I can't leave Ephesians 1 behind... there's so much there and I love Paul's prayer!
A couple of questions:
- does anyone have any ideas on what Paul means when he says "that you may know... the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people" (v. 18)? Does that mean that the inheritance God gives us (our treasures in heaven) will be people? That kind of goes along with what the woman said last night from Psalm 2:8 "I will make the nations your inheritance" but I'm not sure that's what it means. Any ideas?
Does v. 23 really mean what it says? Are we, as the church, truly the fullness of Christ (the fullness of him who fills all things in all ways)? Any clues to what that actually means?
My lovely NIV study Bible is not very helpful on either verse... They never are on the truly interesting verses.
I'll get back to Ephesians 2 tomorrow, I promise!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I was stuck on vs 23 as well when i read it. The only thing that I came up with was that the Church is his body. He is the head, the brain, the mastermind behind everything and all. All power and sensibility come from him, but as the body (us) we do the work on earth through him and by him. The holy spirit which dwells within us, coming from "the head", gives us power to work for him.
Because all blessings and gifts are from the father, we are nothing without him. He gives us power, we provide fullness to him only because of him. Essentially he is fulfilling himself not by us, but by himself. Oh man, this is so hard to write in words and explain. It makes sense in my head, let me know if you kind of understand what im saying. and try to explain it better! haha.
I think I get what you're saying - we are so connected to Christ and Christ is so unified with the Trinity that the boundaries and separation maybe aren't as clear as we'd like to make them in our Western mindset.
I also wonder if we're afraid to accept the verse at face value because we're afraid of the implications. The truth is that we, as the body, are the respresentation of Jesus on earth - we act as if Jesus was acting. He gave us that authority and even said that we would do greater things (as the body, through the Spirit) than he did when he was here on earth.
Post a Comment