Practice Resurrection

a conversation on growing up in christ

Eugene H. Peterson

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive NE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

www.eerdmans.com

© 2010 Eugene H. Peterson

All rights reserved

Hardcover edition 2010

Paperback edition 2013

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc.,

7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920

www.alivecommunications.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peterson, Eugene H., 1932–

Practice resurrection: a conversation on growing up in Christ / Eugene H. Peterson.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6932-6 (pbk: alk. paper)

1. Bible. N.T. Ephesians — Commentaries. I. Title.

BS2695.53.P47 2010

227′.5077 — dc22

2009037051

“Looking for Mt. Monadnock,” reprinted from Robert Siegel, The Waters Under the Earth (Moscow: 2005), 70, by permission of Canon Press.

Excerpt from Part I of “Choruses from ‘The Rock’ ” in COLLECTED POEMS 1909–1963 by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and renewed 1964 by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of the publisher. Also reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Unless otherwise noted, Bible quotations in this publication are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

For Jan—

yoked together in love for fifty years

in the practice of resurrection

Contents

acknowledgments

introduction

I. Ephesus and the Ephesians

1. The Church of Ephesus: Ephesians 1:1–2

The Church We Never See

Church Illusions and Deceptions

The Miracle of Church

2. The Message to the Ephesians: Ephesians 4:1, 7

The Axios Metaphor

The Psalm 68 Text: “You ascended the high mount …”

II. The Blessing of God

3. God and His Glory: Ephesians 1:3–14

Lost in the Cosmos

God’s Verbs

God’s Glory

4. Paul and the Saints: Ephesians 1:15–23

“I remember you in my prayers”

“All the saints”

“It is here. We are on it. It is under us”

5. Grace and Good Works: Ephesians 2:1–10

Acquired Passivity

Good Works

Works as a Form for Glory

III. The Creation of Church

6. Peace and the Broken Wall: Ephesians 2:11–22

The Brambles of Individualism

“A serious house on serious earth”

The Ontological Church

“[Jesus] is our peace”

The Hospitable Church

7. Church and God’s Manifold Wisdom: Ephesians 3:1–13

“I am the very least of all the saints”

Meshech and the Tents of Kedar

Inscape

Shadow Work

8. Prayer and All the Fullness: Ephesians 3:14–21

“Glory in the church and in Christ Jesus”

“I bow my knees before the Father”

“All the fullness”

“The inner man”

9. One and All: Ephesians 4:1–16

“The calling to which you have been called”

The Language of Paraclesis

Deometry

Baron von Hugel

IV. The Congregation at Work

10. Holiness and the Holy Spirit: Ephesians 4:17–32

Stalamus Chief

Negative Space

Shy Member of the Trinity

11....

Content not shown in limited preview…
PR:CGC

About Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing up in Christ

Winner of Christianity Today Book Award for best book in spirituality.

In Practice Resurrection Eugene Peterson brings the voice of Scripture—especially Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—and the voice of the contemporary Christian congregation together to unpack the crucial truth of what it means to fully grow up to the “stature of Christ.”

Though bringing people to new birth in Christ through evangelism is essential, he says, isn’t growth in Christ equally essential? Yet the American church by and large does not treat Christian maturity and character formation with much urgency. We are generally uneasy with the quiet, obscure conditions in which growth takes place, and building maturity in Christ too often gets relegated to footnote status in the text of our lives.

Peterson’s robust discussion will move readers to restore transformed Christian character to the center of their lives.

Support Info

practresurr

Table of Contents