Preaching to the Preacher

Paul closes the letter by addressing the final threat to church unity—the spiritual forces of darkness—and how we combat them.

Paul continues discussing how the gospel impacts the household by addressing the slave and master relationship in ancient households.

Paul continues discussing how the gospel impacts the household by addressing parents and children.

Paul takes his teaching about unity in the body into the household, calling husbands who have a measure of delegated authority from Christ as head of household to use that authority to love and serve their wives and Jesus did the church. He also calls wives to honor Christ by submitting to their husbands as to himself. The call for both is to submit to Christ in their respective temporal roles. In doing so, marriage accurately reflects its true fulfillment--the union of Christ with his church.

Paul continues to describe the life of unity in the church by calling out those deeds that are destructive to it. These should be called out for the darkness they are and should be replaced with what builds up the body.

Paul continues his call to maintain unity in the body of Christ by contrasting their old way of life with the new. They are to "put off" the old self, which is looking out for number one, and "put on" the new self that is looking for how to serve.

Paul introduces another metaphor for the church--the body of Christ. Each of us has been given unique gifts by Jesus himself, yet these gifts are to be used not for our own personal gain but for maintaining and building up unity in Christ's body so that it might grow and mature.

Paul bursts out in a prayer of blessing in light of this gospel. He specifically asks that believers would experience God's power, a power that comes from knowing the enormous extent of his love and fills to overflowing.

God's true plan was mysterious until it's unveiling through Christ. In meditation on the gospel, Paul marvels over that fact that God's plan has always been to include the Gentiles along with the Jews so that the one "chosen people" is actually a diversity of peoples whose existence as a people would make God's wisdom known throughout all creation, including the unseen heavenly powers.

Paul meditates on how the work of Jesus has changed our relationship to God--from aliens approaching a temple through various procedures and ceremonies, or simply without hope of ever approaching, to being caught up and built into a newly created people who are themselves God's temple. And this is done entirely through the working of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.