aBeLOG
Welcome to the aBeLOG, a series of (hopefully!) fortnightly posts on all matters homiletical. I intend to touch on whatever grabs my attention regarding preaching—issues contemporary and ancient, ideas hermeneutical and rhetorical, personalities conservative and liberal, publications antiquarian and avant-garde. Essentially, I’m going to follow my own homiletical olfactory instincts up rabbit trails and after red herrings. Comments are always invited and appreciated.
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
Biblical Foundations Podcast
I was interviewed some time ago on Biblical Foundations Podcast by my friend, Dr. Andreas Köstenberger of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Here’s our conversation on hermeneutics and preaching (in two parts):
Expositors Summit
If you are in the Louisville, KY, area on October 26–28, 2021, do plan to attend the Expositors Summit, organized by The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Yup, yours faithfully is speaking (twice) on a couple of real obscure passages from the Bible. Lots of blood and gore, I promise!
More info: see video, below, and go here …
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
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.