Daily Meditations on the Bible / We stand with Israel
Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
Summary: “Wrath” is another one of those words that mean different things, depending on the situation. Understanding God’s wrath is different from human wrath helps us make sense of scriptures about wrath.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:3c – Children of Wrath”… gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.
Summary: There is a weird aspect to being human that is hard for us to understand. Our spirit and our body are not one and the same. They have two separate agendas.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:3b – Two of Me”All of us also lived among them at one time …
Summary: Paul has a confession to make: He, too, was a person who was “dead” in his sins before Jesus found him. He knows he is no better than anyone else and because of that, he has compassion for you and me.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:3a – All of Us”… and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
Summary: Satan has been at work inciting disobedience since the very beginning of Creation. Jesus showed us a different way to respond to Satan. Paul explains how it works.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:2b – The Power of God’s Word”… in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world
Summary: Paul uses a phrase here that is deceptively simple. The “ways of this world” is a phrase we might accept without thinking about, but once we reflect on it, we realize there is a lot to consider.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:2a – One-Way Ticket to Hell”… in your transgressions and sins
Summary: Paul gives us a peek into the different types of sin that God’s Word deals with. Understanding the differences helps us clear our thinking when it comes to understanding our relationship with God.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:1b – Sin’s Smorgasbord”As for you, you were dead …
Summary: The meanings of “alive” and “dead” are easy to see when we are talking about physical bodies. When the subject is a spiritual body, the definitions of “dead” and “alive” change. The words remain the same, but the meanings are different.
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:1a (Part 2) – The Big Door”As for you, you were dead …
Summary: Understanding the meaning of words is important. When the document we are reading is a matter of life and death, correctly understanding the words becomes even more important. Today we explore the meaning of the word “dead.”
Continue reading “Ephesians 2:1a (Part 1) – Dead Reckoning”… the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Summary: Making sense of Paul’s sentences can be a challenge. Today’s passage is one of those challenges. What is Paul talking about and what does he mean? The answer is found in a closer look at what Paul wrote.
Continue reading “Ephesians 1:23b – Deconstruction”… which is his body,
Summary: God’s math is a bit different than our math. To understand spiritual things, we have to be willing to accept that spiritual matters don’t have to follow the same rules we have in the physical world.
Continue reading “Ephesians 1:23a – Heavenly Math”