Bible in a Year Series - Day #350 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to join along at any time.
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Ephesians
The book of Ephesians brings us two significant understandings that were ushered into being with the coming of Messiah:
- Through the substitutionary death of Messiah on the cross, Yahweh has provided a way of reconcilation to all who might place their faith in him.
- Christ has united people of all nations to himself through the institution of the church, the body of Christ.
As you plumb the depths of these statements, there are great mysteries found.
Consider, for example, these five doctrinal statements found in this letter to the Ephesians:
- All people are by nature spiritually dead, transgressors of God's law, and under the rule of Satan.
- God predestined his elect to redemption and holiness in Christ according to the free counsel of his will.
- God's rich mercy in Christ has saved sinners; this free gift is by grace through faith alone.
- Christ's earthly work of redemption was part of his cosmic reconciliation and exaltation in this age and the next.
- Christ's reconciliation entails uniting all people, whether Jew or Gentile, into his one body, the church, as a new creation.
These statements do not play so well in our post-modern, syncretic culture.
Try and tell one of your non-Christian friends that he/she is spiritually dead, a transgressor of God's holy laws, under the rule of Satan and that the only way out of this eternally condemned predicament is through the graceful election (choosing of God) of them and at the same time through their repentance and true faith in Christ.
Can you see why the world is so appauled at the message of the gospel? These things are not easily digested and generally dismissed as the rumblings of a fool and bigot.
Nonetheless, there it is, and each of us must personally make a decision about these things.
Trust me, I have spent the better part of four years wrestling with these things.
But:
- I believe in a Creator, not a big bang and a random ordering of primordial cells.
- I believe that the Old Testament is a reliable document, faithfully preserved by our Jewish friends, and that the New Testament is a reliable recording of the Apostles teachings from the time of Messiah's coming.
These two facts alone cause a great many to stop in their tracks, let alone the great head scratching that will come if you can put these two things squarely in your belief system and start reading what the Bible has to say.
Furthermore, if you begin to take the teachings of the Bible seriously, your friends will begin to look at you as though you have been drinking a strange form of Kool-Aid. Further still, some will tell you, as I have been told, "I don't want to hear about this stuff from you".
And then, if all that weren't enough, people will begin to judge you by a general cultural layer of misconception and when you falter, as you certainly will, then you will be judged a hypocrite or one lacking real faith.
Isn't that all special?
The journey continues.
Up next, Paul's letter to the Philippeans.
