March 16

Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, — Eph 2:19 BSB

If grace has touched your heart, and the love of God has entered your soul, it has placed you among the saints of the Most High and given you every privilege that God has ever bestowed on His people. What are these privileges? To be washed in the atoning blood of the suffering Son of God, to be clothed in His justifying righteousness, to be sanctified by the indwelling Holy Spirit, to possess the enduring love of God as your portion, to have peace through faith, to receive grace in times of need, to be strengthened and supported as you journey through this valley of tears, to experience abundant comfort in proportion to your afflictions, to feel the everlasting arms of God beneath you in death, to know that your soul will enter eternal bliss when your body is laid in the grave, and to look forward to a glorious resurrection at Christ’s return.

All that the love of God can give, all that the blood of Christ has purchased, and all that the Spirit of God can reveal or impart to any saint—all these become ours when we are counted among the saints of God. We may not always experience them fully, but we get tastes, glimpses, and drops of their sweetness. Just as Abraham was given the promise of Canaan when he had not yet set foot on it, so these blessings are ours by promise, even before they are fully realized. As Paul declares in the broadest and clearest terms: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours. And why are they yours? Because you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”