One of my roommates uses the website www.greekbiblestudy.org all the time. I tried it once, but got confused, and then quit.. ha. She was sharing with me what she was reading this morning from there, and wow.. so cool. I'm going to share it with y'all :).
First of all, the whole first chapter of Ephesians is great. But we are going to talk about Ephesians 1:6 which says "to the praise of his glorious grace, whith which he has blessed us in the Beloved."
So first of all, if you look up the word "blessed" in greek, it actually means accepted, which means to make lovely or acceptable. How cool is that? On our own, we stand before God completely disgusting in our sin. But becaue of Christ, he has not only made us acceptable but lovely!
And then word Beloved, in greek, it is defined as:
ἀγαπάω- Beloved which means, to love, it denotes the deliberate exercise of the judgement; the giving of a decided preference to one object or person out of many. It frequently implies regard and satisfaction, rather than affection.
That's sweet! The giving of a decided preference to one object or person out of many. Which means if we are a believer, Christ decided to choose us out of many. And it's not just based on feelings, or affection, but rather implies regard and satisfaction.
Beloved can also be translated as another word for love, which was defined as..
love [verb]- "to regard, esteem (the principle of internal feeling of delectation and kindliness) to acquiesce with satisfaction, to cherish with reverence, to love, considered in reference to the tendency of the will."
Wow.. can you get your mind around the love that Christ has for us? I sure can't!
