Please click on the attachment to view Joshua Ratliff, “Ephesians 1:3-4: An Explanation of the Corporate and Christocentric Nature of Election” Ratliff. Ephesians 1.3-4. An Explanation of the Corporate and Christcentric Nature of Election
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Divine Election and Predestination in Ephesians 1
With the exception of the ninth chapter of Romans, few passages in the Bible are thought to teach the doctrine of predestination as convincingly as the first chapter of Ephesians. Perhaps equally persuasive are the…
A New Perspective on Ephesians 1 and 2
This post was originally published as the third installment of a series, the first two numbers being “The New Perspective on Paul” and “The New Perspective and the Development of Reformed Doctrine.” The background for…
Does Ephesians 1:1-11 Support Calvinism?
The following is from Dr. Jack Cottrell. While he is neither a member of SEA or a self-declared Arminian, his thoughts on Ephesians 1 are very insightful.
QUESTION: Calvinists say that Ephesians 1:1-11 clearly establishes the absolute and all-inclusive sovereignty of God, including the unconditional predestination of the elect to salvation. How do you interpret this text?
ANSWER: A right understanding of Ephesians 1:1-11 begins with the recognition that God’s purpose for Israel was from the beginning limited to preparing for the coming of the Messiah, namely, for the incarnation of God the Logos as the human person Jesus of Nazareth. Once the Messiah came, it was God’s eternal purpose to merge all believing Israelites and all believing Gentiles into one new body called the church. This is the main point of the book of Ephesians, and it is the key to understanding the often misused passage in Ephesians 1:1-11.
Ephesians 1 Chosen “In Him”
Introduction The central theme of the passage is that our blessings and salvation are in Christ Jesus. This is clear because the phrase “in Christ” (or equivalent expression) takes place a dozen times in verse…
Ephesians 1:22-23; A Devotional
And He set everything under His feet, and made Him head over the assembly which is His body: the very thing which fills every bit of everything.
Ok, let us recall Paul’s context:
Ephesians 1:19b-21; A Devotional
…according to the work of His mighty strength which was worked in Christ, arousing Him from the dead and sitting Him at God’s right side in the celestial realms, far above any ruler, authority, power,…
Ephesians 1:18-19; A Devotional
“…having your mind’s eye enlightened in order to perceive what is the hope of His invitation, what is the glorious wealth of His inheritance in the saints and what is the surpassing greatness of His…
Ephesians 1:17; A Devotional
…that the God of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation on the knowledge of Him… This verse is a verse about the Father, and,…
Ephesians 1:15-16; A Devotional
Because of this, and because I heard about your faith in Lord Jesus and about your love toward all the saints, I’ve not stopped praying for you, recalling you to mind in my prayers. The…
Ephesians 1:13-14; A Devotional
In whom you also have heard the word of truth: the gospel of your salvation by which, having believed, you were sealed by the promised Holy Spirit who is the down payment of our allotment,…
Ephesians 1:11-12; A Devotional
Furthermore, in Him we have been chosen by lot (being predetermined according to the plan by which all things are worked out and according to the purpose of His will) to be who we are,…
Ephesians 1:7-10; A Devotional
Because this is all one sentence in the Greek, I wanted to go back and treat it the way it deserves: as one thought.
[It is in the Beloved that] we have redemption through His blood: the excusing of sins according to the abundance of His grace which He teemed into us in all wisdom and understanding having revealed to us the secret of His will, according to His good judgment, which, through Christ, was preplanned for managing the fulfillment of times in order to coalesce all things in Christ throughout the heavens and the earth.
Ephesians 1:9-10; A Devotional
As I said last time, 7-10 is one sentence, so it is important to have 7-8 in mind as we read 9-10. I intend to recapitulate this section next week, but for now, we’ll just…
Ephesians 1:7-8; A Devotional
Both last week and this week I made the mistake of trying to handle Pauls whole sentence from 7 to 10. However, the content is just too full, and there are too many things to…
Ephesians 1:3-6; A Devotional
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, for we are the blessed in all spiritual blessings, in the heavenly things, in Christ, seeing that He chose us in Him before the inception of the world to be holy and unblemished within His presence in love, thus predestining us into adoption to Him through Jesus Christ, according to the good judgement of His will in praise of His glory and His grace by which He favoured us in love.
Ephesians 1:1-2; A Devotional
Paul, and apostle of Jesus Christ through God’s will. To the saints: the residents in Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul uses three terms to denote the recipants of his letter: saints, residents, and faithful. I found it very difficult to determine the exact relationship between these three denotations, and I found that most translations simply skipped the second (residents). But I feel that this misses the relationship between being ‘in Ephesus’ and ‘in Christ Jesus’ which is a bit more obvious in the Greek, and I wanted to tease this out.
Ephesians 2:14; A Devotional
For He is our peace, having made both into one and having broken down that wall which divides us, that hostility by His flesh. Is there a greater verse to demonstrate the notion of how…
Ephesians 2:13; A Devotional
But now, in Christ Jesus, you, being once distant, have become close by Christ’s blood. It is important to remember that Paul’s primary concern in the book of Ephesians is dealing with the Gentile believers…
Ephesians 2:11-12; A Devotional
Therefore, remember that at one point you — the Gentiles in terms of flesh, the ones called “foreskin” by those called “the circumcised”, a handmade thing of flesh — that at that time, you were…
Recent Posts
Mark K. Olson, “John Wesley’s Doctrine of the Baptism with the Holy Spirit: An Exegetical Study – Part One”
Clayton Sidenbender, “How a Small US Evangelical Seminary Is Defying the Odds”
Richard Coords, “Mystery”
Sermon Video: Jack Hibbs, “God’s Good – Good Sovereignty (Romans 9:14-29)”
