Week 46 Ephesians
There’s a sort-of concept in bible reading that I call the Don’t-Really-Get-It-Until-Later Principle. It goes like this:
I read something;
I don’t get it;
I keep reading;
Then I read something later that throws light on the something I didn’t get.
I thought about that today when I read chapter two. Paul’s talking about what life is like for people before they believe the Lord. The way he described it was:
Once you were dead
Doomed forever because of your many sins…
Obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air
He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to believe God
All of us used to live that way, following the passions and desires of our evil nature.
So how does that relate to the Don’t-Really-Get-It-Until-Later Principle? When I read chapter two I thought back more than ten months to Adam and Eve. Genesis says they disobeyed, were expelled from Eden, and had to make their way in a fallen world. The story is pretty thin gruel. But Ephesians supplements it with extra information: suddenly A&E were internally dead, naturally evil, staring doom in the face, completely whammied by the smooth demonic spirit who’d crawled into their souls and poisoned their systems.
Not very happy reading. But it made chapter two a value-added text for me.
Note: quote from Ephesians 2:1-3 (NLT)