Coming out of Sunday’s teaching, “Ephesians: Before & After” spend some time in prayerful reflection and dialogue with your Home Church/Friends/Family around any combination of these questions (there are a lot this week so don’t try to get through them all!):
Read Ephesians 2:1-10 before starting. Pray and ask God to speak.
- How did God speak to you through the text and/or Sunday’s message? What jumped out to you? Why? What are some of the main ideas that Paul is communicating in this passage?
- Look again at verses 1-3. How does Paul describe our spiritual condition BEFORE Christ? What words, images or ideas stand out to you here? Why?
- What do you think it means to be spiritually dead to God (V1)?
- What do you think it means to be enslaved to the world, to the devil, and to our sinful nature (V2-3)?
- What do you think it means to be condemned and subject to God’s anger (V3)?
- Which of these words, images or ideas in verses 1-3 do you have the most difficult time with? Why?
- How should these concepts impact the way that we think about, pray for and engage with people in our lives who are not following Jesus?
- Look again at verses 4-7. How does Paul describe our spiritual condition AFTER Christ? What words, images or ideas stand out to you here? Why?
- What’s so significant about the first two words in verse 4 (“But God…”)? What do these words show us?
- Notice who did all the ‘work’ in these verses. What does this show us?
- What do you think it means to be alive to God as opposed to being dead to God (v5)?
- What do you think it means to be free in Christ instead of enslaved to the world, to the devil and to our sinful nature (V6)?
- What does verse 1 show us about God love and mercy, as opposed to his condemnation and anger (V 4)?
- Look again at verses 8-10, where Paul describes how we move from our ‘before Christ’ reality and into an ‘after Christ’ reality instead (i.e. how ‘salvation’ happens). What words jump out at you in these three verses? Why?
- What do you think Paul meant when he said, “God saved you by his grace when you believed” in verse 8? What’s God’s role in salvation and what is ours?
- What is God’s grace? How would you describe it?
- How did God show us His grace?
- What is “faith (belief)? How would you describe it?
- Why is that we tend to believe as though we can earn God’s favour in life and that God will ‘save’ us if we behave a certain way? What are some ways nonChristinas might do this? What are some ways Christians do this?
- Why is it important that we understand that God’s grace is not just for our salvation, but also our daily lives as Christians (i.e. that we can’t earn our salvation AND we can’t earn God’s favour and blessings as we follow Jesus either)?
- What does verse 10 teach us about doing good things for God? What is it important about the ‘order’ of these ideas (i.e that good works comes in response of our salvation, not the other way around)?
- What do you think Paul meant when he said, “God saved you by his grace when you believed” in verse 8? What’s God’s role in salvation and what is ours?
- How is God inviting you to respond to this passage? What is your next step?
