Tag Archives: Bible Study

Ephesians 1:1

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A while back I decided that in order to keep my focus on the study of the Bible and not just the reading, I would write my thoughts on the book of Ephesians verse by verse. It will be sort of a simplified commentary.

Ephesians 1:1

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:

Paul declares himself to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. An apostle is one who is sent as an emissary to give out the message that the sender wants people to hear, in this case, to the holy, set apart people in Ephesus.

This is the same Paul who persecuted the church and threw people in jail and even approved of their murder. This is the person who Christ sent to be a messenger.
Paul told the Galatian Christians that God had set him apart for this responsibility while in his mother’s womb. (Galatians 1:15) But, when the time was right, God revealed Christ to him on the road to Damascus.

Paul calls the people in Ephesus saints and faithful. Perhaps he means people who are believers i.e. full of faith. But saints? Holy ones. These are just ordinary people that he addresses as saints. All of those who trust Christ and have faith in Him are saints. Have you trusted Christ? Then you, too, are a saint. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Finally, note here as well that they are in Christ Jesus. This theme is found throughout Ephesians. They are in Christ. That is the only safe place to be. How do we get “in Christ”? By the work of the Holy Spirit when we believe on Christ. He places us into the body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:13)

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:55 AM August 29, 2020.

Like a Father Teaches His Children

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In our Bible reading the other morning, we came upon this verse in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12: “For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.”

I had always read this as the Apostle Paul encouraging the folks in Thessalonica and challenging them to live a God-honoring life. What I had never seen before is the fact that he explains that his encouragement is the kind a father would give to his children. Then, I began to consider the content of that encouragement. Needless to say, it is quite the challenge for us as fathers to encourage and charge our children in the way he describes here. So let’s take a couple of minutes and look at what we should teach our children.

Paul uses three words in verse 12. The ESV translates them exhort, encourage, and charge. Exhort means to ask for earnestly, beg, plead, or urge. The word encourage means to console, comfort and encourage. And finally, charge means to insist, implore, and involves testifying or witnessing to something. When you put all of this together, it means we as fathers should pursue the instruction of our children in such a way that we urge them along and beg them to follow the path we are teaching them. Along the way there will be failures and so there is a comforting and encouraging aspect to our instruction. No failure is final, and we should make sure our children understand that. Finally it involves imploring and insisting based on our own testimony that we are walking this same path and are witnessing to the fact that it is the right path, a path that leads ultimately to our sanctification and eternal life.

He then says that we should teach them to walk in a manner worthy of God. This can mean a couple of things. First, our walk is our manner of life. Therefore, we should encourage and charge our children to have a certain manner of life – a particular way of living. It’s not something to be taught once and then chalked up as a lesson learned. This is going to require time on our part, as Moses writes in Deuteronomy. We should teach and explain the ways of God when we get up, when we are going through our day, and when we are heading to bed at night (Deuteronomy 6).

What does it mean to walk in a manner worthy of God? First, let’s recognize that no one is perfect in this life. But with this understood, the goal is to be an example and to teach them to walk as God would walk. When we talk about living a godly life, we are talking about a life that looks like how God would live it if He were here. And, after all, He was here, wasn’t He? Jesus is God in the flesh and His life is our example. As 1 John 2;6 says, “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.”

As I said earlier, it’s important to be an example in this process. It would do no good to teach your children to live like God would live if you are living an ungodly life. It’s a tough and narrow road, but if we are walking this road as faithfully as we know how, we can encourage our children to walk that same road with us. And we should do this day after day. Think, “How can I teach my children by instruction and example how to walk like Jesus today.” If you don’t do it today, you won’t ever do it.

The God we are teaching our children to follow is the God who calls us into His own Kingdom and glory. Believers are called a kingdom of priests who are to show forth the glory of God, and ultimately, we will be called to rule and reign with Him. You should encourage your children with this truth. If they savingly believe on Christ, they too will be called to participate in the heavenly reign of Christ. What a motivating truth!

Finally, Paul goes on in verse 13 to mention that the Thessalonian believers received the word of God, not as the words of man, but as the word of God. I believe this is an important truth. There are many ways to believe the Bible. But only one way saves, and that is if we believe that the Bible is what it claims to be, the word of God. One of the prayers I have for my grandchildren is that when they read the Bible, they won’t just read it as a historical document, but that they will hear it as God’s word to them. The word is living and powerful and our children need to be taught that, both by example and by direct teaching. Every time you read the Bible to them, tell them, “This is the word of God. Pay close attention.”

This portion of a letter to the Thessalonians that sounds at first like a pastor encouraging his congregation, is more than that. It is a reminder to us dads that this is the way we are to train up our children so that their manner of life will be worthy of God. May God help each of us as we train up our children in the way they should go.

True? False? or Who Cares? Part 4

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In the last article in this series we looked at the concept of “presuppositions.” Presuppositions are ideas we believe or accept without proof. Everyone has them. Even in mathematics we have things called postulates which are statements that are accepted as true without proof. I remember a math class I had once where we assumed that the number 1 existed. We also assumed that the next number in a counting series could be found by adding the number 1 to the previous number. Every other “truth” that we used in the course had to be proved from these two postulates or assumptions or presuppositions.

So what does this have to do with our discussion of truth and how we know it? Let’s take the Creation vs Evolution debate for example. I worked in the public schools for 42 years and have seen the nuances that this debate has taken. When everything is sorted out through the legal system it usually comes down to this: Creation is a religious, faith-based idea and therefore has no place within the science curriculum. Evolution however is a scientific truth and therefore can and should be taught within the science curriculum.

I realize that I am probably not going to change many minds in this short article, but this is how I see it in light of our discussion about truth and how we know it. Scientific knowledge and truth come from proposing an hypothesis and then designing a controlled experiment to test that hypothesis to see if it is true. In the case of the origin of life, it seems obvious to me that there can be no experiment designed that will duplicate the conditions, time span, and forces needed to create and evolve life by random processes. Every attempt so far has involved a high level of human thinking and planning involved to set up conditions favorable for the creation of life. The true condition of randomness and chance events were not duplicated.  Even so, life has not been created by those experiments.

On the creation side, there is no one alive today who saw God create anything. All we have is ancient documents within various religious traditions describing how God did it.

My point is that those who claim evolution is true are actually proposing something just as faith-based as a creationist is.

But the evolutionist says, “No, that’s not true. You creationists are bringing God into the mix. We are providing a natural and scientific explanation of how life began and evolved.” The problem here is with the assumptions or presuppositions that underlie what we believe. In order to fit the definition of science, God must be left out of the equation. That is an assumption. All of the study and investigation that takes place looks for explanations that leave God out. It is assumed that God either does not exist or does not play any role in any way in the natural world. But suppose God actually exists. If God actually exists, isn’t it madness to try to get at the explanation for why things are the way they are without including him in the mix?

“But”, they say, “we don’t know if God exists or not and therefore, we choose to leave him out of our assumptions regarding science and simply look for the natural causes of things.”

OK. That’s fine. But don’t call your explanation of origins totally scientific because you are basing your “science” on the belief that certain things are true. There are a set of beliefs or assumptions upon which the entire system is built. That makes it a faith based philosophy.

A scientist who includes the belief in a god or supreme being in his foundational assumptions will also build a faith-based science. But he, when he looks at the order and apparent “design” in the universe, will come to the conclusion that there is a designer behind it.

It’s interesting that in normal life we do this all the time. If you’re walking through the woods and you come upon a group of similar sized stones lying in the dirt forming the shape of a circle, you assume someone of intelligence placed them that way. You don’t assume that they just fell there randomly. And yet when some scientists look at the brain or the eye, they don’t see a designer at all, but millions of years of random circumstances producing it. So we attribute a simple circle of stones to an intelligent designer, i.e., a human being behind it, but something as complex as an eye evolved with no intelligent activity involved in it at all.

When trying to determine the truth, everyone begins their investigative reasoning with presuppositions or assumptions. Mathematicians do it and scientists do it. We all do it. We need to be careful to recognize that we are doing it. When you make statements of truth or believe what someone else says, look for the presuppositions that underlie those statements. Second, make sure that when you are discussing what you believe to be the truth, acknowledge your presuppositions. Don’t hide them. Finally make sure your presuppositions are logical and consistent. Only in so doing will you be able to get at the truth whether it is in the field of science, politics or religion.

Thoughts from Ephesians – 6

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Ephesians 2:11-18

 

Paul called on the Ephesians to remember that there was a time when they were outside of the covenant people of God. During the Old Testament period, God worked with the nation of Israel. He wanted His praise and testimony to be known in all the world through Israel, but the covenants were given to this particular people. Paul says in Eph 2:12 “You were aliens from Israel and strangers to the covenants and without hope and without God.” (my paraphrase) That was not a minor technicality! Being without hope and without God were serious problems making it impossible to know God or have eternal life.

Paul goes on to say that now, in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. The wall of separation between Jew and non-Jew has been broken down. The enmity which is the law of commandments in the ordinances has been abolished. The commandments and ordinances were the documents that defined Israel and separated them from the rest of the world. Christ has abolished that separation and is creating in himself one new man from the two.

God’s purpose is that both Jews and Gentiles will be reconciled to God as part of one body, not two. Both have access by one Spirit (not two) to the Father.

It is interesting to me that this reconciling work (both to God and to each other) was accomplished on the cross. I think an interesting study some time would be to study through all that was accomplished by Christ on the cross.

Since most of us reading and sharing about these things are Gentiles, it should cause great rejoicing to think that God has made it possible for us to be part of His people too. We are not strangers and aliens any longer!

Thoughts from Ephesians – 5

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Ephesians 2:1-10

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,  in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Paul personalizes the exceeding greatness of God’s power that he just talked about. He told us that the power toward us is the same as the power that raised Christ from the dead. Now he explains that we also have been raised from the dead. The phrase “He made alive” in verse 1 is not in the original. That’s why it is in italics in your Bible. So first, he describes the lostness from which we were raised but he doesn’t explain the resurrection until verse 5. Our condition is described as one of death in trespasses and sins. We used to walk in this condition following the pattern of the world and in the plan of the prince of this world, Satan. We also lived according to the lusts of our flesh and were in our natural state children of wrath just like everybody else. We were naturally the objects of God’s wrath, anger and condemnation.

But God, because He is rich in mercy and because of the great love He has for us, made us alive with Christ. He did this even when we were dead in our trespasses. Nothing is said here of our faith or our responsiveness to the gospel. It takes a living person to be able to respond. We were dead. Resurrection comes before response. Just as in the case of Lazarus. Jesus called him out of the tomb and he came out. Did Jesus give him life because he obediently came out of the tomb or did Lazarus respond because of the life God had given him? The same is true of us. The calling of God and the Word of God grant life and then there is response.

We have been more than raised. There are several other actions that God has (past tense) performed. He has raised us up together and made us sit together with Christ in heavenly places. These have already occurred. As far as God is concerned, we are already there.

So many times we focus on us as the reason for everything God does, but in this passage we get a different point of view. God’s purpose in all of this is that in the ages to come he might show how rich His grace is as it was demonstrated by His kindness. He wants all of creation to realize how great His grace is. It has everything to do with the glory of God and His greatness. Because, after all, it is by grace we have been saved through faith. All of this is a gift of God, not through any of our own works because then we might boast. We are the workmanship of God. We are His creation – both the original and the new creation in Christ.

Thoughts from Ephesians – 3

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Ephesians 1:11-14

In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, 12that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. 13In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

It’s an interesting study to go through this chapter and see the number of times Paul speaks of being in him or in Christ. Here we see that in Him we have received an inheritance. Later on Paul will describe God’s inheritance, but here we receive an inheritance because of our union with Christ. To describe this idea, Paul says that we were predestined. Predestination is not the same thing as election. Predestined means to determine the destiny or outcome ahead of time. In this passage, that destiny is that we should be to the praise of His glory. In other words, God has determined and planned that we will be to the praise of His glory. He works all things out according to the counsel of His will and if He determines and wills to accomplish it, it will be accomplished. We will be to the praise of His glory, because God knows what it will take in our lives to accomplish that task.

The Ephesians also trusted in Christ after they heard the word of truth, the gospel. That is the way we all come to salvation. It is always and only by trusting in Christ that a person is saved. It is always faith in the Word of God. Salvation never comes except through the Word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. People cannot be saved without the Word, that is why missionary activity and preaching are so important.

Having believed, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Paul describes Him as the guarantee, earnest or down payment of our inheritance. Someone provides a down payment as a pledge that the rest will be forth coming. If the rest does not follow, the down payment belongs to the recipient. In this context, that would mean that if God does not follow through on the rest of His promise, we get to keep the Holy Spirit. It is foolishness to think that God would lose the Holy Spirit because of failure to fulfill the remainder of His promise and that is the point. God’s promise of our inheritance is that secure. The Holy Spirit is the down payment until the redemption of the purchased possession. What is that purchased possession? Us!

All to the praise of His glory. These things are not for our glory but for His. Modern Christianity has made man the center. God does what He does for His glory including our salvation. Let’s give Him the glory He deserves.

Ephesians Study – 2

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Ephesians 1:7-10

Several things come to my mind as I read these 4 verses. I think of the key word “redemption” mentioned in verse 7. Here we have visualized the process whereby a slave is bought back. Someone has been sold as a slave and a kind person pays the price to buy him out of slavery and sets him free. I see that as a picture of how Christ has bought us back and set us free from guilt and sin. In fact that is what the next part of the verse talks about – the forgiveness of sins. There are some people who have no concept of how sinful they really are and therefore may not fully appreciate what forgiveness is. To be completely set free from the guilt and penalty of sin is an amazing thing. As we grow older and study the Word more, we realize how depraved we actually are and as a result we realize all the more the wonder of forgiveness. All of this of course comes from His grace. It is all undeserved by us. Sometimes I think we come to believe that God owes us something. But the Bible teaches us that it’s all because of His amazing grace.

Paul seems to delight in superlatives because he doesn’t just stop with the word grace at the end of verse 7. He tells us that this grace abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. His grace doesn’t come in a trickle. It is abundant and it doesn’t come out of God’s ignorance but through his great wisdom and insight. It’s a result of His character.
Probably the next two verses take a deeper study, but what I see here is an expression of ultimate purpose. It flows down through verse 12. But in this section I see that when time is complete and all of the ages roll together toward their ultimate conclusion, God is and will gather together all things in Christ and make Him the ultimate focus of everything there is. This not only includes the things in heaven but also the things on the earth. I imagine that this is why he tells us elsewhere that every knee will bow. Thinking about this certainly makes a lot of other things pale in comparison and much we focus on in life seems rather insignificant, doesn’t it.

Some Thoughts from Ephesians – 1

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Ephesians 1:1-6

1Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus: 2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.

There are many things to think about just in these 6 short verses. My goal is to choose a few topics which speak to my heart and may also speak to yours. In the process, I’ll pose a couple of questions also which might be able to stimulate some discussion and thought.

Much could be made out of the fact that Paul addresses these people as saints even though they were undoubtedly normal, failure-prone people. When God declares us righteous, we are righteous. The really amazing thing to me though is that in verse three, Paul tells us that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. God is not stingy. I don’t know how many spiritual blessings there are, but it seems like there must be close to an infinite number. God has blessed us with every one. And then I think about the fact that it is not others who have been blessed in this way, it is “us”. I’m included in that.

Then, unlike us, Paul is not afraid to tackle a big issue without batting an eye. He tells us that we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. I have thought about these things a lot and am convinced that even though we don’t understand how this all fits together with our responsibility for what we do, God is the one who chose us for himself long before we were born. What an amazing thing!

Some Questions:
What are some of the “benefits” we receive because of our adoption as sons?
What are some of the spiritual blessings we have been blessed with?
What can we do to become outwardly more of what we are positionally, that is holy and blameless?

Part 4 – Because of Christ’s Successful Mission, God Has…

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Highly exalted Him.  We read in Philippians that because of Jesus’ obedience “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,” (Philippians 2:9, NKJV) In his letter to the Ephesians Paul explains it this way: “He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (Ephesians 1:20–21, NKJV)

Jesus Christs has been placed in a position of great glory at God’s right hand and this is far above all other authorities that exist in the universe. The author of the book of Hebrews explains it this way:

“You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, And set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.” (Hebrews 2:7–9, NKJV)

Jesus Christ is the God-man. But never forget that He is a man with a human glorified body. He is the first person to receive his glorified body and He has His place in heaven as our forerunner. He is the guarantee that all of those that belong to Him through faith will also have their place in heaven with Him. He is our anchor behind the veil.

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:19–20, NKJV)

In the Old Testament the temple has a veil separating the two parts. The part behind the veil where God was could not be entered by anyone except the High Priest and then only once a year. That veil ripped in two from top to bottom on the day Christ was crucified. The earthly temple was a model of what is in heaven. This passage in Hebrews tells us that the way is now open. Jesus Christ is already there as our forerunner and our anchor behind the veil. All who belong to Him will have their place with Him in a glorified body some day.

Christ is central and supreme because He is the One who obtained eternal redemption for us through His sacrifice on the cross and is now seated as sovereign in heaven and every knee will bow before Him (Philippians 2:10).

 

Part 3 – Speaking About Christ, God Has…

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Made Him heir of all things. “[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;” (Hebrews 1:2, NKJV)

God has made Jesus Christ the inheritor of all things. Take a moment and consider what is included in the “all things.” All nature?  Yes. Every planet? Yes. Every galaxy? Yes. Every person? Yes.

In Ephesians 1:18 Paul prays that as believers our eyes would be opened to “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” (Ephesians 1:18, NKJV) This is not Christ as our inheritance. This is Christians as His inheritance. Christians are part of the all things that Jesus has inherited from God the Father. And as long as we are stretching our faith, let’s consider the fact that God has announced that His people are joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).

Given Him Authority. “as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.” (John 17:2, NKJV)

“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” (Matthew 28:18, NKJV)

Made Him head of the Church “And He is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18, NKJV)

Jesus Christ has been given all authority over everything in the universe, and in a special sense He is head of the Church because the Church is His body. He is present in the Church everywhere the true church is found and He is its head. No pastor, bishop or pope can claim that position.

Made Him the judge. “For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son,” (John 5:22, NKJV)

“and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.” (John 5:27, NKJV)

It’s interesting to note that the Father judges no one. The authority to judge every one of us has been given to the Son. Every one of us will stand before Him one day and be judged. We will be judged by a peer if you will, another human. The Man Christ Jesus. Paul told the Athenians, “but [God] now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”” (Acts 17:30–31, NKJV)

When will this judgment take place? The book of Hebrews tells us: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Hebrews 9:27, AV)

Has sent Him on a mission. The Word, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity was sent on a mission arranged in eternity past. This mission basically was to come to this earth as a human being, live among us, be tempted in every way like we are without sinning, be illegally convicted and executed as punishment for our sins and then to be resurrected to return to His position in glory from where He had come. This time He returns as a conquering King who has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,” (2 Timothy 1:10, NKJV)

He testified that He had come to give life abundantly (John 10:10) and to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Summarizing then what we have covered under this heading, we have learned that God has made Christ the heir of all things, given Him authority over everything which includes His responsibility to judge and God has sent Him on a mission to rescue people from their sins and the penalty that comes from sin.

We can see therefore how central and supreme Jesus Christ is to everything God has done and is doing in the world.