Tag Archives: mystery

Unity in the Home Part 2

Posted by estherslegacy on

I want to first apologize for it being so long since I have written.  We have been getting used to the new school year and then on top of it all we began to have computer issues.  However, it did give me time to really think about this post.  I am going to be discussing things in ways I have never really thought of them before and so for the extra time I am thankful.

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents as you would the Lord, because this is right. 2 Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, 3 so that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land. 4 Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

5Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ. 6 Don’t work only while being watched, in order to please men, but as slaves of Christ, do God’s will from your heart. 7 Serve with a good attitude, as to the Lord and not to men, 8 knowing that whatever good each one does, slave or free, he will receive this back from the Lord. 9 And masters, treat your slaves the same way, without threatening them, because you know that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him.(HCSB)

Let’s begin with the children.  This command to the children is really a repeat of the fifth commandment that tells children to honor their father and their mother.  That is what it is referring back to when it talks about being the first commandment with promise.  In honoring them they are to obey, paying careful attention to them as they would the Lord and in doing so they are honoring the Lord who gave the command.


Then the fathers are to be careful in how they treat their children.  Notice they are not given permission to do as they please to their children.  They too are given instructions on how to bring up their children.  They are to bring them up to love and obey the Lord, training them and instructing them in the ways of the Lord.  This is a heavy task and one that bears total responsibility and purposefulness.  Fathers cannot do this half-heartedly, it must be with the whole heart and with precise direction – toward the Lord.

Remember we are talking about unity in the home.  If the Father or the children do not get their parts correct their is a break down in that unity.  A father needs his children to obey him and to honor him and their mother.  The children need to be loved and understood.  They are not yet adults and do not do things the way an adult would.  They also do not have the understanding of an adult yet long to be understood by their fathers.  This is to be done with compassion and joy as they watch their children grow in the love and instruction of the Lord.

Here is where the mystery hits this passage.  Scripture talks about us being the adopted children of God.  As His children we are to obey Him without question, He is our Father.  The Father looks on us with compassion as Jesus did the crowds.  He understands us and knows how hard it is to avoid sin.  As Hebrews 2 tells us, Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.  You see He also knows the way to avoid the sin and if we are close to the Father, listening and obeying the Father, He will guide us through the temptation so that we can escape its grasp.  This relationship is all important if we even hope to say no to sin.  It works in unity, perfect unity.  We are the children listening, obeying and thinking the world of our Father, standing in awe of Him and He is the loving Father beaming down in love and delight in His children.

As for the slaves and the masters I have often heard this passage preached from the perspective of employee and employer.  I do not think this is accurate and here is why.  This is not an example of an interpersonal relationship outside the home, but one within it.  The home is the entire focus of these three examples in Ephesians.  In Paul’s day slaves in the home were a reality and one that contributed to the unity of the home.  Therefore it had to be dealt with as part of his conversation.  He was not attempting to address the rightness or wrongness of slavery, but the behavior of both masters and slaves who have become voluntary slaves of Christ, knowing that how they act reflected on their Savior.  Paul was effective in reaching both slaves and masters with the Good News of Freedom in Christ.

Slaves were to obey their masters as if they were serving the Lord.  They were to do this in love for their master, not resentment.  The Lord sees the heart and holds even the servant responsible for his own motives and attitude in his work.  Slaves were an important part of many homes.  If they did not do their work in a timely manner and well the home was not a good place to be.  It reminds me of Joseph when he was the slave of Potipher in Egypt.  God blessed the household of Potipher because of the efforts of Joseph who loved Him.

Likewise, masters are to deal with their slaves with respect as another human being.  They are to treat them fair, knowing that they too have a Master in Heaven who is watching them.  Yes, watching even the way they treat their slaves.  Masters are not to leave or desert their slaves, they are part of their family, and thus, the masters are responsible for their care (keeping in mind the status of a slave was often the result of debts).  This is the true meaning when it says, “without threatening them”, the threat is the threat to leave them alone.  God holds each of us responsible for how we treat each other no matter our station in life.  In Christ we are all brothers and sisters called to love and serve one another.

Now for the mystery within this example.  We are the servants of God called to follow His commands.  Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”  You see He is the Master.  He is our Lord.  He has every right to give the commands and we have no right to disobey them.  As for His part, in love He has promised never to leave us or forsake us as a good master, our good shepherd, would. 

Yes, Jesus does calls us His friends as well, but that does not negate our role as servants.  Paul calls himself a bond-servant of the Lord, a servant by choice, following the commands of His Master.  Let us never forget that Lord means Master.  So when we call God our Lord and Savior we are really calling Him our Master and Savior and declaring ourselves His bond-servant bound to obey His commands.

God desires unity in every part of the relationship He has with us.  Unity between the Bridegroom and Bride, between the Father and His Children, between the Master and His Bond-Servants.  Is not our God awesome in what He desires with us?  Truly His ways are above our ways and His thoughts above our thoughts.

Let us obey our Bridegroom, Father and Master as we love one another.

Vicky

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Unity in the Home

Posted by estherslegacy on

Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, 23 for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. 27 He did this to present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. 28 In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 since we are members of His body.  31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.  32 This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.(HCSB)

Many people in our culture take offense at this passage because of how, on the surface and detached from the rest of the book, it would appear to be subjugating women.  That is far from the reality of this passage.  Never does God tell husbands to subjugate or lord it over their wives.  NO Where!  This passage is actually doing the exact opposite.

Imagine for me a human being.  They have a head and a body, correct?  If you detach the head from the body, what happens?  The body dies.  Both are vital and needed.  Remember that Paul has already, back in chapter one, said that the Messiah is the head of the church, His body.  Marriage here in chapter five is being used to illustrate a much larger truth than just how husbands and wives are to live with each other.

I want to deal with the specific issue of husbands and wives for a minute before moving on to the bigger picture.  Notice what each are called to do.  The wife is to respect her husband.  She is to submit to her head.  She needs him.  To not respect is to say she does not need him and to effectually cut him off.  She would be killing herself and him in the process.

Yes, she is submitting to the needs of her husband, his need for respect.  This is a huge issue for men and it is the way God made them to be.  It is their emotional blood flow, so to speak.  They have a need for their wife to respect them because for them it is the wife saying, “I need you”.  She is submitting to his needs above her own.  Paul tells us that as believers we should all think of each other as more important than ourselves.(Phil. 2:3)  Obeying this mandate as a wife is doing nothing more than obeying the one in Philippians as a believer.

Next, God tells the husband to love his wife.  Why?  Because that is her need, her emotional blood flow.  In order to live and thrive a wife requires love.  It is how God made her.  It is the husband saying, “I desire you in my life, in every area of my life.  You are wanted”.  In this the husband is to submit to her need above his own.  Otherwise, he would be cutting off his own body and thereby killing himself.

In a marriage there must be this unity and this passage gives the way that is achieved.  He, the head, belongs to the body and she, the body, belongs to the head.  If they are going to survive they need each other and so each must be sure to give the other what the other requires to survive, respect or love.  If this is done then the head and body function together with much greater ease and unity.  In so doing they each survive and thrive.

That leads us to what God is illustrating to us.  This relationship is what He wishes to have with His people.  This is the story of the Bridegroom and the Bride.  Yeshua is our Bridegroom and we who put our faith in Him, who follow Him, are His Bride.  According to this passage, this is a profound mystery.  Notice that our oneness with each other is called the mystery in Ephesians and our oneness with Him is called a profound mystery.  This is beyond anything we could have thought of or imagined.(Chapter 3)  

That is why it is so important to preserve the true picture of marriage because it speaks of the relationship He desires with us.  To change the picture is to attempt to tarnish or twist the reality.  For the last 50 years our culture has seen deliberate distortions and downplay of marriage.

Most prominently today, our culture, along with the enemy’s help in deceiving our culture, is beginning to accept more and more the distortion and calling it good. 

Marriage is and from the beginning has been between a man and a woman, but our culture is debating redefining marriage to include being between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.  What picture does that give of God?  It is not two bridegrooms or two brides that offer us the accurate picture of the relationship God wants with us. 

I am not saying that people in these relationships realize what they are saying, but to be sure the enemy does and he seeks to distort and twist all God wants for us.  And to be sure God knows what it says, that is why this particular sin is called an abomination. 

The enemy wants people to concentrate on their
“rights” to be happy and purposefully turns them away from what the reality of what they are doing says about God.  That is why it is called deception. Eve sinned based on deception, but it was still sin. 

The first relationship we see in Scripture is marriage of one man and one woman.  The man represents the Son of God (Luke calls Adam the son of God) and Eve represents the Bride of Christ, the Bride of the Son.  In the end we see the marriage of the Lamb and His Bride.  One is the picture of the other and to distort and twist it into anything else is the enemy’s attempt to distort and twist what it represents, what it will be in the end. 

It is for this reason the church must hold the line on true marriage because we must insist on reflecting the light of the true relationship God wants with His people.  Anything else is from the realm of darkness and based on deception. 

Bride of Christ – Hold the Line, no one said it would be easy to insist on the accurate picture to a world who desperately needs our Bridegroom when all it seems to want to do is reject Him.  

Our Bridegroom wishes to have a spotless Bride, one without wrinkles or blemishes.  He paid for us with His own blood.  It is the least we can do to hold tight to His promise as His bride.  One day He will come for us and call us to Himself.

This picture is a profound mystery. 

Vicky

Hold The Line

Posted by estherslegacy on

Ephesians 4:1– “Therefore I, the prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, 2 with all humility  and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, 3 diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit with the peace that binds us. 4 There is one body and one Spirit —just as you were called to one hope at your calling — 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”(HCSB)

Knowing the mystery and that he had been given the administration of this mystery, having prayed for the believers to know God’s power and love, Paul basically says “with that in mind let’s get down to brass tax”. 

That is what he means by the “therefore”.  To add weight to what he is about to say, to let his readers know that he understands how hard it is and will be he calls himself the prisoner of the Lord.  He has chosen to walk this path that has taken him to prison and he is calling the others to walk it with him.

This is the life they had been called to and are expected to walk in a way that is worthy, worthy of the calling.  And who called them? 

The Lord did, not Paul – God called them to this life. 

Is living the mystery as God wants it to be going to be easy? 

Absolutely not.  Loving and living as one will require their all and nothing less.  It will take the Spirit filled life. 

I want to break down this passage because it is so much weightier than how we often translate it to be in the English.

Beginning with the word “humility” we see that God is asking us to do something very contradictory to the flesh.  This word means to think lowly of ones self, having humiliation of mind. 

This is the exact opposite of the worldly message of self-esteem where we are called by the enemy to think highly of ourselves, to esteem ourselves instead of others and God.  This is by no means easy, but highly necessary.

Our next word is “gentleness “.  It is really the word “meekness”.  Unfortunately we do not really understand this word. 

It is not an absence of power, but a very intense power that is restrained and in control.  Meekness means knowing you have power, but not always exerting that power, or right, on others. 

Jesus is our greatest example of this.  He had the angels at His disposal before His arrest and He restrained that power for the joy that laid before Him, for the sake of His Bride and in obedience to His Father.  This is what this word is calling us to be.

Then comes “patience”, a word we simply do not understand.  This word does not mean just sit around and wait while we twiddle our thumbs. 

This word is the idea of fortitude, standing guard, being fortified.  It is being longsuffering in action.  Knowing you may be fortified, standing guard, for a long time, but willing to keep standing guard until God moves you.

Are you beginning to think, “O.K. that’s enough, please that’s enough”?  Like I said this is not easy, but God does not stop here. 

He talks about accepting or bearing with one another.  However, the word for “accepting” really means to “hold yourself up against”, in this case, one another. 

Are you getting the picture?  We are to hold ourselves up against each other in love. 

Now here is the idea.  The idea Paul is trying to create is a military line.  Like troops in formation, we are holding up against one another as a military line and the thing that glues us together is love.

I want to take the next phrase together. 

It is “diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit”.  The word “diligently” means to make every effort with speed. 

O.K. what are we doing with speed and with every effort?  We are keeping. 

The word “keeping” means to watch as in a watchman on the wall, to guard from loss or injury or to hold fast.  

We are on the ball, so to speak, and keeping watch on, guarding, and holding fast the unity or oneness of the Spirit.  We do this with the peace or oneness that binds us together– our love for one another.

Oneness or Unity is hard work, work that requires every effort and determination to stay the course. 

It is also something that does not automatically happen just because we are one body with one Spirit who lives in each of us. 

No He will not force this upon us but gives us the directions to achieving it through the power of His Spirit. 

We as the body are not one because we do not want it or seek it. 

We do not think lowly of ourselves.  We do not restrain our power or rights.  We have little fortitude and longsuffering and are unwilling to hold up against one another in love. 

We do not stand guard over the unity and oneness of the Spirit through any bond of peace.  We do not love one another as He has commanded us to do.

We do not do this and I am sad to say that for the most part I am afraid we do not even really attempt it.  We are comfortable being apart especially in our different denominations.  This should, just as it was for Paul with the Ephesians, be a matter of prayer and concern for us today.

We are to hold fast or hold the line, so to speak, on the matters of doctrine and life that follow in the book.  Staying firm on the fact that there is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, above all, through all and in all.

Church… you must hold the line, hold fast.  You must stand guard over the oneness of the Spirit with all diligence. 

Let us live the mystery in such a time as this.

Vicky

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The Administration of the Mystery

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Ephesians 1:9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in Him  10 for the administration  of the days of fulfillment —to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him.(HCSB)

Ephesians3:3 The mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have briefly written above. 4 By reading this you are able to understand my insight about the mystery of the Messiah. 5 This was not made known to people in other generations as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: 6 The Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, and partners of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.(HCSB)

Ephesians 3:8 This grace was given to me —the least of all the saints—to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of the Messiah, 9 and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.(HCSB)

Ephesians 3 defines the mystery for us as Gentiles and Jews sharing in the promise as co-heirs together in Christ Jesus.  This is a true mystery that for ages past had been kept hidden although hinted at.  The Old Covenant spoke of people of other nations and tongues coming to worship God, but the actual understanding that Jews and Gentiles would share equally in the promise was not even thought of by those who worshiped The Name.

As we saw in chapter 2 not only were these two to be co-heirs, but would become one man.  Yeshua came to make us one together so that we can be presented to Him as a spotless bride without wrinkle or defect.  Our God is so awesome and His ways are truly above our ways and His thoughts truly far above our thoughts.

God, however, does not stop by just revealing this mystery to us and then leaving us to figure out how to make this reality in our time for ourselves.  Most of us, I would venture to say, do not even think it is really possible for us to truly act and be as one this side of the Messianic Age or heaven.  We tend to leave things alone as they are and not strive for true oneness in this world where sin is still a reality.  But Beloved, God’s plans are greater than ours and not only does He expect us to act and be as one now, He also gave us the road map of how to achieve it.  That is what the rest of Ephesians is about.

Chapter 3 lets us know that God gave Paul the administration of this mystery or to say it another way, He gave Paul the way in which the body of Christ, the blessed bride of The Lamb, could actually carry out this mystery.  It is that reality that speaks of God’s wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.  When they see God’s Spirit filled people living out the mystery of being one with each other and with Him it screams volumes to the unseen realms of how only God could have thought of this awesome mystery.

It is with this truth that Paul prays the prayer of Ephesians 3.

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. 16 I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit, 17 and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, 19 and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us — 21 to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.(HCSB)

Paul begins pretty much where He left off in the prayer of chapter 1, with praying for power among God’s people.  Remember this is no ordinary power as the world defines power, but the power that raised Jesus from the dead.  That is what he prays will be in us, in our inner being through His Spirit.  He prays that through faith, being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, faith that leads us to action not just intellectual awareness that Yeshua the Messiah will dwell, be tabernacled in us (we are the temple of God).

Paul assumes our rooting and firm establishment in love.  The believer is rooted deep in God’s love, the love that sent His Son to die for us, and firmly established in our love for one another, a requirement for the believer based on the command of Jesus.  He (Paul) knows that it is only in this love, the love God has for us and our love for each other, that we will together with all God’s people even begin to be able to comprehend the love of Christ – the width, depth, length, and height of His love. 

It is only together that we will have our full strength to eagerly take hold of that kind of love.  It is His love being made manifest in all of us toward each other that makes His love knowable to us just as us living out that life of the mystery makes His wisdom known to the unseen realms.

Paul prays for us to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, which harkens back again to the prayer in chapter 1.  We can only be all that God desires us to be as we live in power, faith, and love together.  This life baffles the world, but also lets them know that the Father sent His Son. 

Can this generation of believers live this life?  Yes it can!  And the rest of Ephesians instructs us in just how to live out this mystery.  So as we study the rest of the book we will be approaching it from this perspective.

In His love,

Vicky

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The Two ONE

Posted by estherslegacy on

In the book of Acts we see the apostles having to learn to accept Gentiles into the faith.  This took a dramatic event in the life of Peter when God lowered a sheet with unclean animals for Peter to kill and eat.  God did this three times and the message was not the food, it was “do not call unclean what (God has) made clean”, meaning the Gentiles.  Immediately following this Peter goes to a Gentile home and shares the good news of Jesus with them in their home, something that was forbidden for a Jew to do. 

We then see Paul becoming the apostle to the Gentiles.  He took the good news as far as he could, no matter the personal cost.  Immediately on his heals were the Judaizers who claimed that the Gentiles first had to become Jews before becoming a believer in Jesus.  Paul flatly rejected this in very graphic terms.  In fact, I want to be clear on this point, once one is a believer in Jesus they are no longer a Gentile because a Gentile is a foreigner and alien, but in Christ we are made citizens of His nation, the holy nation of Israel over which He is king.  This was the situation in Bible times.

Fast forward 2000 years and what do we see happening in the land of Israel today?  We see many who want to separate the Arabs and Israelis living in the land onto different sides.  Truth is they are on different sides.  On one hand Jews have the right of return to the land of Israel, the land promised to them, and on the other side the Arabs want the Jews completely out of the land and consider the Israelis to be occupiers and colonialists.  There are those who wish to divide the land calling a part of it the West Bank.  What some like to call the West Bank in indeed a part of the historical land of Israel once known as Judea and Samaria. 

This land is proportioned specifically in Scripture among the tribes of Israel.  It was to eventually be the Israelis land.  So how can this be resolved?  How is reconciliation in a land that just about everyone seems to want to divide possible?  There is only one answer to this question.

Those who believe in Yeshua the Messiah are the light in a dark situation.  For the Arab believers in the land there is a group called Musalaha (www.musalaha.org), which is Arabic for reconciliation.  They organize camps for Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ.  This effort needs our prayers. 

Musalaha also puts events together so that Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians can come together in worship experiencing how both sides worship Messiah.  At the same time they also reach out to Muslim Arabs in the land to show them the love and truth of Christ through different outreach opportunities.

On the other side there are Messianic Jews in the land who want a strong bond relationship with Arab Christians as well.  These Messianic Jews are trying to reach out to their fellow Jews with the love and truth of the Messiah.  One such ministry in Israel is Heart of G-d Ministries (www.heartofg-d.org).  While Heart of G-d seeks to encourage Aliyah (Jewish right of return) of all Jews both Messianic and not Messianic, there are some elements of the Israeli government that are trying to keep Messianic Jews from having the right of return, claiming they are not real Jews.  They too need our prayers.

Both sides report a good relationship with the other.  A relationship that is only possible through Christ.  These two sides are coming together.  As they do they will begin to look more and more like each other.  Why?  Because they will look more and more like the Savior. 

The Arab does not have to become a Jew and the the Jew does not have to leave behind his roots, on the contrary they are both the spiritual nation of Israel.  Both grafted into the one tree that is Israel, God’s nation of princes, His holy nation and priesthood.  The root of that tree being the Old Testament (Covenant) fulfilled in Yeshua who spilled His blood, the blood of the New Covenant.

It should be our prayer that as more and more Jews come into the land they will come to know their Messiah as they are surrounded by the truth of who they are and who He is.  Also, that the Arab Christians will spur them on to jealousy as they continue to grow in their own faith and grow closer and closer to the Messianic Jews. 

Jesus is the answer for the peace of Jerusalem and the land of Israel, ONLY Yeshua.  What an awesome time we live in.  We have before us a living example of the two becoming one if only we will take the time to see.

Yes, Jesus has put to death their hostility.  Now it is up to these believers to live that out in a land and an environment that would rather them not.  Yet it is the life that Yeshua calls them to live.  A life that the cross of Christ demands.  They must pick up their cross daily and follow Him where others do not want to go.  How blessed they are as they daily live out the mystery.  May God grant them His grace and His power to live this life.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all the land.

Vicky 

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The Mystery

Posted by estherslegacy on

I learned something very valuable this past week.  Do not start a major endeavor, such as this blog, right before a big week.  This past week was Vacation Bible School week for us.  I did not write last week, and as a result God changed my direction a little.


I found myself in the book of Ephesians.  It has many of the themes we will be dealing with in this blog, and God made it clear to me that that is really where we need to start.  I remember what my speech teacher in school used to tell us, “tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them”.  Ephesians is going to stand as this blogs equivalent to “tell them what you are going to tell them”.


Let’s get started.


EPH 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will– 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment–to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.


After Paul’s introduction, he begins offering praise to the Father and Jesus Christ and says that He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly realms.  Then he goes on to describe those blessings.  Being chosen to be holy and blameless in His sight.  Let that one sink in a little.  We were not just chosen, but chosen with an end result in mind, being holy and blameless.  What does that look like?  That is just what this blog will be discussing and what Ephesians does such a good job at fleshing out.


He adopted us as sons through Jesus Christ according to His pleasure and will.  He gave us His grace, redemption and the forgiveness of sins.  Then He made known to us the “mystery” of His will according to His good pleasure.  It is this “mystery” that is the focal point of Ephesians and what we will spend our time on this blog exploring.  What is that mystery?  Look down a little further to the second part of verse 10.  That mystery is to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.  To bring us together — make us One in Christ and with Christ.  And notice when this will take place.  When the times will have reached their fulfillment.


Some of you might have found it frustrating that I did not mention “before the creation of the world” and “predestined” from earlier verses.  These are connected to our being chosen and adopted.  Just as the fulfillment of time has to do with the mystery, God does things in His time and in His time things often find a fulfillment in the heavenly realms before they work themselves out in the earthly realm.  Bringing all things together under Christ found it’s spiritual fulfillment in the heavenly realms when Jesus died and rose again, however, I believe we are even now seeing the earthly fulfillment of this heavenly reality.  God is bringing those who place there faith in Jesus Christ together as one under Christ.  In other words, He is making us holy and blameless in His sight – a spotless bride.


Have an awesome evening in the Lord!


Vicky