Lectio: Ephesians 1:7
During my lectio divina time today Ephesians 1:7 kept jumping out at me: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”
To be honest, for a long time that verse felt heavy. Like it was about a deal struck between God and Jesus to cover our sins, something transactional, almost like divine bookkeeping.
But reading it now through the lens of Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ feels entirely different. Instead of a transaction, I see a relationship. Instead of punishment, I see participation.
Rohr invites us to consider that Christ is not just Jesus’s last name but the eternal, cosmic presence of God. The Love that has always been incarnating in the world, long before Bethlehem. Christ is in everything, holds everything together, and keeps revealing God to us from the inside out.
So when Ephesians says “In him we have redemption,” it is not just pointing to a crucifixion 2,000 years ago. It is pointing to a much larger truth. God has always been redeeming us by entering into our suffering, our story, our mess.
Even the phrase “through his blood” shifts meaning. Rather than imagining a sacrificial payment to a wrathful God, Rohr encourages us to see the blood of Christ as a sign of divine solidarity. God does not demand suffering. God joins us in it. Love that suffers with us is what heals us.
And “the forgiveness of our trespasses”? That is not a legal erasure of guilt. It is a restoration of connection. Sin, in this view, is not just bad behavior. It is disconnection. From God, from others, from our true selves. Forgiveness is God’s way of stitching us back together with grace.
It is like what Julian of Norwich wrote centuries ago. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” She saw sin not as something that doomed us, but something God bends toward love and healing.
Thomas Merton once said, “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not.” That hits me right in the heart. The Christ does not create our unity with God. It reveals it.
Redemption, then, is not about earning our way back into God’s good graces. It is about waking up to the fact that we were never outside of them.
And maybe that is the riches of grace Ephesians is talking about. Not grace as a rationed-out commodity, but grace as the atmosphere we breathe, the ocean we swim in, the center of everything.
So here is my paraphrase of Ephesians 1:7 in this light: In Christ, who holds all things together, we are constantly being restored. Not through a deal, but through divine participation in our pain. In Christ’s loving presence, we are reconnected, forgiven, and made whole by the endless generosity of grace.
This way of reading the verse does not throw away the cross. It just deepens its meaning. The cross is not about punishment. It is about presence. God with us, even in death, even in the worst of it. That is the Christ I can trust.
And maybe, just maybe, that is the Christ who has been trusting me all along.
To be honest, for a long time that verse felt heavy. Like it was about a deal struck between God and Jesus to cover our sins, something transactional, almost like divine bookkeeping.
But reading it now through the lens of Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ feels entirely different. Instead of a transaction, I see a relationship. Instead of punishment, I see participation.
Rohr invites us to consider that Christ is not just Jesus’s last name but the eternal, cosmic presence of God. The Love that has always been incarnating in the world, long before Bethlehem. Christ is in everything, holds everything together, and keeps revealing God to us from the inside out.
So when Ephesians says “In him we have redemption,” it is not just pointing to a crucifixion 2,000 years ago. It is pointing to a much larger truth. God has always been redeeming us by entering into our suffering, our story, our mess.
Even the phrase “through his blood” shifts meaning. Rather than imagining a sacrificial payment to a wrathful God, Rohr encourages us to see the blood of Christ as a sign of divine solidarity. God does not demand suffering. God joins us in it. Love that suffers with us is what heals us.
And “the forgiveness of our trespasses”? That is not a legal erasure of guilt. It is a restoration of connection. Sin, in this view, is not just bad behavior. It is disconnection. From God, from others, from our true selves. Forgiveness is God’s way of stitching us back together with grace.
It is like what Julian of Norwich wrote centuries ago. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” She saw sin not as something that doomed us, but something God bends toward love and healing.
Thomas Merton once said, “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not.” That hits me right in the heart. The Christ does not create our unity with God. It reveals it.
Redemption, then, is not about earning our way back into God’s good graces. It is about waking up to the fact that we were never outside of them.
And maybe that is the riches of grace Ephesians is talking about. Not grace as a rationed-out commodity, but grace as the atmosphere we breathe, the ocean we swim in, the center of everything.
So here is my paraphrase of Ephesians 1:7 in this light: In Christ, who holds all things together, we are constantly being restored. Not through a deal, but through divine participation in our pain. In Christ’s loving presence, we are reconnected, forgiven, and made whole by the endless generosity of grace.
This way of reading the verse does not throw away the cross. It just deepens its meaning. The cross is not about punishment. It is about presence. God with us, even in death, even in the worst of it. That is the Christ I can trust.
And maybe, just maybe, that is the Christ who has been trusting me all along.
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