Status Updates From The Vision of Ephesians: Th...

I love how Wright phrases things. Speaking about 4:22 he says “…hardened hearts and darkened minds cover up their condition precisely by advertising themselves as clever, ‘modern’, ‘ahead of the curve’, whatever. This is what ‘deceit’ is all about. Twisted desires do not present themselves by whispering, ‘If you come this way you will go mouldy and fall apart.’”

Eph 4:11-13 “…unity doesn’t mean uniformity, but plurifomity doesn’t mean chaos. How easy it has been for leaders with different gifts and styles to develop ministries around themselves, after their likeness, pulling away from what’s going on elsewhere in God’s purposes and priding themselves on doing their own thing”

Paul would be shocked by the very idea of ‘denominations’, close to one another in the same street but not even trying to join in sharing missions and resources…given recent centuries in Christian history it’s better at least to have unity of fellowship, prayer and mutual support…reading Eph 4 we can’t imagine our present multiple disunities don’t really matter.

“…in Genesis, the story is about the creator’s purpose for his creation, and the human responsibility for sharing in that purpose. The failure of humans was as much a failure of vocational obedience as disobedience to one rather strange command.”

Sin, in general, and offenses in particular, are what happens when image bearing humans fail to worship their maker and so to reflect the true God into the world. And the death which results is not an arbitrary punishment. It is the necessary and inevitable result of that turning away from the source of life.

Paul, prays for wisdom. “Wisdom“, as in Proverbs, is what you need to be truly human, to take responsibility in God’s good world... Isaiah 11 reflects the same theme: the messiah is the truly wise human &now the “in–Messiah“ people should have that same spirit of wisdom&insight & knowledge of God. This comes through the eyes of the inmostself being opened to the true God dimension of all the world.

“When the church is worshiping together, cutting across the normal social, cultural and ethnic boundaries, then the filling of the church with the spirit is the true anticipation and advance sign post of the time when all creation will be filled with the presence and glory of God.”