Ephesians
Ephesians 6:10–24
Victory against supernatural foes is achieved by divine empowerment in the form of God’s armor (commitment and dependence upon God) and by Spirit-driven prayer.
It is not surprising that “power” occurs a number of times in this pericope: believers are “empowered” (Eph 6:10), so that they “may be able/may have power” (6:11) to stand against the devil, thus “being able/having power” (6:13) to resist in the evil day, and “being able/having power” (6:16)
Ephesians 6:1–9
Children obey their parents and parents gently instruct their children, and slaves obey their masters with sincerity and masters treat their slaves likewise as they both serve God—all furthering unity and promising reward.
The theme of submission in this text is the extension of the fifth verb (participle)—“submitting”—that qualifies “filling by the Spirit” (Eph 5:18). We see instructions to those in authority (parents, employers) and to those under
Ephesians 5:21–33
The filling by the Spirit manifests in the mutual submission of believers, and in the modeling of the husband–wife relationship after the Christ–church relationship.
“Submitting” in Ephesians 5:21 is the fifth verb (participle) that is dependent upon the main verb “be filled’ (in 5:18); the other four were: “speaking,” “singing,” “making melody,” and “giving thanks” (dealt with in the previous text, 5:1–20). What is called for here is mutual
Ephesians 5:1–20
The imitation of God and Christ’s selfless love call for abandonment of sexual immorality, and the adoption of a wise and worshipful lifestyle.
Here we are explicitly told what the walk of believers entails: the walk “in love,” the imitation of God and of Christ, who loved with a love beyond compare. Having Jesus Christ as both the ground and model of love (Eph 5:2), such self-sacrificial love is to be the mark of believers, the “beloved” children of God (5:1).
After
Ephesians 4:17–32
Believers, no longer living licentiously, are being divinely renewed into the likeness of God that is manifest as they maintain unity and engage in activities that build up one another.
The chronological sequence of events in Ephesians 4:17–18 appears to be written in reverse. Reordering the series, the progression looks like this: hardness of heart (4:18d) → ignorance (4:18c) → exclusion from the life of God (4:18c) → darkness in understanding (4:18a) → futility
Ephesians 4:1–16
Selfless and loving exercise of grace-gifts, that leads to peaceful unity, builds up the body to the mature stature of its head, Christ.
In this section, there is an explicit exhortation to unity with a sevenfold declaration of the unifying elements of the faith, in which are present the members of the Trinity (Eph 4:1–6). These seven acclamations of the core unities of the Christian faith (4:4–6) appear to be deliberately crafted to reflect the significance of the
Ephesians 3:14–21
Believers, increasingly conformed to Christ in faith by the Spirit, and comprehending, in community, the immensity of Christ’s love, glorify God who dwells in them.
This pericope is the continuation of Ephesians 2:11–22 (after which came the “digression” of 3:1–13). There, Paul had concluded by saying that believers have been recreated as a holy temple, the dwelling of God (2:20–22). Here we find out how they should function as this “temple,” and “holy
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.