Last week we began a brief journey through Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. Once he was converted, the apostle Paul worked relentlessly to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. Through his letters, his tireless
ministry travels, and his focus on planting new groups of believers everywhere he went, Paul was perhaps the greatest ambassador of Christianity in history.
In the book of Ephesians Paul faithfully reviews the plan of salvation in which he reminds the believers of the contrast between their lives now, and before they accepted Jesus as their Savior. Their status as ‘believers’ placed them not only in a relationship with Jesus, it also meant that they now had a special relationship with each other.
This ‘shared relationship’ actually was what Paul calls ‘the church’ for which he invests a significant effort in providing a definition. He uses at least four metaphors to help describe these relationships. Last week we mentioned the first metaphor for the church as being ‘the body of Christ’’. In this way, Jesus is identified as the head and all of us who have accepted His plan of salvation are collectively part of His body, His physical presence here on earth.
Because of what Jesus has done for us by providing a way to escape our previous condition when we were ‘dead in our transgressions and sins’, we are now transformed into new creatures, made new by His grace. The fact that this gift of salvation is available to the Gentiles (us) as well as those who were called ‘the children of the promise’ is incredibly good news! Praise God that we are now fellow citizens and included along with the people of God.
Pastor Phil
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