Our Redemption “in Christ” Detailed to the Ephesians Volume 21

Paul declares to the Ephesians that both Jew and Gentile are placed into one Spiritual Building

Ephesians 2:20-22 And are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. KJV

Paul’s final metaphor he uses here is that of an Architectural Building or Structure that is huge and grand and captivating in size, and in quality of construction. In this final metaphor, Paul declares that the foundation or the basis for which this spiritual house is built or constructed seeing that the Gospel of Grace was begun by and explained and expounded throughout Israel by the Prophets of old such as Isaiah who spoke these words referring to Jesus Christ and His Gospel of Grace hundreds of years before our Lord, Master, and Savior was even born into the world, “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.” (Isaiah 28:16). Likewise the Apostles along with the Prophets also spoke of this foundation throughout the entire known world of which Paul is an Apostle and it was he that said, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the Grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:9-11).

Just as in an actual physical building the foundation is the most important part of the Structure as it is the Structures sturdiness, strength, and stability, so is our Lord, Master, and Savior Jesus Christ and His Gospel of Grace that He foretold through the Prophets of old like Isaiah and handed down to His Apostles declaring “true faith” as the Apostle Jude spoke of with these words in this manner, “Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” (Jude 1:1-3). Paul refers to our Lord Jesus as the “chief corner stone” of the spiritual building and this phrase is translated by one Greek word akrogoniaios meaning one belonging to the extreme corner; according to W.W. Lloyd it is the primary foundation-stone at the angle of the structure by which the architect fixes a standard for the bearings of the walls and cross-walls throughout.

In other words, Jesus Christ is THE Standard and nothing outside of Him or vital union with Him will bring any soul peace here on the earth or in eternity or take them to Heaven at the moment of their physical death as our Lord Jesus Himself informed the Jewish leaders when He spoke these words, “Jesus asked them, Have you never read in the Scriptures: The very Stone which the builders rejected {and} threw away has become the Cornerstone; this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes? I tell you, for this reason the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the fruits of it. {And whoever falls on this Stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom It falls will be crushed to powder [and It will winnow him, scattering him like dust]. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables (comparisons, stories used to illustrate and explain), they perceived that He was talking about them.” (Matthew 21:42-45). That Spiritual building or temple is the Body of Jesus Christ (the True Church) (Matthew 16:18).

Paul declares that it is our Lord, Master, and Savior Jesus Christ that has everyone in His Body “fitly framed together” (Ephesians 2:21). This English phrase “fitly framed together” is translated by one Greek word sunarmologeo and this word denotes union meaning to render closely jointed together, that is, organized compactly; to be fitly framed or joined together in an appropriate manner. In other words, it is complete harmony of true love, faith, and doctrine within the Spiritual Body of our Lord, Master, and Savior Jesus Christ and He joins together both Jew and Gentile constituting One True Church kept by His Mighty Power and made up of every nationality as the Apostle John wrote with these words, “And [now] they sing a new song, saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and to break the seals that are on it, for You were slain (sacrificed), and with Your blood You purchased men unto God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And You have made them a kingdom (royal race) and priests to our God, and they shall reign [as kings] over the earth!” (Revelation 5:9-10).

Paul declares that those who are in the Body of our Lord, Master, and Savior Jesus Christ “groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21). The English word groweth Paul uses here is translated by the Greek word auxano which is a prolonged form of a primary verb meaning to grow, that is, enlarge (literally or figuratively, actively or passively); to increase. In other words, true believers are growing in the grace and knowledge of God (2 Peter 3:18) by virtue of God the Holy Spirit indwelling us. Paul declares that this growth is into a holy temple in Christ Jesus our Lord because every true believer is called the temple of God as Paul wrote with these words to the Corinthian believers, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) and also these words, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). God the Father dwelt with His people Israel in the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-38) and this was where the Glory of God was manifested here on the earth. However, now when all true believers come together in one place there is where God dwells along with His Glory inside of every true son and daughter of His.

Paul just as he wrote these words above to the Corinthian believers, he now puts forth the same premise by calling these Ephesian believers “an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). The English phrase “an habitation” Paul uses here is translated from the Greek word katoiketerion which means a dwelling place such as a house resided in or lived in permanently. In other words, God has settled down eternally in the hearts (i.e. the inner man or inner woman) of every sinful soul regenerated and born again by His Holy Spirit and we are now able to worship God the Father in spirit and truth (John 4:24) as the Apostle Peter declares with these words in this manner, “And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5).

My own Personal Note: In the process of passing from death unto life, I had an experience that only a born again child of God can truly understand. It was a mysterious change, but an undeniably positive change. It was as though my old heart was taken out of me and cleansed, all its filth washed away, before it was put back into my soul. It was for me “a new heart and a right spirit”: a mysterious but yet an actual and real change! I immediately began to love people whom I formerly despised. To be truly converted, regenerated, or born again is a process by which the Holy Spirit ignites an explosion inside a person. The bomb (Holy Spirit) explodes on the inside of a person and destroys, or subdues, the old nature (sinful fallen corrupt nature) and the person is flooded with the (agape) love of God. 1 John 3:1 (AMP): “Behold, what manner (of what possible sort) of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!” Romans 5:5 (AMP): “God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.” Excerpt from my Book entitled, “Silent Assassins of the Soul: Finding Freedom from Sexual Impurity through the Lord Jesus Christ, A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs”

“The apostle now applies the metaphor to the purpose for which he produced it, retaining however some of the figurative expressions. As the stones in a temple are all properly placed so as to form a complete house, and be a habitation for the Deity that is worshipped there, so ye are all, both believing Jews and Gentiles, prepared by the doctrine of the Prophets and Apostles, under the influence of the Spirit of Christ, to become a habitation of God, a Church in which God shall be worthily worshipped, and in which He can continually dwell. Of this glorious Church every Christian soul is an epitome; for as God dwells in the Church at large, so He dwells in every believer in particular: each is a habitation of God through the Spirit. In vain are all pretensions among sects and parties to the privileges of the Church of Christ, if they have not the doctrine and life of Christ. Traditions and legends are not apostolic doctrines, and showy ceremonies are not the life of God in the soul of man.” Adam Clarke

“Throughout the Pauline letters we have frequent references to edifying, a phrase which has been so vulgarized by much handling that its great meaning has been all but lost, but which still, rightly understood, presents the Christian life as one continuous effort after developing Christian character. Taking into view the whole of the apostolic references to this continuous process of building, we cannot but recognize that it all begins with the act of faith which brings men into immediate contact and vital union with Jesus Christ, and which is, if anything that a man does is, the act of his very inmost self-passing out of its own isolation and resting itself on Jesus. It is by the vital and individual act of faith that any soul escapes from the dreary isolation of being a stranger and a foreigner, wandering, homeless and solitary, and finds through Jesus fellowship, an elder Brother, a Father, and a home populous with many brethren. But whilst faith is the condition of beginning the Christian life, which is the only real life, that life has to be continued and developed towards perfection by continuous effort. ‘Tis a life-long toil till the lump be leavened.’ One of the passages already referred to varies the metaphor of building, in so far as it seems to represent ‘your most holy faith’ as the foundation, and may be an instance of the doubtful New Testament usage of ‘faith,’ as meaning the believed Gospel, rather than the personal act of believing. But however that may be, context of the words clearly suggests the practical duties by which the Christian life is preserved and strengthened. They who build up themselves do so, mainly, by keeping themselves in the love of God with watchful oversight and continual preparedness for struggle against all foes who would drag them from that safe fortress, and subsidiarily, by like continuity in prayer, and in fixing their meek hope on the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. If Christian character is ever to be made more Christian, it must be by a firmer grasp and a more vivid realization of Christ and His truth. The more we feel ourselves to be lapped in the love of God, the more shall we be builded up on our most holy faith. There is no mystery about the means of Christian progress. That which, at the beginning, made a man a Christian shapes his whole future course; the measure of our faith is the measure of our advance. But the Apostle, in the immediately following words, goes on to pass beyond the bounds of his metaphor, and with complete indifference to the charge of mixing figures, speaks of the building as growing. That thought leads us into a higher region than that of effort. The process by which a great forest tree thickens its boles, expands the sweep of its branches and lifts them nearer the heavens, is very different from that by which a building rises slowly and toilsomely and with manifest incompleteness all the time, until the flag flies on the roof-tree. And if we had not this nobler thought of a possible advance by the increasing circulation within us of a mysterious life, there would be little gospel in a word which only enjoined effort as the condition of moral progress, and there would be little to choose between Paul and Plato. He goes on immediately to bring out more fully what he means by the growth of the building, when he says that if Christians are in Christ, they are ‘built up for an habitation of God in the Spirit.’ Union with Christ, and a consequent life in the Spirit, are sure to result in the growth of the individual soul and of the collective community. That divine Spirit dwells in and works through every believing soul, and while it is possible to grieve and to quench It, to resist and even to neutralize Its workings, these are the true sources of all our growth in grace and knowledge. The process of building may be and will be slow. Sometimes lurking enemies will pull down in a night what we have labored at for many days. Often our hands will be slack and our hearts will droop. We shall often be tempted to think that our progress is so slow that it is doubtful if we have ever been on the foundation at all or have been building at all. But ‘the Spirit helpeth our infirmities,’ and the task is not ours alone but His in us. We have to recognize that effort is inseparable from building, but we have also to remember that growth depends on the free circulation of life, and that if we are, and abide in, Jesus, we cannot but be built ‘for an habitation of God in the Spirit.’ We may be sure that whatever may be the gaps and shortcomings in the structures that we rear here, none will be able to say of us at the last, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’” Alexander MacLaren

If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...


Sincerely in Christ,


Clifford D. Tate, Sr.

Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reade, Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…