of the Kingdom 28th May 2023 – Works in Progress

If you’ve ever driven past a building site, you will know that with any building or construction work things often look really messy during the building process. I find myself comparing that with the way things can sometimes look in our lives as Christians, as God works in us by His Spirit to change us to be more like Jesus. I know there are times, when I fail or sin, that I can easily see myself as a mess, more like a pile of rubble than God’s masterpiece as the New Living Translation translates Ephesians 2:10.

I sometimes use an interlinear Bible on my Kindle, to try and understand the richness of the original Hebrew or Greek text that may have been lost in translation to English. Recently, I looked at Jesus` final words on the cross before He died, ‘It is finished!’, recorded by the Apostle John in John 19:30. The Greek phrase ‘Tetelestai’, translated ‘It is finished’, means ‘to bring to an end, to complete or to accomplish’. Jesus said something similar, when He prayed in John 17:4, that He had accomplished or completed the work that His Father had given Him to do in His time on the earth.

As I read those words of completion and accomplishment spoken by Jesus, I thought of our verse for today from Philippians. The Apostle Paul’s confidence was not in the power of the Philippian believers to complete the work God had begun in them, but for God Himself to do that. The writer of Hebrews 12:2 echoes Paul’s confidence as he describes Jesus as the author and perfecter, or finisher, of our faith.

The result of my simple study above was a renewed assurance and hope that the same Jesus who accomplished the work of redemption on the cross will also accomplish and finish His work of transformation in each of us, who have put our trust in that redemption. Just as scaffolding is removed from a building to show its completion, so one day, each of us will be revealed complete and perfected in heaven.