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Jun 05, 2023
Ephesians 4:1-16
LIVE INTO THIS
Paul has been soaring through the first three chapters of Ephesians. He has been so excited, so thrilled, so wordy(!) about what God has done. Now it’s time for the Ephesian believers to strap on their lifejackets and get ready for the ride of their lives! Doing life together has never been easy for humans. Now more than ever we’re prone to retreat to our solitary caves and keep all the annoying people at a distance. Our God has such a different plan for us!
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Ephesians 4:1-16
- Have you ever been in a relationship where someone worked really hard to keep the friendship alive? How did that go?
- Why do churches have such a poor track record in getting along? What could be done to improve ‘unity’.
- Explain the ‘bond of peace’. Why is that a super important piece?
- Are you maturing in your faith? What has been contributing to that?
- Are people around you maturing in their faith? What are you doing to contribute to that?
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Paul never recovered from God including the Gentiles in the salvation invitation.
Like some of us, perhaps, he felt like some people should be excluded by virtue of where they were born or how badly they have behaved.
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Human beings need reminders about how to get along, and Christians are no exception. We especially need reminders about how to love each other while we disagree. Paul draws the believers' hearts and minds back to what Jesus has done, and that paves the way for loving each other well through conflict.
How do we live with Jesus in a society that opposes him? Paul tells us to wake up to our resurrection hope. When we do that, loving others and rejecting sin in our own lives makes sense.
Romans 12 is the description of what happens when God’s mercy overflows in a church’s life. Lifelong attitudes change, love becomes genuine, mocking enemies are not met with equal and opposite force but, quite the opposite, with peace and gentleness. Be praying even now for how God will speak uniquely to your small group.
All along, we’ve been saying that God’s heart is to see us INCLUDED. That’s why Jesus came, and that’s the subject of Paul’s letter to the Romans. At times, Christians forget God’s radical inclusion of them and go back to the old patterns of competing and comparing. Sadly, that was happening in the Roman Church. Paul has one powerful dose for that sickness.
The resurrection changed everything! The story includes an invitation, a blessing, and a commission for the first witnesses … and for us today.
