his pleasure and will\u20146 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.7 In him we haveredemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God\u2019s grace8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.9 And hea made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ,10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfilment\u2014to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.13 And you also were included in Christ when youheard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Havingbelieved, you weremarked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God\u2019s possession\u2014to the praise of his glory.

I was always struck by the length of the sentences \u2013 especially in the AV. Paul\u2019s
argument is a long string of statements and it\u2019s difficult to read the passage without
having a sense of thoughts tumbling over each other.

There\u2019s little doubt about this being a particularly important passage theologically \u2013
for here Paul is soaring like a bird of prey above the landscape of the expanding
Church, taking in the immensity of the territory and the wonder of its design.
Most of the time we have a very restricted view of the Church, don\u2019t we? And here at
Bristol Road, just at present, it is all to easy for us to see the trees and not the wood,
the obstacles and not the course, the problems and not the plan.

It\u2019s my hope in these studies to take an OVERVIEW of the passages rather than
handle the letter verse by verse. I believe we have a great need of seeing the
Church from a heavenly perspective \u2013 so that we can begin to address the day by
day problems we face as people trying to make sense of the way our particular
church is going. This letter will help us to do that.

The Letter to the Ephesians is a letter about the Church of Christ. It has a very
simple but very profound key phrase \u2013 \u201cin Christ\u201d and I want you to make sure that
you examine the book, and particularly this first chapter looking for all the
occurrences of that phrase in its various forms.

Tonight we are getting straight into the first major paragraph. I am going to assume
that you know that Paul was writing this letter from prison, and that although we
always know the letter as \u201cTo the Ephesians\u2026\u201d there is good reason to believe that
the original was written out with the destination church left blank \u2013 rather like a
circular letter intended for a group of churches. (In fact Paul refers to the practise of
churches handing on the letter he writes them and reading the letters he has written
to other churches in the group. See Colossians 4 16: