God’s Wonderful Plan For Your Life

Introduction to the Book of Ephesians

The book of Ephesians was written by the apostle Paul while in prison around AD 60-62 or possibly as early as AD 53-56.

We know Paul experienced incredible opposition while in Ephesus (Acts 18:24-19:41).

This book reveals God’s abundant grace to both the Jews and the Gentiles as central thing God wanted to do from the very beginning.

Exposition of Ephesians 2:1-3:13

The book of Ephesians is Paul’s pastoral letter to a church that is trying to figure out how to exist as a new Christ community. I think more importantly, Paul does an excellent job speaking definitively on the eternal plan of God, which ultimately leads to the sanctification of the new Christ community. More peculiar about this community is the fulfilment of God’s eternal plan to bring together the Jews and the Gentiles.

The interesting thing about this eternal plan is its origin before the formal existence of either the Jew or Gentile people. One must ask, how could we have a plan for two people groups who do not yet exist? One may immediately respond that the plan is a response to the fall of Adam and the problem of separation among mankind. However, this response seems to downplay the sovereignty of God.

Rather than the Jew/ Gentile motif being a prefigured reality, it is a foreordained purpose that God has in mind to carry out through Jesus Christ. Paul’s testimony in Ephesians is that God has finally done it. All that was to be done in Christ has been completed. His objective is to demonstrate how God’s manifesto impacts creation—particularly Jew and Gentile relationships.

Ultimately, there are obvious parallels to what would become the Jew/Gentile relationship that help us see how and why God’s plan is formed in the first place. From the beginning, there was:

Adam and the rest of the world

Jacob and Esau; Israel and the Edomites

Israel and the nations

Therefore, we can rightfully conclude that God’s initial plan has always been forming from one a global family.

The English translation of Ephesians 2:1 seems to suggest that the Gentiles’ death was in the past. However, the Greek suggests something altogether different. The more literal translation of Ephesians 2:1 is “And you being dead in your trespasses and sins…” Paul is clear that the death is a result of the “ways of this world” or the period of time in which the kosmos is ruled by the ruler of the power of the air and the spirit at work in the disobedient ones (Ephesians 2:2).