Submission — Dennis Kinlaw

I notice that the passage you give me to work with is one that is a problem passage for a lot of people. And so I thought twice about it when she asked me to come, but I thought I'll, as a male talking about submission to a group of ladies, I sort of took my courage in my hand and dared to come.

Titus 2 and the Christian Witness of the Family

You know the passage. Likewise teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind and to be subject to their husbands so that no one will malign the Word of God.

Now you're aware that this is Paul speaking to Titus, who is a pastor in Crete. And in this pagan culture in Crete, they're trying to get a Christian witness. I'm amazed at how much of the New Testament is spent on a corporate witness as well as an individual witness.

I almost think there's more about the corporate witness than there is of the individual witness. And at the heart of that corporate witness is the family. I think Paul almost felt if he could get a Christian family in a community, that community could be transformed.

Because there's something about seeing the gospel manifest in a family that is never true when you simply have a single individual. When you can see a husband and a wife loving each other, that's different from the way the world lives, if it's Christian love.

And when you see parents and children living together in honor and respect and in affection, the world says, this is different. And it produces a different product. That's what produces the next generation.

And so you can understand something of why. Paul is so concerned with Titus, so he's instructing the men, instructing the older ladies, he's instructing the younger ones. Now the key thing here for Americans today is this word subject or submission.

Submission and the Biblical Pattern for Marriage

Is a woman supposed to submit herself to her husband, a wife to submit herself? In this translation here it says subject, which is a little stronger than submit. But the implication that comes to the typical American when he reads this or when she reads this is that the wife is to be something of a doormat, you know, an echo.

The husband speaks, the wife immediately obeys and is subordinate to him. Now there is nothing in Scripture really to support the way the world reads that when they come to this. Because the biblical picture of the Christian family is a radically different one than can be found anywhere else in the literature or anywhere else in the cultures of the world.

And that's what I'd like to get at this morning. Now I'm glad that when I got married, I married a strong-minded woman because she was strong-minded. I got a clue to that after I'd been dating her steadily for about six months.

And we came to the first of June and I was headed to North Carolina and she was headed to New York. We were sitting on one of those green benches, used to be on the campus at Asbury, and first of June and this was, these were our last minutes together.

We were to be apart for three months. And so I said, I will write. She looked straight back at me and said, oh no. I said, what do you mean? I said, no. She said, no. We won't write this summer. I hadn't paid attention to anybody for six months but her.

And now I'm talking about three months ahead of me and she said, if it won't last three months, there's nothing to it. And I thought, oh, for heaven's sake, I've got a different creature on my hand here than I expected.

Now I want to tell you one more story. In 1976, through an amazing set of providences that only can happen at Asbury, we had the Speaker of the House of Commons come for commencement, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

Now Phyllis Corbett's husband was a key factor in this. But I didn't think too much about it and then I found out. I thought, yes, this is the 200th anniversary. And he was coming to the United States at the same time on the trip when he came.

This was not a part of the original package. This is the way it developed. He and the Speaker of the House of Lords were coming to the United States to bring the Magna Carta to put it on display in Washington as a British tribute to be a part of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the American nation.

And so I thought, well, he'll fly in and fly out and we won't see much of him. Well, they had planned to take the Speaker of the House and the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House and Lords, show them Washington, do the yacht trip up and down the Potomac and all the rest of this stuff.

And so I get word that he's coming and he's going to spend three full days with us. And I thought, this is a surprise. Well, he was a lay Methodist preacher in England. On Saturday he'd go up to Wales and preach on Sunday and come back Sunday afternoon to open the House of Commons on Monday morning.

So we had three days together, so we sort of got to know each other. Wonderful person, George Thomas. Well, that next year, Asbury took a group of Asburians to England for a tour of the Wesley sites. And so they asked Elton and me to go along, so we were thrilled that we could go.

And so we found ourselves in Britain. George Thomas, the Speaker of the House of Commons, found out that we were coming. And so he sent an invitation to Elton and me to come have dinner with him. So we found ourselves having dinner sitting under Big Ben.

I was sitting with my back about 20 feet from the Thames, and Elton was sitting across the table from me, and he was sitting at the end of the table, he was an old bachelor. And so the three of us sat there and a delightful British meal.

At the end of the meal, his servant came in and brought a silver tray that had a cigar on it. I knew that I was socially way above my class sitting there, you know, and quite amazed that I had that privilege.

But I'm sitting there and suddenly in my lateral vision, I see him reach out for his cigar and as he does, I see a second hand reach out. It's a female hand, and it grabbed his wrist and held it tight just like that.

I could have gone through a hole the size of a pen in the seat. And I thought, what now? Then I heard her voice. She spoke and she said, Mr. Thomas, you're too important to the kingdom of God to endanger your life like that.

And I died. I turned and looked at him. Suddenly he dropped the cigar, threw both hands in the air and said, oh, Elsie, you're just like my mother. And I sat and he said she was sitting right there at the end of the table.

The prime minister was here in his age and the leader of the loyal opposition was here in his age. And he said, I never told my mother I smoked. She was his hostess. Well, he said, they brought out the cigars and we were in such an intense political discussion that I forgot everything.

And before I knew what I was doing, I was picking up my cigar when all the political discussion was stopped dead still with one imperious female voice. George, what do you think you're doing? And he said, I looked at my mother and he said, oh, mother, everybody does this.

George, that is not the way we determine our patterns of conduct. Elsie, you're just like my mother. I lived with her for 59 and a half years. I knew what it meant to live with a strong-minded woman.

But I was always been so grateful because behind closed doors she talked to me just like she talked to George Thomas. The interesting thing, he developed cancer in his throat, which I thought was interesting.

But about two years later, we got a Christmas card. We began getting Christmas cards from him regularly. They were magnificent art pieces, really, art pieces. So Elsie would take each one and frame it, and so each one of our kids has one of these Christmas cards from the Speaker of the House of Commons.

And now he's Lord Tomypandy. I thought that name didn't quite fit George Thomas, but the British do things differently. But anyway, about two years later, we got our Christmas card, George Thomas. Had a note on it, Elsie, you'll be glad to know that it's been a year and a half since I've smoked.

The next year we got another Christmas card, Elsie, you'll be glad to know it's been two and a half years since I've smoked. So every Christmas he reported in to my wife. Now, so what about this matter of subjection or submission of a wife to a husband?

Reading Scripture in Its Larger Context

Now, here's the place where we need to get not a text, not a verse, but the teaching of Scripture on the relationship of husband and wife and marriage and the family and the whole. I had a prophet, Princeton, that one day, I never got over it.

It was one of those major steps in my education and my development. He was a German scholar, New Testament scholar, also people, probably the greatest mind I ever had the privilege of sitting under. And so he started a lecture one day by saying, you know, you people that underline your Bible.

He said, I know which verses you underline. I can tell you which verses you underline. And I closed my Bible. He said, the verses you don't underline are the word of God as much as the verses you do underline.

Now, he said, I understand why you do this, because a verse becomes significant to you and it's a blessing to you and you grasp it and so you mark it. But he said, you want to get beyond the verse stage.

No verse comes alone. It always comes in a paragraph. And you need to know the paragraph if you're going to understand the verse properly. And then every paragraph comes in a chapter or a section. And what you want as you work with Scripture is get to the place where you can see the larger context that the verse comes in.

Because oftentimes you can pull a verse out and you see it alone. And when you see it alone, you misinterpret it and miss the richness that God has for you. Now, he said, you want to get to the place where you can hold in your mind the basic thrust of a whole book.

And then you want to pick up motifs and see the way they're developed through Scripture from Genesis 1 all the way through to Revelation 22. You know, I've never been the same since. And that became sort of an ambition.

Now, I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. Because how different it is, how different it is when you see a biblical theme and the way it is developed. And you cannot talk about the relationship of the husband and wife without talking about the biblical view of marriage, which is radically different from the Buddhist view, from the Hindu view, from the Muslim view, from the secularist view.

You can just keep on going. It is radically different. And you can't do that without talking about the biblical understanding of the family. And we need to look at that. Now, but as we do that, let me begin by illustrating how we need to put things into a paragraph or into a section.

Ephesians 5: Imitating God Through Sacrificial Love

Turn with me to Ephesians 5. And you know the passage in Ephesians 5 that I'm coming to. Because the word submit is used in the 5th chapter of Ephesians, where he's beginning that remarkable passage about husbands and wives and Christ and the church.

Now, look with me at 5 .18. He has been speaking before in the earlier part of the 5th chapter. The 5th chapter begins with this incredible verse, Be imitators of God. Therefore, as dearly loved children, live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Now, that is the only passage in the Bible where we're told to imitate God. We're told to imitate Christ. We're told to imitate Paul. Paul says he's an imitator. But this is the one passage. And it's the beginning of a section telling us how we are to live.

And it ends up with this section about husbands and wives and about Christ and the church. Now, this is a passage that speaks to all of us without any exception. Because you may not be a husband or a wife, but every person who is a believer is to be a part of the body of Christ and is part of the bride of Christ.

Now, one of the things I like is that this mixes up all the gender stuff. Because, you see, I'm a part of the bride. Now, it's interesting, males are part of the bride, but that's who I am. I'm part of the bride.

And, of course, the reason is that there's no gender in God. There's no maleness and femaleness in God. Whatever is in the maleness that's different from the femaleness and whatever's in the femaleness that's different from the maleness, whatever that is, it's all in Him, but it's not separated into male and female.

That's down here for you and for me. And so I get the privilege of shifting gender roles when I come to Christ. Isn't that interesting? Now, that means that I ought to think twice about my gender role when I think about else's things.

Because we're in a relationship that transcends the world's understanding of this gender relationship. Now, he's going to tell us how we are to imitate God. What it means to imitate God, it means that we live in love as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us.

It's a magnificent passage and an amazing passage. Then he talks about how this has worked out, the kind of quality of life that will be lived if you live, if you imitate God and you live in love. Now, I remember I wanted to read through the book of Ephesians at a sitting so I could get a feel for the whole of it.

And so I'm reading through and sort of lost in it, and I come to the fifth chapter and the first verse, and I read that, imitate God, and I laughed out loud. I thought, this is ridiculous. Me, imitate God, the omnipotent one.

There are a few people in human history who've tried that and all turned out to be fools. Omniscient one, the one who knows everything. The thing I know about me is if I've got a question I don't have an answer to, if I find an answer to it, I always pick up ten more questions when I get the answer to that.

So my knowledge is not exploding knowledge, it's exploding ignorance. So I thought, and then omnipresent, he's everywhere. Well, I'm amazed at how much more I can be everywhere through a computer than I could 30 years ago and know what's going on, all this kind of thing, but it still doesn't match in any sense.

God's presence is everywhere. So how can I imitate God? Then I kept reading. Imitate God. Well, only in one way. Live in love, agape love. And then he defines and explains the character of that love. As Christ also loved us and gave himself for us and in that became a sweet-smelling fragrance in the nostrils of God.

Isn't it interesting when your B .O. can be pleasant fragrance in the nostrils of God? Now, what is it? It's agape love. Now, that's the key to this whole passage that runs through. And you dare not read the passage about submission without reading it in the light of the way this section begins.

And what is that love? The incredible thing to me, and I cannot get over it, and I don't want to get over it. I think if I could understand it, I don't think I'd ever get off my face. Because the incredible thing is that he loves me more than he loves himself.

The eternal God loves you more than he loves himself because he was willing to die for you. Now, that's the context for any submission that we're ever going to talk about. Now, notice the way he develops it.

Being Filled With the Spirit and Submitting to One Another

I want to talk grammar to you. So, I'm going to take you to school for a few minutes. And so, don't get afraid. If I can understand it, you can understand it. So, here. Do not get drunk on wine. Now, you remember in Titus, he said the older women should not drink too much.

It was common in that culture. And what do you use wine for? To get that lift you think you need and you want and so forth. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, the Christian's alternative is to be filled with the Spirit.

Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. Now, that's the translation that I have in front of me.

But the interesting thing is the grammar of the Greek is different from the grammar of the English. Now, watch with me. Keep your eye on the test. Do not get drunk on wine. You've got a good imperative verb.

Don't drink too much, a command, which leads to debauchery. Instead, and you've got an imperative verb, a command, be filled with the Spirit. It is a command that I should be filled with the Spirit. Speaking, therefore, is not an option for me if I'm to follow Christ.

I have to seek until He has filled me with the Spirit. My text says, speak to one another with psalms. But the interesting thing is, that's an imperative in English, but it's not an imperative in Greek.

It's a command in English, but it's not a command in Greek. And this is where our translations don't represent accurately. It says, be filled with the Spirit, speaking, and it's a participle, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing, and you've got another participle, and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father, and the English translation got it right there for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then submitting, and it's a participle.

It's not a command. Now, what am I saying? You've got a string of participles that describe what it means if you're filled with the Spirit. How does the fullness of the Spirit reflect itself in one's life?

If I'm filled with the Spirit, then I find myself speaking to others in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Christians can't keep from singing. Somebody was telling me the other day about a Muslim convert, a woman who showed pictures of her wedding, and there was not a smile in the place.

She said, we never smiled, and we never had music until we found Christ. And the greatest music Lucy of the world's ever had, the only place you can find the greatest of music is among Christians. We sang, and when the Spirit comes, if you go back and look at those films of the Seventy Revival at Asbury, you'll find they were singing.

They couldn't keep from singing. They had to sing. Okay. When you're filled with the Spirit, there's a song in your soul, and you sing. When you're filled with the Spirit, you make music in your heart to the Lord.

When you're filled with the Spirit, you give thanks to God the Father for everything. And when you're filled with the Spirit, what do you do? You submit to one another. And the first call for submission here is universal.

It's not to women. It's to everybody. The person who's filled with the Spirit, male or female, has quit living for himself or herself, and is now living for somebody else. Now, that's the context in which this Word occurs.

And so, if we're to deal faithfully with the text, we'll do that. Then you get that line. My text says, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. The interesting thing is, there's no verb in that sentence, in the Greek.

What he's doing is, he's saying, now, if you're filled with the Spirit, you quit living for yourself, and you live for other people, and other people's well-being is more important than your own. Now, how does that apply to wives?

And he says, I'll tell you how it applies to wives. Then he says, and I'll tell you how it applies to men. So, the women, they submit. The men, how does their submission reflect itself? It is reflected in a far tougher standard than submission.

You know, you can obey a person and hate him. You can obey a person and resent him. But the command to the men is, you love your wife the way Christ loved the church, which means you live for her and sacrifice yourself and your interest for her.

Isn't that an interesting play of a reciprocal relationship in which each is working to get to see that the other is fulfilled? And the amazing thing is, when you come to that point, you find that's the most fulfilling thing you ever do.

When I fell in love with Elsie, I just liked her. She made me happy, and I enjoyed being happy. There came a day when I found there was more fun in making her happy than there was in making me happy. And I thought, am I really growing in grace a bit?

That's the way with Christ. He gets more pleasure out of giving to us than having us give to him. That's God. Now, you see, that's the context in which the New Testament talks about this. Now, does that mean that there is not an order in the relationship between a husband and a wife and in a family?

Of course there's an order. There has to be a structure in any social group. Like, you'll notice it's very clear when he comes to children, he says, children, honor your father and your mother. I was grateful when I realized that the Old Testament does not tell a child to obey his parents.

It says respect. And the Hebrew word for respect is the same word as the word, it's the verb of the verb for glory. And it's a word which is used, when you use it for God, you say glorify God. And when you use it in his relationship to his parents, you say respect or honor.

Now, why doesn't he say obey? I've got a son who's fifty-something. You think he's going to obey me? God's been very good to me. But the time's going to come when he's going to tell me what to do. Not me telling him what to do.

The circle spins, you know. But never is a place where he's not to respect me and honor me. So when he orders me around in my dotage, he's supposed to do it with respect. And with honoring me. Now, you see the tenderness of the personal relationship that permeates this thing?

It's not this hierarchy like this. It's we're in this thing together, and the male has a role which the female doesn't have, and the female has a role which the male doesn't have. And you honor each other in the different roles that you play.

Like the parents have a role which the child doesn't have, and the child has a role which the parent doesn't have. And I was talking to someone the other day, a mother who was going into a very difficult situation, so she took her granddaughter along with her for protection.

Marvelous. The roles that different members of a family play. And sometimes the little ones can get away with stuff, can solve problems the adults can never solve. But there are roles that are to be played.

Historical Context, Family Roles, and Submission

Now, one of the places where we make a mistake in our ignorance and our lack of sensitivity is we have to realize that Titus and Ephesians, these other passages, Timothy in the New Testament, they were not written for the 20th century or the 21st century.

They were written in a day when there was no such thing as birth control. Do you know how much difference that made? That meant that any woman who was married, and the interesting thing is, in the Old Testament there's no word for an old bachelor, there's no Hebrew word in the Old Testament for an old bachelor.

There weren't supposed to be any. And it's very interesting. The Scripture tends to think of the norm. Now, there are anomalies. You get anomalies like Miriam. You get anomalies like Deborah. You get anomalies like Anna in the temple in the beginning of the New Testament.

You get anomalies like this. But they're not the norm now. He's addressing the norm. And in that norm there are these different roles that we play. So in that day, every married woman was within the possibilities of six months of pregnancy, wasn't she?

And during that she needed somebody to, he needed to play a role which she couldn't play because she was playing a role that he couldn't play and her role was far more important than his role. And what it was is an obedience to the command in Genesis, be fruitful, multiply, be fruitful, replenish the earth.

Because it's God's intention. He likes people. And he wants more of us. That's the kind of God we've got. He likes people. And he wants more of us. And he wants his purposes to go on. So, you know, we tend to think in terms of the 20th century.

Let me just drop something to you. You know, I almost hate to say it out loud because it leaves a wrong commitment. You know, in my lifetime, one of the greatest men in the world, one of the most influential men in the world, because I lived long enough to have lived through that day, was Mahatma Gandhi.

Did you know that his wife couldn't read or write? There's not a woman in this house who can't read or write. You've got to search to find somebody like that. Careers? What careers were open? You were born, like in the early part of the United States, you were born on a farm, you grew up on a farm, you lived on a farm, you died on a farm, with a few exceptions.

Now, the Scripture is speaking to the norm. Now, there are differences, but what about the normal roles of the family? Now, let me talk. It's interesting that the very words submit here, the root idea behind it is order.

The taxonomy. It's the word from which we get the word, the taxic part of taxonomy, order. There is structure in life, and there has to be. And so, that's what he's getting at. But what is it that motivates the role that I play?

It's the agape love of God that has come into my heart and has made the difference. Now, it's interesting that the United States Census Bureau can't define what a family is. Now, that's a clue to how far we've disintegrated in our culture and in our society.

What is a family? You see, now we're going to have different kinds of families. We're going to have two men who live together and get some woman somewhere to bear a child, and then they take the child and they'll, in their love, they'll let the child grow up.

Maybe a girl with two men or a boy with two men or two women who live together. Or maybe we'll be, you know, Mormons, original Mormons, this kind of thing. What is a family? Now, the sociologists will tell you that a family is simply a social structure, and it has to be dealt with as a social institution.

So in your colleges, universities, you get your sociologists to teach their courses and write their books, and those are changing drastically from what they were when I came along. A family, if you have marriage, you're going to have sex.

So some people say it's biology that's the basis of it. Now, in your social sciences, or in your sciences, social and otherwise, the tendency is to come at marriage and family that is physically based or socially, culturally based.

Christians are radically different. I went through a period when I was reading stuff on this score and the question was, will the family disappear? And I decided, no, the traditional family is not going to disappear.

And you know why the traditional family is not going to disappear no matter how corrupt or how polluted we become? Because the basis of the family is not in biology, nor is it in sociology. The basis of the family is in theology because it's rooted in the nature of the deity.

We're the only people in the world who believe that. A Muslim, what's a family? Allah certainly has no family. He lives alone. But you see, when we worship, we worship in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity as the Foundation of Family and Love

So the very God that we worship has a family nature in him, and that's the reason that for a Muslim, love is something Allah does with somebody he likes. In Judaism even, love is something that the God of Israel does.

He loves Israel. But with us, love is not just something he does, it's what he is. It's his nature because it's the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. It's amazing to me how long I miss that.

You know, I think I was 40 before it dawned on me that Adam wasn't the first father. I was a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary. I'd had two and a half years at Princeton, and subconsciously, when I thought of father, I thought, because I'd never really been trained in any measure in the doctrine of the Trinity.

This generation has an opportunity to think thoughts that my generation never could have conceived because we thought the question was, is God a person? The textbooks that I studied in philosophy and religion at Asbury College when I was a student here were all written by a personalist whose big question was, is the one God who exists personal?

It was never in a discussion of the Trinity. And so suddenly when I was in my 40s, I began saying, wait a minute, you baptize a person in the name of the Father, not the Lord. You don't even baptize a person in the name of God.

You ordain a person to preach the gospel of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. You've got the family. Now, that's the reason Christians make so much of an issue about the family, because the root of it is in the very nature of God.

Now, at this point, I wish I knew how to say things well enough that I was sure that I was being heard. But, you know, really, all of my notion about the creation has changed. Why he created us. Look with me at the first chapter of Ephesians.

Well, get your text, the first chapter of Ephesians, the opening verses. Let me tell you something about the Ephesian letter. Eight times in the Ephesian letter, God is called Father. Our Father, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father.

We are to have access, not to God, access to the Father through the Spirit. The Father from whom the whole family in heaven and earth derives its name. There is one God and Father of all who is over all, through all, who reigns.

It's the Father who reigns. Now, it's a sovereign role, but who is the person who's sovereign? He's Father. Always give thanks to God the Father in all things. And he concludes, Peace to the brothers in love with faith from God the Father.

Ephesians, the family permeates it. Now, listen to the family terms that you have in the Ephesian letter. Now, there are some scholars who think in some of the best Greek manuscripts of Ephesians, the word Ephesus doesn't occur.

So, there are some who think that it was a general letter that was to be circulated in all the churches. And if you read it carefully, the content of it hits that. Now, listen. You have adoption, son, inheritance, household, heirs, children, circumcision.

Now, I'm old enough that I can get away with this. So, let me tantalize you for a moment. What was the mark in the Old Testament that a person belonged to God? It's interesting it wasn't on the woman.

That doesn't mean that she was inferior because she was the climax of the creative order. And God speaks of the name Hephzibah, my delight is in her. In the Song of Songs, the longest poems are about her, not about him.

Now, I always thought my poem about him ought to be longer than his poem about me. But his poem about me is longer than my poem about him. The most ecstatic, the most poetic, the most beautiful, the longest ones are about her.

The woman has a special role. There's nothing like it in any of the rest of the literature or the religions of the world. Okay. Now, the mark that a person belonged to God was at the point where the man and the woman, the husband and the wife, met.

You see, prostitution was the way you worshipped in the pagan temple. And when a Hebrew man went in, the prostitute looked at him and said, you don't belong here. You have another God. I cannot get an Old Testament scholar who will even talk about that.

But the interesting thing is that you don't get through the Pentateuch before the term circumcision is used as a synonym for the new birth. The transformation. That life has been brought into you. Divine life.

Now, I wish I was smart enough and delicate enough to know how to develop that. But we're dealing with holy things here. This is the reason that God is so concerned about sexuality. There's theology here that's deeper than any of us have ever plummeted.

Plum. Yes. Okay. All right. Now, you get those terms? The term body. The body of Christ. Love occurs 22 times in this short book. 22 times. It's a major theme that runs through it, Agape. And he says it's mysterious.

And I love this. The word mystery occurs more times in Ephesians than anywhere else in the Bible. Paul says, I'm ordained to preach this mystery, this mystery of God, the gloriousness of it. Okay. Now, you see, there's so much here that could be developed.

Ephesians 1 and the Purpose of Adoption in Christ

But let me tantalize you for a few moments. We are the bride of Christ. Now, what you have, well, let's look at chapter 1 here. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you know what a mess of a time the early Christians had deciding what to do with that. You see, they were monotheists. They knew they worshipped only one God.

But what are you going to do with Jesus? You remember when Thomas said, I'll never believe until I see the scars in his hands. And suddenly Jesus shows up and says, Thomas, there, put your finger in there and check it out.