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And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.
Ephesians 1:13‭-‬14 NLT

As a life-long, card-carrying Gentile, I feel quite blessed indeed, knowing by way of the Holy Spirit that I, along with believing Jews, am truly one of God's own people. Lately, I have been reading through the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a., the Old Testament), and it's amazing how "God's own people" back in those days continually failed to follow his instructions, ignoring the prophets, and generally living as if they weren't his own people at all. And yet, God never gave up on them. Oh, they paid for their rebellion, but even when the whole lot of them (almost) were exiled to Babylon, God promised that he would bring them back, and by golly he did.

I hear a lot of folks grumbling these days about the God of the Old Testament, how he bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the New Testament. But the Old Testament God was ever faithful and extremely merciful to his people, no matter how rotten they were acting.  Sounds like Jesus to me!

But anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to focus on from today's selection from Ephesians, because I have always been a bit confused by the whole idea of how the Holy Spirit was given to us as God's guarantee of our inheritance in Christ, and I wanted to take some time to think through it, pray about it, and ask God to speak to me about it today.

The NASB says it this way: "In Him, you [Gentiles] also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory."  That's the version I've been used to reading for most of my life, and it might just be the main source of my confusion.  Yes, I must say that the NLT has helped me understand it better.

The idea that the Jesus "identifies you [me, us] as his own by giving you [me, us] the Holy Spirit" reminds me of a verse from another of Paul's letters:

"For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him."  Romans 8:15-17 NLT

Paul is almost saying the same thing in Romans as he does here in Ephesians, but he comes at it from the opposite direction, starting with the Holy Spirit who confirms to us that we are God's children, and therefore heirs.  In Ephesians, Paul is saying that God has made us heirs in Christ, and has given us the Holy Spirit to confirm (guarantee, pledge) that fact to us.  It's the same thing but turned around.

That Paul, he was pretty consistent, wasn't he?  But he does like to turn things around from time to time.

So let me see if I can put this whole thing into my own words, avoiding all the churchy-sounding stuff.

When we put our faith in Jesus and all he accomplished when he died for us on the cross and was raised from the dead, God adopts us into his family to be his heirs along with Jesus.  And since it's hard for us to wrap our heads around that, he gave us his Holy Spirit to live inside of us, and part of the Holy Spirit's job is to keep us convinced that we are indeed children and heirs of God in Christ, to remind us of who we really are, even when (especially when) we aren't following the path God has laid out for us.

I think that's right, more or less, although I added a little more than what Paul actually says in Ephesians.  But one thing I do believe is that it's never the Holy Spirit's job to "convict" us when we sin, but rather to remind us of who we are, to encourage us to walk with God, and to celebrate with us when we show evidence that we are growing in Christ.   To "convict" carries a connotation of guilt, and I do not believe that the Holy Spirit ever makes us feel guilty. The exact opposite is true, in my opinion; he inspires us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Father, thank you for adopting me as your child and for giving me the amazing gift of your Holy Spirit living in me, encouraging me, reminding me of who I am and whose I am.  Open the ears of my heart to listen more closely to you and to walk in the Spirit, because the Spirit knows who I am and who you are.  I love you, my "Abba," my Father.  Thank you for speaking to me today.