Author: Megan Langan

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:1-6 (day four)

Paul asks us to be diligent in preserving unity in the church. Other translations say “…make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.” Unity isn’t just something we hope for or proclaim as a value. Paul says that unity is something we work for, not halfheartedly, but making every effort to keep the church unified in one Spirit, one hope, one Lord.

To be honest, I don’t know that I have made every effort to live in the unity of the Spirit with others. Not genuine unity, at least. Genuine unity doesn’t sweep tough conversations under the rug or ignore each other’s differences.  Genuine unity doesn’t settle for surface-level relationships in order to avoid disagreements. Genuine unity recognizes that while there are many things that contribute to our identity, one stands above them all – our relationship with Christ.

Your relationship with Christ is the most important thing about you. If you and another believer vote differently, live differently, speak differently and look differently, but you both proclaim Jesus as your savior, then you have the most important thing in common. While the differences between us may be significant and need to be addressed, Jesus is the firm foundation on which a unified church can be built.

As we head into an election season, and continue to live in a changing and challenging world, this Scripture must be the banner that we raise. We must make every effort to live in genuine unity in the Spirit.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:14-21 (day four)

Think back for a moment. What are the times in your life when you have gained a new comprehension of the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ’s love?

I recently had an experience where I found myself with a new understanding of the cross and the magnitude of God’s love. But this experience didn’t come like an epiphany out of nowhere. It came because I had experienced a deep hurt, and I took it to the Lord. In a vulnerable, painful place, the Lord showed me a new depth of love that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. I think many of the times we understand God’s love in a new way are like that – we’re in a vulnerable place, and God meets us there.

I think it’s interesting here that Paul prays for his listeners to have power. Specifically, he prays that they would have “power through his Spirit,” so that Christ would dwell in them and they would know the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love. I didn’t feel “powerful” in the earthly sense when I saw a new depth of God’s love – but the Spirit’s power is different. The Spirit’s power is strong in our weakness and vulnerability, and allows us to see new dimensions of God’s love, so that Christ would dwell in our hearts more and more.

The Spirit’s power shows us the love that surpasses all knowledge, so that we may be “filled up to all the fullness of God.”

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 3:1-13 (day four)

“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”

The church is essential. I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but the church is absolutely essential in the work of God. It is essential because God decided it was so. From the very beginning, the church was part of God’s plan. The church is the way in which followers of Jesus gather for worship and fellowship, it is the way in which believers serve the needs of their community, and it is the way by which the city comes to know Jesus.

But Paul tells us here that the church isn’t only part of God’s plan for the visible world. The church’s testimony reaches into the cosmos. When the church carries out its mission, it reverberates from the neighborhood all the way into the heavenly places.

The church certainly has its quirks. She has no shortage of bumps and bruises, and has hurt some with scrapes and serious wounds. Imperfect though she is, the church is still God’s plan for all creatures in heaven and on earth to know that Jesus is Lord. In Christ, what would otherwise be a rag-tag group of misfits becomes the unified reflection of God’s mercy and love. Will you stick with God’s church, and shout her testimony into highest heaven?

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:19-22 (day four)

I was recently back on Baylor’s campus and walked past one of the new buildings that had popped up since my last visit. In the bricks on the facade of the building, there were peoples names on them, the names of folks who had donated in order for that new space to be built.

When Paul says that we are now part of the household of God, he means that not only our names but our entire lives serve as bricks in the temple, built for the glory and worship of God. But we don’t get a brick in this building by donating or earning it, we’re part of this building because of what Jesus did on the cross.

The work of the cross is a work of scandalous unity, grafting all the people of the world into the family of God. We as Gentiles aren’t included in this building as an annex or a mother-in-law suite, an after thought or an add-on. We’re included in the very body of Christ, the ever-growing temple of worship to the God of all the earth. Praise God, the opportunity to be apart of this work is open to everyone, and the temple is still being built.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 2:8-10 (day four)

Many of us would say that when we think back to our moment of salvation, that initial surrender to the Lord, we knew that it was purely a gift of God’s grace and not something we could have achieved on our own. We might have even gotten to that moment of surrender because we had tried to find salvation through our own efforts, and kept coming up empty. We couldn’t have somehow earned or climbed the ladder to salvation, rather it was by God’s grace through our faith in Christ.

But as we continue in our journey of faith, we can so easily forget this. I knew at the moment of my salvation that I was receiving an unearned gift of God’s grace, but as I continue on this journey of working out my salvation, I so easily fall into the trap of thinking that I can somehow climb the ladder of sanctification on my own, or that if I just work hard enough I can look more like Jesus. It’s tempting to tell God, “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.”

While Paul makes it clear that we are meant to respond to God’s grace with good works, Scripture lovingly repeats that is only through God’s grace that we have been saved, and only through God’s grace that we continue to grow closer to him. Continually accept God’s free gift of grace, friends. It is sure and steadfast.

 

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 1:3-12 (day four)

Paul’s opening of Ephesians reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. Near the end of the movie (spoiler alert!), when Dorothy and the gang finally reach the wizard, they pull back the curtain only to realize that the “wizard” is a small, unassuming man using gimmicks in order to appear powerful.

Paul is also pulling back the curtain, but instead of disappointment, we’re met with wonder and promises beyond our wildest dreams. He pulls back the curtain of the cosmos and we find that not only are we adopted as sons and daughters of God, made pure and blameless before him by the sacrifice of his son, but that this was God’s plan from the beginning. Long before the creation of the world, God loved us and planned to live with us for eternity.

Ephesians lets us in on the plan that God has had all along, and we find that Christ is not only the center of that plan or the climax of the story, but he is the beginning, middle, and end, the one in whom all things on heaven and earth find their origin and conclusion. Through Christ, we see God’s love for us that was there from the very beginning, and his plan to live with us for eternity.