The Epic Poem that Opens Ephesians

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Goal: To hear what God is saying to each one of us through these words he wrote to us

Opening: From, To, Grace & Peace (Shalom) (Charis)
- Paul has added some poetic styling to it
  - holy ones (what if you are not holy) —not about purity, but purpose: dedicated to God
One long sentence, all the way to v.14!!
- Exquisitely constructed jewel of a sentence
- Poetic in it’s structure
  - Would have been read aloud as a public event
  - Sounds resonant in the Greek, with poetic echoes
- I have tried to capture as much as I can of that in the translation
  - I have used color to draw our attention to some of the beauty of balance!

In Christ (or equiv, like in him, or in whom.) How many can you count? 12
- Joined to him, connected with him, our very being united with him
in the heavenly places, not as simple as it sounds, because warfare can take place there (but more in later sermons)
Before we get into the meat, we need to deal with a controversial issue:

Humans are responsible, accountable, and wrong choices can bring penalties.
God is sovereign (the highest authority) and does not just predict the future but destines it.

These seem to be in contradiction, because our minds are finite, and God is outside time
We need to hold both A and B in tension. If we let go of one, we’ll be in error

Hyper-Calvinist (no human choice)
- Don’t need to preach the gospel because all the elect will get saved anyway.
Arminian (no predestination)
- God did his part and hopes the elect will choose him (he peeked into the future and they did)
- You can constantly flip between being Christian and not
Augustinian (African theologian) also called Calvinism
- You have to hold both truths because the Bible teaches them.
- Our finite minds can’t resolve the tension, we just trust!

Preach the Gospel assuming humans can and must make a choice, and we do our best to persuade them
Rest in the joy and security that you were loved and chosen before the foundation of the world and it does not depend on your constant faithfulness.