David Pawson - Ephesians

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THOUGHTFUL THOUGHTS 27.2.26 BY JOHN DUNNING.

PAUL’s LETTER TO THE “EPHESIANS”.

INTRODUCTION

The church at Ephesus was one of the major churches of that time.

Paul was still in Rome under “house arrest”, when he wrote to the church at Ephesus. (In the same time period that he wrote to the Colossians and Philemon.) 

Paul requested that the believers in Ephesus share this letter with the churches at Laodicea and Hierapolis. (Remember that the believers in Laodicea were told off by Jesus in Revelation 3:14-22).

This letter was not written to address one particular issue, but rather was a “general letter”. The problems were due to a lack of good teachers, so Paul wrote to fill the gap and provide the much needed role of “teacher”. He taught about correct belief and behaviour.

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CONTENT

A). Get the vertical relationship with God right, FIRST.

Paul goes back to basics…
i). We see from Acts 19:1-6 that the church at Ephesus had not received teaching on the Holy Spirit. They had had “believer's baptism”, but didn’t know about the Holy Spirit. So, it fits that Paul talks about “Spiritual gifts”, and “not grieving the Holy Spirit”, in Eph. 4.
ii). In Revelation ch. 2 Jesus says they have lost their love of God. So it fits that in Ephesians 5 Paul talks about walking in love. In the vertical relationship between God and mankind, we are all equal.

Paul is able to say in Galatians 3:28 says “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. That is how God sees us in the vertical relationship. It is God’s vertical view of us in which we are all equal…

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B). Then, with the vertical relationship with God being right, the horizontal relationships come right.

In the horizontal view we have on earth, between men and women, the differences remain. God made men and women, and the difference He made remains. (ie in the context of us relating to each other.) This is spoken of in the second half of Ephesians which talks about our horizontal relationships with each other. You could call it the different ‘behaviour’ men and women must have between each other. Whilst we are all equal before God, we must respect the differences God made between men and women. (This is in line with the two greatest commandments of loving God first and treating others as you want to be treated.)

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So, it is important we get our vertical relationship with God, right, first, because that enables us to get our horizontal relationships right. (ie. Another example is, that just as by putting the vertical relationship with God right, first,

we become able to forgive others because God has forgiven us.) 

a). We are saved BY God first…

b). The outworking of being saved by God, is that we are saved to serve.

So, for example, in the letter to 1 Timothy 1:10, Paul puts slavery alongside a list of other terrible sins that leads to hell. He could say that because God had changed him, just as the ex-slaver, John Newton, came to write “Amazing Grace”, expressing God’s rescue of him from the evil one. I say this because Paul has been falsely accused of endorsing slavery, because he sent Onesimus back to back to his owner, Philemon. 

That is a slur from those who have not done their homework on Paul’s teaching, because Paul said that slavers will go to hell in 1 Timothy.

Although Paul references the problem of slavery in Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon, in the case of the letter to Philemon, Paul dealt with slavery in a way to make the new Christian convert feel so guilty that he released his slave, Onesimus. He went on to become a pillar in the church at Colossae. 

Paul’s method changed history. Wilberforce used Christian teaching to force through legislation in the English Parliament in 1807 to outlaw slavery throughout the whole of the British empire. Because the rest of the world continued on with its slavery, the British government created in 1808, the Royal Navy’s “West African Squadron”, which successfully stopped slave ships of other nations taking slaves from Africa to the Americas, and elsewhere, until they succeeded in stopping slavers in their tracks… That squadron existed until 1920. As a Christian, Wilberforce was influenced by Paul’s teachings and undermined slavery in that way. So followers of Jesus changed the world.

So now, that helps to explain the difference between the vertical and horizontal relationships. First get the vertical relationship correct, which will lead on to getting the horizontal relationship correct.

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If you want to do some more homework on this church, here are some pointers…

a). One of the letters in Revelation 2 is addressed to this church. 

b). We find that the Ephesian Church is written about in Acts 19-20. 

c). Paul wrote the letters we call 1 & 2 Timothy from Rome when Timothy was in Ephesus. So next time we look at Paul’s first letter to Timothy as I suspect that the same courier would take the general letter to the Ephesus church at the same time as Paul wrote to Timothy.

d). St John made a home in Ephesus, so he helped establish that church when not imprisoned on Patmos Island. Ephesus became his base and provided a home there for Mary. (Remember Jesus asked his best friend, John, from the cross to give a home to Mary.)
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EPILOGUE

So, in summary, the first half of Ephesians talks about our vertical relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. You could call it the correct teaching on a personal faith in Jesus Christ. After which, he gets to deal with our horizontal relationships, which can then come right.

Last time I mentioned a biographical film about a South African farmer who became an evangelist after God answered prayer. This is the link to the advertising trailer for that film called “Faith Like Potatoes”...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8YAzrssT8c
Feel free to share the website link to this study…

This is John Dunning signing off from “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.

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