Ephesians Lesson 1 our introduction through #5

DOCTRINE, REPROOF, CORRECTION, INSTRUCTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS

Before we get into this study I must acknowledge the wealth of knowledge both natural and spiritual which we've received first from God the Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit who are one Spirit of all Truth and indwells us. Then such mystics as St. John of the Cross, Jacob Behman, William Law, Andrew Murray, Major William Ian Thomas and lastly James A. Fowler of Christ In You Ministries and Watchman Nee, E.W. Kenyon and a few others who's materials we read during our early years as babes in Christ, while we struggled through our first estate in redemption. As with all of the outlines used by us we've taken the basics from Les Feldick and his program of Through the Bible with Les Feldick, as they are the most simple to use and follow.

Before we get into the meat of this study it might be said that Paul was Christcentered or Christocentric in his approach to this Gospel of Christ because Christ is the Gospel and the Gospel is Christ. Which is the revelation of John in his book titled Revelation. In fact we've tried to hold to this same line of thought in all our writings. As with all our writings as we begin to move forward in each days sharing the Holy Spirit reveals more of Christ and His activity and through them adjusts what we have as notes and at times has changed them. As we learn all that Christ is through this method.

We're going to look at a different timeline that covers Paul's Church Epistles. The reason we like to share these things is to show how intrinsically and how beautifully, all the Bible just fits together. Everything is so programmed that no human could have ever dreamed it up. Now we're going to see that there are seven of Paul's Epistles that were written to the Church, and they're called the Church Epistles. Paul just wrote those letters as it was appropriate and it just fell out that there were seven of them that were written directly for the Church. In the Book of Romans we find that he comes out with seven distinct things that God had accomplished with the Nation of Israel. All of this just points out the inspiration of everything, even to the way they were lined up in our New Testament, which is not according to the chronological order that he wrote them. But the Holy Spirit put them in the way they were supposed to be when men of God put the New Testament together.

The Books of the New Testament are sometimes in various copies of antiquity in different orders. In other words, the New Testaments in libraries across the world are not always Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Even the Four Gospels may be mixed up, and the same way with the little epistles of Peter, James, Jude and John, as they're not always in that order. But every one of Paul's epistles are always (in every copy of the New Testament that's available) in the same order that we have them today. Now that tells us that the Holy Spirit was in total control when the men who met (in approximately 350 AD) put the cannon of Scripture together, formulating our New Testament. So always remember that God has particularly brooded over these Pauline Epistles because they are the ones appropriate for us. But like so much of scripture unless we have eyes to see and ears to hear we'll miss the underlying tones such as the wickedness of religion and the animosity towards all things of religion (the familiar spirit of Isaiah 19 and 29) which both John the Baptist and Jesus brought to the front or foreground in the gospels. Even though many miss the sternness of the language which they both used especially when addressing those of the Jewish priesthood though it was not limited to them alone. It also carried over to those of the militant or nationalistic propensity of the day which later caused the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem just as Jesus and Daniel and the prophets said would come about. Which happened shortly after Paul and Peter were removed from the scene.

Now turn for a moment to II Timothy 3. We'll be looking at Ephesians verse by verse, but before we get started there let's look at II Timothy, where the Apostle Paul writes in verse 16 -

II Timothy 3:16
"All scripture (the whole Bible from cover to cover that we now have) is given by inspiration of God,..."
Now we know nothing irks us more when (even) good men, and we're sure they mean well, for example they'll say Luke was a Gentile. Remember Luke wrote a good portion of our New Testament, the Book of Luke and Acts and as we've said that he was not a Gentile, but rather he was Jewish and physician. And now there's articles from out in television land proving almost beyond a shadow of doubt that Luke was indeed a Hebrew. We just based it on a verse in Romans where Paul says -

Romans 3:1-2
"What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them (the Hebrews) were committed the oracles (Words, a set discourse or utterance) of God."

Now how in the world can we make a statement like that and then have something like the Book of Luke and Acts written by a Gentile? Well we're sorry but it just won't fit, and so on that basis we've felt that Luke was a Hebrew. Now granted he had a Roman name, but Paul did also (see Saul was Paul's Jewish name). Paul was a Roman name and we think much of the same thing happened with Luke. You know they tell us Luke must have been a tremendous diarist. In other words he must have kept a perfect diary every day, especially as he traveled. No. We're sure a lot of these things were in Luke's mind, as he remembered things that took place, but he didn't write the Scripture from what was in his memory. Luke wrote the Scripture as the Holy Spirit inspired him to write it, and it was the same way with the other gospel writers.

They may have remembered a lot of the things that took place in Christ's earthly ministry, but they didn't write from what they remembered. They wrote from what the Holy Spirit inspired them to write, and always remember that. All writers of Scripture even though they were part and parcel of that point in time and their personality shines through because of it, yet what they wrote was not from notes they had gathered, it wasn't from hearsay, but as the Holy Spirit moved them to write. Now looking at verse 16 again.

II Timothy 3:16a
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctorine, (good teaching) for reproof, (when things have to be straightened out) for correction,..." (for someone who gets off course)

Now we were mulling this word correction over, and we remembered when we were putting men on the moon. And as those rockets were going though space that they had to constantly correct their trajectory because if they were off just a fraction of a degree with the distance involved they would have missed the moon for example by who knows how much. So what did they constantly have to do? Correct. Now that's what the Scripture has to do. It's so easy to get off course, but the Scripture is here to bring us back on course, and that's what correction stands for. That's why we're admonished to study and then to study yet again and then again. So the Scriptures are profitable -

II Timothy 3:16b
"...for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:"
It's kind of unique that all of Paul's Church letters especially the seven that we're going to note, all fall into doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. We've said before that all Scripture from Genesis through Revelation is a progressive revelation of Christ. In other words, as we come up through the Old Testament, God is always revealing something that the fellows back there didn't know. Even those of Jesus' day did not know what was written in the same fashion as those who have the Holy Spirit or Spirit of all Truth now have. Because it was hidden from sight (as fragments of a picture) and in some cases it was veiled from view. We come into the New Testament, or more correctly the promised New Covenant and God begins to reveal things that weren't in clear sight in the Old Testament. And especially when we get to the Apostle Paul's writings. Revelations that were never hinted at in the Old Testament (but were none the less still there), revelation that Jesus never spoke of accept in veiled language as parables, allegories or metaphors.

And within the letters of Paul and especially the seven Church letters that we're going to be looking at, again it's a progressive revelation going from the beginning of his writings to the end, but it's going to be under this format. First doctrine, then reproof, then correction, and last instruction in righteousness. Now we point that out only to show how beautifully this Book is put together. Paul didn't sit down and say, "Now how can I do this, I've got to be able to put doctrine first, I've got to somehow be able to write in the area of reproof." No. We don't think the Apostle Paul, when he wrote his letters, even realized that he was writing Scripture. We think that he would have been aghast if he could have seen down through the corridors of history what his writing have become. Paul just wrote as the Holy Spirit inspired him to write, and fired the letter off to these various Churches by courier.

The Book of Romans he sent to Rome from Corinth with Phoebe, a lady. Other letters went with some of his other friends such as Titus and Timothy, but we don't think he had any idea that this was going to become what we call cannon of Scripture. But whether he knew it or not he put it out with this very format of doctrine, reproof, correction and then instruction in righteousness.

We're going to put again a timeline of sorts dealing with Paul's Epistles and we'll start back here with his letter that was written during early missionary travels. Most people are aware of missionary travel when he left Antioch and went up into Asia Minor, Derbe, and so forth. And then later on in his second journey he went all the way over to Greece, and so forth. Those journeys began about 40 AD, when he came back from Arabia and his year or so of instruction given him by the Lord and in the area of Mount Sinai which began about 37 AD. These letters then became what we now know as Hebrews, Romans, I & II Corinthians, and then came the Book of Galatians.

Romans was written about 64 AD, and Galatians was written earlier than that in about 60 AD. Then the Corinthian letters were written somewhere around 61 or 62 AD. Those four letters then were written during his time of missionary travels. By virtue of the Hebrews being in every city in the Roman Empire, wherever the Apostle Paul went, where did he go first? To the Hebrews, to the Synagogue or temple. So being a Hebrew himself and having been steeped in Judaism, having a love for his kinsman according to the flesh as he calls them, he would always go first to the Hebrews. He would expound to them out of the Old Testament because we want to remember that there was no New Testament. (Nor was the New Covenant fully revealed at or during that time because we're still in the enigma of the interim between the Lord's first coming and His second. During this period we're to live by trusting as Abraham and Jesus did. Trusting God's faithfulness, by receptivity of His Grace. For Faith is an action word of Love. Not a stagnate or lifeless form but rather Living and actively working through Grace within those of receptive by faith, the same faith which Jesus activated and demonstrated by His life style. One writer of the mysteries of God calls faith a darkness of night because therein we're to learn not only Christ but also God as God develops His faith within us through a darkness of sorts. Because in darkness we learn trust and then the Light comes within our soul/spirit only through faith's activity.) Even the Four Gospels weren't written until after Paul had written his letters, so he couldn't even tell people, "If you want to know a little more about Jesus and His earthly ministry, then read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." NO! So, everywhere he went he had to simply speak the Word verbally, out of the Old Scriptures scrolls because there was nothing written until he began his letters. For its through them that we learn of Christ and the fulness of Christ and His day to day operations within us who have become receptive of Him and His Grace and Truth, as our All in all.

Now we're going to come to I & II Thessalonians which are going to be at the very end of the seven letters to the churches, and they're going to be the ones that are "instruction in righteousness." But the amazing thing is, even though they're at the end of the line of revelation given Paul, these were written first, probably about 57 or 58 AD. But the Holy Spirit, even though He prompted the Apostle Paul to write them earlier, saw fit to put them at the end in our New Testament/Covenant order. Now then, we want to turn to Acts chapter 28. Because, this is all history as well as Bible study, because if we understand the historical setting, then we can understand where the apostle is coming from and why the Holy Spirit does what He does.