Onesimus – Continued V2
The three three’s
1. Slave – Escape – Soldier (Warrior)
2. The previous life – the current life – the future life
3. Question – answer – result
(Eph 2:1) It wasn't so long ago that you were mired (stuck) in that old stagnant life of sin.
(Eph 2:2) You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.
(Eph 2:3) We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.
(Eph 2:4) Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love,
(Eph 2:5) He embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!
(Eph 2:6) Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
(Eph 2:7) Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.
(Eph 2:8) Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish!
(Eph 2:9) We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing!
(Eph 2:10) No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work He does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
1. Slave – Escape – Soldier (Warrior)
a. Salve – Sin and the sinful world
b. Escape – set free by the cross of Jesus
c. Soldier – Once free we can be useful to God
2. The previous life – the current life – the future life
a. Previous life – Sin
b. Current life – New in Jesus
c. Future life – Life after
3. Question – answer – result
a. Question – every day and every moment
b. Answer – choices
c. Result – the result to your choice/God’s choice
What makes an athlete/soldier victorious – it is the invisible goal that they keep their focus on and never alter until they are victorious.
(Eph 3:14) My response is to get down on my knees before the Father,
(Eph 3:15) this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth.
(Eph 3:16) I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit--not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength--
(Eph 3:17) that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love,
(Eph 3:18) you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights!
(Eph 3:19) Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
(Eph 3:20) God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
(Eph 3:21) Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!
