The Gospel in Ephesians 2

I'm preaching on Ephesians 3:14-21 - Paul's great prayer - this weekend.  Verse 14 begins with the words "for this reason," which tells you that what follows is predicated on what came before.  However, when you look at what came before you see the same Greek word in 3:1 that is also translated "for this reason" in the NIV.  This lets you know that, to understand the rationale behind what is said in those two sections (3:1-13 and 3:14-21) you need to look back into chapter 2. 

Without going into too much detail here I'll just say that Ephesians 2 gives a great description of the gospel.  And I thought I would share a few of my notes on this one for your review and study.

Here's a quick gospel outline from Ephesians 2

1. The Gift and Implications of Salvation - Ephesians 2:1-10

a. Our sin - Ephesians 2:1-3

1). Sinful nature - verse 1 (dead in trespasses and sins)

2). Sinful practice - verses 2-3 (followed the ways of this world, etc.)

3). Penalties of sin (children of wrath v. 3 - see also vv. 11-12 - exclusion from covenants of promise,without hope and without God in the world.

b. The remedy for our sin - Ephesians 2:4-10

1). The remedy for our sinful nature - verses 4-8 (made alive with Christ) - by implication this is contingent on the cross and resurrection).

2). The remedy for our sinful practice - verse 10 (created in Christ Jesus to do good works).

3). The remedy for the penalties of sin - verse 6 (seated in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, see also verse 13 - "brought near").

2. The Benefits of Salvation - Ephesians 2:11-22

a. Brought into citizenship in Israel, i.e. the kingdom of God - 2:13-20

b. And thereby heirs of the covenants of promise - verse 13

Excursus - what are the covenants of promise?  These are the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 15:4-7 and Genesis 17:3-8.  A quick summary of these promises:

1). A kingdom - Abraham promised to be the father of nations, the father of kings, we are members of the royal family in this kingdom.

2). A family - Abraham promised a seed, offspring - we are his offspring, we have a new family relationship.

3). A land - Abraham was promised the land of Canaan which Jesus expands to include the whole earth - we are the inheritors of a new heaven and new earth for eternity.

4). A mission - to be a blessing to all the people of the earth.

I found this helpful and expansive in thinking about the gospel.  Sin is defined more broadly than mere action - it is our nature.  The work of Christ pays not only the penalty but crushes the power of sin, thus it has day to day relevance to Christian practice.  And the benefits of the gospel are so much more than just forgiveness of sin or eternal life.

It might also be a useful discussion to ask if being "on mission" is an inherent result of believing the gospel.  In other words we understand that being a member of the people of God is a necessary result of believing the gospel, having eternal life is a necessary result of believing the gospel, so wouldn't "being a blessing" to the nations be a necessary result also?

(And let me offer a commercial here - I mentioned a few days ago about my new found love for Logos software as a result of going to Camp Logos.  I don't claim that any of what I just shared is earth-shattering, just hopefully helpful - but Logos has some pretty cool syntax analysis tools which are helping me see connections and relationships in passages I didn't see before, and some of that has come into play here).

Comments

[Mark Daniels]

Ephesians 2:8-10 are among my favorite verses in all the Bible. Please print your sermon on the blog.

I'll be preaching on Acts 2:1-21, as this will be Pentecost Sunday.

God bless!

Mark