Ephesians Chapter 4: Walking Worthy, God gives us Helps
Dec 6th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Ephesians, Verse by Verse --Studies led by Br. Frank Shallieu (Click on Book name)Paul went to a more personal exhortation with regard to problems in the class and besought the brethren to “walk worthy of the vocation” wherein they were called. This exhortation was necessary because their former life was immoral. There was cheating in business, for example.
With Ephesus being a noted commercial and “religious” center, people came from all over the Roman Empire and wanted relics or souvenirs attesting that they had been to the Temple of Diana. The making of relics provided numerous job opportunities for the Ephesians, and many lived on profits from tourism because of the Temple of Diana. Greed and covetousness, as well as the practices of the temple worship, were sinful. Temple priestesses called “virgins” were actually a form of prostitution but without an evil connotation in the heathen worship.
One phrase in the epistle became the seed thought of Gnosticism, which, among other things, said the Christian does not have to worry too much about the natural life, for immorality is not that important. They maintained that the new creature is what counts. After Paul died, Gnostics took his writings on the distinction between the spirit within us and the fleshly vessel to justify their wrong thoughts. They excused the flesh by saying that the new creature was not responsible for it, for God views us according to the spirit.
