Introduction to Ephesians

January 22, 2010 in Ephesians with 0 Comments

4 For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glo­ri­ous hope for the future. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one bap­tism, 6 and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and liv­ing through all.

Eph­esians 4:4–6

Eph­esians

Today we begin a new book of the Bible. If you’ve been a part of The Oil Change for awhile, you know that this will be the thir­teenth book of the Bible that we have cov­ered (we’ve done a few books twice).

There have been a few times in the past when I wanted to start into this par­tic­u­lar book, but decided to go in another direc­tion. Of course, look­ing back, I believe it had a lot to do with God’s tim­ing. You see, I think now is the per­fect time to look at a book that’s pri­mary focus is The Church. And so, I’m very excited about jump­ing into Ephesians.

Eph­esians is another of the books writ­ten by Paul. And, as I’ve explained in the past, these “books” were actu­ally let­ters writ­ten by Paul for the church in spe­cific areas. How­ever, it was com­mon for Paul’s let­ters to be passed around from city to city. This let­ter, to the church in Eph­esus, was no different.

Most schol­ars believe that the let­ter was writ­ten around A.D. 60, while Paul is in prison in Rome. Paul knew the peo­ple of Eph­esus, hav­ing lived there for approx­i­mately three years dur­ing one of his ear­lier mis­sion­ary trips. It was Paul who started the church in Ephesus.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be chal­lenged with the area of unity within the church. Paul will remind us of what it means to be a Christ fol­lower and the beauty of being part of some­thing far big­ger than just one small group of peo­ple. The Church is made up of mil­lions of peo­ple all around the world. We wor­ship in thou­sands of dif­fer­ent ways in order to effec­tively reach peo­ple from var­i­ous back­grounds, and yet, we have one pur­pose: to rep­re­sent Jesus in a world need­ing salvation.

So, I hope you enjoy this next study. And, as I always say when we are first start­ing into a new book, this is the per­fect time to for­ward this devo­tional to friends and fam­ily and encour­age them to sign up and enjoy the jour­ney with us.

My prayer: Lord, open my heart over the next few weeks and help me dis­cover again what it means to be part of a glo­ri­ous church. Amen.

Until tomor­row.