Ephesians Chapter 6 review

We're doing a summary of Ephesians to get to our summary of Ephesians chapter 6. So how might we summarize chapter 1 as best as we can in not too many words? Our blessings in Christ. I think that's a perfect summary. And you'll forgive my handwriting. I worked at a pharmacy for a while and I can pretty much read anything that looks like handwriting. Okay, so chapter 1, our blessings in Christ.

What would we say about chapter 2? Steps about salvation. Okay. Alright, and how about chapter 3? The problem, well, we'll say the problem later. So chapter 3. introduces the church? Well, that's the problem. So in 2.11, he transitions from some of the salvation stuff into being saved, leading us to one body in the mystery of the church. And then he restates the mystery of the church three different ways, and the third way starts in Chapter 3, but then the second half of Chapter 3 covers the love and the growth of the body together as a result of that unity.

So it's a little hard to summarize chapter 3 as just one thing. So we can do like a semicolon. How about that? You can say, like, mystery of the church, semicolon, our being a family. Those would be like lots of sub-bullet points if you made a really long outline, right? So chapter 4, what would we say chapter 4's summary is? Okay, I think that's pretty good. It also talks about unity a lot.

So I'd say unity and the walk of the believer. And so if that's our four, where does five take us? So what's interesting is that five is the walk of the believer and then that leads into Submission, right? So the walk of a believer and then submission.

And then so we're on six now and we finished six. So what do we want to say about chapter six? I'm going to summarize it. I would argue there's actually three key points. If this was my list that I was putting together, I would say it's continuing on submission, the armor of God, and then praying. and then his closing statements. But those three things. So submission, armor of God, and then praying to close.

Alright, so this is a fun exercise. Is there a trajectory? Is there a purposeful arc throughout the book of Ephesians? Do we see some thematic things? position first. We start with the blessing and the blessing pours out into all of the other areas and impacts our understanding of God's plan for us in eternity, God's plan for us as individuals, God's plan for us as a body. In chapter 4 definitely, in 3 and 4, that's a major element. Chapter 5, our position impacts our walk, or it should impact our walk, right? Theoretically. That's what Paul's hoping that they're seeing and understanding.

And then the idea of submission is actually really important. This idea of submission is one of those things where in our modern culture, we have a lot of confusion around what submission means, right? Like, oh, you know, if you tell your wife, submit, right, that would be one of those gender things.

I have to tell you that I only tried that once. No, I'm just kidding. I knew better. But the idea of submission is one to another, right? And that's a challenge. That's the biblical truth there. It's not just submission. Oh, God's put this order together, and so I'm the boss. I'm the guy. That's not what he's saying at all.

So submission then leads in in chapter 6. We get to see the submission of children to their parents or to their And then fathers being challenged to be submittable, or to be the kind of father that the child would want to submit to. So, what does submission represent within the body? What does it mean when we say, coming back from 522, where he says, submit to one another? What does that mean?

I've got a cross reference there and I know it's in Philippians 2.3. Paul wrote to the believers there, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. This was a pretty radical concept. If you think about what the culture thought of at the time.

Emphasis in the United States are not that far apart in some of our cultural events right what when I say I What do you do for a living? How much clout does your role carry right I am a senior software developer That's how you know you're gonna be right-sized. But the thing is that our position in the culture around us matters significantly with these things, and so it's easy for us to carry that when we walk into church situations. This idea of, I'm here, you've got this role.

I've been involved in churches where they had a senior elder and then everybody else. He was more equal. That's kind of the way they would say that, right? And what he said went. And it didn't matter if like, okay, there was no hashing it out. It was whatever so-and-so said. That was it. That carried all the weight. And everybody just did what so-and-so said. I'm being very abstract and vague. I'm sorry, but I just don't... It's a political sort of a thing and it's not worth pouring too much energy into.

But this idea of not being selfish or having empty conceit, but having humility in mind towards one another means that when we come together our attitude is with humility. Submission with humility is not a problem. Submission without humility, well then you start getting into the clout game and who's better than somebody else. So this idea of submission is coming into chapter six, where Paul says, okay, children, obey your parents and the Lord, and we went over this together, and honor your father and mother, so that it may be well with you that you may live long on the earth.

So he brings in the law, and we said this is not for the law to apply to the believer, right? We're not looking to add the law. This is just Paul saying this was a unique property of that law that was given. Why is it that the children would have to be told to submit to their parents?

If you came from a Hebrew perspective, can anybody think of anything in the Gospels that might link to this? Well, you're in luck. We have some notes here. So, in Mark 7, 9 through 13, and I'm going to jump back there. You can join me if you'd like. Mark 7. Actually, the Gospel of Mark is an awesome book. I really love it. Read the Gospel of Mark this week. You have homework. Read the Gospel of Mark and look for language patterns. He has some really interesting language patterns compared to the other Gospels. So, Mark 7, verses 9-13.

He was also saying to them, You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, Honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say, If a man says to his father or his mother, Whatever I have that would help you is Corban, that is to say, given to God, you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down, and you do many things such as that.

So what was happening is the children were taking their possessions, this appears to be kind of an adult child situation, and they're taking their possessions and they're saying, I'm not going to help out my parents. My parents are in need, for whatever the circumstances, and it's Korban, the Jewish term under their tradition, to say, this is God's.

Does that show submission and respect to parents? No. And so the Jews had this tradition, and maybe the Romans had a totally different cultural scenario for their kids, right? Because the adult children could be killed by their fathers with no legal consequence. That's pretty different. You might listen to your parents if dad could kill you at any moment, maybe a little bit more, right? But children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right.

Paul calling that out I think is significant because we do tend to see this tradition causing a stumbling block within the body. People carrying these ideas in. Then he mentions the law. We're going to skip the law because I think we went over why it doesn't apply to us in the previous class. So we're going to move on to number four.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. One of the things that is challenging as a dad, for me, I'll say this is for me, but most dads I've talked to have agreed with this, is that you're trying to juggle all the things, right? You've got a career, you've got a wife, you've got kids, you've got time limits, you've got everything vying for your attention, and it's really easy to put something on the back burner, and it's really easy for that to be the kids.

In my Growing up experience when I was 12 years old my dad called me down to the the Kitchen table and with tears in his eyes. He apologized. He said I'm sorry I've been a workaholic and I've been working and working and working and working and working He would go to bed at 10 and get up at 4 and just work work work work work because he didn't want to fail and his apology to me was very I life-changing. It kind of changed the trajectory of my perspective because he realized he was not being the kind of father that was going to be able to fulfill the second half of this.

We see the provoking and we think, okay, don't be a jerk to your kids. That's good. Don't be a jerk to your kids. I think that's a good, reasonable assertion. But the difficulty of the second half of this is he says, that they need to be bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord as an extremely busy, trying to be executive-ish role that my dad was in, he did not have time to fulfill these callings. As it turns out with today's culture, if you've got Girl Scouts and softball and Boy Scouts, and baseball, and football, and cross-country, and swimming, and all the things, it can be really easy for us to fill our time up with those things that are not evil, but then also not, as parents, be able to fulfill those things. So it's easy to look at the not provoking your children. The second half of this is really the challenging part, where we're bringing them up in discipline and instruction of the Lord. In our household we do a family Bible study. And I'm not saying this to brag. Don't hear that that way. We do a family Bible study and we're trying to disciple our girls and go through some material with them to try to equip them.

You need to be spiritually equipped. If you're going to go into a relationship and your basis isn't Christ, what do you have? So parents equipping your children, instructing them in the Lord, and training them up in discipline. This is, in my own personal life, a practical application of those things. But these challenges exist as parents. Imagine that your kid grows up and they don't get married. And that's spectacular. God's given them the gift of singleness. But they're not walking with the Lord. That's a challenge. It's one of those things we deal with and we wrestle with. So as a body, Paul is recommending for fathers that they do this. I feel like I'm blitzing through all this, but we're going to keep going.

In verse 5 he starts talking about slaves. Slaves is awesome because in America we have a tradition of slavery that represents one type of slavery, but it does not represent necessarily the historical context for this book. And so we want to make sure that when we see slavery, we understand the biblical context and we don't walk away from it with misunderstanding. What were the historically consistent ways that people became slaves in biblical times?

They could choose to become a slave. You could choose to become a slave. Because it bettered your situation. It's possible to be in debt. It's possible you chose to be a slave. And it's also one of the other possibilities is that if a ruling army came in and they took over your kingdom, they'd grab you and take you in. So those are the three ways that people became slaves historically. When we get to the slavery in North America, that was just completely an economic move and really a fourth kind of grossness.

But what does Paul do in his response to slavery? What do we find out about slavery from Paul's perspective? Is Paul pro-slavery? He's pro-relationship with the Lord. That's definitely key. He's pro-relationship with the Lord. The other thing to note here is Paul and Peter both say the same thing.

Peter's response to, listen, if you're a slave, serve the Lord. Live out a Christ-like service in this slavery. It wasn't that slavery was good. It was that slavery existed. It was an institution that was acceptable to the government as it existed. And so he said, you're in this situation. Here's the biblical reaction to it.

But let's turn to Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 7.21. And some of you were in the 1 Corinthians study when we did that, so maybe this will be familiar. And if somebody gets there and wants to read that out loud, that would be cool. So if you became a believer as a slave, Don't let that cause you to be too stressed out, but if possible, become free.

That's the Not King James Version translation of that. It's a little expanded there. But the idea with that is really key. Paul is not pro-slavery. He's saying, if you can, get out of it. Bob? Reverse 22. I've already skipped past that. Let's go ahead.

For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's free man. Likewise, also he that is called being free is Christ's servant. So we're slaves to Christ instead of... and of course Paul wrote about that in his own position. Now when Bob was teaching through this, he did a good job of trying to bring this to a certain degree to our parallel of our modern working conditions. I don't think the assertion was that we're slaves, but the idea is that if we have to serve at work, what does that look like? And I think the same principles carry over that our service at our jobs be godly, Christ-like service. It's really challenging. It's really challenging when we think about that because as we look at what he says here, he says, do not be men pleasers as slaves of Christ, but doing the will of God from the heart.

In today's politically charged work environment, that can be really challenging. I know at my job, I witness people sometimes holding back because they don't want to say the wrong thing and upset somebody. Sometimes I don't hold back and I probably should have. That's the downside of the Randy mouth. That's why James is so important. Bob, what were you going to say? Well, just the concept of obedience. I mean, the question is what is the obedience to? Is it to avoid the consequences of bad behavior or is it the buffer? Faith is where, you know, in Verse 22 that you just read in 1 Corinthians. I mean that whether you're a servant or a master, the faith is what you're called to as believers, no matter what your circumstances are.

That begins with what your theme was today of reviewing the entire book. It begins with position. And ultimately our condition should mold increasingly to our position. And that's living by faith. and in parallel to that first corinthians passage in verse nine he says masters do the same things to them and give up threatening knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with them repeating that same thing from from first corinthians 7 22 all right so as we continue to zip through chapter six we get to to verse 10 here and we start to see this tortoise formation and spiritual armor principle that's this coming together and standing together with the spiritual armor. I tried to challenge myself to kind of think through all these things as best as I could in light of everything that we've studied together to maybe highlight some nuances.

Paul's emphasis here is in standing. Again, the idea of standing is not the aggressor mode, right? The kind of armor he's describing and the kind of formation that these soldiers would have been modeling in front of the believers was a together standing sort of thing, not an individual warrior going out to fight.

In fact, as we take a brief look at the armor that is outlined here, I think we'll see that there are some key elements to that. But the standing together seems to also be linked to things like the unity and submission and those kinds of things, this idea that they come together. That's in parallel to the theme of the text.

One of the things I love to highlight here is the Godhead in the armor. This is God's armor. And so how does the Godhead interact with the armor? And so in 614 it's God's truth. It's not just any truth. It's God's truth. And so he says, gird your loins.

The thing they would have girded their loins with It's described as a skirt, and I probably should have put pictures up, but skirt is like we think of like a kilt or something like that. It's not a fully covering unit necessarily. They're like thick wide leather straps hanging down from a belt with metal studs in them. The idea being that if somebody is going to protect your thigh and your loins, if somebody comes at you with something so that their sword or whatever the weapon is would get caught in it and stop it from penetrating and making you less useful as a soldier, right?

But the idea of truth there is that that's at the core of who we are as people. Historically, this idea that the middle of our person and our loins were critical, obviously it's how we reproduce. That can be kind of a sensitive area. Six, via our senses, not. that we can't handle talking about that.

All right, so 614 he continues on with God's righteousness. The breastplate of righteousness, or also the name that the armor piece had was the lorica segmentata, and that was strips that were connected that were metal and they were connected together. Now what I think is kind of cool about that is that the armor design was designed so that you could move in it.

How many of you have ever seen like a suit of armor that the knights would wear, right? You can't see and you can't move. You're not as likely to get stabbed, but you're also not as likely to be able to stab somebody else. That's a real problem. But this breastplate of righteousness, as I was kind of meditating on what this would mean that there's flexibility but keeps the soldiers protected and to be able to be responsive under attack.

What is our flexibility in our breastplate of righteousness compared to the law? What's our flexibility? choose to do things, but it's all in the Lord. So we're not others, we're free. We have grace and liberty, and that liberty is a really big thing.

I'm not proud of this, I have too many stories I'm not proud of. As a young teenage boy, I wanted my brother to get rid of his secular music albums, because woe were those from Satan. And I'd watched all the videos and I knew all the factoids. And I just brought down a tremendous amount of legalism. And then I started dating Jessica and I was like, you need to get rid of your secular music as well.

And she did, which we now look back and go, man, that was really not my place to say anything. But it was extra legalistic. Like, I'm not proud of this at all. But what's hilarious is that I brought that legalism and it did nothing to focus on the Lord. It did nothing to produce spiritual fruit. It was just legalism. It was just rigidity.

But instead we have liberty and righteousness. It's okay on occasion to listen to that devil's music. It's not really devil's music. 615, the Gospel of Peace. The name for the spiked sandals is the Kalige. They look sort of like cleated sandals. The idea with that is the cleated sandals would help you to stand, which as it turns out was a major focus of this formation and what Paul is calling the believers to, that you would be able to stand firm and stand in place. But the gospel of peace, how does that relate to our walk with the Lord? How does that relate to the Godhead?

What are Satan's schemes? What does he bring to challenge our thinking? Doubt, anxiety, all kinds of just chaos. He wants to bring chaos. That's the opposite of peace, right? And so we respond to the gospel by faith, and the Lord's peace is what comes there. The gospel of peace, as our feet are shod with the gospel of peace, it's almost like he wants us to be standing and resting in who we are in Christ. Almost, right? No, it's actually that he does. Then in 6.16, he talks about the shield of faith, and our faith is in God. our whole life.

The scutum or scutum, however one says that, it was a tall shield that would protect most of the body. What's really interesting about it is it also had really intense edges, so that if you had to, you could use it as a club, kind of a thing that you would swing. So this shield of faith is defensive, but it also actually is something that would prevent the fires. It's got leather on the surface to prevent fire from penetrating and causing issues.

So this shield of faith, Satan is deceiving. He's trying to attack us with what is not true. Oh, did God really say that? Is this really what he meant here? And the answer is, we have this shield of faith that is not susceptible to the fiery arrows. unless we open ourselves up to it. That's why Paul in Colossians warns the believers about the secular philosophies. Don't embrace the secular philosophies, because you're doing this. You're opening yourself up, ready for the attack. Then he continues on with the helmet of salvation, and God saves us, including our minds, and is renewing our minds in Romans 12.

The Galea as a helmet was really cool because it looked like you had the most awesome steel lamb chops ever. It hangs down over there, it has a flap that protects the back of your neck, and even as it came down it had pieces that came out that while your ears were open and exposed, it had pieces that came out and protruded so that if a sword were to have come down at your head, it would have bounced, hit that, and moved away from your ears. So you had good visibility. You could still hear because hearing is super important, right?

I like the idea of having your head covered and doing this. What's going on and people are yelling at you. it's really fast. You're going to lose communication. So communication was preserved, but your brain bucket, right? You get to keep thinking and your mind is preserved. The helmet of salvation.

And then the sword of the Spirit. The cool thing about the Greek New Testament, this is just a little factoid for you to tuck away, all of the places in the New Testament that you soared use the same word and it's like the generic word for either a long knife or a short sword. But what we know the Roman soldiers used was a sword called, in this formation was called a gladius.

It was about 27 to 30 inches long. It had a nice point on the front so that if you had to jab at somebody you could. This is a little oversized, but that's so everybody can see it. But it had a nice point on it so that you could make sure that somebody's ribs were still there, right? Tickle them in the ribs with that. That's a weird joke, sorry.

But the idea is that we have this sword of the spirit. Now this is the only one of the elements that actually involves a specific person of the Godhead. We associated the other elements with the Godhead. But this is the sword of the Spirit. Why does it matter that the Holy Spirit is the sword?

It's our offense. He's our offense. Who has authority over Satan? God does. When we think about offense, and if I'm wielding something that's an offensive weapon, then oh, look what I've got, I can wield this against Satan. But if the Holy Spirit is involved.

I have mentioned before I grew up charismatic for my teen years and one of the things that we used to do is bind Satan all the time. And we would tell Satan where to go and what to do with himself when he got there. And he got out every time. So we had to do it again next week, right? But the thing is that when we look at this and we consider this, even the angels in the Old Testament defer to God to deal with Satan.

So why we think that we're all that in a bag of chips, I don't know, but the call here is for believers to recognize that we're standing together, we're protecting together, and the Holy Spirit is the weapon and it's His engagement and His involvement.

We're to be standing. That's not a popular opinion in the Charismatic Circle, by the way, but I think it's the one we can exposit from the text. So considering the spiritual armor, what we find is that if we're growing in spiritual truth, the spiritual armor becomes clearer to us in its purpose and its use. But then the other thing is that we can work together as a body to be reminding each other of these things, to be fellowshipping and talking about these things and coming together and drawing attention to these things Making sure our armor's on tight, right? Making sure that the shoes fit well. It's something that we grow in as God is preparing the body for standing. When new believers come into our unit, right? New believers come in and God brings them into our life. Do we do like Saul did with David? Here, put on my big giant suit.

Do we strap them down? That's kind of the reaction sometimes. Not at Holly Hills. I've never seen this at Holly Hills, praise the Lord. But where somebody comes in, and they're a new believer, and we're just like, alright, bring on the perfection. And the law. The perfection comes through the law, right? That's the mindset. We don't just burden you down with these 613 rules, except for the ones that we hand-picked out. We have all this stuff going on and we want you to show up for everything because that will really show us how serious you are.

In the 80s there was a song by a guy named Steve Taylor called I Want to be a Clone. It starts out, I think it's the first verse, he says, the language it was new to me but Christianese got through to me and now I speak it fluently. I want to be a clone. But the idea is sometimes people come in and we just want a cookie cutter.

But what's cool about the body, and we saw it here in Ephesians, but we also saw it in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where the body, we all have different roles. And we have this opportunity as believers in liberty to be like, oh, you're totally this. You're an eye, you're a ear, you're a mouth, or whatever else. Sometimes I think I I've been an appendix, right? I've been that vestigial organ, right? And the Lord's like, not yet. Just wait. You're going to be an appendix. No, you're not an appendix. But it's time for you to be the quiet, protected parts. So we have this idea of the body coming together and this protection. And the spiritual armor is kind of a cool element for us to come alongside other believers and equip them in understanding how that works out.

So then Paul continues on. He talks about praying, and he says, "...and pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel." There's that principle of the mystery again that we saw all the way back in chapter 3. "...for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak, but that you also may know about my circumstances..."

Oh, I'll stop. Why do you think he juxtaposes the spiritual armor with the praying? Do you think he had a plan for that or is it just happenstance? He just accidentally put it in there. I mean, obviously I'm looking for the answer. He put it in there on purpose. But why? What would be the purpose of putting prayer next to the spiritual armor?

I think there's a key element to this when we think about what we're doing in the body, this idea of praying for one another, praying on his behalf, but also praying for all the saints. This togetherness principle of the armor is really key to this building up of our blessings are in Christ, our salvation is in Christ, the church is one in Christ, we're a family in Christ, we have unity through the Holy Spirit and the direction of Christ.

Actually, in chapter 4, what's cool is that all three parts of the Godhead are actively involved in the life of the believer. The Holy Spirit brings unity, Christ brings grace, and God is in all and works through all. And it impacts the walk of the believer. But a lot of these places where he's giving direction are in the plural. It's a together kind of a thing.

And so when we get here to this idea of praying, he's praying for all the saints. And he's saying all the church all around the globe, all the saints. And that's an important thing for us to consider because how many of you are aware of the persecution happening around the world? If you look at Google News or any of the news websites, those kinds of things are kind of only hinted at, right? Usually they don't get prominent attention. But we need to be praying for the church around the globe, all over the world, where they're at, in our local communities, in the region, in our states, in our country, around the world.

So this idea of praying for all the saints was key. Why does Paul want them to be praying for all the saints? Because of the unity in the church. I mean, we're all together. What you just laid out. They're the unity of the church, but also he's an apostle. So he's sent to establish the church. He wants the church established. That's the standing thing also as a principle, right?

Because what's going to happen is that the deception of Satan is going to come in and their minds are going to be distracted. Not Romans 12, where the renewing of their mind, proving the will of God, but instead walking in the flesh and thinking the carnal things after the desires of the flesh, and that's all Satan needs to do. He is a prowling, roaring lion, but often Satan's efforts are impactful only in misinformation being spread. And it's really easy. Because if we don't study the text of the scripture, then we can just easily hear or read things.

I'm going to pick on Facebook because I'm not on it anymore. But if you go on Facebook, how many times have you seen a cute picture with a cute little quote on it and somebody shared it on their wall? Every day, if you look at it every day, you'll see the pictures and the cute quotes. But that misinformation also gets plugged in there, right?

Paul is praying for the church that they would be established, that they would be able to be part of co-ministers with him in the gospel, and clearly teaching and sharing those things. So then we get to the closing or conclusory statements, the sign-off. And Bob did that last week. And Bob, you did an excellent job with that. You covered the hardest part of all of Ephesians. It drew attention to it. No, no, it's the hardest part because it could be dry, but you drew attention to a lot of good, fruitful things.

So who's Tychicus? We see that Tychicus is an agent of Paul's. He's a representative. and he comes as an ambassador to share, and this is where I think, this is a supposition, this is not inspired text teaching, this is just me thinking out loud. What if Paul had put everything that he wanted Tychicus to say in the letter to the Ephesians?

Would that impact our understanding of the book of Ephesians? Would it impact our understanding of Paul? Would it have diluted the message? Would it have changed what's there? It seems like Paul, very specifically, when he sent us with Tychicus, was like, this is the important stuff that I don't want Tychicus to just kind of verbally try to regurgitate and remember.

We're putting this down. This is doctrine. And he can tell you all about minority conditions face-to-face, verbally. And so there's an element here of he's a beloved brother, he's faithful ministering to the Lord, and he'll make everything known to you. I trust Tychicus. Go. Listen to him. He's going to tell you about what I'm doing.

And then Paul says, I've sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know about us and that he may comfort your hearts. Comforting hearts? This is the church in Ephesus where Paul lived with him for two and a half years. They probably had a relationship with him. I mean, when he came back around on his third missionary journey, he stopped 50 miles south of Ephesus, which had to break some hearts.

Right? But he called for the elders. The elders had to trot around for, that would have been two and a half days journey probably. The elders come down and he meets with them. Maybe that was a good comforting thing. And they have to go back to Ephesus. And he continues on his journey. But they know he's in prison. They know this is a problem. So Paul wants their hearts to be comforted. Peace be to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. There's that principle of peace again. They're being persecuted.

The church is an infantile entity. The Jews hate them because they're this But from a Jewish perspective, the church was a heretical entity. You're saying that Jesus was the Messiah, and we know what the Messiah is supposed to look like, and he didn't come in and wipe out Rome. They didn't recognize that Christ would come twice.

In the theology circles, they say that the New Testament is kind of a parenthesis. There's this unexpected mystery, as Paul talked about in chapter 3. But he's praying for peace. for them, and love with faith. And as Bob pointed out so well, love and faith are interconnected throughout the scriptures. From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Our peace can't come from anywhere else, right? And then, as we said last week as well, He redefines grace throughout the text of scripture. It doesn't just mean blessing.

Remember, grace was like the aloha of the Roman society. How many of you are familiar with aloha? It's the coming and going greeting in Hawaiian. My aunt is Hawaiian-Chinese, so I like to think that I know that extra special, because I get the aloha from Aunt Olette. But grace was the aloha, and they would say it like, hey, blessings from the gods. plural, the unreliable, crazy Roman mythology.

But he says grace, and we know it's the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love. That's that love we're supposed to know from Chapter 3. That's unknowable. That's that love that's the height and breadth and depth and width. It's incorruptible and we share it with one another and we grow in it together.

So we have managed to, I think we have two minutes left, we've managed to jam through Chapter 6. I skipped a bunch of stuff but What are things that you wish we'd have talked about from chapter six? Anybody have any tidbits that I missed? Otherwise, we'll close in prayer. That's okay. have very much the same message about being in Christ, which is exciting. Come next week. The two of them are parallel.

They're geographically just for fun. I don't want to steal your intro next week, but this is a closing on Ephesus. But Ephesus comes in and there's like a river valley and it's Ephesus here, And then Laodicea is over here and Colossi is over here, if I have my information correctly memorized. Your Bibles have better maps in the back than that, but you get the idea.

So they're they're related. So I think it's important to point out that although they're parallel texts, there's a lot of foundation in Colossians that is not part of the. They're parallel. Some of the same areas are like about submission. And I think the societies to which these epistles were written were somewhat different. And I think that has a lot to do with the nature of the way Paul's written.

So I'm excited for it. In summer camp I had to memorize all of Colossians chapter 3 to get points for my cabin. Can we hear that now? No. And that's the problem. I memorized it just enough to get the points, but my camp counselor wasn't confident that I had it, so we didn't get the points anyways. It was like, oh man.

But Colossians chapter 3 is one of my favorite. Well, okay, all the New Testament is my favorite. I'm just going to own that. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we lift up the opportunities we have to study and dig into your word together and we just are grateful for your provision in our lives as we have been able to do this together. We just pray for wisdom and guidance throughout the coming sections of Colossians that there would be lots of things we get to glean from that together. In Jesus' name, Amen.