Like the commercial where the little ol’ lady falls down and pitifully cries, “Help! I’ve fallen down and can’t get up!” so I yell, “Help! I’ve fallen into Ephesians again and can’t get out!”

Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

Give me a break! Big, bad God wants me to be in on the plans HE is making for “everything on planet earth”?

Doesn’t that push the envelope just a bit too far?

Or, what about this lack of guilt thing?

I haven’t been a nice person for most of my life. I’m not always a nice person even now. How is it that I merit a get-out-of-jail card AND a pass-GO-and-collect-$200 card?

Either Paul has been hitting the Jack Daniel bottle a bit too much or he’s spilling the beans on a celestial conspiracy that has the potential to rock my world.

If it is the latter, then the words of the late Martin Luther King would be quite appropriate:

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”