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Ephesians 5: 15-21
May 24, 2009
Exordium: You will remember that the letters of the New Testament are given to us to explain the teachings of our Lord in the gospels. What a great help they are to us, because Jesus’ words are so concise that they require considerable unfolding and explanation.
EPHESIANS 5: 1-14
May 17, 2009
Exordium: This passage takes your breath away-listen to how it starts again. “Become imitators of God.” What an order that is!
He thinks of us as His children (and we are). Every father wants his children to be like him. The best way to honor your parents is to imitate their good qualities. And God wants that too, only He wants us to be that for His glory, not ours. Many folk would like to have God’s praise or power, but our imitation is that He may be exalted not ourselves.
This is the very thing, for which God made us-to be after His likeness. Is it not the reason Christ died for us-that He might have us as members of His family and bring us to glory in His likeness?
Ephesians 4: 25-32
May 10, 2009
Exordium: Another “therefore.” They seem to outline the book, especially the last half where we are learning how our beliefs are to affect our everyday lives.
We saw the connection we did have with Adam and how it has been left behind in our new connection with the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that we are His, the old is done away and all things have become new, and our living is to display this newness of life.
We are students now in Christ’s school where we are learning Christ and leaving behind the lessons which the culture was trying to teach us. We have seen that God wants us to cultivate the contrast between the old and the new connections; between the school of Christ and the training of the world around us.
EPHESIANS 4: 17-24
MAY 3, 2009
Exordium: In the Bible we have a mirror of ourselves. We see who we are, where we came from, and how we need to change and grow; what we ought to be doing and thinking.
Yet, it is like those clothing stores that give you two or three sides of yourself in the mirrors. God, in this passage, also sets the heathen, the pagans, before us as a mirror in which we can observe what our nature is like not governed by the Holy Spirit.
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