Saturday, March 15, 2025

The Vision (3.14.25): Introductory Thoughts on Ephesians

 


Note: We began a new Sunday morning exposition last Lord’s Day at CRBC through the book of Ephesians. Listen to sermon here.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:1).

Today, we begin an exposition of this first of three “churchly” prison epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians), Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. This letter is filled with some of the most profound and most practical teaching in all of Holy Scripture.

The great Welsh minister David Martyn Lloyd-Jones who preached through this book over the course of eight years from his pulpit in London, from 1954-1962, and whose sermons were later published in eight volumes, states in the introduction to the first volume: “The epistle to the Ephesians is the most ‘mystical’ of Paul’s epistles, and nowhere does his inspired mind soar to greater heights” (Ephesians Vol. 1:6).

Let me sample a bit of the content to whet our appetite:

It contains the “magna charta” of the Biblical doctrines of grace and the Biblical view of good works in Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace are ye saved through faith….”

It contains the great household code, including the teaching on the relationship between Christian wives and husbands in Ephesians 5:21-33 (esp. vv. 22, 25).

It contains a great metaphor for militancy in the Christian life in Ephesians 6:11-17, exhorting Christians to “put on the whole armour of God” (v. 11).

There is indeed some of the most foundational teaching in the whole NT, the whole Bible, in Ephesians, and we will get to study it together, God willing, in the coming months.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

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