a Pauls Mystery stated - part 1
Ephesians 3:1-6a · Randy Peterman · May 27, 2018
Ephesians (2018-19), No. 19
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261910175661

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

So I have some things written on the whiteboard. We'll get to them as we go through the lesson. Some of it will become real obvious real fast and some of it maybe not so much. This morning we are going to start chapter 3 looking at verses 1 through 6. I actually will also be teaching next week and picking up seven through nine.

And the thing that's interesting here is, as Roger and I were discussing briefly before the class started, if they had asked me where they should put the break in the chapters, I would have kept going. This would be like chapter two still. And then I would have put the break between verses 13 and 14.

But they didn't ask me. So we're going to look at chapter 3 verses 1-6 today instead of chapter 2 verses 23-27. Ephesians 3, 1-6 Paul writes, For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I write before as I wrote before in brief, by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit, to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Sorry, I read that a little sloppy there. That's not intentional. I didn't sleep well last night. So I think my pronunciation of read and read reflected a second grade reading level and I apologize. All right. No offense to anybody who's in the second grade.

So Paul has been covering this topic of union between the Jews and the Gentiles in the church since chapter two, verse 11. And he's covered it from the angle of Gentiles being called close in chapter 2 verses 11-15, and then through identification, and then he also quoted the Old Testament. Now, if he was reaching out to the Gentiles before and talking about identification, why did he quote the other passages from the Old Testament? Anybody want to take a stab at guessing why he would quote that? Would the Gentiles be familiar with those passages?

No, but the Jews would. So Paul has been trying to take different angles as he approaches this topic, and as he goes through all the way to the end of chapter 3, if we look at it in 14 on, he carries on this theme in a different angle still. What we see here is that Paul really, really, really wants the Ephesians to understand that there should be no division between them, between the Jews and the Gentiles. And so we're going to take a look at this today in kind of a different perspective, predominantly focused on the idea that Paul was given a special ministry with a special revelation that was specifically to call out this new to new to the people of the church revelation. We'll take a look at that in more detail.

So he says, for this reason I Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles. So he's a prisoner. He's a prisoner in Rome. We're not going to spend too much time on his imprisonment there, but that's the context for this. Is he a prisoner of Christ, or is he a prisoner of Rome? He says he's a prisoner of Christ.

That's a perspective thing. My prayer request with the sewage main back up, it's like, hey, God wants me to learn something by doing something to his house. It's his house. I'm a steward of it, but it's his property. Everything I own is his. God wants to fix my plumbing. Okay, cool. And maybe he wants us to be a light on account of this awkward plumbing situation. It's God's house. It's God's plumbing. And it's our growth. Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ. But then he goes on, he says, for the sake of you Gentiles. And so I really want to dig into that from a different perspective, maybe, than you've thought of before.

And I want to ask the question, what happened to Noah's children when they got off the ark? I know this sounds like it's unrelated, but I promise we'll connect these dots. What happened to Noah's children when they got off the ark? What did they do? They were supposed to scatter, but they stayed. Alright, but they stayed. They didn't scatter, but they had babies, right? Little baby descendants of Noah. And we're all indirectly descendants of Noah as well, because we came out of the four children, which all came out of Noah and his wife, right? Did they faithfully pass to their children the truth of the covenants and the relationship that God made when they got off the ark. They didn't. And their kids also didn't. And their kids' kids didn't.

You're waving three fingers at me. I said four, didn't I? I apologize. Thank you. He's waving three fingers at me. I'm going, this is a sign, and I don't know it. OK. Yeah, yeah, three kids. Three kids. Thank you. Because it's three kids, and Noah is eight. That's what I was, my brain, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. I even know their names. With my own kids, sometimes I mess them up. Got his kids down.

But the point of that is that there's this pattern of disobedience. And as a consequence of that, God calls Israel to be His people. He says, I want to separate you from the disobedience. And He tells Abraham, right? Abraham is a key part of that. And He calls them to be a special people. So we're connecting the dots. We're going to take the big picture here. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus.

You all know John 3.16, right?

What does John 3.16 say? Somebody quote it off the top of their head. Jesus tells Nicodemus, God loves the world.

And he wants to redeem everybody. The three children of Noah, got the number right this time. The three children of Noah and their descendants He loved him. He made a covenant with Noah and his three sons and their families, saying, this is what I want for you. I want to bless you. I want the rainbow to be a sign of blessing.

And yet they still wandered off. So when we get here to this point, Paul, who used to be one of those reclusive or, shall we say, He preferred Jews over Gentiles. I don't want to say racist. I think that's over the top. That's not what it was. But he knew that they were God's chosen people in the Old Testament time. And so he favored them, right? Until God met him on the road to Damascus and said, Hey, I've got a new plan for you. And I want to make you my apostle for the sake of the Gentiles. Because he wanted to save the world.

The law allowed for Gentiles to adopt Judaism, but it was a minority. Let's be honest, it was a minority for the situation. If you looked at Israel, not a lot of Gentiles adopting Judaism comparatively. So Paul was given this special ministry for the sake of the Gentiles.

Now, I want to do some comparative analysis. I've got columns up here real quick. Let's try to make this a little bit modern and appropriate this for ourselves. Today, do we spend a lot of time thinking about Jews and Gentiles outside of this classroom? You turn on the news and the anchors are saying, today the Jews and the Gentiles.

We talk about In the Middle East we have like the Syrians and the Palestinian state and all the conflict is there. So that exists in the Middle East politically, but we don't tend in the United States particularly to do that. But instead we do other things where we have separation. We might find other racial tension and other boundaries.

I went to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis a couple months ago and there was a fascinating twist that took place Martin Luther King was saying we need to follow the Christian values of unity so that we stop looking at color and race and then there was a twist shortly after his assassination where it became more divided again because it was about there was a group fighting you know the black panthers for for black power well that wasn't the same vision it wasn't the same message one says we need to erase the line and and Because Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching salvation, right?

If we're all saved, then it doesn't matter. Paul was saying that. Today we might have boundaries, like you might say instead, we might have something along the lines of Broncos versus Patriots. Okay? And I know everybody laughed, but the thing is that I've seen some Broncos fans downtown that are mighty feisty, right? But people draw the line between their races and their boundaries that are here.

And I think sometimes when you read this, it just doesn't feel relevant to us today. Because we just go, I don't care. Especially at Holly Hills, where our theology is pretty well balanced, I'd like to say. Where if I said to you, hey, do you favor Jews or Gentiles? You'd look at me like, why would I do that? But we need to kind of understand Paul's writing to a city where The Gentiles were often Roman soldiers who had retired or were given a special colonization offering where they didn't have to pay taxes and they would be able to establish their households for way less money. And the Jews that moved there moved for the same reason and they were basically in territory that wasn't previously Roman territory establishing a colony And there were some racial tensions in those places where people were dealing with, you know, Paul saying, hey, let's talk about the gospel and how we can be united. And these people are going, yeah, but I don't know if I really trust this other person. I don't know if they're safe. So Jews and Gentiles coming together here, Paul's saying, he's telling them, I was given this ministry to the Gentiles as a Jew. And he carries on in verse 2, "...if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you."

So let's ask, what's a stewardship? This isn't in your handout, so we'll have to wing it. What's a stewardship? When you're taking care of something. You have a responsibility over something. It's not necessarily the same as ownership, right? We use the word, if I own something, I could still have a steward take care of it.

For example, If I take my car into the shop, I hand my keys to the steward of the car and I trust that he's not going to take it out and jump out in the dirt and do all kinds of crazy things with it. I have a four-cylinder, so he's not going to go racing around town. But he's not going to go do crazy things with it. He has a stewardship of my car, but I own it.

So Paul has been given a stewardship. He has a responsibility for this, but it's God's message. Paul says, if indeed you have heard. Do we know they heard? Can we infer that this is a rhetorical statement? Everybody feels comfortable with that? Nobody wants to doubt whether they've heard this? Paul likes this as a rhetorical argument. He likes to use the if statement.

So, if indeed you have heard, and they have, of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you. Stewardship of God's grace. What was Paul a steward of before the road to Damascus? Self-appointed even a bit. He was carrying the law. And he had gotten court orders to try to imprison and persecute Christians all throughout Israel. So he had a self-appointed steward.

He was so zealous and so angry about Christianity. He had a stewardship in his mind before God. That's the thing that I think is most important. He felt like he was preserving the authenticity of the Old Testament law and God's truth. So he had a mindset of stewardship. And he's on his way to Damascus. But then God gave him a stewardship of God's grace.

And that's a powerful contrast. Obviously, the first time you hear the story of Paul, maybe for many of us we were kids, or even into adults, you hear the story of Paul and you go, wow, that was a big change. That was really huge. But his stewardship changed. It wasn't just simply that he changed his mind. He changed his stewardship. And he moved towards God's grace.

And I think we could spend almost a whole class talking about grace. And when I mean a class, I mean like a whole elective class, right? We've done that before here at Hollyhills, and I think we've done it. There was a couple class names that Mike and Courtney co-taught where they changed the name, but it was still like the grace class. I think we all know that, right? And I don't say that with any, there's no slander that I think it was really important that grace was the focus for those classes over and over because I think we're not used to thinking in grace. When we come to true biblical grace, we bump our heads against it over and over again, going, wait a minute, can I still lose my salvation?

What if I do this? Or, what if grace isn't as big as we say it is? Well, then we're really in trouble. And they had this thing basically that I did. What if I do this? What if I do that? It turns out that your septic main, your sewage main, is not covered in your insurance policy, just so you know. I know now.

So man's grace did not extend to this. It's like, ouch. So Paul had been given this stewardship, and it was given to him for the Gentiles. So the Gentiles were recipients on account of the stewardship God gave. Starting in verse 3, he says that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief. Now, some of you have been wondering why there is a moose on the board, and the answer is because the Greek word, which I've written below, and you may not understand Greek glyphs there, but it says moosterion. And when my dad was teaching and ran into moosterion, every time there would be a moose flying across the PowerPoint slides. So I don't PowerPoint, but I did whiteboard. So we got a moosterion there.

But the idea here is that in chapter 2, starting in verse 11, Paul talks about how God had made the two one, and he's speaking to the Gentiles about identification. And then he talks about the Old Testament quoting things. And then in chapter 3 here, he goes into a third argument, which is that there is a special revelation given. So Paul received a special revelation and we could probably spend a whole class talking about why Paul got the special revelation and why it matters that Paul does and how do we handle special revelation, is it for now and all those things. We probably won't do that for the sake of time because I have six verses this morning. But let's ask those questions and have high-level answers on that.

So why is it that Paul received the revelation? Why didn't Tom get the revelation? Wrong time, wrong everything. And what was Paul's role? He was an apostle, right? He wasn't exactly a willing candidate for this role. No! God picked him. He was fighting against God. He didn't know He was fighting against Him.

And so the idea that this special revelation came to Paul was significant because he's already established what Jesus did. He's already established that God said some special things were going to happen. But then he said, And I've been given this revelation of a mystery.

And this mystery, he mentions twice in this passage, so we're not going to dig into it as much this time as we will the next time, other than he says the mystery as I wrote before in brief. Now, don't misunderstand as I wrote before in brief to mean another letter. This is what he's talking about in chapter 2 verses 11 through 22. He wrote about it briefly.

So the Greek language infers that a little bit more clearly than the English translation. Why they chose to translate that that way, I don't know. If it was up to me, if they had said, Randy, please translate the NASB from the Greek here, Again, I don't know why people don't ask me these questions. I would put the chapter markings in different places. But I would say it probably makes more sense here that we might say here, known to me, that I wrote earlier in the letter. That's basically what he's saying in the Greek. That's more words. And the New American Standard likes to have almost one from one word parallel, other than to cut out definite articles and things like that.

Yes? Are you saying that his references to something you'd already written in this letter? Yeah, starting in chapter 2, verse 11 through 22. Not a separate letter. And we want to make sure that when, you know, it's one of those things where the translation makes you go, oh, there was another letter? Oh, we should call this second Ephesians. No, no, that's not what he's saying.

He's saying, I just wrote you about, I just wrote about this topic. You saw it. You read it already. And in verse 4, by referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ. So he basically is, in his letter, saying, go back and read it again. Right? Like, go back and look at this.

And then you'll understand more the special revelation or the special insight that Paul had into the mystery of Christ. part of me would love for us to go back and stop right here and just let's all study together for the rest of the day Ephesians chapter 1 verse 1 all the way up until this verse again so we could do what Paul is saying right but what are some of the key things that we remember from chapter 1 and chapter 2 about these mystery insights into who we are in Christ what are some of the 34 things or 215 depending on which list you read What are some of the things that are true of us in Christ? Blessed with every spiritual blessing. Yeah, you read 3 through 13. Chosen. Adopted. So we look at that and then here we see in chapter 2 where he's talking about we have riches in mercy, rooted in love. saved by grace. I mean, that's huge.

And then that we're unified into a new spiritual entity that didn't exist before. It's not Jews or Gentiles anymore. It's not black or white or Chinese or Japanese or any of the, you know, Russian versus Indian or Laotian or Vietnamese. There aren't those delineations. My grandma loves to say we're German. Peterman with two Ns before we cross the ocean. But I don't care if I'm German. Do we have Jesus together? Don't tell her I said that. I'm just kidding.

But the thing is that this delineation that's here, this special revelation, the mystery that came through was given to Paul and the things that are true of us in Christ were not known before. They were mysteries. How many of you have read through the Old Testament and read through the Psalms or Isaiah 53 and you see this is a prophecy about Jesus Christ? The Jews reading that, for the most part, did not understand who they were reading about. That's why they rejected Jesus Christ when he came. He didn't come as a reigning king. He came humbly. Jesus from Nazareth? What good comes from Nazareth? Well, He can't be the Messiah.

We know the Messiah is going to come and kick honey and take names, and He's going to rule. Don't we know that? We know that. We know that now. We know that as the second coming. They thought it was the first coming. So when Jesus comes, Israel rejects Him. They're done. And so they had no anticipation for the church. No expectation.

Now what did God promise Abraham would happen through his seed? All the nations would be blessed. All the nations are blessed, right? The gospel is preached all over the world, and all the nations hear the gospel, and they respond, and they're saved. All the nations are blessed. And that's a tremendous thing to consider.

It just wasn't their expectation. It was a mystery. And so here, the fact that Israel would reject Romans chapter 11, Paul says there's another mystery that Israel's hearts have been hardened to await the time of Christ's second return so that all Israel could be saved, which is fascinating. So there's seven mysteries.

I haven't gone through them in here for the sake of time. We might do it next week, actually, since Paul carries on in the theme. That was my plan, but I just want you to know that it's not in this lesson. If the rapture happens, I'm sorry we won't get to it. Yeah, I hope that you won't remember at all, but you'll be thinking about other things more important. We'll be learning about grace on Into Eternity, so that'll be good. So he wrote these things in brief. Now he says the other generations, and I think it's important to understand, we talked briefly about the prophets there.

Verse 5, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit. The Jews and the Gentiles neither received prophecies of the church, and neither received prophecies of what was going to happen with Christ in a way that they understood. It's not like Jesus dying on the cross was mysterious. Like we said, if we go back in the Psalms, we can see it's going to happen. We look at Isaiah 53, we can see it's going to happen, but they didn't understand. And so that generation, that group of people, did not know. The sons of men did not know.

And then he says, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit. So, the holy apostles, who are the holy apostles? Do we have the not holy apostles? Are any of them not holy? The saints, the set aside, the called out apostles, and the prophets in the Spirit. So who are the holy apostles and prophets?

Is he talking about prophets maybe from the Old Testament that we're looking for? No, this was just founding the church, starting the church. So let's take a look. We're going to jump forward. If you've got your Bible, flip over a chapter. Again, if the chapter numberings were different, we could have fixed this a little bit and finessed it. But when we look at at chapter 4, we're going to say here, verse 11. So chapter 4, verse 11. He says, And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers. So it turns out that in the Greek construct, pastors and teachers is kind of one role.

But But some are apostles, and some are prophets, and some are evangelists. Why did they need prophets? We know why they needed apostles. Apostles were sent to establish the church. They were sent as special, authoritative, miracle-working, saw-Jesus representatives. They were special ambassadors. But why did they need prophets? To drive home the point that this is a new setup, new system, and it's God by grace, not by law. Yes, and so it was part of God's outpouring of His Holy Spirit to establish that this was His work in the church.

The other half of it, and so that's correct, the second half of what I would add to that is that they had no New Testament yet. You go to church, and everybody gets there, and they don't turn to Ephesians. There is no Ephesians until Paul writes this letter in prison. Nobody goes, hey, let's study the book of Revelation. You can't. That doesn't come until the end of the apostolic period there.

So what you have here is you have this important distinction that Paul makes between the apostles and the prophets but God was revealing through the prophets New Testament truth that had not been revealed yet to establish the church in truth with power by the Holy Spirit and this matters a lot because if you're not under the law but you want to know what you should be doing and I don't mean that in a legalistic way right we're not saying what you should be doing so that you can check off your legalistic bucket list so that God knows you're good But how do we know that we're supposed to behave?

Because you've got Gentiles who are really grody, and you've got Jews who are super legalistic. We could use other terms. We could say we have those who are legal, or those who are liberal. They want license. But what is the Christian supposed to be walking in? Another L word, liberty. So they need some sense of direction.

And so God, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the church body, and we see this in Paul's writing to the Corinthians, he says, here are spiritual giftings to help give some goal posts, using football terms. Now you know all the football terms I know. Just kidding. I think they punt every once in a while.

But the thing is that you look at this, and so Paul has established these things, these two roles, the apostle and the prophet, to help one, say it didn't come from them, it didn't come from man, it came from God. Two, it was for the establishing of the church. And three, when we look at these things, do you get to tell God whether he's right or wrong on this? You don't.

If you're a Gentile, that matters. You see, the Gentiles had mystery religions, cults, mystery cults. You'll hear it termed various ways if you read about it or do some studying. And their secrets were kept within the mystery cult. If I was a Roman soldier and I was part of the Roman soldier mystery cult, we would have our own codes and we couldn't talk about it. Today we have something like the Masons, I think, have a similar thing where they're like, hey, we have our secret handshake and our secret stuff and nobody can know about it unless you watch the documentary on Netflix. But the idea is that it's all secret, right? And so Paul's mystery here that was never revealed to these previous generations, he's making known publicly and he's proclaiming it.

And it was revealed by the prophets and the apostles. Well, you know, the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Yep. Actually, when I thought that was a verse that kind of really if you look at Acts 15, 31, 32, it talks about to make that statement about the prophets, which I am not as well as I become aware of. So I'll read it out loud, or do you already have it there? Okay, so Acts 15, 31 and 32.

When they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. Judas and Silas, also being prophets themselves, encouraged and strengthened the brethren with a lengthy message. But they weren't apostles. And it gives you some context to see what the prophets are doing and who they were. And they're distinct.

Thank you for drawing that. I think that's important. Alright, so, verse 6. Verse 6, he says, to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. If you were a Jew, you were part of God's chosen people in the Old Testament, right? were special.

And I don't think they all took that arrogantly. There were obviously some that we run into, the Pharisees fighting with Jesus, they thought they were special. But Paul says, I've been given this mysterious revelation, this thing that was previously not understood, and one of those things is that we're fellow heirs. Now, is this the first time Paul's written about this in Ephesians?

It's not. In chapter 1, he says that we are an inheritance. And then it says we get an inheritance. I meant to write down the cross-reference, and I did not do that, so let me just skim chapter 1 briefly. I apologize. Oh, there we go, verse 11. Also, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will.

So we are fellow heirs. The special revelation, we are fellow heirs. We have this inheritance that's coming. And it's way better than anything your parents could have left behind for you. It's funny because when we think about inheritance on this earth, it's all temporary. It's going to burn. It's going to turn to ash. It's going to turn to dust. Or we will. And then we'll leave it to our kids or grandkids or nephews or nieces or some organization or whatever else.

But we're not meant to be eternal in these earthly bodies. We'll have new eternal bodies. And we'll have an eternal perspective. And we'll have an eternal inheritance. And that's a powerful, powerful principle. But if you were a Jew thinking we're God's special people and we are God's bride, and we are going to receive this inheritance of the land, Paul says, it's bigger than that. It's a bigger inheritance. It's an eternal inheritance, and both the Jews and the Gentiles get it. Being an heir of Abraham is earthly, being an heir of God is eternal and heavenly, and includes so much more. How long is Christ going to reign on the earth over Israel and the whole world?

A thousand years. A millennium. Two L's, two N's. Millennium. And as it turns out, if that's all you're looking for, or looking forward to, that's unlimited inheritance. but we have an internal inheritance. Eternal. I keep saying internal, but it's because inheritance is an IN word. Then he continues on.

He says that we're fellow members of the body. Now, we know many of you were in at least one of the times we've taught through 1 Corinthians. And in chapter 12 in 1 Corinthians, he talks about the body in great detail. Later on, when we look at the second half of chapter 3 here, Starting in verse 14, Paul is going to set up being in the family of God and then he's going to talk about love within the body between one another.

And if that's not enough, in chapter 4 he's going to talk about being in the body and being one. And if that's not enough, in chapter 5 he's going to talk about being one. And if that's still not enough, in chapter 6 he's going to talk about us being one as a military unit.

So, if you don't like the idea of being one, Ephesians is not the book for you. They're members of one body. What was once separated by food, separated by clothing, separated by culture and religious routines through the law, is done away with. And we're one body.

And then he says something, and I really I really want to emphasize this very carefully. He says, "...fellow partakers of the promise." Why is it that it matters so much that he uses the word promise here? Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here. How many of you have heard that the church is under a new covenant in Christ? Have you heard that before? I believe that's erroneous teaching. I'm just going to say that. I'm going to say this is not a New Covenant thing. Paul uses specific words here. He could have used the phrase for New Covenant. It would have been, one, he has the vocabulary, and two, if he wanted to specify the theology that that was the case, it would have been by the Holy Spirit to do so, and I wouldn't be up here making a big deal out of it. But I think it's important to recognize here that we're fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. And what are the promises in Christ Jesus? That's the 34 things, right? That's what's true here.

It's important that we emphasize that he doesn't say New Covenant here, in part because what happens is when people say we're participants in the New Covenant, does anybody remember, or we can turn to Jeremiah, does anybody remember what the promises of the New Covenant are versus the promises of being in Christ?

The New Covenant promises the law will be written on your hearts and you won't have to teach it to one another anymore. So this is not that. Some people have taught that the new promise in Christ is the new covenant. It's not here, and we don't want to take the law and have it in you more. This is totally different. This is identification with Christ. This is separation unto him as a new creation.

And he says, in Christ Jesus, through the gospel. Through the gospel is one of those phrases that you look at and we hear the gospel in Paul's writings. He talks about the gospel. We talk about the gospel. And it's one of those things that I think at Holly Hills, just like so many other doctrines, we're comfortable with it. We're comfortable with the gospel. We're comfortable with grace. We talk about it all the time. I think a lot of us have been in enough classes where we go, OK, the gospel, that Jesus Christ died and was crucified, was buried, and resurrected again on the third day according to the scriptures. And we go, sweet, got the gospel. Ready to go.

But the consequences of the gospel are what the rest of the book of Ephesians is about. But it also turns out the consequences of the gospel are what the first part of Ephesians were about too. So the gospel is a starting point. We believe and then what? And so part of the consequences of the gospel, not just identification, not just these simple promises, but part of the consequences of the gospel are that we have a oneness, a unity.

And I know we're not there yet, but I'm going to skip ahead. So this is really bad form for whoever has to teach, not has to, gets to, who has the blessing of getting to teach later on in chapter 3. So let's skip forward all the way to verse 16. We're together.

We're in the promises according to what Christ did on the cross. We're in the promises because we believe the gospel. And look at verse 16. This is Paul praying, that God, He, would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, plural, your hearts together, plural, through faith, and that you being rooted and grounded in love together through faith may be able to comprehend with all the saints together through faith in Christ rooted in love what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

I'm okay with that. I think that's pretty awesome. I find that invigorating and enlivening and exciting that as a consequence of our all believing the gospel, through the gospel, Paul's prayer is this richness of life that nearly moves me to tears every time I read it.

And you too. I can't do it without you. It's an us thing. It's a one another thing. And unfortunately, it's also got some geometry in there. We've got some breadth and width and depth and height. So you know what that means, right? To have geometry, you have to have multiple points. So you're a point, and you're a point, and you're a point, and you're a point. We're all points. And that geometry is Christ in us through the gospel.

So I didn't mean to pre-teach Later on in Ephesians 3, I didn't steal the lesson, but there's some richness in here. So Paul has been given this special mystery. He's talked to the Gentiles, he's talked to the Jews, and he's talked to the Gentiles and the Jews with the special revelation. And the consequence is going to impact the body for the rest of the chapters as well. He's building on this.

Any other thoughts or questions? I see that I saved my file after I sent it to the printer, so the conclusion section is clipped off, so there's not even really good content there. I don't know why I did that. Any other thoughts or questions? Pat? Just kind of going back to last week's lesson. Do it. Bob's not even here, so I'll make it up.

This, uh, is it, we're saved by grace? Or is there one that was pretty much obvious? Yeah, yeah, 210. What is it? Oh, sorry, yeah, 228, sorry, not 210. 228, right. 10 was the other one everybody liked. Yeah, go ahead. You have been saved by, or by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourself, it's a gift of God. Yes. And, uh, we think of this thing as a gift of God, Somehow he imparts us the faith itself. No, the gift is the salvation through grace. Grace means gift. The Greek word grace means gift. But we've been saved through faith. Correct.

And that, not of yourself. It is a gift of God. I'm talking about the faith itself is a gift of God, so you don't follow the faith. Yeah, but the thing is that the faith is not of yourself. You're not having faith in yourself, you're having faith in God. It is a gift, in the sense that faith is a gift, but it's not a gift of your will was not involved. We want to be careful how we teach that. The Reformed Church teaches that... Go ahead, Roger, because you're the elder. This is one of the ones you ought to know.

The triple asterisk, that gift, which is in supply, is really focusing not on... The gift is not faith. Some will teach, I haven't got the gift of faith, that's why I can't believe. What do I do? That's not it. It is really referring to salvation. That God's gift is salvation. It is not faith. It's referring back to salvation.

So you need to kind of be settled with that. If you want more, I have some stuff I've written before on that. It looks like it was it. So you say, well it, that's faith. Well no, it's not. Actually, there's a look at the tents. Anyway, I see. Well, yeah, yeah. There's some helps in the Greek. And if you want, I have some patrons that kind of went to that, but it is not speaking of faith. Yeah. The word might be reflexive in a way. It is referring to... So the question is, so you need to still in your mind, what was the hit referring to? If you say it's faith, you've got some more problems. Yeah.

The Greek, I'm going to read the interlinear Greek, because I think it helps emphasize the word relationships, okay? The translators tried to smooth out to make it nice and English, but Greek word order emphasizes importance often, but not always, but often.

So he says, for by or for the grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, of God, it is the gift. So the faith is not the gift, the grace is the gift. But that being said, When we look at the word grace, it means gift. It's blessing or gift. So Paul takes that principle and carries on and defines grace more broadly than the culture would have. And he gives it a Christian meaning that is beyond what's there. But that relationship of gift to Grace is important there.

And the other thing about faith is if God is giving you the faith and you're not having the faith, then there is no accountability, which I think is important to call out. Why is there accountability that God can say, why did you not believe me to those who don't believe? Because if He did the believing for them, then He can come to them and say, hey, I didn't want you to believe you're going to hell, but why didn't you believe? Where's the justness in God? God's a just God, except for here, only in salvation.

That seems a little biased and lopsided. The principle of grace, which as we saw here even in our passage today, Paul was a steward of, grace is importantly a gift rooted in mercy, which is rooted in love. They kind of stack on each other and build on each other as a foundation. But the gift is the grace, not the faith. Otherwise, God's justice is compromised. You will find in Reformed circles that they don't teach that, and they teach that the faith is a gift. I think there are some consequences for that, like I just mentioned. But the other thing is that the Greek structure doesn't really bear that out.

Alright, let's close in prayer because that was the second bell. I really appreciate that it's quieter. Now I have to actually listen for it. Alright, Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just focus our hearts and minds during the main service that we would study and learn there and fellowship and worship and enjoy that time.

Thank you for the truth that we have in your word here. Thank you that we are one as a body and we don't have these delineations that were once there, but instead we have a new inheritance. We have a new body and we can be partakers of a rich promise in Christ Jesus. We just thank you in Jesus name. Amen.