I am very excited about our new adventure in the first book of Paul's prison epistles – Ephesians! We laid some groundwork establishing Christ's declared position as the only begotten son of God, in Psalm 2. It is imperative for us to know that God's plan for man's redemption in this dispensation of grace, must go through Calvary! The shed blood of Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection, according to the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) is God's only plan to redeem mankind during this mystery period. There is no difference between the Jew and Greek. All must be saved the same way, by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ! Ephesians is an incredible book of church doctrine. Paul carefully crafts such in depth truth about our relationship and fellowship with God the Father, and God the Son. 40 times there are references made to either you being in Christ or Christ being in you. To be “in Christ” is our position, and “Christ in you” is our possession. I introduced a new term to most of us – Confirmation Bias, which we all are guilty of practicing nearly on a daily basis. It is the process of reading certain words of subject matter in an entire paragraph or page and coming to a conclusion about the information without reading all of the subject. We use our own experience or the experience of others, to help us draw our conclusion. The problem with confirmation bias, when reading scripture is that we must first seek to understand what a verse says before we seek to understand what the verse means, without focusing on individual words. We began to identify the spiritual blessings in heavenly places, that we all receive through being “in Christ.” V.4: God has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. V.5: We are predestinated to adoption by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will. V.6: By his grace, we are accepted in the beloved. V.7: We have redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of sins, all according to the riches of his grace. We will continue this incredible chapter of doctrine this coming Sunday. Please take a few moments each morning to read a chapter a day, starting with chapter 1 tomorrow, and chapter 2 on Tuesday, etc. I look forward to all that we will discover over the coming weeks.
