I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 4-6

Paul continues discussing the unity those who follow Christ should seek and experience.  He goes on to explain how we can truly enter into that unity and avoid the divisiveness which the world is constantly trying to inject into Christ’s Body.  He begins by pointing out that Christ has only one Body, and the Spirit which binds it together is One being.  Christ has given the Church, His Body, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers for the purpose of building us up in unity, knowledge, and faith.  As we are built up in Christ, we will become more mature.  That maturity will lead us to avoid living in lust and deception.

That transition happens when we allow God’s Spirit to transform our thoughts and attitudes.  I find it interesting that even though Paul wrote of the destructiveness of lust and immorality, he starts the list of behaviors which we must allow to be transformed by telling us that we must stop lying to our neighbors.  He follows that immediately by telling us not to allow anger to control us.  If we allow anger to control us, we will sin.  It is only after reviewing several other behaviors that Paul comes back to reminding us that sexual immorality, impurity, and greed will create division in the Church. We must carefully examine our lives and do what please God, rather than allowing those things to fester within us.  Our human tendency is to attempt to rule over each other.  We must resist that tendency and allow God’s Spirit to transform us into those who submit to one another out of service to Christ.  Above all, we must recognize that our enemies are not human foes.  In fact, humans are never the enemies of those who serve the Lord.  Rather, the enemies of those who are members of Christ’s Body are the unseen rulers and spirits of this world.  They cannot be defeated using human weapons and methods.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 1-3

Paul makes several wonderful points in today’s passage.  Paul writes that God has revealed His plan to us, a plan which had been kept secret until Jesus came.  That plan is to bring all things together under the authority of Christ.  God began that plan by uniting all of those who put their faith in Christ into one body, despite the many divisions between them which the world has imposed upon them.  The world continually attempts to divide us into different groups, Jew and Gentile, Black and White, etc.  We must reject such divisions and accept God’s unity.  Despite the attempts by the world to thwart God’s plan, He makes everything work together to forward that plan.  God will use the attempts by the world to divide us to unite us in Him.

I was going to go on to something else, but I had to step away for a moment and I lost my train of thought.  I re-read the passage hoping the thought would come back to me, but I just saw more emphasis from Paul on the unity of the Body of Believers.  That is not entirely true, he also wrote again about the fact that we do not and cannot earn our salvation, that we can only be saved by putting our faith in God’s grace.  Then, as I reviewed the passage to wrap up today’s blog, I came upon Paul’s reminder of God’s power.  As I came to the end, I was reminded of the power of prayer, which always challenges me because I do not pray as much as I should.  The reason that prayer is so important is because God’s power is at work within us and prayer allows us to connect with that power.  The power of God within us is able to do more than we can ask, or even imagine.  Let us strive to become conduits of that power so that we might see God’s plan implemented around us.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 4-6

Paul writes that we should strive to live in unity with other believers.  However, that unity will result as we become mature in Christ so that we are no longer tossed about by every new teaching.  We should not live as the unbelievers around us live.  He warns us that society around us is hopelessly confused.  Our unity as believers should come from our insistence on sticking with the teachings which Jesus and Scripture present.  Every generation will face those who present lies cleverly contrived to appear as truth.  We can avoid falling for such lies by imitating God, which means living a life filled with love.  Love does not mean telling people they will be OK no matter what they do.  Love means warning people that they will hurt themselves if they partake in self-destructive behavior. 

I find it enlightening that when Paul sums up the things we must avoid his list always contains sexual immorality, impurity, and greed.  He often adds other things to his list, but these three are always there.  In fact, the other things which he adds are really just subcategories of one of these.  In this very passage he talks about not being a thief, which would come from being greedy.  He talks about not using foul and abusive language, which would be a subset of impurity.  We could follow how the actions which Paul warns against are expressions of greed, impurity, or sexual immorality, but I think you get the point.  However, Paul does not just warn us against certain types of behavior, he encourages us in appropriate behavior.  As opposed to foul and abusive language, everything we say should be good and helpful.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.  

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 1-3

I realized as I read today that when Paul wrote that he prayed for those to whom he wrote this letter he actually prayed for all who would read it.  He prayed that Christ would make His home in our hearts.  Which reminds me of a lesson I heard several people teach from this passage.  If Christ makes His home in our heart we should think about the other things we allow into our hearts.  Sort of like the sorts of things we would allow in our homes if we knew we had special guests coming who would move around our home as if they lived there.  Most of us have things in our homes that we would get rid of if we knew someone we truly cared about and wanted to impress was moving into our homes with us.  In a similar way, we should not allow into our hearts things which we would be embarrassed to have seen by someone we want to think highly of us. 

This seems like an impossible task.  There are so many sins which I struggle to resist and parts of my life which I am too lazy to clean up.  Yet, Paul tells us that God’s power is at work with in us and that He is able to more than we can ask, or even imagine.  Not only is God capable of doing more than we can imagine, He is capable of doing infinitely more than we can imagine.  The thing about what I wrote about cleaning out our hearts because Christ is making His home there is that we have rooms there where we want to close the door and tell Him, “Don’t go in there. It’s a mess. Wait until I can get in there and clean it out.”  And Christ’s responds by saying, “Don’t be silly.  Get on with your life, I will clean it out for you.”  If we listen to Him and get on with our life of doing God’s will, He really will clean out those dirty, messy rooms in our heart so that we next go in there all that nasty, ugly stuff we were embarrassed for anyone to see will be gone.  We can never clean those “rooms” out on our own.  When we go in there we get distracted by something and make the mess worse.  When I started this paragraph, I intended to write about prayer, and, in a way, I did.  One of those things we should be busy doing instead of trying to clean our hearts is praying for others.