Knowing, Showing and Sharing.

Knowing God, Showing God, Sharing God - the truth behind the motto

At RBC, every now and then we might have a theme we explore over a number of Sundays, or even a one-off study on a passage of the Bible that's struck a member of our teaching team.

However, most Sundays you'll find us studying through a book of the Bible together. Just before the Summer holiday season kicked in we finished a year-long journey through the book of Jeremiah together, and in September 2014 we started out with Paul's letter to the Ephesians, where we'll be finding out how God's word sits squarely behind our new Church motto: Knowing God, Showing God and Sharing God.

The recipients

We don’t know for sure where these Christians were from. We call the letter ‘Ephesians’ however many bibles have a footnote which says “some early manuscripts do not have 'In Ephesus'”.

The original destination of this letter is one of the great unsolved puzzles. Various explanations exist, all are at best guesses. The letter could have been a circular and therefore had no designated recipient at first, withPaul adding the personalisation information to the church dear to him.

Paul twice refers to the recipients as  "you Gentiles" (2:11 & 3:1).

These were not Jews who had now come to know Jesus. They were pagans, Greeks, Romans, any non-Jew who had come to faith in Jesus Christ.  This is important because what a Jew and non-Jew experience in coming to know Jesus is different.

For a Jewish Christian the scriptures and the language were familiar, through Jesus they beautifully find their fulfilment.

For the Gentile it was all new, and must have wondered at times “What on earth are they going on about? My friends tell me I’ve got caught up in some little new sect and I’ll grow out of it before long. What am I doing here? Who am I?”

Many of us relate to that when our friends and relatives say:

• You’re not serious about being part of those Evangelical Christians are you?
• They are fundamentalists, they believe the whole bible and they try and convert people.
• They’re so narrow and you have to give them your money and time.
• I do hope you will grow out of it into a broader perspective on life.”

If this Christianity stuff seems weird and you just don’t get it, then this letter is for you.