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Tim Mackie says: “The gospel of Jesus enters the first-century situation and transforms it. We read Ephesians faithfully when we read it to gain wisdom for how the gospel seeks to enter our situation and transform it!”
Paul subverts the notion that the ordering of the household should be for the benefit of those in power by setting in parallel the “headship” of the husband in relation to his wife and that of Christ in relation to the church.
We have a choice as to what our influences are going to be. If we submit ourselves to the influence of the Spirit, we will be filled up with a life of the new creation.
Our holy lives ought to resist corrupted practices and replace them with life-giving patterns of conduct that draw on and radiate the resurrection power of Jesus.
Borrowing what we did for the last week of Advent, we stayed on a diverted course from our normal dive into Ephesians by recapping Ephesians 2 — especially as it pertains to what we need for a faithful, abiding 2023.
We took diverted from our normal rhythm in Ephesians and examined it through the lens of Advent. When you see the full Christmas narrative (Gen. 1-3, The Gospel accounts, Revelation 12, etc.), Ephesians takes on a whole new light.
Our ‘growing up in Christ’ does not create our holy status but reflects it, honors God by it, and aids others through our expression of it. Ephesians 4:17-5:2 invite us not to become someone new but to become like who we really are.
The world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. [We] were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made.
Paul’s prayer in the center of Ephesians (3:14-21) gives us a robust, grandiose vision of how we can actually start live into being the New Creation people he’s been describing — and it starts with prayer.
The manifold wisdom of God evident in Christ’s united body, the church, becomes a witness to all of creation (both humans and the heavenly realm) of the greatness of the gospel’s transformation of the human heart.
Ephesians 2:11-22 shows us that rather than the church gathering at the temple to celebrate God’s victory in Jesus, she gathers as the temple of the victorious Christ Jesus!
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…”
Jesus, the suffering and exalted Messiah of Israel, fulfilled God’s calling for Israel and all humanity. Now, the people of Jesus share in his death, resurrection, and exalted rule over the cosmos.
Ephesians 1:11-14 teaches us that apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, we would neither believe in Christ (1:13) nor have the eyes of our hearts opened to the realities and promises of his word (1:18).
At the core of our gospel — what the Father purposed in the Son — is that this world is far from all there is. There is a glorious reality beyond what we can see from this earthly perspective.
United to Christ, we are also adopted by the Father, and as such have all the rights, privileges, and affection that the Son of God himself receives from God. What joy is this?!
Paul uses two words to describe the Christians in Ephesus: saints (lit. ‘holy ones’) and faithful. Every Christian is both and both identities plant us firmly in the realm of Christ’s power, security, and honor.
Markus Barth says, “the logic of the argument [of the Divine Armor] is this: if these arms are spiritual, and if they are sufficient for God and Jesus Christ—they will certainly be good enough for the saints.