The ONE Thing God Is After in You: Understanding Your True Identity in Christ

Subjection once.

Feet once.

Church, only once.

Body one time. All in all, one time. And did I miss anything that you think should have been included in that?

Fullness? Yes, just before—okay, fullness is also one time. No, fullness got mentioned twice, didn’t it? What did I leave out?

Gospel, thank you. It’s easy to skip some of these.

By the way, I found a horrible error in there, yes, last night. I don’t know how in the world Aristarchus got in there, substituting for Epaphras, but when you see the word “Aristarchus,” please mark it out and put “Epaphras” there. I’ll blame that on my secretary. She’s new and doesn’t speak English, and I don’t know New Zealand, and sometimes it is not easy for us to get together.

Now then, I’m going to do this again. Will somebody tell me how many sentences there are, or how many lines, excuse me, how many lines there are, L I N E S, in Ephesians 1? Is it 23 or 24? Twenty-three. Now listen to this. Subjects mentioned only once: I come up with 58. Did anybody count? Fifty-eight total new subjects, any one of them you could spend a week on. Fifty-eight, and how many lines? Twenty-three.

Does anybody have any idea what my point is? Paul of Tarsus, this is absurd. How could you do this to us? 58 undefined subjects brought up in a period of 23 lines, plus about a dozen more that are mentioned twice, three times, or four times. That’s why I said last night that no one understands Ephesians 1, except Peter, and he’s only 80% right.  (laughter) And if you missed out on a conversation yesterday, that won’t mean a thing to you.

This is incredible. This is absolutely incredible. Do you have any other statistics besides mine? I did not try to make this real theological. Do you have any comments about this? Perhaps, in the great mercies and wisdom of God, it was important that we not understand much of this.  Because more than any other chapter, Chapters 1 and 2 speak to us about a need for revelation, and I’m telling you that this book, more than any other, you really do need revelation to understand. But oh, the riches that are hidden here.

Now we’ll just drop that subject, and I’m going to chat with you for just a second. I didn’t come five or six thousand miles to bring you messages. I came here to…in hopes of making an impact on the lives of a few dramatic people. We have five brothers and sisters, and I think from this moment on, I’m going to use the word, Constance. Is that okay? How many of you live in Switzerland? Two. And three in Constance. You’re outnumbered. So, boy, it was a tight one. Sometimes you meet in… That’s absolutely correct.

I’m going to talk mostly to you, but I want you to listen. I want you to listen. These two young ladies come and meet with you folks sometimes, so I want you to think in terms of being with them. This is going to be very difficult for all of us because we are so individually inclined. Try to think of yourself as part of one person. Try to think of yourself as all one person. Think of yourself corporately, not individually. Yet think of yourself as a single person, not an individual. Can you follow that? Okay. Now, the second thing I want to do is, at times, I want you to vanquish with me the present day, and I want you to be in the first century. On the other hand, at times, I’m going to ask you to vanquish the first century, and consider that you, who are in Constance, are just as close to Jerusalem, even though you live in this day, and that Paul is still alive. Sometimes I’m going to be Paul, and sometimes I’m just going to break away, and I’m going to be Gene Edwards, and I’m going to just break away and talk about the mess we’re in today.