🌊 Life will bring storms. People will argue, situations will spiral, and chaos will surround you. But God’s favor gives you peace in the midst — the kind of peace that guards your heart and mind even when nothing makes sense. 🙌🏾

Today’s Favor Fridays with Tony™ dives into the supernatural calm that only God can provide.

👉🏾 Read the full post here: https://wix.to/jLzQJto

#FavorFridays #PeaceInTheMidst #Faith #TrustGod #Shalom #DivinePeace #Blessings #GodsFavor #blackmastodon #DailyInspiration

Psalm 145: 10-11, 19 All your works praise you, O God, and your faithful servants bless you. They make known the glory of your kingdom and speak of your power…Abba God is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully

Introduction

Through Ephesians we’ve talked about the need for heartfelt, mind-filled remembrance of Christ’s work in the world thru the Cross and Resurrection event and how remembering this brings Christ close to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, here, we have hope. What God has done combined with God’s presence with the community through remembrance makes us hopeful because we are not abandoned and have something to participate in: the divine mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the beloved. And at the intersection of hope and remembrance we find ourselves bending our knee to pray, not as a last-ditch effort but to find our ground and our language so we can move through God and toward our neighbor, bringing tangible hope that is faith working itself out in action for those who are in need, on death’s door, frail and fatigued, on the verge of giving up.

Last week we dove into the peace that Christ brings us by destroying dividing walls, ridding us of hostility and enmity, and rendering inoperative laws that cause in groups and out groups. Within the Christian walk and life, the act of rebuilding walls keeping many out and few elite in, fomenting hostility and fear, and forcing the gospel to become a law in the church or the state is anathema. According to Ephesians, the followers of Christ cannot support any of these things or anything that supports these things. We have been liberated into radical equity with our neighbor through the work of Christ and the event of the Cross and Resurrection—(we are not, have never been, and will never be superior to our neighbor).

But all of this is moot if we don’t grow—individually and corporately—bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. Ephesians 3 exhorts us to grow in such a way so we can be stronger and more able partners of God participating in God’s mission in the world made known to us in Christ and inspiring our hearts, minds, and actions by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 3:14-21

…so that [God] might give to you according to the abundance of his glory the power to grow through [God’s] Spirit to align with the inner person [and] establish Christ in your hearts through faith. Having been fixed firmly on and having laid the foundation of love, [stand on love] so that you might be perfectly able to comprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and weight and depth, and to ascertain the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge… (Eph. 3: 16-19a)

This portion of Ephesians is a prayer to God the Father. The hint is For this reason I bend my knees to the Father, from whom all families in heaven and on earth received [their] name… I retained the use of “Father” in the translation to highlight that Paul isn’t praying to some distant deity,[1] but to a loving parent, who is involved in our lineage and our name.[2] But the point of the passage isn’t the emphasis on “Father” but rather the “bending of my knees,” the fact that Paul prays for the Ephesians.

So, Paul prays and prays these three petitions: for 1. Inner strength, 2. Profound understanding of God’s love, and 3. Being filled with God’s fullness.[3] The request for “inner strength”—so that [God] might give to you according to the abundance of his glory the power to grow through [God’s] Spirit to align with the inner person [and] establish Christ in your hearts through faith—is a statement that nothing is taken from God[4] as God inspires and woos the believer and the congregation as a whole[5] to bring the outer person into alignment with the inner person. In other words, the wholeness of self—the receipt of the believer’s self—hinted at in chapter 2 (last week) is confirmed here in chapter 3 as Paul prays that God out of God’s abundance gives abundant strength to the believer to be a whole person by bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. According to our letter, to be loved by God is healing balm that then empowers the believer to love as they have been loved and this is done from the firm ground and fixed foundation of Christ’s love and the believer’s faith that this God (as parent) really does love them.[6]

And because Paul sees the Ephesians as grounded and substantiated in God by love, Paul can write, Having been fixed firmly on and having laid the foundation of love, [stand on love] so that you might be perfectly able to comprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and weight and depth, and to ascertain the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge… In this prayer, the author of the letter bases everything on the love of Christ—on which the Ephesians have been firmly fixed and which is the foundation under the ground where they stand in the spiritual realm. The love of Christ is the starting point for the believers in Ephesus, from here they not only understand just how massive and astounding is God’s love (which is truly beyond human understanding),[7] but from where they move, have their being, and participate in God’s mission of divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the beloved. The great mystery that the Ephesians are let in on is the divine mystery that is Christ’s birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension and the impact of this divine event for the cosmos. But even then, understanding those points does not now make the Ephesians perfect or filled, or the arbiters of all that is of God[8] as if there is nothing more to learn or understand; this mystery surpasses all human knowledge. [9] For Paul these two things—the alignment of the outer with the inner person and the understanding the depth of God’s love—are woven together to create the situation where the believer might be filled into all fullness of God.[10] Embedded in the prayerful entreaty is Paul’s awareness that the Ephesians can never fully be filled with God’s fullness as if it is one and done. Rather, it is to be worked out; it’s on going—happening in the future and happening right now. This is what it means to grow: to grow in strength, to grow in act, to grow in prayer and dependence on God, to grow into fullness of the relationship with God, with the neighbor, and with the self.[11]

Paul then ends with And to the one who is able to do abundantly more than all things of which we ask or we can perceive according to the one who strengthens us, to [that one] be glory in the assembly and in Christ Jesus from all the families of the ages of ages, amen. As the three petitions work themselves out in the lives of the believers by the power of God, the Spirit,[12] glory is brought to God because where this community remembers, hopes, and prays, there is God in Christ. It is this that is the firm foundation and starting point for the one community that is the temple of God who worships together and then proceeds to move through God to serve the beloved, the neighbor. And as the neighbor is served, their God’s name is blessed (hallowed,[13] honored[14]) and glory is brought to God in the community and in Christ Jesus.[15]

Conclusion

Beloved, we remember, we hope, and we pray. We have wholeness with God, with our neighbor, and with ourselves by faith in Christ as divisions, hostilities, and laws cease to pull apart in Christ. From here we grow, constantly being brought to the edge of our understanding of God’s love for us and not just for us but for our neighbor. Because, for Paul here in Ephesians, the community who is open to and able to go outside of itself is the community that is growing—individually and corporately—in the knowledge of God’s love.

Paul prays for the believers—in Ephesus, and here today—that we would completely and fully—as limited as we are—understand just how much God loves us. Paul reminds us of the work of Christ on our behalf—the great mystery of the divinely inspired cosmos—and that we—who were once far off—are now counted among the children and families of God—spanning all time and space. And all of this never for ourselves in some privatized fashion so promoted by current American evangelical theology, but in a deprivatized way: for we are so loved by God that we can bring our outer person (personal and corporate) in line with the inner person (personal and corporate) and live in the world in love as we have been loved—no dividing walls and fences, no enmity and hostility, no laws keeping some in and some out. As we remember Christ, hope, pray, embrace radical divine equity, and grow, we can work to bring love to those who suffer under the oppression of indifference, life to those who are dying and liberation to those who are captive.

[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 123-124. “The ‘every family’ would have God as ‘Father,’ and every tribe and nation would be counted among the children of God. Then the invocation could be translated, ‘Father of all families [or tribes or nations].’ It is clearly not a biological relationship that is affirmed, but the care a father takes to supply the needs of his family, as when God is praised in Psalm 68:5 as the ‘father of orphans,’ the father of the fatherless. The scope of God’s parental care is not limited to those who know to call God ‘Father.’ Its reach extends beyond those who are near, and even beyond those who have been brought near.”

[2] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 124. “This is no tribal deity, no local god, not just the god of our ancestors. This God is not just committed to the flourishing of ap articular culture, country, or family. This God is the God of ‘all the families of the earth,’ the God of ‘all things.’ And to this God alone the Jews and Gentiles of the Lycus Valley—and we—owe ultimate loyalty.”

[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 368. “Three petitions may be discerned in what follows. (a) Intercession for the inner fortification of the saints; this is unfolded in the prayer that Christ reside in their hearts (vss. 16-17). (b) supplication for their strong perception of all the dimensions of God’s will; this supplication is interpreted by a request for knowledge of Christ’s love (vss. 18-19a). (c) Petition for perfection with God’s perfection (vs. 19b).”

[4] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “In remembering the ‘riches’ and ‘glory’ of the Father, Paul is convinced that God need not change or lose anything by granting the requests made to him. God is expected to act according to his nature, his character, i.e. his radiating love and power.”

[5] Barth, Ephesians, 385. “The gospel proclaimed in Ephesians is distinct from many variants of secular and religious collectivism by the vital concern shown for the enrichment, strength, stability, love, knowledge, grown, and perfection of each member of the community and, virtually, of every man.”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “If this command is a parallel to the prayer contained in 3:16, then ‘the Lord’ is the aim, focus, and source of gathering strength—he, and not some innate self that resides in the nature of man and constitutes his individual quality.”

[7] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “In Eph 3 these nouns are so arranged as to make it clear that man must be invigorated by God’s Spirit before he is able to grasp God’s manifold wisdom and hold onto it in knowledge. Paul would hardly affirm in general terms, that knowledge is power. Rather he avers that through his Spirit God empowers man to know things that are beyond the human mind, eye, ear…”

[8] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 127-128. “Paul pleads that the church will grow strong enough to hold onto the mystery of God without claiming to be able to understand that mystery fully. That is, after all, what ‘all the saints’ (Eph. 3:18), including Job, did.”

[9] Barth, Ephesians, 373. “God laid his heart bare when he showed that from eternity the Gentiles are included in his love and in the Messiah’s realm, but the saints’ knowledge and understanding of the secret is still ‘imperfect’…”

[10] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 128. “Here Paul prays that the church will in fact be ‘filled with all the fullness of God’…that is, with Christ…., in whom the secret was made known and who will bring the plan of God to complete fruition. That grace, that glory, that loves is not created by human beings, but it exalts human beings. It creates and restores humanity, and it strengthens the church to respond to God’s grace and glory and love, to be responsible agents in service to God’s plan.”

[11] Barth, Ephesians, 373. “While Col 1:19 and 2:9 speak of the ‘indwelling’ of ‘the whole fullness of God’ in Christ and the church, and described it as an accomplished fact, it is (despite all elements of ‘realized eschatology’) characteristic of Ephesians to speak of ‘filling’ as a process still going on.”

[12] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 125. “The petition is that the church will be empowered by the Spirit to grow into Christ.”

[13] Let your name be hallowed (Lord’s Prayer)

[14] Honor your Father and Mother (Ten Commandments)

[15] Barth, Ephesians, 376. “In Eph 4:4-6 Paul mentions the church first because he starts from the actual locus of God’s praise. Then he adds a reference to the Messiah Jesus to designate the basis of the that praise. The existence and manifestation of God’s glory in the church is and remains dependent upon glorification of God through the Son. The secret of God is indeed now known only to the church, but it was revealed in Christ of the benefit of the whole world.”

https://laurenrelarkin.com/2024/07/28/growing-from-and-into-love/

#Alignment #Beloved #DivineLove #DivinePeace #Ephesians #Hope #InnerLife #InnerSelf #Love #MarkusBarth #OuterSelf #Paul #Peace #Prayer #Remembering #SpiritualGrowth #VerheyAndHarvard

Psalm 23:1-3 Abba God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. Abba God makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.  God revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for God’s Name’s sake.

Introduction

At the end of last’s week sermon, we ended talking about remembrance, hope, and prayer. For Christians, when we gather to speak of, read of, hear of, and consume together with Christ in our weekly fellowship and worship, we are remembering Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are not just remembering Christ but participating the work of God made tangible in Christ: the divine revolution and mission of love, life, and liberation in the world for the beloved. This is truly εὐαγγέλιον. And if this is truly εὐαγγέλιον, then it is also the source and foundation of our hope that exists to sustain us today.

In remembering and having hope we are led to pray, to bring ourselves deeply into God, to bend our knee (literal or figurative), to be creatures fully dependent on God. We remember, we have hope, and we pray, and it is this that is the beginning of all our activity within the walls of the church and without. As mentioned last week, “Prayer does not resign the believer to non-activity as if it is the final act in the face of trouble; it is the starting point. Prayer is how the believer unites with God and God’s passion for life, love, and liberation.[1] It is the bold request for God to enter in, to act; in prayer God is spoken to and from, in prayer God is remembered, so, too, the neighbor.”[2]

But the author of Ephesians isn’t done with us yet as if it’s just about remembering and hoping and praying. But that this remembering, hoping, and praying participates in making believers one with God and with each other in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and bringing them into the true peace that surpasses all understanding.

Ephesians 2:11-22

For [Christ] is our peace, the one who made both [the Israelites and the Gentiles] one and [the one who] destroyed in his flesh the division-wall of the fence, [and] the enmity [between the two], and [the one who] rendered inoperative the law of the commands and public decrees, so that the two might build in him one new peace-making humanity… (Eph. 2:14-15)

So, the author of Ephesians verbally exhorts us (using an imperative!) to remember. To remember what? Not only Christ but who we were prior to being encountered by Christ in the event of faith. …remember that in the past you [were] Gentiles in the flesh, the ones who were called “The Uncircumcised” by the ones who were called “The Circumcised” in the flesh done by [human] hands (v. 11). But that isn’t enough; Paul asks his audience to remember, further, that they were for a time without Christ, having been alienated from the citizenship of Israel and a stranger of the covenant of the promise, not possessing hope and [were] without God in the cosmos (v 12). Paul is eager to recreate the situation for the Ephesians to cause more than just recall but real, heart-felt remembering,[3] pressing into the reality that apart from Christ they were dead in their false-steps and missing the mark (sin) (v 1), they were strangers to the promises of God, to Christ, and to the hope of God which is the hope of the reign of God in Christ.[4],[5] According to Ephesians, the Gentiles were overcome by their own desires, turned in on themselves, stuck in place by division, and consumed by hostility. This isn’t something that someone can work themselves out of, no matter how hard they try. For Paul, it is only through the encounter with Christ where one finds God, finds their neighbor, and finds themself; it is only in Christ where one finds true life, love, and liberation.[6] But at this time you who were once far off you became near by the blood of Christ (v 13). In other words, this is not done by human hands (χειροποιήτου in v 11), but by the love of God in Christ done by the power of the Spirit[7] as the down-payment in lives of the believers in Ephesus.

This is why Christ is the peace of everyone—for [Christ] is our peace (v 14a)—Children of Israel and Gentiles combined. Because, as Paul writes, the one who made both [the Israelites and the Gentiles] one and [the one who] destroyed in his flesh the division-wall of the fence, [and] the enmity [between the two], and [the one who] rendered inoperative the law of the commands and public decrees, so that the two might build in him one new peace-making humanity (vv 14b-15). There is now no longer us v. them, insiders v. outsiders, elected v. not-elected, Israel v. Gentiles, the circumcised v. the not circumcised.[8] There are not two groups, but one group. Thus, this peace Jesus brings in his own flesh, by the blood of the cross event and the glory of his resurrection is not just for privatized souls but for deprivatized humanity; it’s a socio-political event.[9] There is now no wall that keeps some in and some out, some included and some excluded; there is now (absolutely) no line—whether 2-D or 3-D—that can render some humans “good” and others “bad” based on which side of that line they fall because that line has been destroyed[10] and is now anathema for the believers and followers of Christ who benefit from the destruction of the division-wall of the fence by being included in to the heredity and mission of God by the work of Christ on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirits dwelling in their hearts.

And if the wall has been destroyed, so, too, division according to enmity,[11] which is the hostility and intolerance fomented between the two groups that was the fruit of the division wall; it is the anger of the kingdoms of humanity turned inward to tear humanity apart.[12] This includes the laws and public commandments used to make some clean and some unclean, some righteous and others unrighteous; these, too, like the wall and the enmity, have become inoperative in solidifying groups of people against each other. For Paul then writes, and so he might completely reconcile both in one body for God through the cross he killed the hostility in himself (v 16).By Christ’s work[13]—the mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation for the world—there is now no wall, thus no enmity, thus no law[14] that can keep anyone out and in this radical establishment of divine equity, there is peace[15]—true peace that is not contingent on one group suffering under the weight of another.

Then the letter continues, [Christ] came and brought peace to you (all) who were far-off and peace to you (all) who were near because through him we—both in one spirit—possess access to God therefore now you are no longer a stranger and sojourner but you are a fellow citizens with the saints and of the family of God (vv 17-19). In Christ, these two have become one[16] and together they will dwell in and with God and they will have real peace—the type of peace that threatens the principalities and powers of the kingdom of humanity. [17] But this peace brought by Christ is more than reconciliation with each other, it is also reconciliation with God, thus, these two who are now one become the dwelling place of God. [18] As Paul continues, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets—Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone—in whom all building is being fitted together and grows itself into a holy temple in the lord in whom you, you also were built together into the dwelling place of God in Spirit (vv 20-22). Boldly Ephesians declares, where there is a lack of enmity and hostility, division walls and lines, laws and commands geared to keep some in and some out, there God is and there the saints of God are; no one is excluded and left out and the church is caught up in this radical inclusion and equity, snatched into this divine peace that knows absolutely positively no walls or dividing lines.[19],[20]

Conclusion

The church is without excuse here, according to Ephesians. Peace—the very peace Christ brings through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension—is peace that is not contingent on the kingdom of humanity but dependent on the reign of God. It is peace that arises in the communion of humanity with humanity, humanity with God, and humanity with creation; it is peace that manifests within and among humanity in its unity to the glory of God, which is in opposition to the “peace” (i.e. “security” (“control”)) of the kingdom of humanity that thrives on the humanity’s disunity. None of us who claim to follow Christ can afford to support systems dead set on dividing and conquering, oppressing and marginalizing, and fostering anger and fear; these systems are antithetical to the gospel of Christ and to the faith and praxis of the believer in the world before God and neighbor. None of us who claim to follow Christ can find peace (and hope) anywhere else apart from God: not in federal positions and presidents, not in parties and platforms, not in promises and progress made with human hands. We can only find true peace in our reconciliation with God, which is reconciliation with our neighbor, and, thus, these two combined give us reconciliation with ourselves because we have been made one with our neighbor and thus have become the dwelling place of God.

We cannot find peace by building the world we long for with human hands because as soon as we build it it has expired and must be torn down to allow something new to be born. We cannot find peace by turning the gospel into a law as if it can found a nation that would only gift life, love, and liberation to those who qualify. We cannot find peace by letting enmity and hostility be the mortar holding the bricks of the division-wall together. We cannot find peace by legislating Christianity because the doctrines born of the second word of God that form the tissue of the Christian Church inherently resist such socio-political ossification. We can and will only find peace by pressing further into God, clinging to God’s Word in Christ, and leaning into the guidance and leading of the Spirit of God, the guarantor of the new covenant, the down payment of our adoption into God, and the fertile soil making us one with God, with our neighbor, thus, with ourselves. It is only here, in God and with God, do we find true and lasting peace that surpasses all understanding.

[1] See Sölle, Choosing Life, pp. 92-93

[2] This portion is taken from, Lauren R.E. Larkin, “Leaving Heaven Behind: Paradoxical Identity as the Anchor of Dorothee Sölle’s Theology of Political Resistance,” PhD Dissertation (University of Aberdeen, 2024), 202.

[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 254. “Repentance, decision, and gratitude are called for, not a mental recollection only.”

[4] Barth, Ephesians, 257. “In Eph 2:12 a status of strangership is described, not an event leading to estrangement.”

[5] Barth, Ephesians, 259. \“Unless Paul flippantly denied or dispossessed the Gentiles of any hope he must have meant a specific hope. This ‘hope,’ then, could be understood as fostered in the minds of the Jews, because it was founded and guaranteed in the heart of God or ‘laid up in heaven’……It is the hope for the promised messiah from the root of David…”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 254. “Paul’s thought moves from men in the grip of ‘flesh’ (2:11), over the work performed in ‘Christ’s flesh’ (2:14, to the operation of the ‘Spirit’ (2:18). Nothing can prevent the ‘Spirit’ from operating ‘in the realm of flesh.’”

[7] Barth, Ephesians, 255. “As the building of the temple by God is contrasted to the construction of temples by men, so circumcision of the heart…highly excels handmade circumcision.”

[8] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 93. “If it was especially the Jewish Christian who needed to be reminded earlier that all are ‘sinners,’ not just the ‘uncircumcised,’ not just the Gentiles, and that all are brought from death to life by the gift of God’s grace, not by ‘works’  of the law, the Gentiles are now reminded of the promises to Israel and that it is in the Jewish Messiah that they are given a share in them.”

[9] Barth, Ephesians, 262. “Christ is praised here not primarily for the peace he bring to individual souls; rather the peace he brings is a social and political event…”

[10] Barth, Ephesians, 263-264. “The combination of the two Greek nouns yields a composite sense: it is a wall that prevents certain person from entering a house or a city (cf. 2:19), and is as much a mark of hostility (2:14, 16) as, e.g. a ghetto wall, the Iron Curtain the Berlin Wall, a racial barrier, or a railroad track that separates the right from the wrong side of the city, not to speak of the wall between state and church.”

[11] Barth, Ephesians, 264. “In this case, the ‘enmity’ is as much the object of destruction as the wall.”

[12] Barth, Ephesians, 264. “The word ‘enmity’ defines the separation between Jews and Gentiles more specifically: this segregation implies intolerance, and is a passionate, totalitarian, bellicose affair. While the ‘enmity’ mentioned at the end of vs. 16 is the one-sided enmity of man against God, the ‘enmity’ of vs. 14 is mutual among men.”

[13] Barth, Ephesians, 265. “…the context of Eph 2:15 reveals that for the author (as much as for Paul himself) the death of Christ rather than the promulgation of new decrees stood behind the abolition of the divisive statutes.”

[14] Barth, Ephesians, 264. Wall, enmity, and law “Each of these terms throws light on the others; the author wants them to be considered as synonyms.”

[15] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 96. “…God seals a ‘new covenant’ in ‘the blood of Christ.” And in that ‘new covenant’ there is a new community, a community of both Jew and Gentile, a community that shares the memory of Christ and the hope of God’s promises with a common meal.”

[16] Barth, Ephesians, 272. “After showing that the church exists only as a unity, that is, as one new man created out of Jews and Gentiles, the apostle does not proceed to split t into halves.”

[17] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 97. “But this was not merely an idea, as the reality of baptism makes clear. This was not merely an ideal that exists outside history and toward which we must strive. This was and is a reality wrought in Christ on the cross and displayed in the churches when God initiates diverse people into Christ and into the church. Ideals are powerless against the forces in this world that divide and abuse, against the principalities and power that nurture cultures of enmity. But those forces are and will be finally powerless against the promise and reality of God’s future.”

[18] Barth, Ephesians, 274. “The church herself is not reconciliation but she lives form it and manifests it. She serves the glory of God inasmuch as her members mutually assist, support, and strengthen one another. Neither jews nor Gentiles nor any individual can independently claim after Christ’s coming to offer an appropriate residence For God but Jews and Gentiles together are now ordained by God to become his temple.”

[19] Barth, Ephesians, 324-325. “Now the church is the sign of his mercy, his peace, and his nearness the whole world. If God can and will use people are who are as tempted and weak as the Christian are, then he is certainly able and willing to exclude no one from his realm. The church lives by this hope and bears witness to it publicly.”

[20] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 98. “They are called to break down the walls and to perform this new social reality by forming friendships with the people on the other side of the aisle, or on the other side of town.”

https://laurenrelarkin.com/2024/07/21/6623/

#Beloved #ChoosingLife #ChristianNationalism #DividingWall #DivineLove #DivinePeace #Division #DorotheeSölle #Ephesians #Hope #Jesus #LawAndGospel #Love #LoveOfNeighbor #MarkusBarth #Peace #UnionWithGod #UnionWithSelf #UnionWithTheNeighbor