Class Outline:

Sunday January 23.2022

This section is a bio of the maturing believer and a description of his church. It is also a description of the schemes of the enemy that wants to destroy both.

But who is this believer in Christ? He is blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ. He is elected before the foundation of the world. He was predestined to adoption into God’s family by the kind intention of God’s will. Therefore he is forgiven of all sin. To him is made known the mystery of God’s will. He has an inheritance predestined before the world. This new man and his new age was brought about when the Father raised the Son from the dead.

No matter what the age, what decade or century, that is true for every believer. It is a summary of EPH 1:3-14. And in every age, these believers have been called to the body, justly fitted and knit to one another in their proper place with their proper gifts and called to equip the others for the work of their own individual ministries.

Our given divine life lived, individually and together, is the city on a hill that shines forth the light that those in the world long for but often don’t know it.

MAT 5:16

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

In our day, a time of great strife and division politically, socially, and economically, the shining forth of Christ’s light through each of us individually and from us as a group, will remind others in the world of what they are truly longing for.

JOH 13:31-35

When therefore he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; 32 if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately. 33 "Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' 34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

As Judas went out, the betrayal began the hour that the Lord had so long anticipated, which would be a long hour indeed, only ending with His cry from the cross, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” God the Father and the Son would be glorified and the Son would rejoin the Father in the glory they had shared, but now as a Man seated at the Father’s right hand above all rule and authority. The disciples could not join Him, not yet. While they remained a war torn, sinful, and dark world, they were to love one another just as the Lord had loved them. He would describe this love further during and after the supper as one that lays down its life for its friends. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples.” The church is to be the city on a hill in all generations. Our church should be a light to our family, friends, and neighbors by means of our good works. Not by staging some show of works before others or using gimmicks to get them to attend (a simple courteous invitation will suffice), but by each of us revealing the Lord by our living His life, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs or groups, as the circumstances afford, and when some of them get curious as to what we know and how we can live so obedient and free, we share the Lord and His church with them; the church that is community and body of Christ. They don’t have to go to our church, but we encourage them to go where believers gather to worship the Lord based on the revelation of His Word.

Each believer, through Bible study, prayer, reflection, and application has to learn Christ and His plan for humankind throughout human history. Paul prays fervently in Eph 1 that we would know the hope of God’s calling and the riches of the glory of God’s inheritance.

The new self walks worthy of his/her calling, grows up in all things into Christ, serves the other members in love, and he overcomes the enemy with hope.

Eph 4-5:21 shows us the way of this truth of living, and purposeful living with one another, using many commands and warnings. The characteristics of our walk and the oneness that we share in the church are related to our gaining knowledge of Christ and maturing in all things. Along the way in Paul’s exhortations and commands he reminds of the dangers along the way.

Paul gives us a map through a mine field with a mature believer and a mature church on the other side.

A big part of this exhortation is the warning that there exist many things that oppose our growth and our walk with the Lord and our service and unity with one another.

EPH 4:17-20

This I say therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous [cease to feel], have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. 20 But you did not learn Christ in this way;

The old life, the walk of the unregenerate is emptiness, darkness, separation from God’s life, ignorant, callous, and at the mercy of sensuality, impurity, and greediness.