And it happened,
while Apollos is what's at Corinth,
that Paul, having
passed through the upper regions,
came to
Ephesus.... Moreover you see and hear
that not only at
Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia,
this Paul has
persuaded and turned away many people,
saying that they are
not gods which are made with hands....
And when the city
clerk had quieted the crowd,
he said: "Men of
Ephesus, what a man is there
who does not know
that the city of the Ephesians
is temple guardian of
the great goddess Diana,
and of the image
which fell down from Zeus?"
Acts 19: 1a; 26, 35
In the last
blog I outlined some of the history for the city of Ephesus and today’s blog I
continue to outline some of Paul’s events in Ephesus. Paul's first preaching is recorded in Acts 18, about 54
A.D.. Paul is the Ephesians elders at
Miletus in the spring of the year 58 A.D. and gave them exhortation to
earnestly and affectionately in regard to the threatening disturbances from
within the church and to take it into themselves and to feed the Church of the
Lord, which Jesus Christ had purchased by His own blood. The keynote of the epistles to the Ephesians
is that it is a doctrinal and practical exposition of the idea of the Church as
being the house of God that we will see in Chapter 2: 20 -- 22, and that the
church is to be the spotless bride of Christ, the mystical body of Christ. The
pleroma of the Godhead resides in Jesus Christ corporately so being that Jesus
Christ is of the pleroma of the Godhead then He can bestow upon His church a
plenitude of His grace is an energy as His body. When we speak of the fullness of God, we speak of the fullness of
Jesus Christ for it is the same fullness as the Godhead. Therefore the Church being the bride of
Jesus Christ, His body, then the church is also the fullness of Jesus Christ,
and, God is reflected in Jesus Christ, and Christ is reflected in the
church. From the opening scriptures of
this blog we find that Paul was being confronted because he was willing to
preach the gospel and speak against worship of false gods. Let us contemplate this for a moment and how
it applies to us: we are the Church of Christ, we are the body of Christ, we
are the fullness of Christ, therefore, our responsibility is to speak against
those things that are anti-Christian whether it be false gods or
immorality. Yes, as it did for Paul
bring some persecution and accusations they will receive the same and if you're
not receiving the same then it is questionable if you're acting as one of the
persons in the bride of Christ and of the fullness of Christ is living in you.
This
conception, this celestial vision, as it were, of the church is the conception
of its future state of perfection. We
may not see that perfection in our day but after the second coming of Jesus
Christ would be bride of Christ is now living eternally with Him the church,
the assembly of God, will now be in a state of perfection. Until then Paul is representing, as we
should also, that the present church is militant in its gradual growth until we
reach the complete stature of Christ's fullness. Yes, it is true of the early apostolic Church had defects, and we
can learn us from any study of any book in the New Testament. This is true because the Church consists of
individual Christians, and as it was with the city of Corinth and in Ephesus
and other cities the Christians were coming in from a world that was
anti-Christian even though they had now accepted Christ as their Savior. We just ran about another temple, the temple
of Diana, in the city of emphasis and how the people of Ephesus were upset with
Paul because he was saying that this was only a god not God. If we are looking for perfection in the
church they were looking as that song would say "looking for love in all
the wrong places." The body of
Christ grows in the two words with its several individual members:
"Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed
what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him,
for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).
When Paul
speaks of the church is not a speaking of speculation or some fiction as to
what it shall become as Plato’s Republic, or Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. This in regard to Jesus Christ, the pleroma
of the Godhead, and the church having received the full list of the Godhead
through Jesus Christ finds his reality in Jesus Christ, who is absolutely holy,
and is spiritually and dynamically present in His church. Scripture as inspired and given to Paul to
record is the inspired standard and the aim that we are to constantly
keep in view. Jesus Christ exhorts
everyone of us individually to be perfect, but does not mean that we will reach
as some heretics thought that there is perfection where a person could never
sin, no Jesus Christ at this: "Therefore
you shall be perfect, just as your father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). A problem that was facing Paul in the
churches was there loss of vision and understanding as to who they are and Whom
they belong to, and this is a problem in the churches today for many know about
Jesus Christ but they don't really know Him.
With all of this conception of the church and how the churches to view
itself is to show what's this profound and fruitful idea of what it means to be
one of the family of God.
But the LORD is the true God,
He is the living God
and the everlasting King.
At His wrath of the earth will tremble,
and the nations will not he able to endure
His
indignation.
Jeremiah 10: 10
Remember you all are of the family of God
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