May 6th 2007 Organic Unity: Believer’s Past, Present, and Future (Ephesians 1.1-2.22) Message #1

It’s nice to know where you came from, and–in these early chapters–Paul gives us our spiritual heritage. He lets us into the mystery of how much we owe and to Whom.

ORGANIC UNITY
What we know about God and what we do for God have a way of getting broken apart in our lives. At the moment the organic unity of belief and behavior is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world. He “sets” our belief in God into our behavior before God so that the bones–belief and behavior–knit together and heal. Now that we know that the energy of reconciliation is the heart of the universe, it is imperative that we join in vigorously to bring everything together and summed up in God. Ephesians describes a long-range plan to do just that.
(write up adapted from the introduction to Ephesians by Eugene Peterson for The Message)