What does First B Jackson teach about ephesians 1?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on Ephesians 1 starts with the shape of the passage itself. Ray has walked through this text across more than one message, and each time he returns to the same observation: Paul's opening doxology, verses 3 through 14, is a single flowing sentence in Greek, 202 words long, structured around the three persons of the Trinity. God the Father is the one with the will and the plan, choosing believers before the foundation of the world and predestining them for adoption. Christ the Son is the agent through whom that plan is carried out, the one in whom redemption and forgiveness are found. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee, described in the passage as earnest money, a down payment on the full communion with God that is still coming. Ray has been careful to say the Spirit is a He, the third person of the Trinity, not a force or an it.
One question threads through all of Ray's teaching on this passage: would you rather have God work through your obedience, or in spite of your disobedience? The phrase "according to the purpose of his will" appears three times across those few verses, and Ray reads that repetition as the passage insisting that God's purposes will be accomplished one way or another. The only real question for any believer is whether they want to be part of that by saying yes. He also notes that "saints" and "faithful" in the salutation are not two separate groups in the Greek but an appositive, the same people described two ways. If God has called you holy, He has also given you what you need to be faithful.
Ray has connected Ephesians 1 to Paul's broader point that the chosen are not a closed circle but simply a few steps ahead of the people they are called to reach. The letter was always meant to travel, and the body of Christ on earth continues the work Christ began, sent the same way the Father sent the Son. Grace, he has said drawing on N. T. Wright, is the origin of the whole gospel, and peace is its effect. When God's unmerited favor is accepted, what follows is peace.
Taught from Ephesians 1:3-14 · Ephesians 1:1-2 · Colossians 1:19-20 · Romans 8:28 · Galatians 4:4-5
The passage taught · Acts 18
1 After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth.
2 He found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, who had recently come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome. He came to them,
3 and because he practiced the same trade, he lived with them and worked, for by trade they were tent makers.
4 He reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded Jews and Greeks.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- March 8, 2026 Outside the Envelope: Grace and Peace to You Pastor Ray opens Ephesians 1, showing how God's grace and peace, given through Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit, call the church into His will and purpose.
- May 28, 2017 Blessed Be God the Father Pastor Ray walks through Ephesians 1:3-14, a single sweeping doxology of Father, Son, and Spirit, woven together with stories from a mission trip to Guatemala.
- May 28, 2017 Learning to Lean on God's Will Pastor Ray weaves Ephesians 1:3-14 with stories from a Guatemala mission trip, showing how God works out His will through the obedience of ordinary people.