ISSL Reflections November 6 2022 Ephesians 1:1–14 Post 1

I.
For the past nine weeks we have spent time with writings from the Hebrew Scripture that speak to us of God’s call on the lives of a number of persons. For this week and the next three weeks we will read passages in the Epistle to the Christian community in Ephesus that speak to God’s call on our lives.

As I begin listening to Paul I hear him speak of those in the Ephesus as being “God’s own people.”

As you spend time with this passage, what do you notice as the words and images he uses to describe “God’s own people.

II.
Ephesians 1:1-14 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,

To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

III.
What word or words or image stands out to you the most vividly as a means of identifying “God’s own people”?

How do you sense that might apply (or even not apply) to you?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}


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