Introduction
Ephesians 1:1-2 · Roger Henderson · Jan 7, 2018
Ephesians (2018-19), No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/410261637307729

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, this is Ephesians, if you hadn't guessed. We have these fancy notebooks. I found this cool picture online, and it had, amazingly enough, it had who we are in Christ, which I thought was amazing. I just Googled it, and I found I did pictures, and it had that. I said, whoa, there's somebody else out there that has an understanding of Ephesians.

So pretty cool. So they're available. It was probably how true. That's very true. So this should be fun. I'm excited. I know Bob and Randy are excited, too. There's just some there's actually so much in this. And if you notice, Bob, I really micromanage this. I got this down to two and three verses that a pop here. So hopefully not 12. No, no, no, no. So we're going to have fun. We're going to have fun. It's great. It's a great. Great book.

So let's see anything else I want to say at the beginning here. You know, actually, I went through and looked. I spent a long time trying to decide how to kind of break it up. And it breaks naturally. We'll see here shortly into two divisions, which we kind of know already from Paul's writings. So it's pretty cool. So let's just kind of dive in here. OK, so we just start with you. I borrowed a chart from Vern here.

Basically, Paul. Paul, he visited Ephesus quite a few times, his second and third missionary journey. Actually, let's pray before we start. Actually, the handouts are coming. We'll pray. I forgot to do that. I got so excited about what's going on here. I'd be glad to pray before we start.

Dear Father, we thank you for our time today, Lord. We thank you for the start of this new year, Lord. We thank you for our opportunity to study your word. We thank you for the marvelous truths that are in Ephesians, Lord. As we go through that, we would be encouraged and strengthened. We would see our Savior as we know that He's talked about and declared in so many ways in Ephesians. Father, we thank you for that declaration by Paul and by your Holy Spirit. Thank you for our time today. In Christ's name, amen.

This chart, I kind of like this chart because it's kind of, I hadn't really thought a whole lot about it, but actually Paul spent, of course he wrote a lot about Ephesus, and he spent several years there. It was during his second, third missionary journey. He spent a total of three years in Ephesus teaching the whole counsel of God. And we're going to get to some of these, we haven't gotten to those quite yet. And there's a long discourse in Acts directed to believers. that's talked about.

And I just put some pictures in here that were in the arrow right there. There's Ephesus. Corinth is over here. So we spent a long time hanging out over here the last couple of years. And now we're moving across the water there to the Ephesus here. And here's the ruins. Have you guys visited Ephesus? We have. We spent a whole day. Oh wow, what a neat place. It looks pretty cool. I looked at some of the pictures that are available. It's pretty cool stuff. And the amphitheater. Yes, we saw the amphitheater. We have some pictures in front of the amphitheater. And they've now done new renovations.

Excavations, thank you. Of new areas that they hadn't even found even 10 years ago. Now with new type of GPS stuff they've been able to find. It does seem to be the case where they're actually across the board in Israel. There's a fairly sophisticated history in Ephesus. Some of the more interesting constructions were houses that actually had plumbing. They actually had toiletry and drainage. Yeah, it was really pretty amazing. On the negative side, it was a very immoral place, very pagan.

But what's interesting is, as has been observed before, Paul doesn't even go there. He mentions it indirectly, but he goes right to who Christ is and what he's done. We kind of thought as elders this year, with the three classes that are being taught, Ephesians, Romans, and then the riches of God's grace, which actually there's a whole bunch that are in here that Vern's going to use. Let's focus on where Paul started. Why don't we start there for this new year? Let's start on who Christ is and what he's done. That's a wonderful place to start. I borrowed a couple of paragraphs here and there from different folks.

Paul wrote Ephesians along with Colossians and Philemon and Philippians. They're called their prison epistles. He actually was in prison more than one time. He was in prison in Rome, which is where he wrote this. During this time, he was under house arrest. He lived in his own rented quarters. I wasn't able to verify the validity of every single statement here, but I used Constable quite a bit. It seemed to be pretty accurate. So Paul mentions the fact that he's in prison.

So let's read a couple of these. I'm going to read Ephesians. 3-1 and someone else pick Ephesians 4-1. Ephesians 3-1, Ephesians 4-1. For this cause I Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles. Does someone have 4-1? Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. Okay. So how does, from those two verses, actually 620 has a little bit more, how does Paul, just from, how does he view himself being, his imprisonment? Is he ranting and raving against Rome? Is he, so who is he a prisoner of, according to those verses? Well he's, I get the impression that he's, a prisoner but he's relishing being a prisoner because of Christ and in Christ. That he's in prison because of his relationship with Christ and it's okay.

He says in Ephesians 3.1, he's a prisoner of Christ. He doesn't say he's a prisoner of Rome. He's not a prisoner of Nero.

Can you imagine in today's world People are put in prison for various things, some rightly, some wrongly maybe. And most times they're not, they're probably not too happy with the prison situation. They're always innocent. And they're always upset with the prison situation.

Paul doesn't, you know, and then actually in 4.1 he says he's a prisoner of the Lord. I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I'm a prisoner of the Lord. So his view is totally different. So actually with that in mind, I kind of, in fact I'll just go through this. Macaulay had some great statements here, kind of what we just talked about. He viewed it as the sovereignty of God. He trusted that it was the will of God he was there. He was a prisoner of Christ, not a Nero. It was no disadvantage, Margaret, exactly what, you know, no disadvantage to Paul.

It gave him an opportunity to reflect deeply upon the nature of the Church and its relationship with Christ. And what's interesting is, as Macaulay points out, The most Christological books, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, are all prison epistles. Think of yourself, sometimes in the hardest times, that's when you learn the most about the Lord. That's when you come to understand the most about him.

I thought that was a pretty cool starting point for this. I have an outline here. Which is I use McCauley quite a bit in this presentation. This is the outline. I tried to fill in some things, some details to it. We have a problem. Houston. No, no, we don't. No, we don't. Let's do it here.

Too many white spaces. It was scaring me there. You know, if you build charts, you guys to build charts, you know, you you expect them to come up in a certain order. And when you do a click and something comes up and you didn't expect it, you say, well, something went wrong. Well, this case, it's just I got too many white spaces in this chart.

Basically, this is a very simple division of the book. We have the greetings in verses 1 and 2, which we're going to cover today. We have the benediction in verses 23 and 24. In between that, very simply, in the first three chapters we have what are the implications of our faith in Christ. And then secondly, in the second half of the book, what are the applications of our faith in Christ.

That's a very simplistic look at this. The details of that, you could call the first part, number two here, implications are doctrine. There's going to be doctrine, there's going to be information for believers about who they are and who Christ is. And the second part is going to be how do I counterpoint, how do I utilize that information to live my Christian life. So you can put a variety of words in. Macaulay chose implication and applications. I'm going to break down the center two parts now. Okay, implication.

What's pretty cool here, the first three through fourteen, we have the greeting, in fact we haven't read that yet, we'll read it shortly. We have the greeting and then three through fourteen is one long sentence in the Greek. I had a sharp belt that had this one long sentence in there and I kept looking at it and I underlined sections and I said, This is just going to be too hard. So I decided just to talk to it. Because otherwise, you get kind of immersed in all the words. But it's one long sentence. But what's cool is, and I had not seen this before, there's a marking off of that one long sentence. And I'll just kind of warn you, your Bibles will not have one long sentence. Your Bibles will have some commas in there. It will end. Certain parts will end as a sentence, and those sentences will start.

So it doesn't really reflect this one long sentence, but what's cool is, I think it's going to talk about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it's going to mark off, Paul's going to give praise to the Father, he's going to give praise to the Son, he's going to give praise to the Holy Spirit. And someone has kind of encapsulated that with saying this, he's going to say, in the first section, the Father chose us, The Son redeemed us and the Holy Spirit sealed us. And that's very simplistically again what we're going to see. But immersed in that, we're going to see all these truths about ourselves, about who we are. So let's just look quickly here.

Could someone read Ephesians 1.6? And this is the end of the first little section.

Ephesians 1.6.

Do the praise of the glory of His grace which he freely bestowed on us and beloved." So that's the end of the first section and it starts off with God and Father are Lord Jesus Christ in verse 3 and it kind of goes all the way down and it comes to the praise of the glory of his grace.

He's exalting the Father for what he's done. He's chosen us and there's a bunch of other cool things and Bob's going to talk about those next week and so is Randy's next week. There's just all those cool things in there but at the end of that he says to the praise of the glory of his grace. And that's speaking of God the Father. Did someone read verse 112? That we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ.

Okay. So, once again, he's praising the Son for his redeeming us. And it ends in verse 12 there. And then lastly, it's going to be in 14, which Lonnie pointed out to me. I usually go over this with Lonnie if I have a chance. I got to do it last night. It was cool. Because I'm going to read 13 and 14. 1, 13, 14.

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession. to the praise. So here the Holy Spirit is being praised. So it's really cool. When you go back in there again, boy there's this other truth. I didn't see that before.

So Paul gives praise to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in those three through fourteen. But immersed in there, he's not talking about us, all the blessings that we have. But he doesn't forget what's the source of these. The source is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they each have different ministries. Again, the Father chose us, the Son redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit sealed us. So that's just through 14.

Prayer the prayer of Paul for the Saints and some part. I didn't really amplify a whole lot You know this talks about he's praying for the us Believers at the very end of that he has that wonderful section at the very end of of that He talks he exalts Christ, and that's a wonderful part of that and now now this chapter 2 is cool and truths about what we were and what we are. He's going to use this approach, we were this, we were dead in trespasses and sins, and now we're alive together in Christ. He's going to use that approach. So as I mentioned, verse 5 says we were dead in our transgressions and sin, made us alive together with Christ. Verse 13 says you were formerly far off, having been brought near by the blood of Christ. 19, no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints.

So just a wonderful section. A lot of meat in there, a lot of wonderful things. And then he gets down to chapter 3, and this maybe is an oversimplification, or actually there's a lot more meat in there than just the mysteries of the church. Just for example, down toward the end in verse 10 there, 3.10, it talks about God the Father and the riches of his grace. He talks about the love of Christ. We can't comprehend it.

Just because I have this one little title, there's so much more that's kind of buried in there. But this is kind of the introduction, the overview we're doing here. We're going to get into all the details here. So this is really the first. This is going to talk about our position in Christ, who we are.

But in the midst of that, Paul doesn't forget the source of that. I really like the fact that he praises the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's something that I hadn't seen before. Any questions or thoughts about this? We're going to go into our Christian walk in the next section. And you're allowed to ask questions in this class. So Roger, can you put this into chronological perspective? OK. And why did Paul write this epistle of relationship to where he was spiritually? OK. All right.

Well, why did I actually I didn't go down that road. If you have some, you know, you want to share something with that. I really didn't. And actually people are trying to do that. Like and I agree with you. Like you look at Romans. And you look at 5, 6, and 7, and you see 7 looks like, some people say, Paul didn't even write 7, Roman 7. Well, that's kind of strange. But 8 looks like he came to understanding. Where that fits in with his total ministry, I'm not sure, but it certainly is.

We know, for example, he was writing several of these epistles at the same time, or in the same imprisonment. Like I mentioned before, so you could go back and look at Philippians and Colossians. In fact, Merrill Byrne did this 10 years ago. He did a study where he compared Colossians and Ephesians. So from that perspective, you can kind of look at that comparison there. When you get something like that, it's approximately 68. Right. Right.

This was written and it was it was. Geographically, when you look at the flow of it, the journey would come in Edict of Ephesus, and then you would come into Philippi, and then Colossae, and you'd come in. But there's a whole bunch of stuff, like his letters to Timothy and Titus come after this. This would be Acts chapter 28. Right, exactly. You alluded to that. One thing I would say, you said that Paul was under house arrest. It's Acts 28, 23. The Roman leaders say, we'll come visit you at your house. Yeah, I know.

But we haven't gotten any letters to explain why you're here. So he's under house arrest because they don't know what to do with him. They can't send him free. Well, that's the point. That's the question that Bonnie had. We went through this. What was he in jail for? Well, it seems like it got there and they said, well, we're just going to keep you. I mean, I don't know. It was uncertain why he did. But he said, we're going to let him go. So he had the minimal amount of supervision, if you will.

So, you know, my thoughts, along with what Randy was saying, is that prisoner pistols were all written at about the same time. I don't know chronologically which was first, but I mean, The epistle to Romans was before this in terms of my best understanding.

You know, the epistle to Galatians preceded Romans. I mean, it's kind of like Paul first had to deal with this log race issue before he really matured enough to really see how the log race issue applied, i.e. Romans and Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians. And then these epistles seem to follow that. Of course, the epistles to the Thessalonians and Timothy were later. So anyway, I just thought it might be interesting to see where Paul was at. So Paul had already done Romans before he did these epistles.

It is amazing, and his focus here is so much on our position and so much focus on the heavenlies. It's been said about Ephesians that it's from the heavenlies to the homilies, which I'm not sure what homilies exactly means, but I get the impression it's down in our daily lives. home life that goes from the exalted position in the heavenlies with Christ down to the Shiva that we walk every day and every problem we have. And the idea here is that we learn from who we are and we take that and that that's how we live our life by knowing who we are. OK. Actually, according to the scope of my correction, the epistles to the Thessalonians occurred much before Romans. So I know. I think it's important to really realize that Galatians was before all of these. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, I don't know.

Okay, so here we are in our position. Now we're going to look at the shoe leather part. He calls it applications, our walk. So there's like five things here I want to have. Our unity. So this is how the Christian life... So Paul's giving us... Instruction here. How are we to live out the Christian life?

First point is unity. Being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Maturity. We are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is head, even Christ. I'm not giving you more to go on than this. These are one-liners. I want you to see the big picture. Our conduct.

So our conduct is that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk. This all makes sense. If you have the life of Christ, you're not going to want to walk like your Gentile friend. Well, of course, we all have Gentile friends. We are the Gentiles. The unsaved Gentiles.

Let's do that. Our relationship. This is a wonderful section. I just chose the first verse here. Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Then it goes on that wonderful section about the family. Husbands, love your wives. Wives, respect your husbands, children obey your parents, and so on. And then our conflict, this is what's called the spiritual battle section. Be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might.

So very quickly, through the last three chapters, that's kind of a bird's eye view. Unity, maturity, conduct, relationships, and conflict. Okay, so that's actually, so we're all done. Not quite. We're just starting here. So this is kind of the overview, the outline. We're going to go on and we're going to look at verses one and two now, mostly verse one. We're going to spend the rest of time in verse one. OK, so we'll just go ahead then. So actually, I want to show you something here.

This maybe is a little bit geeky, but I actually, there are so many great helps for Ephesians. It's just one of what's been studied well. I actually have, you remember back when Hal would diagram. I actually have every sentence diagrammed, and it's available. I'll share it with you guys too, or anybody who wants it. It's in Greek, so you have to translate each word to English. So if you do that, which isn't hard, you do it quickly.

But what they point out here is that in these two verses, there's actually some possible missing main verbs. And it kind of shows you the greeting style of that time period. So the verse one reads, Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are at Ephesus. We'll talk about that little bracket thing in a bit. Who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Then, as with a lot of Greeks, the main verb will actually come at the end of the sentence, which seems kind of strange. To our ear, you'd like the verb to come in the middle of the sentence. Jack hit the ball. Hit is a verb. But in Greek, they'll put the main verb down here.

So this would read, greetings would go up there and that would say basically, Paul and Apostle Christ Jesus by the will of God to the Saints who are at Ephesus who are the faithful in Christ Jesus. Greetings. And we see examples of that structure in other opening passages. In James we see that. It has at the end greetings and an axe. It shows that.

We come down to the grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So the one here is, this is the one be multiplied to you, be yours in the fullest measure. So just interesting parts that this greeting was typical of a lot of other ones, but there's other things they would add in there. So both these verses 1 and 2 don't have a main verb.

It's just kind of understood. So one of the points I want to talk to though is this at Ephesus. We're going to talk to it a little bit later, but basically a lot of the early manuscripts He just says three, which sounds like only a few, but those were some of the key ones. Don't have the at Ephesus words in there. Actually, it would just be a blank.

And the thought is you could write in the name of the church. You could write in Corinthian church. You could write in Philippian church, or whatever church it is. You could write in Holly Hills. So it makes it very, very up to date. You write in the name of the church. This epistle is two. the church at Holly Hills, and so on. So that's pretty cool. This chart is kind of just talking to that idea here. So let's go on here. Okay, verse one.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. So it follows the pattern. This is another thing, if you look through all these introductions, Paul had 13 letters. If you look through all these, you'll see there's a pattern. Author, title, authority. And it wasn't just Paul, I think it was kind of the culture. So Paul's the author. His title is Apostle of Christ Jesus. And his authority is by the will of God.

And we see that pattern if you look in Colossians 1.1, it's exactly that.

And 2 Corinthians 1.1, it's exactly that.

Corinthians 1.1 has a little extra information in those. So Paul, we're going to go through each word here.

Paul had two names. His Hebrew name was Saul, which means ask for or pray. Gentile name was Paul, which means small. And some have said, well, if you look at what we understand about Paul, he actually was kind of a small person. So some think it was kind of, maybe that's why I got the name Paul. Of course, we see in scripture, Paul is you.

So I'm not sure I totally understand. Okay, Apostle. This is kind of cool. Apostle is one cent forth. It's kind of nice to see, when you look at words, you try to do word studies, it's kind of nice to see how is this word used in other contexts. The word apostle is used of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's look at that. It's used when we talk about our Savior.

Can someone read Hebrews 3.1? Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. So it kind of gets you focused on don't think so much of apostles. We think of apostles as being the twelve. The first thought we think is the twelve. Well, no, scripture says apostle is a sent one.

And certainly Jesus Christ was a sent one. That was the agreement between God the Father and God the Son. That he would come and die for our sins and be raised on the third day. So he was a sent one. The twelve were sent as well. And then Paul, as mentioned above. But interestingly enough, Barnabas, Saul, Silas, and Timothy, they're all called Apostles too.

So the words are literally, Apostle is one sent forth. So that's the word Apostle. So the noun Apostle is strengthened by, like I mentioned, of Jesus Christ and by the will of God. So by the will of God, Is dia by or because of? I did the same thing here. Here are several things that are mentioned in the scripture that are by the will of God. Apostleship is one we just read about.

Coming to you in Romans 1.10 is talked about as by the will of God. Your sanctification. and those who suffer are those who suffer according to the will of God.

So we see that Paul was an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and that's consistent with God's plan and his purpose. And then after we get to that point we're going to see, and this is where we get the greedy part here. So if we had it in English, we'd put the greetings right after this comment. We'd say, greetings. It would say, Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Greetings. And now we're going to talk about, well, who's this letter to? It's to the saints who are at Ephesus. So we'll spend a little time. OK. So first of all, saints. So saints here, it's in the plural. What's interesting, it's always in the plural in Ephesians. And that's kind of significant because it is talking about a group of people. Use of believers.

It was first used in Acts 9.13 and then it's used nine times in Ephesians.

So what's your thought when you hear the word saint or saints? What's your first thought? Now if you come from a background of maybe certain churches, you'll think of that as being St. Paul, St. Peter, you'll think of those kind of people, right? But scripture really talks about saints as being any believer, basically. I think that's important to keep in mind. Saints, and it's in the plural, is believers.

So I borrowed a paragraph here. The word signifies one set apart to God, The emphasis is upon the idea of purposeful possession. Saints comprise a class of people who reside on this earth, but bear a special relationship to the Lord, as belonging to Him and living for Him. So now, actually, I kind of changed horses right here in the middle of the stream, so to speak. I want to go to the ephesus statement.

So just I kind of mentioned that it was it was believed that this was used because it was going to be a circular letter. So what I have here is how the word reads and some of these translations, these three early manuscripts, it reads to the saints, which are at blank. and faithful. If you notice, who are, it's been supplied. So it just reads, so if you look at the Greek, you'll see the text, it's just, that's blank. There's nothing there. So you write in the name of the church that was addressed to for that time period. It's a generic letter. Exactly. That's the idea.

Now, not every single person agrees with that, to be fair, but it seems like that's the strongest indication. But Roger, deal a little bit with the will of God. Is this the generic will of God or is this a specific will of God? Is there a generic will of God? Yeah, I think there is. I totally do. So are you saying, help me out a little bit.

Is this, you know, by the will of God, is this letter being written specifically to Ephesus or in fact is the will of God to in terms of Paul's life as an apostle of Jesus Christ, to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, and part of that is in fact directing this truth to the saints at Ephesus. It certainly was primarily to Ephesus, but it seems like the intent was to pass it along, from what I understand, to other churches. It was to be a generic letter to the churches that he was ministering to. But I think it was primarily, it seems like, to the church at Ephesus. I'm not sure I agree with that. Well, you have some company. I think the will of God is about Paul. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God. Would you agree that introduces who he is, right? That's talking to who's this to, right?

We have two to the saints who are at But the will of God is for Paul in his new nature and ultimately by being conformed is also addressing the saints at Ephesus. I think you can overly spiritualize stuff but the will of God is as Paul is an apostle of Christ. It's not necessarily directed to the saints. Paul to the Saints who are at Festivus. So by the way, Paul is being described as an apostle of Christ by the will of God. It seems to me that the will of God is Paul.

It's not the Saints. It's a letter that's being written to the Saints. I don't quite understand your concern. Maybe we should talk later. I believe that describes who Paul is, his credentials, who he is by the will of God, and then here's who the letter is to. There's no question about that, who the letter is to. I'm only just questioning by the will. What's the will of God? You're trying to connect the will of God to the fact that at Ephesus may or may not be there. Is that what you're saying? I'm saying the apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God is describing Paul. Absolutely. Not the letter. No, but he disagrees with that. No, I agree with that. We agree with that. So if you do, let's go on. Alright, so this last part I think is pretty important.

Who are the faithful? So this is going to describe the saints, right? Would you agree with that? To the saints who are at Ephesus and, the word who are has been supplied, faithful in Christ Jesus. OK, faithful. So here's this is interesting. Faithful has the word pistachios, which is you somewhat familiar with studying like believe or faith. So it's a common word used for for believing, trusting, relying. But it can be used in two senses to be used in a passive sense, which means to describe like describing God. God is a faithful God.

Like, if you read in 1 Corinthians 1.9, you'll see it says, God is faithful. And it goes on. It's describing God's character. And then it talks about believers.

Like in Colossians 1.7, it says, there are faithful servants of Christ Jesus. So it could be used in that sense, describing an attribute of that person. Or it can be used in the active sense, Believing, trusting, relying. And here it's used like it says Abraham the faithful or Abraham the believer. So the question is, how is it being used here?

What's the meaning in this passage? It says, you are faithful in Christ Jesus. Is it the active sense? Is it the passive sense? Is it both? So I found this kind of an interesting question. That definition is right out of Bynes. If you go to Bynes, open your Bynes up or go to your computer. Bynes has a passive definition and he has the active definition.

So. So in this passage, what do you think? So it's not. There's no. What am I trying to say? There's there's no. No way in the Greek that you know which which one is being used by to my understanding is not the article or anything like that. But it's the data case. So which would be like of the way you translate that in certain cases. So those who are of faith in Christ Jesus would be the way I would translate that.

And that actually I've seen that. But does that tell you whether it's passive or active? The of? I would say it's active. Yeah. I guess my first thought is that I would think that it seems like you're not active. I mean I would think it's an active. Well I'll give you I'll give him a call. McCauley isn't the provider of all truth.

This is just this is his opinion. Right. He says I like both statements whether they apply here. The question one obtains a position in Christ by trusting him. I guess no one in this room would disagree with that. So is it saying that? It's basically saying the faithful, the one who are the faithful in Christ Jesus, describes that he's trusted in Christ. He's a believer. The second possibility would be one who is in Christ should be trustworthy and dependable. And that's also true, right? We expect that a believer says he has the life of Christ in him. So Macaulay takes the path, well it could be either.

I'm kind of with Randy. I think that the primary focus is talking about believers. Believers in Christ Jesus. That makes the most sense to me. So that's how I kind of came down on that. All right. I would argue that you could have used a different case. Paul was pretty savvy with this. Right.

Despite not being his first language. And actually there was another little path I could have gone down here. It was a little more geeky and I didn't go down that path. And I said, because somebody else had that and and they questioned whether that should be in. And they had they had something like over something else in there. And I thought, well, I really understand this. I didn't do it.

So there are some people that try to nail it down, like you said. Well, is he talking about believers that have trusted in Christ? Is that what he's talking about? Or is he talking about people who are just the faithful one, an attribute of a believer? Right. Yeah, I would say, I don't know, but I would say he's talking more about the active. Right. And I would agree with you. That's what I think, too. OK, so now we come to the cool part.

In Christ Jesus. You've all been waiting for this, I know. Well, this statement begins a long series, and as we know, if you've been around Holly Hills for a while, the In Christ or In Him marks off a set of truths that are just unique to Paul's writing. And he uses that in a tremendous number of ways.

So we're going to look at this a little bit. So what does that prepositional phrase mean? in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? We're going to attempt to answer that. That's the goal of the next couple of charts, to answer that question. But what do you think? If someone says, Randy, what does in Christ Jesus mean? Or Bob, or Margaret, what does that mean? I hear you guys in Holly Hills talking about being in Christ, or in Him. What does that mean?

It's positional. Okay, that's good. I like that. Very specifically, I would probably go to Colossians chapter 3 and say, Paul has said we're in Christ there, but he describes what that entails specifically. He says we're in Christ, seated with him in the heavenly places. And Romans 6. Exactly. That's good. That's cool. That's exactly what...

So I didn't exactly go that way, but we're going to get there. It's the same. It's the same information. Same information. OK. So and I am in the Greek is Ian. It seems kind of strange. I'm also saying, you know, it's a primary preposition denoting a fixed position in place, time or state. And grammatically, I'm this. So I'm a little bit weak on it's in the locative case, which you could say. And I kind of like this. And I think we've used this. In union with Christ, it would be another way of saying, in Christ, I'm in union with Him.

Boy, that really helps me. That helps me get a feel for what that... I'm in union with Him. Boy, that's... Remember how he would do this? I don't know. He put his fingers in. I'm in union with Christ. And that can't... He takes his fingers and I can't... I can't break that. It's impossible to break that apart.

I'm in union with Christ. So, I like to say, even better than that, amplify them even more, since Christ is alive, seated at the right hand of God, we are in a living union with Christ Jesus. I think it's even stronger and even better. I have a little picture, this is not unique to me, and it's not a very fancy picture either.

We're engulfed, I think of the verse in Colossians 3.3, hidden with Christ in God. just describes our wonderful and living union with Christ Jesus. Macaulay says, the prepositional phrase, in Christ, is the most fundamental expression in the New Testament for what it means to be a Christian. I found Macaulay had some just outstanding statements. This is one of the ones I really liked. When you come to understand the significance of being in Christ, it's a fundamental thing.

If you miss that, If you miss that you're in a living union with Christ, you miss so much. You're going to live a Christian life that's totally different than you will live if you believe that you are in a living union. And scripture says that. Yeah, I looked back at this once in terms of prepositions that related to the believer in Christ or for Christ, and it was like, I don't recall accurately, 155 or something in Christ or in him versus 454 Christ.

The idea that we're here to do things for him. And most of the four Christs are actually in the gospel accounts, meaning the synoptic gospels. So anyway, I mean, that just gives you the importance of what... Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. what's being said.

The in Christ statements about believers are called positional truths. I took a crack at this. Here's a summary of positional truths. Positional truths describe our living union with Christ. Positional truths describe our new history in Christ. Our brother Mike says that many times and I believe that is a wonderful way to look at it. Positional truths never change or are ever lost. Positional truth is discovered only in the word of God. positional truth is independent of our feelings and emotions. But I will say this, even though they are, even though they're only found in scripture, they're independent of our feelings and emotions, once you come to realize what they are, it makes a huge difference to your feeling and emotions. I mean huge.

Even though we can't say that I get the feeling that I'm in Christ, I feel like I'm in Christ. Well, the Lord doesn't say, I want you to know that. Your intellect is to be involved. You want to know that you're in Christ, not that you feel like you're in Christ. After you know you're in Christ, the feelings will be there.

Lord, I can't believe it. I'm seated with you in heavenly places as you read more about being in Christ. McCauley had a definition which I hadn't seen before. It's the body of truth that tells us of the facts and significance of our union with Christ. Pretty simple, straightforward. I liked it. OK, I think it reflects our citizenship. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, there's more you can fill in here. But this is this is, you know, some key points.

And then we actually have the last verse raised to you in peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the same same as we'll see in Romans one, seven, probably other places, too. I didn't really Remember we always notice in scripture grace always precedes peace. There can be no peace without grace. And it's from our God and Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I'll leave you with one last little paragraph here. This is by Constable. In associating these names together as the Apostle does, the conclusion is inescapable that the Lord Jesus must be very God and very God himself, possessing co-eternality with God the Father, the same essence that is Deity. So that's the first two verses. Bob's going to teach next week, Randy follows him, so we're just going to go through little gems by gems.

Let's close. We thank you, Father. Thank you so much, Lord, for our time today, Lord. Thank you for just the marvelous truths we have in Ephesians, Lord, just the wonderful statements about you, Lord, and our relationship to you, like being in you, being hidden with Christ and God, and just amazing truths that we are to understand and believe. We ask it in his name. Amen.