In this summer study, we read through Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. Paul’s great theme is God’s eternal purpose in establishing and completing the universal Church of Jesus Christ. As background for this study, I have used N.T. Wright’s Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. This study covers six weeks.
(Summer 2013)
Ephesians 1(a)
One of the essential attributes of being a Christian is participating and being in the community of other believers both on the grand scale of being part of the universal church and the smaller scale of believers simply sharing a fellowship meal and the apostles’ teachings.
Ephesians 1(b)
Think about the role of God’s grace in bringing about the assembly of God’s people, and specifically how the church is not a hotel for saints who are good enough to enter but a hospital for sinners to which Christ has admitted us.
Ephesians 2(a)
For Paul, membership in God’s covenant family is open to all people who have been chosen, destined, and called by God’s grace, and whose outward sign of justification is faith in Christ.
Ephesians 2(b)
“Paul’s vision was to make his brand of Judaism — with the recognition of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah — a world religion easily accessible to everyone.”
Epheisans 3(a)
As you read through the concluding prayer in Ephesians 3, not only make it your own, but pay close attention to the proper roles and functions of faith, love, and knowledge.
Ephesians 3(b)
‘We are all teachers. We are free to propose ideas which might be wrong or heretical and to consider them and turn them around. No one will be shocked or frightened. It is a very wonderful time of spiritual relaxation for us.’
Ephesians 4(a)
Paul speaks of the unity of the Body of Christ, echoing Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21 that we all may be one. What are some of the practical means by which unity in the Church is obtained and restored?
Ephesians 4(b)
Our unity, therefore, is a reflection of the unity of the Divine, and as we become perfectly united with each other, so too do we become perfectly united with God.
Ephesians 5(a)
The Lord Himself has pointed out that their punishment lies in themselves—in their extreme agony. Pride, envy, hatred, avarice, covetousness—all are thus punished. Each passion is its own tormentor, and at the same time the executioner of each man possessed with it.
Ephesians 5(b)
The merciful God regards the lives and tempers of men more than their ideas. I believe he respects the goodness of the heart rather than the clearness of the head;
Ephesians 6(a)
In the household codes, notice the simplicity of the instructions and the readical egalitarianism that Paul assets at the end of this section.
Ephesians 6(b)
Onward, Christian soldiers,
marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
going on before!