Living Water Community Church Living Water Community Church

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the body has been uniquely gifted by God. The reason we have been gifted and set apart is firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus. We explored how when Paul talks about Jesus descending to the lower regions of the earth he is really talking about the role Jesus plays as the new Adam. His descent is linked in the passage to His ascent which should point us to His death and resurrection. These are pivotal to Jesus role as the messiah and the new Adam. It is in this role He fulfills God’s command to Adam to subdue and to rule. He currently rules at God’s right hand and God is bringing everything into subjection to Him. One of the key ways He is doing this is through the church. The church has many members and each of those members has an important role to play in the body. It is as the body the work of ministry is accomplished. We are called to build each other up. To equip each other. All of this is achieved through our unity in faith in Christ. We come to maturity through our knowledge of the Son of God and our conformity to His image. The goal then is for us to each point one another to Christ and help each other to be conformed to His image. The whole idea here is to push beyond head knowledge or passive knowledge to relationally knowing Jesus and becoming more like Him.

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the body has been uniquely gifted by God. The reason we have been gifted and set apart is firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus. We explored how when Paul talks about Jesus descending to the lower regions of the earth he is really talking about the role Jesus plays as the new Adam. His descent is linked in the passage to His ascent which should point us to His death and resurrection. These are pivotal to Jesus role as the messiah and the new Adam. It is in this role He fulfills God’s command to Adam to subdue and to rule. He currently rules at God’s right hand and God is bringing everything into subjection to Him. One of the key ways He is doing this is through the church. The church has many members and each of those members has an important role to play in the body. It is as the body the work of ministry is accomplished. We are called to build each other up. To equip each other. All of this is achieved through our unity in faith in Christ. We come to maturity through our knowledge of the Son of God and our conformity to His image. The goal then is for us to each point one another to Christ and help each other to be conformed to His image. The whole idea here is to push beyond head knowledge or passive knowledge to relationally knowing Jesus and becoming more like Him. 

Today we celebrate explicitly the great work of Jesus in overcoming sin, and death by sin, in completing the work of paying for our sin, and rising from the dead. He lived a perfect life and He who new no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We call this transfer of our sin to Jesus propitiation. We became righteous because His righteousness was given to us. We call this transfer of His righteousness to us expiation. Today I want to focus on something which has fallen out of popularity in our world but we must not forget. The fact that we were under the curse of sin and Jesus became a curse for us. This may be most explicitly laid out in our main passage today.

We just finished summarizing how the prayer is a petition for Paul’s readers to be strengthened by the riches of God’s glory through the Holy Spirit. That Jesus may dwell in our hearts through faith. That we would be strengthened to comprehend the immeasurable nature of His love for us. That we would know this love not just in our heads but we would experience it. God calls us to "put up with one another" especially when it is difficult. We strive for unity in the body of Christ. Christ should be first in our hearts and pervasive to us throughout our lives. The Church needs to set her heart on Christ.

We worked through the prayer Paul prays for his readers. He wants them to know the immeasurable riches of God. God gives us these riches for His glory, He does this because He has given us His Son and He sees us in Jesus. All of this is bound up in God’s love for us. This love of God is immeasurable. God has given us all of this so that we can manifest the greatness of God’s glory to all generations. He has called us to be a people who walk by faith. A people who trust in God in all areas. 

We worked through the beginning section of chapter 3. It is a section where Paul takes a short excursion into his role as the apostle sent to the gentiles. He does this immediately after highlighting the new great mystery of how the Jews and gentiles are now one new body of Christ because of Jesus work on the cross. Paul is a minister of the gospel to the gentiles. The church is now the physical manifestation of God’s people on earth. It is through the church that the wisdom of God is being made known not just to men but to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This is all part of God’s eternal purpose realized through the person and work of Jesus. Since Paul sees all of this including his imprisonment as part of God’s plan, he calls on the people he is writing to not lose heart over it. Paul affirms how part of the reason he is in prison is because of their faith. But rather then looking at the situation and losing heart because of it, they should look at how they were counted as being so effecting as followers of Jesus, Paul had to be imprisoned because of them. Instead of losing heart they should see Paul’s imprisonment as their glory. It was a testimony to their effectiveness in promoting the gospel. But the sad truth is the people in Ephesus and the surrounding areas were losing heart and it is probably connected to the problem laid out in the letter to the Ephesians in Revelation. There John writing on behalf of Christ says they had lost their first love for Jesus. Here in Ephesians Paul is encouraging them to look to Jesus and the work He is doing and not be discouraged. Again the calling for christians today is the same as it was to those who received this letter first. We are called to be the witnesses of Jesus in a world which is lost in darkness.