Sit, Walk, Stand: Signposts in Ephesians

May 4–18, 2025

Last fall we looked at Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, a cosmopolitan city with competing religions. As the young, predominantly Gentile church struggled with its identity, Paul reassured them that Christ was all they needed to live good and fruitful lives. About the same time, Paul wrote another letter to a group of churches in and around the Greek city of Ephesus. This letter shares some content with Colossians but, freed from the constraints of a specific situation, Paul elaborates more broadly on the nature of the church and its role in God’s work “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).

In this three-week series, we will take a quick journey through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, guided by the signposts “Sit,” “Walk,” and “Stand”—an approach popularized by the persecuted Chinese church leader Nee T’o-sheng (Watchman Nee) in the 1950s. We will explore what Paul might have meant in describing the church as “seated with Christ in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 2:6) and the implications for our own individual and collective identity. We will ask how we live out these implications in practice as we walk through life. And we will consider how to take a stand against oppressive forces and all that runs counter to Christ’s way of love.