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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey family. First of all, I am so, so, so proud of you. If you have an unbroken streak right now like I am, I'm beyond proud. We're gonna get into Ephesians today, and I'm really excited about Ephesians, but I'm excited about the next four books. And I'll tell you what those next four books are when we get to our context clues. For those of you who have not done the reading for today, if you haven't read Ephesians chapters 1, 2, and 3, go ahead, pause right now. Go do the reading. Come back. I'll be right here. But. But for the rest of us, if you've already done today's reading, if you've read Ephesians chapters one and three, then welcome to day 35. And let's get into the content. First of all, context clues. Okay? There are four things I gotta tell you in terms of wrapping your mind around what's going on with Ephesians. Actually, I had a New Testament professor who used to say this, that reading the letters of Paul is the equivalent to. To being, like, let's say, in the car or in the living room with someone who's on the phone. This happened a ton of times with me and my wife where she's on the phone with someone and I'm listening to her talk, but I can't hear what the person on the phone is saying. Okay? And so when we're reading the letters of Paul, we're listening to Paul. We know what Paul is saying in response to the Ephesians of the Philippians or the Corinthians or the Romans, but we don't know what they are saying. And so we are trying to piece together context so that we can understand exactly what Paul is saying. There are times where my wife is, like, on the phone, and I'll just ask for, like, hey, thumbs up, thumbs down. Like, are you happy? Are you, like, is this a good conversation? And she'll go, thumbs up? And I was like, okay, okay, okay. I don't have to worry. Let's get into some context. Number one. First piece of context. You can read all about Paul in Ephesus, in Acts, chapter 19, with all of the Letters of Paul. If it's actually some place that Paul has been, he never visited Colossae. So you can't go read about that in Acts when you're reading Colossians. But he did visit Ephesus. So as you navigate the book of Ephesians, it's good to just kind of get some context, like what actually happened when Paul was there. Number two, Ephesus is the second largest city in the entire Roman Empire. So this is a urban hub. This is a strategic place for Paul to plant a church. But it is a it like Corinth, it's just a cesspool of idol worship and pagan idolatry and debauchery and sin. Second piece of context is that Paul spends three years here, here in Ephesus. So not only did he think that it was going to be a major hub for Christianity in the Roman Empire, but he thought that it was a good idea to spend a long time here. And this is actually the longest place that Paul spends time. Okay, three years. The second closest would be Corinth, and he was in Corinth for 18 months. And last piece of context is that this is a prison epistle. We have four prison epistles in the New Testament. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. And over the next week or so, we're going to dive into all four of those books. Paul is in prison in Rome under house arrest when he writes all four of these books. All four of these books are probably written in 62 AD, so these books are written simultaneous with each other. Okay, so Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, all written at the same time. They all have similarities in them. Okay. If we're looking at the writings of Paul as a genre, the prison epistles would be kind of like a subgenre. Now, there's some people who ask, well, why would two Timothy not be a part of the prison epistles? Well, that's because When Paul writes 2 Timothy, it was a different imprisonment. When he writes 2 Timothy, it's actually the imprisonment that is gonna result in his death. He is eventually released from the imprisonment which produces the books of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. And so there we go. That's all of our context. Okay? And we need all that context to really begin to understand what's going on in the book of Ephesians. Let's get into our nerdy nuggets. Okay? I love doing nerdy nuggets with you guys. The first nerdy nugget I actually wrote this in the margin of my Bible years ago. Is that the phrase in Christ or in him is repeated nine times in nine short verses. Okay, so if you read chapter one, I mean, you start at verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ. And then verse 7. In him we have redemption through his blood. Next verse. Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory in Him. You also, when you heard of the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation in the Beloved and believed in Him. I mean in Christ. In Him, In Christ, In Him, In Christ, in Him. One of the things that I love about Ephesians, Colossians specifically, and Romans for that matter, is that Paul is going to focus on orthodoxy for the first half of the letter and then orthopraxy for the second half the letter. So there are no practical things to do until first Paul deals with identity. Who are you in Christ? Until Paul can get the Ephesians to understand who they are in Christ, he does not address their behavior. Because the gospel is not after behavior modification. The gospel is actually there to remind you and to teach you of your identity. The reason you smoke weed is cause you think that that is in line with who you are. The reason that you have sex even though you're not married is cause you think that's who you are. And so Paul doesn't address behavior, he addresses identity. He says, ah, if you knew that your body was the temple of the Holy Spirit, you would not do these things. So for the first half of the letter, Paul is drilling into this church. This is who you are. You are not someone who watches pornography. That's not your identity. Therefore, once you become convinced I'm pure, I'm redeemed, I'm a child of the King, I'm in Christ. When you really believe that, it actually has a massive impact on what you do. Okay, so the citizens of the world, we'll try to change behavior first. The gospel says, no, we want to change what you believe first. We want to change your identity first. Okay, so the first three chapters are going to be all about this is not just what to do, this is who you are. And if there are, is there, if there's dissonance between what you do and who you are. Paul's going to continue to remind you of who you are so that what you do is a natural byproduct of who you believe you are. I had to first believe I was a husband before I started acting like a good husband. I had to believe I was a father. Even when doctors told me and my wife we would never get pregnant. I had to believe I was a dad. Before I could ever act like a father. I had to believe that I was one. And so I didn't think that I would ever be an entrepreneur. That wasn't one of my goals, but I had to believe I'm a fruitful person. All an entrepreneur is is somebody who can take seed and make fruit out of it. When I believe that about myself now, imposter syndrome is not something I struggle with. I believe I'm a mouthpiece for God. I believe I'm a pastor. I believe I'm a preacher. Even though there are people who may tell me your personality type isn't that pastoral, Eh? I believe God's called me to be a pastor and what I believe about my identity has to be stronger than what an enneagram test may reveal or what people may think about me. At the end of the day, Paul is adamant for three chapters. We got to get your identity right. What if I told you that what you're learning in this video was just the tip of the iceberg? The Bible Department is actually powered by by arma. What is arma? I'm so glad you asked. ARMA is an online subscription based platform that we designed to help people, everyday people learn the Bible for themselves. We started ARMA so that anybody, anywhere could have access to trustworthy and entertaining Bible and theology content. In addition to this podcast, we have over 60 courses on individual books of the Bible, on theology topics, and on some hot topics like homosexuality, tithing and women in ministry. But really, ARMA is a community. A community of people that I've gotten to know. A community where thousands of people are currently finding family, asking questions and nerding out on the Bible together. If you want a community to read the Bible with you this year, or if you want to dive into some deeper theological content, or if you want more exclusive access to me and the entire armor team, how about you go to thebibledepartment.com I'll be sure to post the link in the description of this video. Let's make this your year to become a Bible nerd. Not only is there a focus on identity that's in Him. In him, in him, in Him. We've talked about this previously. This the reason that there's such a big focus on being in Christ. A, that's our identity, but B, the ancient world saw predestination and election as communal and corporate, not just individual. Okay? So there's a big focus on being in Christ. The big question is not has God predestined you for greatness? No, the question is he's predestined Jesus and are you in Christ? The question here is, are you going to be in Christ or outside of Christ? Because if you're in Christ, then Christ has been elected, Christ has been predestined. Christ is going to do awesome things. And what does it say right here? Verse 10 of chapter one as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. So the goal is to unite all things in Him. Your personal predestination is nothing in comparison to you being united to the full body of believers in Christ and acting out that corporate call in that corporate election. Okay, next nerdy nugget that I have written down, you're gonna see not just in this letter, but every letter of Paul that the goal is for Gentiles and Jews to become one. Okay? So reconciliation and unity, massive theme. And they're never going to act that way if they don't first believe that that's their identity. And so Paul says, hey, the two have actually become one. Like Christ has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility that you non Jews, you used to not be able to be connected with the Jewish people. But in his flesh, he tore down the veil that separated non Jews from Jews. And now in Christ, he unites all things. He unites all people. One of the things I always love to remind people is that Christianity is the most diverse religious experience on the planet, period. There's so many people who want to say things like, well, the church is divided and the church, you know, there's black church and white church and Asian church and Hispanic church. And I wanna look at them and go, do you not realize, like, you can't say that about mosques, you can't say that about Buddhism. Are you joking? Like, when I was in Thailand, the phrase is to be Thai is to be Buddhist. For every other religious group, there's a strong ethnocentrism. Christianity is the only religion on the planet that does have Chinese churches and does have Guatemalan churches and does have Mexican churches and black churches and white churches. And like the gospel is compatible with every single culture on the planet. And sometimes I think we get confused and we look at diversity and we think that it's division. When, if you compare Christianity to every, every other religion on the planet, we're insanely diverse. We are the most diverse expression of religion on the planet. That's just true. And when you start from that starting place, you actually start to see people from every other ethnic group that, that is a Christian as your brother and as your sister. If you start from the starting place of we're divided and we're separate and we're splintered, then you feel like you've got to build a bridge with people and you do all this work to try to build bridges. I live my life off the assumption. If you're a believer, we're family. And Paul is trying to get these Ephesian Christians to live that way. I have more in common with a white person who's a Christian than I do with a black person who's a non Christian. Because my first identity is not the color of my skin. The color of my skin is an important identity on the hierarchy of identities. Maybe it's number three or four or five, but it definitely ain't number one. Number one is that I've been bought by the blood of Jesus and I see every other blood bought Christian on the planet as my kin, my family. That is what Paul is trying to get both Jews and non Jews to understand here in Ephesus, so that when we get to the second half of the book, they can actually walk in unity and have the right practice. Orthopraxy. He's trying to get them to understand orthodoxy so they can walk in orthopraxy. All right. Timeless truth that Jesus unites and reconciles all things. Exactly. The verse that I read, it's one of the favorite things that I love about the gospel. As a plan for the fullness of time. This is verse 10, chapter 1. To unite all things in him. At one time I had this glass whiteboard and a friend of mine dropped it in the parking lot. We were moving offices and man, it was like tempered glass. That thing shattered into like 2 billion pieces. And I remember looking at it and going, that is a shockingly like, I cannot believe how much glass was in that, like, whiteboard. And then I went, man, the gospel is. Imagine Jesus just coming and grabbing all that glass and uniting it all together again to make this whiteboard again. And I would say, that's the gospel. That what sin has done is. It's broken us and severed us into all different kinds of groups and factions and political parties and ethnic groups. And what Jesus does is he gathers all things together, things that have been fractured and broken. Some of that fractured brokenness is in our own soul. And Jesus gathers it all together. And he's the only one that knows how to reconcile, not just reconcile you to God, but reconcile you to yourself, you to Christ, you to the church, you to the body of Christ, you with your neighbor. He reconciles all things, and that is a timeless truth. All right, fam. I love Ephesians. Tomorrow we finish the book. We'll do chapters four, five, and six tomorrow. And four, five and six is spicy. You got the S word. Submit. We're going to talk about wives. Submit today. Husbands. It's going to be good. I'm proud of you. Love y'all. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram at the Bible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses at thebibledepartment. Com. We'll see you back here tomorrow.