Run-on sentences

 Continuing our journey through Paul's letter to the Christians in Ephesus long ago, we venture into the latter part of what is numbered chapter one. In some of the research I have been doing for our look at this book, I came across a very interesting point. In Ephesians 1, we have the two longest sentences in the entire New Testament. The first one, verses 3-14, consists of over 200 words in Greek! Can you imagine writing a sentence with 200 words? The second longest is verses 15-23, with 169 words in Greek. That is just staggering to think about, or at least for someone like me. Of course, I am a bit of a grammar person and find such things as that fascinating.

What I also find fascinating is how focused Paul is on God and His work in Jesus. When you read through chapter one, you find Paul almost exclusively talking about what God has done, what Jesus has done, and for the Ephesian Christians to know God's work and how that is meant for them. After having Jesus personally confront him on the road to Damascus and re-orient his life to serve Jesus, Paul seems to devote everything to pointing to Jesus. He wants everyone to know the same thing that he came to see: Jesus can take even the most hardened of people against Him and turn them to Him in grace.

It's easy for us to think that Paul had it kind of nice. He got to see Jesus personally after His resurrection and ascension. "If only Jesus would appear to me, then I wouldn't doubt anymore. Then I would be more sure of how I live my life or do what God wants me to do." Such thoughts are easy to intrude, and I would suggest that we should look at such thoughts critically. When Jesus went out of His way to reveal Himself to someone, He usually had a task for them that required a great sacrifice from who they were and what they were previously doing. It also meant that they stopped looking to their own good, and instead looked to the good of others almost to extremes. Think about that for a moment next time you have one of those moments where you wish Jesus would just show Himself to you.

Still, that doesn't take away those momentary doubts that pop up from time to time. We still would like a bit more certainty about what we believe. After all, we believe a dead man came back to life and His death covered everything that is wrong with the world. That is a fairly unbelievable kind of thing, and in fact, it is unbelievable without God's Spirit inspiring faith within us. We only come to believe by God's grace. Humbling, right?

That calls for thankfulness on our part. I'm planning to do another blog post about thankfulness and prayer, and hope that it proves helpful as you read it. For now, though, I encourage you to take a few moments to calm yourself and talk to God, thanking Him that He has called you as His own child in Jesus. 

Kicking off Ephesians

 This summer, I am working on a series of messages on Paul's letter to the Ephesians. For this post, I want to focus on a few interesting items from the letter overall. Future posts will look a little more deeply at different parts of this letter, in an effort to help us grasp the different things that Paul was trying to communicate to the Ephesians about their faith in God and in the grace of God demonstrated in Jesus.

A common theme throughout this letter is how God brings all people who put their faith in Jesus into one body, with Jesus as the Head and the Church (the whole community of those who come to believe in Jesus and His sacrifice and resurrection for them) as Jesus' body. There is a significant unity and togetherness that he makes a big deal out of throughout this letter, and we would be wise to consider what that means for our lives together as Christians. If God is so concerned about our lives together in unity in Jesus, then perhaps that means we should open up our ears to hear what He has to say on it.

One interesting thing about the Ephesian Christians is that they seem to have been Gentiles, or non-Jewish people, primarily. The astonishing thing that Paul writes about is that the promise of God to them is just the same as it is to the Jewish people. At that time, that was an astounding thing to consider. But the grace of God in Jesus meant that God was making all people into one in Christ Jesus, with Jesus at the heart of that unity.

Since that is what God has done for all people, then that means that we have to consider the conduct of our lives. What we do, what we say, how we interact with others, all of these are impacted when we realize that we are included in Jesus' body along with all these other people. There is no place for some of our sinful tendencies, and even when we find ourselves engaging in those tendencies, we respond with grace and kindness and forgiveness, even as we are corrected.

Life together in the body means that we look to place the good of others in just as significant of a place as we do our own. Paul uses a word that we tend not to like a lot, the word submit. As Christians, our whole life is one of submitting to the good of others. Yes, we are still called to be responsible with our own lives, but we are to expand our outlook beyond our own selves, and see what we can do in grace for others.

Because that is such a challenge for us, God gives us significant defenses to equip us for living this kind of life. We are clothed in armor to protect us, and this armor is given by God. 

Since we will be looking over this all summer, we will be diving much deeper into these sections in future weeks. Hopefully this brief summary helps prepare the way for our journey together.