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Category: Ephesians (Page 1 of 19)

Body of Christ: Incarnation

March 17, 2026 / / 0 Comments

In the beginning, our God spoke words into the darkness and chaos to create light, to create the heavens and the earth. Our God spoke powerful words from a smoking mountain in the middle of the desert to bring forth a holy nation, his sacred people. Our God spoke words through his prophets in Israel–words of truth and grace, comfort and encouragement, judgment and mercy and love.

And God’s words were not enough. Words are never enough. So God’s Word became flesh. God’s Word became a body.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” ~John 1:14

The holy Son of God has a body. We know Jesus has a body–a real, physical, flesh-and-blood body. Jesus ate and drank, he slept and wept, he walked and talked, he worked and played, he taught and prayed in a real skin-and-bones body. He bled real blood. He suffered bodily pain. And he died a real, physical death. Jesus died.

And when God’s Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the grave, he raised him to life in a resurrection body–a real, physical body. Our risen Lord Jesus, in his real resurrection body, was recognized by everyone who knew him. He ate and drank with his followers, whether he was invited or not. He walked and talked with them, he taught them and prayed with them. It was Jesus’ real, physical, flesh-and-blood body that proved to them he was really alive. It was remarkable.

What’s even more remarkable is that our ascended Lord Jesus is reigning right now today and forever at the right hand of the Father in heaven, but he still has a real, physical, flesh-and-blood body on this earth. Jesus still insists on being skin-and-bones present in this world. Jesus has a body. He still does.

It’s us! It’s the Church! We are the Body of Christ!

Through us, by his Church, our Lord Jesus wraps his real, physical, tangible, concrete, flesh-and-blood presence around the whole world. Today, the physical, skin-and-bones Body of Christ lives and breathes and moves and acts in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the utter ends of the earth–even to West Texas!

That’s us. The Church.

Now, you’ll hear people say sometimes that Jesus never intended to start the Church. These are mostly well-meaning people, I think. They’ll say Jesus was a holy man; they’ll even say he’s the Son of God and the Savior of the World, but he never wanted to start what we call the Church.

Baloney!

That was his plan all along, from the very beginning of the story. Jesus started the Church when he called together that first group, that first body of twelve apostles. The Jesus Movement was always a corporate, social movement–it was never just a collection of religious individuals. The Church was always meant to be the Body of Christ. That’s the way Jesus meets people today, how Jesus interacts with people now–through his Church.

It’s not just a metaphor. This is about Incarnation. This is about who Christ is and who we are in him and what it means for the risen and reigning Son of God to remain physically present in this world through a people.

Jesus’ body, his physical presence on this earth, is the Church. They are inseparable. You can’t have Jesus without his body. You can’t know Jesus without his body. You can’t be in a relationship with Jesus outside his body. Jesus is the Church; the Church is Jesus. Seriously. That’s not just how the apostle Paul sees it (1 Corinthians 6:15, 10:16-17, 12:12, 12:27; Ephesians 1:22-23). That’s the way Jesus sees it. This is how Jesus talks about it. This is how he always planned it to be.

Saul’s on the road to Damascus when the risen Christ appears and blinds him with his divine light. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:1-19) Saul’s thinking, “I’m not persecuting you, Jesus; I’m arresting all these so-called Christians who are blaspheming Scripture.” But Jesus makes it clear that if you mess with the Church, you’re messing with him.

When Jesus sends his disciples out in Luke 10, he commands them to do the same things he’s been doing. “Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near!'” (Luke 10:9) Then he adds, “The one who listens to you listens to me; the one who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). Jesus says the exact same thing in Matthew 10:40. He says that he and the Church are functioning in the same way. Jesus sends his Church as his body on earth to do all the things he did: “I have given you the authority!” (Luke 10:19)

On that last night, at dinner with his gathered followers, Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing” (John 14:12).

And we do! We heal the sick and proclaim the Kingdom of God! And we turn the other cheek and we go the extra mile and we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Why? Jesus says, “So you can be like me. So you can become sons and daughters of our Father in heaven.”

When we forgive the ones who sin against us, people see Jesus. When we’d rather be wronged than to fight for our rights, people see Jesus. When we sacrifice and serve, when we consider the needs of others more important than our own, people will meet the Lord Jesus in us.

The Church. The Body of Christ.

Peace,
Allan

Family: By Jesus

March 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

“I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” ~Matthew 10:35-37

Why does our Lord Jesus talk this way about family? Jesus had no problem splitting up family businesses, separating sons from their dads with a (snap) “Follow me.” He told a disciple who had just lost his dad to let the dead bury their own dead and get about the urgent business of the Kingdom.

When Jesus was teaching inside someone’s house, he was informed that his mother and brothers were outside looking for him. “Who are my mother and my brothers,” he asked? Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother!” (Mark 3:31-35)

Why does Jesus talk like this about family? Jesus treats family like he treats money and possessions. He talks about family like he talks about the government and the traditions of men. Why? Because to Jesus, every single thing we hold dear must be submitted to him and his Kingdom. Nothing comes between us and following Christ Jesus. Not even family.

You know, Jesus has this weird knack for harpooning the things we treasure the most. He devalues what we overvalue and calls us to something bigger and better. He points us to something holy and eternal. Like with our families.

We probably put too much emphasis on our biological families. I mean, our natural families are notoriously undependable. Unstable. Unreliable. Our families are divided by ambition and selfishness. Our families are separated by geography and greed. Our families are destroyed by divorce and death. You can’t count on your biological family. Yet, if we’re not careful, we can get drawn into idolizing the family. We get sucked in to prioritizing family over God.

We put our kids in sports camps and sign them up for traveling teams at alarmingly younger ages and at increasingly frantic paces like they’re going to be playing baseball and volleyball their whole lives. Their spiritual formation takes a backseat to their athletic formation. We’re more concerned about our kids being popular and successful than we are about them being like Christ. We’re investing more time and money and energy and emotion into our children and grandchildren than we are into the Kingdom and mission of God.

When we do that, we send the wrong message. We distort the Gospel. We communicate the wrong things inside our families and to everyone who’s watching.

Because not everybody has a family.

There are more and more men, women, and children in this fractured world who grow up without moms and dads. Fewer and fewer people are getting married and having kids. You know lots of people who are single–some because they choose to be and some against their will. Some people have tried to make family work, they’ve tried to keep it all together, but it just doesn’t. They don’t have a family. And we hold up biological family as some kind of spiritual ideal, as something to attain to as one of God’s top priorities, and it’s just not! We wind up excluding more and more people from the Gospel.

“Here are my mother and my brothers!” 

Jesus devalues what we overvalue and calls us to something bigger and better. He points us to something holy and eternal.

“As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.’ The Lord Almighty says, ‘I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters.'” ~1 Corinthians 6:16, 18

Jesus is showing us a forever family conceived in God’s love and grace and birthed by his precious blood. God’s eternal family is not based on genetics or DNA or last names, but on his compassion and Christ’s sacrifice. Romans 9 says it’s not the natural children who are God’s children, but the children of the promise. The promise is that God will create an eternal family, where everybody belongs together and everybody’s related–no barriers, no restrictions, no distinctions–where everybody belongs and everybody’s equally loved and nurtured and cared for. That’s the promise. That’s the mission of our God.

When you become a Christian, when you give your whole life over to Jesus, you are joined into God’s family. An eternal people born of water and Spirit, a family bigger and better than your biological family, a worldwide barrier-breaking family where we eat and drink together and share and accept and carry each other’s burdens. Together. Where we rejoice and mourn together. Where we support and encourage and grow and work and bless and love. Together.

“He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he adopted us as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” ~Ephesians 1:4-5

If you say “Yes” to being adopted, if you’ll give yourself to it and really embrace the Church as the family of God, it’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

“I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields) and in the age to come, eternal life.” ~Mark 10:29-30

Peace,

Allan

Praying on Mission

January 30, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Interesting tidbit to begin this post. Eight teams qualified for the divisional round of the NFL playoffs this year: Rams, Seahawks, Bears, Pats, Broncos, Texans, ‘Niners, and Bills. Seven of the eight quarterbacks who started those games weren’t even born the last time the Cowboys won a divisional playoff game! The lone gray-hair, Matthew Stafford, was seven-years-old in January 1996–a cute little 2nd grader in Highland Park with a Troy Aikman jersey. Sam Darnold, the starting quarterback for Seattle in next Sunday’s Super Bowl, wasn’t born the last time the Cowboys made it to the postseason’s third week–and he’s already played for five NFL teams!

This 30-year drought is moving out of the realm of a generational thing and into oblivion.

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In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul prays this beautiful prayer for the church. He prays about transformation, that God may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts, that the church may be rooted and established in love, that we would have power together with all the saints to grasp the love of Christ, to know the love of Christ, to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen!” ~Ephesians 3:20-21

The prayer is for God to do a whole lot, for God to do incredible and unimaginable things with his power that is at work in the Church. This prayer is not a wide-open request for God to demonstrate his power in random ways. This is a specific request for God to act in spectacular ways through us, through his Church. The transforming power of God belongs to us. So, we’re not asking God to do great things while we sit in the pews and wait on it. And study it. And talk about it. And agree that it’s good. The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power!

In Matthew 9, Jesus tells his followers to pray for workers to send to the fields. Pray about it. This is what we want the Father to do: raise up workers. Then in the very next verse–one verse!–he’s giving them the authority and giving them the power and sending them into the fields to do the work! Have you ever noticed that?

Be careful when you pray. The answer to your prayer might be God moving you into his mission.

If you pray for God to use your church, or to work through your church, you’d better be prepared to get off your pew and into the mission. If you pray for the hungry and the sick, if you pray for God’s will to be done in your town just as it is in heaven, you’d better open your eyes, your ears, and your heart to how God wants to work through you to do it.

Peace,
Allan

 

The Transforming Church

January 14, 2026 / / 0 Comments

“The closer we draw to the Church, the closer Christ draws to us.” ~ Kenneth B

I’m still posting some excerpts from this past Sunday’s sermon on how we are transformed more into the image of Jesus in and through the local church. I am also sharing some lines from the excellent article I found Monday–a few days too late!–written by Kenneth B on Substack about the same topic. You can read his outstanding piece here.

The main point of Sunday’s sermon is that the differences we have with one another in our churches are precisely the areas where our Father shapes us into his image. It’s in those differences and disappointments that the Spirit changes us to more consistently think like God and more regularly and predictably act like Jesus. We have different ideas, different preferences, different buttons and triggers–there’s never going to be anything we all agree on together within our churches.

And that’s okay.

If we had to agree with everybody in our churches on everything, Carrie-Anne and I would be at two different churches.

If unity means uniformity, a bunch of us are going to have stop thinking. Nobody wants that.

God’s people are messy in community. But I think that’s the point.

“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people, and members of God’s household… In him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” ~ Ephesians 2:19-22

“In fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” ~ 1 Corinthians 12:18

I believe that every man, woman, and child in your church is there because God placed them there. You are a part of your congregation for a reason: God’s reason. We need each other if God’s going to work in us and through us the way he intends. Our mindset must be: We are together in this church because of what God is doing in Christ. If that’s the mindset, then we commit to one another. We vow to make it work.

We were watching a TV show a couple of weeks ago in which two of the characters work together, and they’re dating. They’re in a relationship. He did something at work she didn’t like, something that messed up what she was trying to accomplish, and it made her angry. So she broke up with him. It’s over. And he said, “So, that’s how it is? You don’t get your way and you sever the relationship? You’re going to be a sad and lonely woman.”

Some people leave their church when they don’t get their way. They just leave because something’s not going the way they want.

No! That misses the whole point of Christian community! It’s a family, it’s like a marriage. You work it out. You don’t leave. You work through it. And it’s hard and it’s painful and sometimes it’s disappointing and sometimes it hurts. But this is precisely what leads to spiritual growth. This is what facilitates increased Christ-likeness. You don’t treat your church like you treat your car or your shampoo. Your mindset is: I am all in with these people in this place because God has put me here and he’s doing something.

“In Christ, we, who are many, form one body. And each member belongs to all the others.” ~ Romans 12:5

We belong together in our church communities. And it’s in your church community where God’s grace transforms you. Being together all the time with people you don’t necessarily agree with, worshiping and serving together, living and dying together with people you didn’t choose, forces us to grow in Christ-likeness.

Love one another. Build one another up. Encourage one another. Honor one another. Be in harmony with one another. Pray for one another. Be devoted to one another. Instruct one another. Greet one another. Accept one another. Serve one another. Be patient with one another. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Submit to one another. Forgive one another. These biblical commands can only be obeyed in community. We can only follow our Lord’s instructions if we’re together, if we really belong to each other. And when we do these things, by God’s grace, when we commit to this way of being together in Christian community, we’ll find that we are more consistently thinking like God and more regularly and predictably acting like Jesus.

This is how God works. And where.

I’ll end today with this paragraph from the Kenneth B article. Again, I urge you to read the whole thing here.

“A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is real, but it is not solitary. It is lived through the Church. You do not discover Christ by escaping the community, but by joining it. You do not grow closer to God by seeking exceptional moments, but by entering the ordinary pattern of worship, repentance, fasting, and love that has formed saints for two thousand years… We meet him as members of his Body. We are saved together, healed together, shaped together, and restored together. Even our most personal experiences of grace arise from the shared life of the Church, it’s sacraments, its Scriptures, its prayers, its elders, its martyrs, and its saints… In the ancient world, to speak of knowing Christ personally was to speak of being united to his Body, standing shoulder to shoulder with the community he founded, and learning from the people who had already learned to pray, to repent, to love, and to die with hope.”

Peace,
Allan

Grace is a Calling

June 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

“God chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he adopted us as his children through Jesus Christ, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves… the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” ~Ephesians 1:4-8

God’s amazing grace gives us an immeasurable amount of everything we need most: forgiveness, restoration, reconciliation, peace, joy, hope, salvation–all of that and a million blessings more. But that’s not our primary focus. A lot of the church songs we sing and, frankly, a lot of the church sermons we hear are centered on those blessings. But that can’t be the center of it for us because the grace of God is a calling. It can’t be just my salvation or my peace of mind or my eternal hope or my blessed assurance. Grace is a calling.

Paul says he was called by God’s grace so that he–in order that he–might preach Christ to the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15). We are changed by Gospel power and called by God’s grace for a mission, the mission of our Lord.

And I know it’s not the same for everybody. Not everyone called by God has a blinding Damascus Road experience. Some do. Some people are converted and called–BOOM!–immediately. I’m ready to minister! I’m ready to serve! With some people it takes several years and lots of different experiences. Some people can’t really point to where and when it started. But you are called by God’s grace to minister.

“It is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” ~Ephesians 2:8-10

This helps, too, when those weird, random, bad things happen to you. I posted about this yesterday. When something goes wrong in your life, you don’t face it with a determined self-reliance: “I can overcome this! I can fix this!” And it’s not fatalistic doom and gloom, either: “I’m never going to get through this. My life is over.” 

No, you are called and grabbed by Christ Jesus to be his minister in that mess, to be his witness. And you have his power and grace to do it. Your primary calling is not to be a successful salesperson or a successful surgeon or a successful oil man. You are called first to be a Christian. A Christian witness. So you can relax and rest in that. You are free to love and proclaim, you’re empowered to witness and serve.

You have received the grace of Almighty God. You have received his calling.

Peace,

Allan

His Glorious Riches

April 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The Stars lost a heart-breaker last night in a way no team has ever lost before. Dallas was leading the Canucks 3-0 heading into the third period and, after Vancouver scored two quick goals to pull to within one, the Stars scored two more, including an empty-netter with 2:20 to play, to go back up by three. With one minute left in the game, Dallas led 5-2. One minute later it was tied and headed to overtime. For the very first time in NHL history, a team trailed by three in the final minute and scored three goals to force overtime. It’s never happened before. It was stunning. I’ve never seen anything like it. And it hurt bad.

Dallas has lost three straight now for the first time all season and they had a third period lead in all three games. They’ve left a lot of points in the standings on the table the past week or so. Instead of being one or two points behind Winnipeg and tomorrow’s game against the Jets being for first place in the division and the number one seed in the Western Conference, it’s only for how far behind Winnipeg they’re going to finish. Whitney and I bought tickets for tomorrow’s game, hoping it would be for the division title and the top seed. But the Stars are four points down and reeling. Whit and I will see in person tomorrow how the team responds to the historically impossible meltdown. It all but guarantees a first round matchup with the Avalanche in a week-and-a-half, and nobody wanted that.

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The prayer at the end of Ephesians 3 is loaded with hefty theology. It’s packed with soaring adjectives and lofty descriptions of God’s eternal promises and our unshakable confidence. I’d like to focus today on one simple phrase at the beginning of the prayer that sometimes goes overlooked.

“Out of his glorious riches…”

The prayer asks God to strengthen us with power out of his glorious riches. The literal Greek words in the original text are “his wealth of glory.” It could be translated “glorious wealth” or “the riches of God’s glory.” One translation says, “God’s unlimited resources.” Either way, what it means is that God is never going to run out.

God is never going to run out of what he has for you. Do you think God’s going to run out?

He is never going to run out of love for you. It’s part of his glory, his nature. God is not going to run out of mercy or goodness or comfort or peace for you. Knowing that should give you strength. Having direct access to all of who God is and his glorious riches for you gives you power.

But he won’t keep forgiving me for the same thing over and over, not for this long.

Yes. He will. He won’t run out of forgiveness for you.

But God won’t take me back again. He won’t let me come back after what I’ve done.

Yes. He will. You can’t use up God’s goodness toward you, his desire to be in relationship with you. His love for you is without limit. Out of our God’s glorious riches, he strengthens you with power.

Peace,

Allan

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