Dear Theophilus

My last few posts were about the meaning of Ephesians 1-3. You can read them here and here if you would like. For a starter on how Ephesians 1-3 could help with a discussion on Race and Church, you can read that here . But seeing that this is the word of God for the people of God in all ages, contexts, tribes, and places, how do we apply such a specific meaning to our lives and churches? First, a summary of Ephesians 1-3 may help catch us up: Summary: In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul is writing to a mostly, if not exclusively, Gentile audience. He is not writing about individual salvation, but about how Christ brings the Gentiles into God's covenant/people. This conclusion is come to from 3 major sections: Ephesians 1 - Paul talks about the work of Christ as revealing the mystery of God. Ephesians 2 - Paul talks about the cross of Christ uniting both Jew and Gentile into one body. Ephesians 3 - Paul reveals what the revelation was he received from God, tells us...

My last two posts were about the meaning of Ephesians 1-3. You can read them here and here if you would like. But seeing that this is the word of God for the people of God in all ages, contexts, tribes, and places, how do we apply such a specific meaning to our lives and churches? First, a summary of Ephesians 1-3 may help catch us up: Summary: In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul is writing to a mostly, if not exclusively, Gentile audience. He is not writing about individual salvation, but about how Christ brings the Gentiles into God's covenant/people. This conclusion is come to from 3 major sections: Ephesians 1 - Paul talks about the work of Christ as revealing the mystery of God. Ephesians 2 - Paul talks about the cross of Christ uniting both Jew and Gentile into one body. Ephesians 3 - Paul reveals what the revelation was he received from God, tells us what the mystery is that Christ reveals, and a major implication of what the gospel is: the inclusion ...

Some question arose from my first post to why and how I believed that Ephesians 1-2 (and now I am including chapter 3) is about the inclusion of the Gentiles and not about our individual salvation. Firstly I would like to say that I affirm individual salvation, I just don't find the author of Ephesians discussing the nature of our individual salvation. Secondly, this post is long and a little more heady than I intended this series to be. The next post is going to be my ideas on how to teach this text appropriately for the church in this modern context. Stay tuned. Hopefully the summary just below explains what it is I am trying to work through in this post. Summary of contents In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul is writing to a mostly, if not exclusively, Gentile audience. He is not writing about individual salvation, but about how Christ brings the Gentiles into God's covenant/people. This conclusion is come to from 3 major sections: Ephesians 1 - Paul talks about...

Many, many Christians have read and been encouraged by Ephesians 1 and 2. It is here we get the Reformation battlecry " sola fide ," "faith alone",  from Ephesians 2:8 ("For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— "). It is here that our reformed brothers and sisters (those Christians who lean more Calvinist/Augustinian) hammer the language of being "chosen": "just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world... He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will" (Eph. 1:4). This verse alone has sparked numerous late-night conversations at Denny's as to God's will, free will, the Matrix, robots, automatons, determinism and fixed history. But I would suggest that Western Christianity has not been true to this text. As with almost all things we have turned this text, Ephesians 1-2, into Paul telling...