Week Five Wrap Up October 23, 2014

A reminder that there will be no class next week - Wednesday October 29 - but there will be a viewing of the film - "God is Not Dead." There will still be children's and youth programs so please do attend. As well, when you think of it, say a prayer for me and the pastors that I will teaching in Cuba. This is an important work we do in Cuba for our Cuban Pentecostal Pastors. Pray that the week will go well and that God will protect the pastors that will travel from all over the island to attend the course. Pray as well for safe travels. We will see you Wednesday November 5th where will be move into chapter 4 of Ephesians.

 What a prayer Paul prays in chapter 3 verses 14-21! How important, given what the Father through Christ, by the Spirit, has done for us in what Paul shares in chapters 1 and 2, that we ask for more strength on the inside.  We need God's Spirit to strengthen us to live according to the New Humanity that Christ has given us. Paul doesn't ask for things, he asks for more of God - His Spirit - His presence - His wisdom! Paul doesn't ask to be released from his present suffering. Rather, he knows the advantage of living out the new humanity where he is. Luke tells us at the end of Acts that Paul is sharing the good news with people in Caesar's own household. Those converting to Christianity in Caesar's own house are the beginning of a lineage of believers in the circle of rulership in Rome that will eventually help push the Empire toward Christianity!

To know the depth of relationship with the Trinity - to know the depth of love that flows from their being; to share such depth with others and with each other - brings Paul to a moment of wonder and awe at what God our Father has given us! Although we can't understand the depth of such love, Paul says that we can be filled with it. We can live in the fullness of it. It's up to us to nurture such desire and stay connected to the Father with the Spirit's help. Paul indicates that when we connect with God in this way, there is no telling what He will do:

"Now to Him who is capable of doing outrageously more than we could ever ask for or think of, in keeping with the power that works in us, to Him goes all the fame and the honour in God's community and in Jesus Christ to all people throughout all ages, Amen." Eph.3:20-21 

What God will do because of His commitment to His creation is beyond our wildest imagination. Imagine a world with no more evil, where everyone is free to live out their new humanity in unhindered relationship with God and with each other and we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what the future will look like as God has planned to move us toward it.  We need to dream the dream of God for our world. We need to expect even more than what we are capable of seeing.

Paul will now spend the rest of the letter describing what God's community should look like and how it should go about living out its communal life in light of this astounding revelation that Paul has revealed through the Spirit to us in chapters 1-3.  The next weeks will be a time spent of seeing exactly what God expects of us as His followers and how we together shine the light of our new humanity in the darkness of our world and so join God in His battle to root out evil in our world.

Power Point

Ephesians Chapter Three

Ephesians Chapter Four Part I

Ephesians Chapter Four Part II

Some more thoughts on our discussion in class on October 15, 2014

Well that was an interesting class for sure. As we looked at Ephesians chapter 2 our discussion centered around what our attitude and words should be as believers to those who are the walking dead. I encouraged you to take our example from how Paul mentions that God responds to the walking dead. Living as children of wrath, far from God, living out life in the flesh and feeding the desires of the flesh, Paul makes the astounding statement that God who is rich in mercy, and for his great love with which he loved us [Paul's actual words there] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

What emerges from this is a clear view of how God sees the walking dead. They are also, as we who now believe, objects of His love through whom Christ has brought life by giving his life as a sacrifice and raising it up again as a new humanity. It's significant that Paul chooses to present the good news to the walking dead in this way. God loves the walking dead and He - out of his love and mercy - desires to restore them to the true humanity that He intended - the masterpieces that He created them to be. His desire for us as well is to live and continue to live out our lives in keeping with the restored humanity that God has given through Christ.

What I am doing is following the logic of Paul as he presents one of the largest thoughts shared in all of his letters in these first two chapters of Ephesians. You will notice that there is absolutely no mention of hell in this discourse. In fact, there is no mention of hell in the entire letter. What we will find as we continue in the letter is a discourse on light and darkness - of which darkness is in keeping with the influence of evil on humanity. It is this evil that Paul encourages believers to expose by living in the light - of which Paul points out is expressed by imitating God [chapter 5] in his character of love.

Make no mistake - the bible and particularly the New Testament writers acknowledge that hell is a real place and a destination for those that remain distant from God. Yet when we read Paul's letters and look at the preaching of the Apostles in Acts, their focus is on communicating the good news by relating that Jesus is the True King and that He has risen from the dead and has restored us to the Father.  The phrase "for the forgiveness of sins" indicates the restoration of relationship with God. The Kingdom of God and the Resurrection was the focus of their preaching.

The goal of repentance in the New Testament [the Greek word metaonia which means "changing what we know"] is to give those who are distant from God a true perspective of what God has done for humanity in drawing us back to Him. This centers on Jesus. As the Apostles and the writers of the NT tell us in their books and letters, our consistent message to those who are the walking dead is the they have been shown love by God through Jesus and they are restored to their true humanity. Their willingness and openness to accept this will translate into their transformation - what the NT writers refer to as "metanoia" and what we translate as repentance: A change in how they view themselves, God and the world around them.

So it begs the question - where does the teaching on hell fit in? It fits in terms of the biblical story as a whole that emerges well down along the line of our introducing others to Jesus. Like the NT writers, leaving that for the end and leaving it out altogether makes us aware of what they thought were the important points of the good news to share with others. The good news is the true and rightful King has landed and that He has rescued our humanity and He will judge evil and restore human beings. Introducing people to the reality of hell was not an evangelistic point that the disciples used in their message to the walking dead. New believers after coming to Christ would learn of it all too quickly as they became more familiar with the biblical story.  Their knowledge of such an end for those that remain distant from God encouraged them all the more to - as Jude mentions in the New Testament - to snatch people from the fire - and so let Jesus become real and alive in their life.

These were some thoughts that circled in my head as I prepared for teaching Christology at the campus this morning and reviewing with my students what the early believers in the NT believed about Jesus and how they communicated it to non-believers.

Hope this helps put our discussion yesterday into perspective.

Wednesday October 15, 2014

Two of the most important words in Scripture - "But God ..."  After describing the life that comes with living at a distance from God - the walking dead - Paul introduces the reality of how God perceives us in a walking dead state. It is clear that while we were still sinners - God loved us in Christ and willed that we be restored to our new humanity. We began this thought last week and will continue it tonight.  Realizing what God has done in Christ, and based solely on His love for us and not on what we done brings an overwhelming sense of our identity before God: objects of His love.

We need God so desparately because on our own we are lost, broken, corrupt and unable to rescue ourselves or restore ourselves back to our true humanity. Its no wonder then that Paul in all his letters points out how important it is to live our lives out according to the Spirit or "by the Spirit" because it is the Spirit that helps us maintain the new humanity.  We need Him to help us put on the character of Christ and put off that which is from the walking dead life. It is as much a daily decision as it is a one time commitment to live for Christ and embrace the new humanity.

We will finish up chapter two and move into chapter three next week where we will see Paul speak of the open access to God that we now have because of Christ bringing us all together in one new humanity. Paul will marvel at what God has done through Him and for us and he will pray for more of the Spirit and more of Christ in us. Paul knew all too well how important it is to lean on the Spirit for our Christian walk and our existence as God's  community. We will look at home important and profound this is in our class next week.

Powerpoint: 

Ephesians Chapter Two

Welcome to Ephesians at Willowdale Blog

As promised to you, I've created this blog so that you can keep track of where we are in the letter of Ephesians and you can get access to the power point presentations that I'm using in class. I will be attaching links to the power points at the bottom of each blog post after each week of class. For those of you taking the course for credit, you can also access the course syllabus. You will find the link for the syllabus at the bottom of the post as well.

In our second class last week  I took you through chapter one of Ephesians. What we have in these words of Paul is the grand vision of the Trinity working out their plan for creation. From the prior conversation and commitment they made [Father, Son and Spirit] before they created to ensure that we would be with them [and so adoption] to the work of the Spirit in us to reveal to us this wisdom and revelation, Paul weaves through describing God's redemption of humanity and creation.

The church [the holy ones - His community] are the first to experience and believe, having had the Spirit open their eyes to this understanding. It is in this community that the presence of Christ is most pronounced and the power of His resurrection felt through the work of the Spirit in us. He transforms us and by this transformation we too communicate this to everyone everywhere. God's community lives out of such transformation in relationship with the world around them.  This speaks of the breadth of the reach of Christ in the world. God's community points the way to the future, the inheritance coming to those who believe, where evil will be no more and the world will be renewed with King Jesus ruling over all.

I will start this week with picking up on the later half of chapter one to help us understand the importance of the Spirit's presence in our lives. It is his presence that causes us to live holy and blameless [relational terms] staying connected to the Father and living in Christ. The Spirit makes us more like Christ, our righteousness being His righteousness. We don't lean on our own understanding. We do not have the capacity to live righteous lives without the Spirit's help made possible through the work of Christ.

We will then move into Chapter Two and talk about how God makes dead people alive again and brings peace to humanity.

Power Point

1.Introduction to Ephesians 

2.Chapter One of Ephesians  

3. Syllabus