How does it feel to have slowed down and pondered a passage of scripture? Being able to slow down is what is often talked about, but how? Read slower? Having a plan and a structure to follow allows us to be constructive in our slowness and labor. I hope you are encouraged that this is do-able and are having fun like I am.
If you’ve been studying and working through the process with me, I bet it’s been a few days or maybe a week since you read through the letter from start to finish. I recommend you take time before moving on to each subsequent passage to read or at least have the scripture read over you.
When I go to sleep at night, my beloved almost always reads out loud to me. This week he was gone on a business trip so I was on my own for falling asleep. Well, that didn’t work very well, especially the first few nights with how loud the quiet was. I listened to Ephesians read out loud a number of times and I was stunned how much more I recognize the whole of the context. That’s what we want. If you can, as we study, keep bringing the whole book in front of your brain. We never want to lose sight of the forest as we analyze one of the trees.
All right, fellow student of the Word, after we PRAY (I hope you’re relying on the Lord as you sit down to study each time–I know it’s easy to get excited and overlook a seemingly mundane activity. That’s ok, we will develop better habits and reliance on God. We always have a chance to try again!) and read through the whole book again, what do we do next? Do you remember? We begin by creating our observation worksheet.
Here is our hermeneutic order of business. No interpretation yet; certainly no application yet. We don’t know what Paul is saying yet, and we do not know what he meant. We could have a giant arrow and sticker that says, “You are here!”
- Observation
- Interpretation
- Application
Leaving our preconceived ideas and what we might automatically regurgitate as we approach a familiar passage of scripture, we get to decide what the next passage is. Try not to rely on what the translators decided would be where the passage breaks are. We are watching for a change in topic or thought. Key words for these transitions might be therefore, now, for, or finally. Sometimes there also will be a complete change of subject. The topic will be entirely different. Like in verse 3, the topic changes from the opening of the letter to talking about who God is. After verse 3, do you see any marks of a start of another passage?
I believe the next passage is Ephesians 1:3-14, based on the for this reason in verse 15. We will treat this as our next passage and dive into diagramming it.
Please remember, this is not a black and white activity. This is an activity to bring us closer to our Father and know him more. Separating out parts of language isn’t a right/wrong endeavor. Almost every time I sentence diagram a passage, I come up with a different outline. We are getting into the Word in order to understand. God is pleased that we are students of his Word. Tell any apprehension to just hush.
Our first phrase is Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I notice that the first word is not my subject but is a describing word. Since that is the case, I am going to leave blessed be over next to the left margin and tab over to separate out my subject which is the God. Like this:
What are the next words? and Father. Do you see how that also is an answer of what is blessed? Let’s line that up with the God. Like this:
I went ahead and included the phrase of our Lord Jesus Christ. It modifies or explains who’s God and who’s Father. There aren’t any other modifiers, so I moved it over a little but left it on the same line.
Next is who has blessed us. What question does that answer? The question is in the phrase, isn’t it? Who has blessed us? Even if you don’t know anything about grammar (like when I homeschooled my kids, we had exercises where we would cross out prepositional phrases. Since of our Lord Jesus Christ is a prepositional phrase, it can’t be the point of the sentence. It’s modifying.), you can see that the person who has been blessing can’t be Jesus because he’s mentioned immediately following. Therefore the blesser must be God. Who has blessed us modifies God and Father. Let’s scoot over and put it under the subject. Like this:
When I’m checking to make sure the components of the sentence still make sense, I will read it in its chunks. Let me demonstrate.
- Blessed be the God of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us.
- Blessed be (the) Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us.
See how that works? Do you see how the two equivalent words describing the subject (God and Father) can be lined up to show yourself they are equivalent? These lined up equivalents are how I begin my observation lists. I find it helpful.
Continuing in the text, in Christ and with every spiritual blessing are the next phrases. In and with are prepositions so we know they are modifying something. If we ask “how has he blessed us?” we get the answers from these two phrases. We will scoot those over and line them up. There is one more prepositional phrase of in the heavenly places. I don’t see that answering how God has blessed us but more telling us something about the spiritual blessings. I placed it underneath, scooted over. Like this:
That is how I diagrammed the first phrase. As I’ve been sentence diagramming for many years, I don’t think too much about the 5 W’s and an H as I pull the pieces apart anymore. Unless it gets complicated. I can look at the pieces like the God and and Father and know they line up together. I can see the prepositional phrases that go together and which ones probably don’t. For example, I’m looking at the in the heavenly places up there and now I’m wondering if it modifies how God blessed us or if it modifies the blessings. Using the technique of reading the chunks of sentences I described above, I can read it “who has blessed us in the heavenly places”. Which could make sense if the blessings are being given in the heavenly places. Or are we blessed in the heavenly places? Or does it make more sense that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places?
I’ve shown you pictures of my original sentence diagram that I did a few days ago in my own personal study. Now that I’m asking us both to ask questions of it, I’m not sure I chose correctly. I think it might be about the blessings. However, I’m going to leave it because I want you to understand that I do not think these diagrams are the point of our study. They are tools to help us be in the Word and begin to actively consider what the author was saying. Now we have a question write down that we could investigate as we interpret.
If we were having coffee this morning with a professional sentence diagrammer, he may disagree with me about ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’. But we aren’t; we are burgeoning students of the Word and we are choosing to enjoy our Dad’s company. Where the prepositional phrase goes does not in any way change the fundamental truth that we are blessed. That’s where we will dwell. Continuing.
The next piece I see is verse 4, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. Asking the question “he who?” helps us know who the antecedent is for the pronoun. God and Father. We will line up who and even because they both modify the subject God. Like this:
Here is a place tracing the antecedents gets a little sticky. And where asking questions becomes critical. The next two words are in him: him who?
I probably don’t know enough English and I know I don’t know enough Greek yet to be able to explain grammatically how to know the antecedent is Christ. Except if it were that we were chosen in God, the English translators would’ve used “himself” instead. We need to trust our translation. The only other object identified then is Christ.
We could use our knowledge of theology to unravel these, but our purpose at this intersection of our study is to come empty-handed to the text. Being empty-handed is asking Paul what he’s saying and not assuming we know what he’s saying. I know that is difficult; I don’t always achieve it either. But that is how we will be better students and know God better.
If we look at the next few phrases, the in him we just looked at, and before the foundation of the world and that we should be holy and blameless, they all seem to explain the question “how did he choose us?” Interestingly, it doesn’t answer “why did he choose us?” I lined up those 3 modifiers under the word chose. The before him I placed under the holy and blameless because I see how we are both positionally and physically tied together there. Here is what we have so far:
To simplify a bit, I could have placed before him on the previous line. However, it is my preference to highlight details like this because I may find myself glossing over the whole line and missing that believers will be before God.
When I was teaching my little people to read, most of them had the pattern of looking at the first letter of a word and deciding what the whole word was simply because it started with that letter. And that it was a word they knew. Me too. I will read a line and decide what the whole thing says based on the first few words. Consequently, I try to hedge against my weaknesses and I placed before him clearly as modifying or being modified by holy and blameless.
Are you starting to understand that the discipline of sentence diagramming isn’t so much about “getting the right answer” as much as it is a tool for us to use to get into the Word? It’s an exercise that allows us to rummage around in the Word, seeing how the pieces fit together.
Did you notice I don’t use punctuation in sentence diagramming? That is largely because the punctuation is from the translators, not the original text. In the period when all capitals were used in Greek (these manuscripts are called uncials), there was very little punctuation. Since my purpose is to understand what Paul is saying, I disregard English punctuation in order to keep my diagram less cluttered.
In the same way, chapter and verse identification was added during the Middle Ages. To this day, there is discussion around what does in love modify (at the end of verse 4). Some scholars say it goes with how he chose us and some scholars say it goes with the way in which he predestined us. Either way, the point here is that God is doing what he’s doing in love. In my head, as I’ve considered what I’ve read about the topic and what I’ve been told by a pastor I respected, it’s my opinion the in love modifies the phrase he predestined us. As long as we keep the order of the words, we can put it above with the before him, or here with the he predestined.
Which brings us to verse 5 that says In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.
I lined up the in love he predestined us with the subject, God and Father because this continues to answer the question “what did God do?” He predestined us. The next line answers the question “why did he predestine us?” For adoption, so I put it under what it’s modifying.
After that, I see three associated prepositions associated with how we were adopted. Depending on how you look at it, there could be four. I chose to place to himself, as sons, and through Jesus Christ under the word adoption. I also chose to associate the phrase according to the purpose of his will under Jesus Christ to highlight that for myself. You can choose how you want to lay it out because it could be answering the question “why did he predestine us?” It was according to the purpose of his will.
If you’re starting to have opinions about how you would lay out your sentence diagram, that makes me happy! In fact, I’m going to turn you loose. I’m not going to walk you through the rest of the passage. I think you are a capable student and can do a little wrestling with the text to figure out answers to questions and what modifies what.
Next time we get together, I will share the rest of my diagram with you. Not so you can “correct” yours, but compare and see if there is a different way to see it. Or if you struggled too much and couldn’t quite get the idea yet, you’ll have one to use for your observations. It’s okay if you don’t quite get it yet, we will have lots of opportunities to practice.
My hope for you, my Bible Study Bite friend, is that you are feeling comfortable with getting into the Word. Actively participating in our own growth and knowledge and not relying on someone else to feed us, that is our goal. Our Bite for today is that we continue to ask questions of the text and let the pieces that are part of the whole speak to us.
