Review of Process
I noticed for my own self that I haven’t read through the whole book lately. Have you remembered to keep yourself grounded in context? I think I will listen today as I trim some pots in my pot shop.
And prayer. We just studied a passage where Paul gave us an example for prayer and I noticed that I learned about it but neglected to practice it. So I’ve paused to consider that before I proceed. I want to be disciplined to learn and disciplined to apply/practice.
The Start of the Next Passage
The last time we chose our passage, Paul couldn’t have laid it out for us any easier. Basically he started with, “Dear God,” and then he literally ended with, “Amen.” Straightforward.
Now we’ve turned a bit of a corner. Beginning in chapter 4, Paul exhorts his audience to action. Even though he ended his last thought with amen, we will still practice our skills identifying passages. Reading through, we can see his topic switched. As he prepared to exhort his audience, he prayed for God to move, and now he is into his exhortation. New direction. Our passage begins at Ephesians 4:1.
The End of Our Passage
Reading into Ephesians 4, we are looking for transitions, changes in topic, or some other method by which Paul breaks his discourse into sections.
It seems, reading through, Paul’s topic has to do with a believer’s walk. He starts to explain an aspect of unity by talking about a body and a Spirit and all the “one‘s.” Same topic of the walk, information perhaps about why the walk is important.
There is a parenthetical reference to the OT and Paul’s exposition of it, and then he returns to his discussion of what has been given. Grace in Ephesians 4:7 and assignments of ministry in Ephesians 4:11. Talking about what will result from those ministries, Paul says that preventative measures will be in place as well as the positive.
At this point, Paul stops talking about the walk and how the church will learn and grow into it and begins to contrast the proper workings of a believer with the futility of the non-believer. I believe that at this point, we can decide that Ephesians 4:1-16 is our passage. One basic topic with a couple of points within it, before Paul goes into detail further into chapter 4 about “don’t practice life like this, but rather…”
Our Passage
Our section of scripture seems a little longer than some of the others we’ve decided on. In the middle, Paul has an OT quote and his take on it. We will look at it, but we will not dwell on it. The point of our passage is Paul’s main point. Paul’s main point is going to be our main point. All of that to say, even though there are challenging and difficult to understand sections, we are still able to focus on the point and not get bogged down. Let’s read it together.
1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord,
urge you to walk in a manner worthy
of the calling to which you have been called,
2with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another in love,
3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is one body and one Spirit
—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
7But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
8 Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
9 (In saying, “He ascended,”
what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?
10 He who descended is the one who also ascended
far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets,
the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry,
for building up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
14 so that we may no longer be children,
tossed to and fro by the waves
and carried about by every wind of doctrine,
by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love,
we are to grow up in every way
into him who is the head, into Christ,
16 from whom the whole body,
joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped,
when each part is working properly,
makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.1
Distracted
Because I’m committed to telling you how I do what I do in my Bible study, I need to tell you that I’m feeling v e r y distracted.
On the one hand, we still have all the panic-demic swirling. The church is still closed! On the other, there are cities in our nation where people have such soul-hurt that they are having civil unrest and rioting. On another hand (I must have an octopus), I’m personally under attack from some large company who has copyrighted the phrase “butter bell” and is telling me I can’t list items in my Etsy store with the words “butter” or “bell” because they have a copyright. Except they don’t have rights to the individual English words “butter” or “bell.” Still another hand, there is always the drama of whatever my children are enduring. I’ve heard it said that a mom is only as happy as her saddest child. Yup.
All of that to explain to you that distraction and drama in life, it’s normal and is part of the course of the life of a student of the Word. It’s why study is a discipline. The opposite of discipline might be chaos, confusion, or disorder. Which is interesting to me since that is about how my soul feels right now. Therefore, in order to order my life, or at least attempt to order my life, I am going to have a conversation with our heavenly Dad right now about my scattered brain and tattered heart.
Up into his lap I go, cuddling my coffee and tears of sorrow flowing for how broken our world is. That’s the thing about our God: he both knows and wants to hear from us about our woes. So excuse me for a moment while I cry out for a few minutes.
Sentence Diagramming
Okay, here we go into the nitty gritty of the task.
As we approach our new passage, we have a subject in front of us. I. I leave that lined up on the left margin. The word therefore doesn’t have a grammatical tie to the subject, so I scooted it over a little to the right and then lined up a prisoner under I since they are equivalent. We’ve been reminded again, Paul is writing and he’s a prisoner.
Side Note
For me, my main objective in sentence diagramming is to get into the text and become more familiar with it. Secondary to that, I want to be able to see the author's train of thought. Paul has a lot of descriptions, modifiers, parenthetical commentaries. None of these are extraneous, but they are sometimes hard to wade through when I want to get the overarching message. Obviously, none of scripture is "not important," however some of it is thick with verbiage. Sifting through and getting the skeleton of the sentence can help us understand the rest of what the author is saying. If we don't know his point, we will not be successful at understanding his purpose for the supplemental descriptions. Just like any other philosopher, if you don't know what question the philosopher is asking, you will not understand what he says.
Back to Diagramming Ephesians 4:1
After the equivalent phrase to I (a prisoner), Paul modifies prisoner. For the Lord. There are not multiple prepositional phrases, so I left it next to what it modifies and went on.
Many years ago, one of the people who helped me with my rudimentary technique of diagramming told me to try to keep the subject and the verb together, on the same line. I don’t remember who told me that, but I remember that encouragement. Since I had the equivalents I and a prisoner, I couldn’t keep the verb on the same line as the subject. Which makes the skeleton sentence more muddled. But the basic sentence here so far is “I urge.” The other phrases help us feel what Paul wants us to feel which is vital, but his point? I urge.
Paul then gets to who is being urged: the recipients. You. And what he wants them to do. To walk. The word you is in the predicate, I think that is the direct object, though I’m not confident about that. It is part of the skeleton of the sentence, as I see it, so I made it stand out a little to myself by tabbing a few spaces over on the same line.
Next we have a series of prepositional phrases. Let’s play the “what does this modify?” game.
What Does This Modify?
- In a manner worthy–how to walk?
- Of the calling–I don’t see a question, but it modifies in a manner worthy.
- To which you have been called–what calling?
- With all humility and gentleness–how to walk?
- With patience–how to walk?
This exercise takes us into Ephesians 4:2, as well. But that is how the prepositional phrases ended up. Based on what modifies what, we can line up the various phrases in order to see their relationships.
Sentence Diagramming Ephesians 4:3
Well, there is one more line of Ephesians 4:2, but the verse breaks aren’t inspired so we aren’t that worried about it. They are of aid in finding our place, not to be revered.
Another Side Note
As I diagram these lines, I consider two aspects. One, what are the types of words (nouns, verbs, prepositions) at the beginning of the phrases? Because Paul was a cosmos author as opposed to a chaos author. He had a system of thought which preceded the flow of words. And related to the nuts and bolts of the grammar, secondly I consider how meanings of the words go together. Can I read the words when I line them up and still understand? Maintaining the meaning is obviously very important. We will talk about these two aspects a few times through the course of our time together today. Grammatical word-types and flow of the meaning of the text. End side note.
When I see these two words, bearing and eager, it seems like they are answering a “how” question. But is it how to walk? Or is it how to do patience? Which ultimately, the answer is “yes.” Because with patience answers the question “how should they walk?” But I think more specifically, these words modify the way of patience.
Like I said, I like to consider types of words. Prepositions often line up in clear and distinct columns. Love that. I know what prepositions are only because as a homeschool mom for 19 years, I memorized all of them along with my children. (Why in the world didn’t they teach me that when I was in school?)
You could check out what a preposition is here at this website, in case your education left you in the dark, too.
Types of Words
But these two words, they look different from each other. I know that a lot of -ing words are participles, but what is eager? Delighted with the opportunity to learn, I looked down in my reverse interlinear in Logos that also reveals the morphology of the words.
I circled in red the morphologies, the letters that represent the different aspects of the words bearing and eager. Cool thing about this resource is I don’t need to really know what any of those letters mean. I can hover my mouse over the letters and a pop-up window declares what they mean.
See how the series of letters are the same? A-ha! They are the same type of word. And the pop-up tells me that they are both participles. (And if your education left you in the dark about participles like mine did and you’d like more information, maybe this link will help illuminate you.)
This helps me to know that lining them up can’t be too far from Paul’s intention because he used same word-types to modify.
All of that is to help you see that I don’t know all the details of how to actually diagram. That is okay. Tell yourself that. It’s okay to not have all the details. We don’t have to be experts to study and get involved with the text in this manner. We need to acknowledge that we don’t know and then use whatever tools we have laying around to either learn or have study hacks.
Continuing to Diagram Ephesians 4:3
After I lined up the participles under patience, I see two more phrases with same word-types (prepositions). Of the Spirit and in the bond of peace. I ask what question are these two phrases answering? What are they making more clear?
What unity?
Isn’t that an interesting question? There are all sorts of unities. But Paul is speaking of one in particular. We aren’t going to go into that right now because I am still observing through sentence diagramming. For now, I line up these prepositional phrases under the word unity.
Here is where I’ve gotten so far. Is it making sense?
You do know that if you have questions, you can leave them in the comments below? I’m not saying I have all the answers, but at the least, we can wrestle with problems together.
Diagramming Ephesians 4:4-6
I have gone into quite a lot of details about my process in our time together today. We will go through these few verses together before I turn you loose on the rest of the passage. As always, I have a link at the bottom that you may feel free to print and compare or use or whatever will make your Bible study journey less rocky.
Next up, Paul has what seems to be a new topic. He speaks of a whole herd of one‘s. Which could be a new subject, except as we consider the meaning of what he’s saying, all of these one‘s could also be in relation to the unity he just mentioned. What are some of the elements of the unity of which he speaks? Paul lists quite a few.
The list is not strictly straightforward. I’ve done a couple of different “versions” of my diagram, attempting to make the flow right. I’m not sure I’ve arrived at the best possible solution, but I don’t think that this is the main thing I should labor over extensively. Diagramming should be a tool to help me attain understanding, not to attain stress.
The One’s
Therefore, my solution to the organizational issue I see is that I lined up the words there is under unity. I moved over a couple of spaces to allow the rest of the one‘s to neatly line up. Because having them line up neatly makes my soul happy.
Paul says there is one body and one Spirit. I lined those up. But then he inserts a clarifying point with the words just as you were called to the. Probably I could have backed up the words there is so this just as phrase would fit on the line with one hope, but I thought the alignment with the unity was more important. I’ll show you what I did in a second.
Worship of God
I lined up the rest of the one‘s right down through one God and Father. After that, Paul launches into a fairly customary portion of written worship of our God. Because when Paul thinks about God, he often launches into worship.
Next are some phrases that describe God. Back to considering those two aspects we talked about earlier, word-types and the flow of meaning. The phrases of all and who is are not both prepositional phrases, so I don’t really want to line them up. I left of all on the same line as one God, only tabbed a couple of spaces over. Then I dropped down under God and that’s where I put who is.
Finally, in these verses, there are three more prepositional phrases which go with who is and answers the “what?” question. Who is what? Over all, through all, in all.
Here is what we’ve come up with so far.
Your Turn!
I’m going to turn you loose on the remaining 10 verses. Not only would this Bite would be waaaaaay too long, but I think giving the exercise a try each time might help us develop muscles that not only are willing to make the attempt but also gain skills when we attempt.
Wrap Up
For our Bible Study Bite today, I did already broach the subject of what I’d like us to take away from this exercise. If we notice word-types, we will quite possibly see more clearly Paul’s method of organization which will help us understand what he’s saying and, in some cases, where he’s going.
Additionally, we can notice the flow of meaning through the passage and try to see what the sentence skeleton is. What is the basic flow of his writing, minimized down and without some or all of the modifiers. Not that they aren’t important, but it is a little like summarizing. What is the gist? This will also help us understand Paul’s overarching meaning. Details are less likely to confuse or lead off-topic when we recognize the flow of meaning of the text.
Like I said before, I have a link right there (look down an inch) if you’d like to print my rendition of a sentence diagram and just get started observing the text through lists. But I encourage you to give the technique a try. See if you don’t start to understand how the parts of the whole fit together.
If you find anything useful in what we talked about today, would you consider signing up for emails and/or sharing this article with other aspiring students of the Word? Thanks for studying with me today!
