status. Even as they exercise the often apparently modest virtues of humility, truth, justice, peace, and prayer in the ordinary arenas of everyday life, they are engaged in a cosmic battle in the heavenlies (TRYN). No document in the New Testament puts as much stress on the church as does Ephesians, but it is not the church as such that is, finally, the center of the story. First, the church is in Christ. That means that it is a messianic phenomenon, inextricable from what God intends to do in
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