Ephesians 2:3

Among these we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh [our behavior governed by our corrupt and sensual nature], obeying the impulses of the flesh and the thoughts of the mind [our cravings dictated by our senses and our dark imaginings]. We were then by nature children of [God’s] wrath and heirs of [His] indignation, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:3 AMP).

This verse conjures up a very peculiar image in my mind of my little dog, Ellie.  She is a slave to her nose.  She cannot help herself.  It is a passion that drives this poor creature to completely ignore me, even though she is overwhelmingly obedient in every other instance.  I am no competition for her attention when it comes to the myriad of scents she discerns on our walking trail.  As disgusting as this may be, her favorite scent happens to be other dog’s piles of poo.  Sometimes the only way I can get her “off the scent,” is to reattach her leash and yank her away so she can continue her walk with me.

While I realize that this is a base comparison, I do think it rightly reflects the way it looks to God when He sees mankind obsessively obeying their corrupted and sinful nature.  He stands at a distance – already up the road because we fell behind to sniff – calling our name to go to greater heights and better places, but we lost in “cravings dictated by our senses.”  You have to admit that whether it is Ellie or us, this is quite a sad scenario. 

It is easy to read this and think, wow, so glad I’m not there any more, but is that really the case?  I mean I certainly don’t go around sniffing at alcohol, sexual immorality, or many of the other “scents,” that used to draw me in. Yet, am I still not sniffing the scent of sin when I take offense at something someone said or did to me?  Is this not the same as sniffing someone else’s poo?  It is when I am caught up in this ridiculous human condition of being “wronged,” that I am most thankful for the short leash of God’s Word that can yank me away so that I can continue my walk with Jesus and not waste time on the excrement of this world!

Today I choose to come away from an area of my life that has the disgusting stink of the flesh and obey, instead, the clarion call of God’s voice to move forward and not linger on the smell of death.

Check out Gennarino’s devotion on this verse:  Ephesians 2:3.

Ephesians 2:2

You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God (Ephesians 2:2 NLT). 

This paints such a stark contrast between believers and non-believers and forces us to face a reality that so many Christians tend to soft pedal.  The truth of the matter is that we are either in Christ, serving God, and living in righteousness; or we are not in Christ, serving the devil, and living in sin.  Talk about narrow-minded, exclusive, holier-than-thou, intolerant, and Bible-thumping!  Yet, that is what God declares in His Word to be the true state of reality.  So, do we shy away from walking in that truth because we don’t want those labels, or do we walk in that truth because of the labels we do want, like – chosen, holy, child of God, righteous, saint, heaven-bound, and beloved, to name just a few?

There is an illustration with which most of us are familiar about the frog in the kettle.  It explains a powerful point that if you throw a frog into boiling water, he’ll jump out.  However, if you put him in warm water and turn on the heat, he will never move, even though the water reaches boiling because it was a gradual increase in the temperature to which he became accustomed and that seemed normal. This is a perfect parable for believers in our society today.  We are boiling in the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, but not jumping out because we have become desensitized to sin. 

It is easy to see the progression of our deterioration through the history of cinema.  In 1939 when the movie, “Gone With the Wind” came out, it was considered scandalous because Clark Gable uttered the unmentionable curse word in his famous line, “Quite frankly, Scarlet, I don’t give a d….”  Fast forward to 2014 and we have the record-holding Hollywood blockbuster of the “Wolf on Wall Street,” touting the use of the “F” word 506 times, that’s once every 21-1/2 seconds!  In 1952, in the TV show, Ozzie and Harriett, we were so modest as a society that this Hollywood couple slept in twin beds even though they were married.  Yet, in 2014, just flip through the channels during Prime Time TV and you will be hard-pressed to find any show that is not promoting some type of sex outside of marriage.  From adultery to homosexuality, it has become the acceptable standard of our viewing audience in America today.  And we wonder why so many Christians are having a hard time on the topic of gay marriage.  Wake up people, the water is boiling and we need to jump out of the kettle or boil to death.

I am reminded today that my path is one of holiness and I need to repent of the compromise I have allowed in my life and ask God to replace my boiled heart of stone with one of flesh that follows hard after Him and His righteousness regardless of what I am labeled by the world.

Check out Gennarino's post on this verse at:  Ephesians 2:2.

Ephesians 2:1

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1 NKJV).

Death in scripture does not have the same concept as what we typically think of as death in our modern society.  We tend to envision a casket, a funeral, and being buried in the ground and that’s it.  Death connotes the end of life in most people’s minds.  Yet that is not what death means in a Biblical sense.  Death is not the end of anything; it is not a ceasing to exist, so to speak.  Death, when used in Scripture, signifies a separation – in a spiritual sense mankind died in the Garden of Eden when man’s soul and spirit separated from God.  In a physical sense, we die when our soul and spirit separate from our bodies. 

Therefore, when Paul says that we were “dead” in trespasses and sins, he is not inferring that we didn’t exist.  On the contrary, we were very active in our sinful state of being.  Yet, we were separated from God, who is Life.  Paul is explaining that God made us “alive” not in the sense of existing, but in the sense of being reconnected to Him through the finished work of Christ on the cross.  That’s why Paul tells the church in Rome:

 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Romans 5:10 NKJV).

Our reconciliation was through Christ’s death, but our salvation is through the life we have in Christ.  Put another way:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20 NKJV).

Since I have been made alive in Christ – I have been reconnected to the very source of Life, which is God – I have the ability to walk in the newness of that life, simply by choosing to.  It is not something that I need to figure out, or conjure up, or pray for, or even fast to make happen.  It has already been done and is, therefore, at my disposal.  The only question is, will I walk in it?

Today I choose to walk in the truth of new life in Christ.  For me right now that means since home is Heaven, not earth, then all my expectations and desires need to be placed there, not here.

Be sure to check out Gennarino's devotion on this verse:  Ephesians 2:1.

Ephesians 1:23

[The church], which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all [for in that body lives the full measure of Him Who makes everything complete, and Who fills everything everywhere with Himself] (Ephesians 1:23 AMP).

We’ve all met people who claim to know Christ yet do not feel any compulsion to go to “church.”  They say things like, “Well, I can worship God anywhere.  I don’t need to go to a building to do that.”  While that may be true in one sense, it denies the compelling argument Paul sets out in this verse as to why we actually need to gather together with other believers in what we traditionally call “church.”

There is a sense in which Christ is filling us individually, but the reality that God does not want us to miss in this area of Scripture is that there is another way in which we participate in the presence of Christ that is corporate, rather than individual.  With the filling of Christ in me personally, I am complete in my gifts and calling, my indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and my position of salvation past and sanctification present.  Yet, when I get together with other believers, I contribute my fullness to their fullness and it creates another level of the fullness of Christ.  This concept is very much like those photos we see of a face, but when we look more closely, we see that the photo itself is made up of individual pictures that all come together to create the bigger picture. 

That’s what Paul is saying – there is a bigger picture of Christ that is fulfilled in the body of Christ. It’s why Scripture says that wherever two or more are gathered in His name, He will be in the midst of them.  That doesn’t make sense unless you consider this concept of bigger picture because we know that Jesus is already in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, so why would He be in the midst of us only when two or more are gathered?  It is because He is with us in a different way.

It is important not to miss this concept because it is the power of God in the world today.  We can all be witnesses for Christ individually, but there is a synergy that is created when we collectively worship and serve the Lord.  It is like the one draft horse who can pull 2500 pounds alone, but when yoked with another draft horse of equal size and strength, they don’t just pull twice as much.  They are able to pull exponentially more because of the synergy of their union.  As a believer, I can impact my world.  As a member of the Body of Christ, I can join forces with my brothers and sisters and impact HIS world.

So while it is true that we don’t need to go to church to worship God, we sure do need to go to church to see a fullness of Christ that we won’t see in any sunrise, mountaintop, or any other place on earth worshipping God on our own.  As a believer, we would be missing out on a special blessing that God desires to give us if we fail to take advantage of the power of the Body of Christ with whom He has specifically told us to gather together. 

The next time I get together with my brothers and sisters in Christ, I will purposefully be on the lookout to see what God will do with the synergy of our faith as He shows up in a special way in the midst of us.

Check out Gennarino's devotional on this verse:  Ephesians 1:23.

Ephesians 1:22

And He has put all things under His feet and has appointed Him the universal and supreme Head of the church [a headship exercised throughout the church] (Ephesians 1:22 AMP).

This verse is one sure way to qualify those churches that belong to Christ from those churches that don’t.  Can Christ’s supremacy be seen in the leadership of the church?  Is He obviously at the helm, and not just in wisdom, truth, and power, but also in gentleness, meekness, self-control, humility, honesty, faith, goodness, kindness and all the fullness of the fruit of God’s Spirit?  While we know that it is not humanly possible to hit the mark perfectly, we also should recognize that this does not eliminate the mark.  Those who lead the church need to be examples to the believers in their purity, speech, faith, and good works, but most of all in their humble willingness to be accountable to the real Head of the church. 

It is interesting to note that in the Old Testament God’s plan for Israel was always to be their King, yet His concession was to appoint a human instead since they insisted on being like the rest of the nations.  Fast forward to the New Testament and we see that God replaced the one-man “Moses model,” with a council of leaders who formed a team that studied God’s Word and sought God’s heart for the church.  While it is helpful to have a governing body in place for the purpose of operating the mechanics of a church, that government should never be a substitute for the Universal and Supreme rule of Jesus over a body of believers.  When there is a team of leaders who insist on the unity of one Spirit, there is safety against the human propensity for fallibility. 

In light of how many amazing and wonderful men of God have fallen to adultery, suicide, and other moral failures in our society over the last several years, I think the church needs to take a long hard look at this verse and consider the practicality of allowing Jesus to be the head of His church again. 

Today I will pray for the men who are leading the body of Christ to have wisdom and conviction to follow hard after Jesus.

Check out Gennarino's devotional on this verse:  Ephesians 1:22.