Ephesians 5 - Chapter Overview

Well, we made it to chapter 5!! Yeah!!!! Did you think we would never make it out of chapter 4? I was starting to think we might be there forever.

This week we will do an overview of chapter 5. That means we are going to look at chapter 5 with a high view. We will not dive in deep this week, but that is okay. We want to establish a good context of chapter 5 before we go deeper. This week our goal is to observe all that we can of chapter 5 and see how it fits together. Remember, when we observe we are asking ourselves "what does the text say?"

Begin this week by reading all the way through chapter 5. Okay, now let's read the text again, this time read with a purpose, investigate the text looking for key repeated words. Look for main themes or concepts.

Now it's time to mark words. What words stuck out to you as key words? Did you see any words that were repeated? Remember we mark key words because it helps us slow down and it helps us see what is obvious. This is an important part of Bible Study, what we observe helps build a foundation for everything else. Marking words, is when we use colored pens or pencils and actually mark up the text. 

If you are recently joining us, you will need to mark these words: Paul(my, my, I), The Ephesians (you), walk, formerly, in Jesus(in Him, in the Lord, etc)

If you have been studying with us and have already marked the words above, mark these words (newbies, you need to mark these too): God, Jesus, dark, light, husbands, wives, subject, love,  church, therefore (term of conclusion), but (showing contrast)

I encourage you to mark only one word at a time. Each time reading the text. Don't just skim. Reading while marking will help the text become familiar to you. Our minds are not trained to really read and soak up the text, so this may feel frustrating, keep going!! Press on! 

Once you have marked these words, the paragraph themes will become more clear. Now we want to walk through each paragraph and look for a word or phrase that sums up what the paragraph is saying (you are looking for words from the text, DON'T PARAPHRASE. Look at the words you marked in each paragraph, that should give you an idea of what the theme is.) Write down in the margin or in your journal what paragraph themes (maybe one word, or maybe a string of words from the text) you see. If you are using the worksheets, you can see the beginning of a paragraph noted with a bold number. Here are the paragraphs: 1-2, 3-5, 6-14, 15-21, 22-24, 25-33. Observe these paragraphs, investigate the text. Remember you are looking for the text to tell you what it says, you are not trying to make it say something. 

Now think, how does chapter 5 fit in with the rest of the book of Ephesians? Do you see how it connects? Write down in your journal your thoughts. You may need to go back through and read the first 4 chapters again, it is worth your time to understand how this chapter fits in with the other chapters. Write down in your journal what you observe and how Ephesians 5 connects with the rest of Ephesians.

Come to Bible Study ready to talk about the main ideas/themes of chapter 5. Be ready to discuss how this chapter fits into the rest of the book of Ephesians. It's important to build this foundation before we dive in deep to chapter 5.