-Two magnificent buts in this letter. The first (in chapter 2): you were enemies, excluded, and so on and so forth, BUT God... Now here: the nations are thus and thus, BUT you...! The former is the Great Intervention. Here we have the Great Deviation. In fact, it is directly due to the fact of the Great Intervention that you all are now part of the Great Deviation. So, not thus, Paul says. Not like them, not like this. Not in emptiness and darkness and ignorance and callousness towards the truth did you learn about Christ. Not stumbling around and living like everyone else, not living and learning by base instincts. No, you all are different, you all are truly deviants. (In the best way, of course...!)
-Paul makes a safe assumption, one which he has made for the entirety for this letter, that these ones in this assembly in Ephesus have heard and have truly believed the truth about Jesus. Yes, Virginia, there absolutely is such a thing as absolute truth, and this truth is in Jesus. You want off the way of the empty mind? Learn about Jesus. Learn FROM Him. He IS the Truth and the Way, the way into heaven and out of the Cult of More. He is the Beginning and the End, and the end of the Law of Futility. To believe and fully follow Him is to deviate off the wide and well-trodden way of the nations, the way of the empty mind which leads to death, and to embark upon the narrow way, the way of the Cross, of denying and dying to self - AND of breathtaking goodness, unspeakable joy, indescribable peace and eternal life.
-Heard AND taught. note the distinction here - they wound up being deviants in part because they both heard and were taught. Deliverance from this Cult of More, escape from the prevaling way of the nations is not effected in a single dose, a single hearing about Jesus. Old thought patterns and values long embraced must be diligently retrained and resected. Pressure to conform is constant, it continues daily even after I hear and believe in Jesus. My flesh along with the world and the devil are always nipping at my heels, nagging me to regress and choose the old way, enticing me at every opportunity to prioritize the three-fold-self and live into the ever-present now. Every day I must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, beginning again as if nothing yet has been done for my Savior, constantly renewing my heart and mind with the light of God’s Word - embodied only in the Word-made-flesh, the God-Man, Jesus. Each and every day and throughout the day, moment-by-moment glory beckons, an adventure of following and learning from Him, listening to His Spirit and living more and more fully into what God wants. Which is ultimately what my soul wants. Breathtaking goodness. This is what I was truly made for, and by the grace of God, in truth, i. am. a. deviant.
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