This is the final post in a series on my study of Ephesians. As I said at the beginning, this is a study that I could repeat with any epistle in the NT.
1. What the book of Ephesians was about
2. The background of Ephesians
3. What is actually in the Ephesians
4. How the book of Ephesians should affect my everyday life

After I felt a lot more comfortable with the general drift of the book of Ephesians, I went through paragraph by paragraph for the most part and answered the COMA questions for each one. (COMA stands for Context, Observation, Meaning, and Application.) You can download these questions here.
I used some commentaries and such, but I tried to study through it on my own first.
The COMA questions really helped me see how Ephesians would affect my everyday life because at the end of the questions there are several specific application questions that I had to think through and answer.

1. How can I use this passage to point others to Jesus?
2. How does this passage challenge (or confirm) my understanding?
3. What attitude/action needs to be changed in my life?
4. Under what specific circumstances would I turn to the truth of this passage?

So, to sum up the last few posts, here is what my plan looked like, more or less:

1. Read through the entire book in one sitting. Do this three times.
2. Read Acts 19, Paul’s time spent in Ephesus.
3. Answer COMA questions for the entire book on the fourth time through.
4. Listen to the book of Ephesians (audio NIV by Max MacClean)
5. Listen to the book of Ephesians (audio NASB)
6. Read through Ephesians again and circle all the references to Christ in red.
7. Make a list of what Christ does, who He is, what He hates, what He loves, etc.
8. Read through Ephesians again and circle all references to the Holy Spirit in green.
9. Make a list of what the Holy Spirit does, who He is, etc.
10. Read through Ephesians again and circle all references to God the Father in blue.
11. Make a list of what God the Father does, who He is, etc.
12. Answer the COMA questions for each passage as you study through the whole book.
This was a stretching and growing experience for me, but a very good one. I am so thankful to God for His Word and it was so exciting to be able to study deeper than I usually do! I hope that there is something here that will enhance your own study! What would you add?

This is the third post in a series on studying Ephesians.

1. What the book of Ephesians was about
2. The background of Ephesians
3. What is actually in the Ephesians
4. How the book of Ephesians should affect my everyday life

I spent the most time in the last two areas of study. This was where I tried to dig in and pay attention to small details while keeping the overall theme and context in mind.
I answered the COMA questions for the entire book on my fourth time reading through the book of Ephesians (the COMA questions have been adapted from a book everyone should read, One to One Bible Reading). If you would like to download a PDF of these questions, click here.

Somewhere in here I also listened to the audio version of Ephesians that can be found at biblegateway.com. I listened to it in a couple of different versions.

I then read through the book again and circled all the references to Christ in a red pen. I then made a list about Christ (who He is, what He does, anything I could learn about Him). This was a pretty slow process for me, but very encouraging. I did the same type of list with the Holy Spirit (with a green circle), and with God the Father (a blue circle).
I liked color coding the text because I was able to spot things at a glance. It shouldn’t have surprised me how many times God was mentioned, but it did. This helped me gain perspective on the book of Ephesians being about God first and foremost, not me.

In the previous post, I shared how I wanted to know what the book of Ephesians was about. Now, we will look at the second of the four areas that I covered:

1. What the book of Ephesians was about
2. The background of Ephesians
3. What is actually in the Ephesians
4. How the book of Ephesians should affect my everyday life

To find out a little more about the background of Ephesians, I read through Acts 19, which tells about Paul’s time spent in Ephesus. It is a helpful exercise because I could see not only that Paul faced while he was there, but also what the Ephesian people would be experiencing and a little of their culture. I was able to understand a little bit better about the readers of the book of Ephesians and how they might have read and understood what Paul was saying to them.

“Ephesus Celsus Library Façade” by Benh LIEU SONG – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I (Crystal) recently studied through the book of Ephesians, and the next few blog posts will be sharing about this study. My goal is not to make you feel as though you should study in the same way I do, but to perhaps give you some new ideas for you own study. What I have done in Ephesians is essentially the same study I would do of any epistle in the NT. As I studied, I covered these four areas:

1. What the book of Ephesians was about
2. The background of Ephesians
3. What is actually in Ephesians
4. How the book of Ephesians should affect my everyday life

This study turned out to be a much longer study than I was thinking, and many of the steps that I took lasted for a day or several days. It is nice that in a study like this, you can choose to go as deep as you want. I found that as I was in Ephesians for more than a few months, I started really making connections about Paul’s train of thought and it seemed like so many of life’s situations were mentioned in Ephesians. I probably annoyed my husband by all of the times I said something like, “Well, just like in Ephesians…”

For the first post, we will look at the first area of study: what is Ephesians about?

Too often, I take verses or passages and use them without truly understanding the context. It’s funny how when I read the whole book of Ephesians in its entirety it made a lot more sense to me!

So, as I started out, I read through the entire book of Ephesians in one sitting. I did this three times to start to get a feel of Paul’s flow of thought.
Reading through or listening to the book of Ephesians really only takes about 20 minutes or less and it is definitely worth it.

From biblegateway.com, I copied the book of Ephesians into a document and then printed it out so that I could mark it up.