Ephesians 3:15 - Families are forever

"...out of whom every family in heavens and upon earth is being named..."

-Family.  Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, right?  As Paul is praying for this assembly in Ephesus, he is thinking about families.  Those things and people we are around most often we are more likely to take for granted, more likely to be wounded and scarred by whatever brokenness might manifest itself.  Family.  We can tend to come to the place where we believe we don't need them, but this could not be further from the truth. The most elemental societal unit, this - it is the building block of healthy functioning civilization. Individuals do not build society, families do, providing lifelong support and nurture and companionship as well as the basic framework by which we carry out the command to be fruitful and multiply. Much of the growth of the early church we see taking place as families and entire households come to Christ.  

-But don't miss this - Paul is telling us that there are families in heaven.  And since they are not families of angels (who neither marry nor are given in marriage), we know that these must be the souls of those who have died and gone to be with the Lord, and are still a family.  Which reveals in stark relief that families are forever.  Yes, Jesus in Matthew 22.30 says in response to the Sadducees' hypothetical that in Heaven people will be similar to the angels in that we too will not marry or be given in marriage, but Jesus there is not nullifying the family unit but rather merely pointing out a diminished functioning of marriage in heaven.  But make no mistake, families are forever.  We must not let the devaluation and breakdown of the family in our modern western society (nor any distance or dysfunction in our own family) convince us of anything to the contrary.  My family is intended to be forever, and God even named it.  They are part of His plan, and He never ever makes mistakes.  If anything we ought to double down and renew our commitment to the family God has given us.  In so much as is possible with us, praying, forgiving, reaching out, communicating, serving, loving, giving them as much Heaven as we can by the grace of God.

-But neither do we here need to diminish the value of any individual soul in the kingdom of Heaven or in the heart of God.  Yes, God is the One Who named my family, but He also knows my name.  Because He gave it to me.  He knows who I am, every hair on my head, He knows every intimate detail, every hidden thought before I even think it, all the things about me that nobody knows and some which I don't even know myself.  He made me, forming and shaping me in my mother's womb, body mind and soul, awe-inspiring and full of wonder, so full of potential to show off His breathtaking goodness.  He knew the course and number of my days before there was as yet even one of them.  And part of this included my family. For better or worse, they are God's gift to me, and He wants to redeem my entire family here on earth because He so longs for us to be together with Him in Heaven.  Forever.

Ephesians 3:14 - All knees...

"For the sake of this I am bending the knees of me toward the Father..."

-Paul is back on track at last.  This multi-national Church which God is gathering and which He has called Paul to help build supplies him with the motivation and the incentive to bow his knees before the Father.  And that would be both knees, not just one.  Normally a position for prayer, this (although sadly not a normal position), but more specifically this is a picture of dependence and reverence.  I rather doubt that Paul needed any extra motivation for prayer or for depending on the Lord.  His was not seasonal or occasioned by some unsolvable crisis.  But Paul is making a point of emphasis that this thing (or things) for which he is praying is not some flippant fly-by-night request tossed up to the heavenlies, a little dab'll-do-ya and a dash of prayer for favor.  He's not just stopping in to pick up a quart of milk and a pack of blessings at the heavenly convenience store.  Paul means to do some serious business in the throne room of Heaven, and the stakes could not be higher.

-Which begs the question, what is the reason for which I bow my knees before the Father?  Is there any serious business that I ever do with the King of Heaven?  Is there any reason, anything at all that drives me to my knees, in dependence, in reverence, in worship, in desperation?  Am I ever awestruck or woefully undone or desperately inadequate in any way?  Is there anything?  Something other than some formulaic ritual in a religious service, or perhaps when I have reached the end of my rope, the end of myself, when I have exhausted all other options except the One to which I should have turned to begin with?  The sad truth is that I bow my knees intermittently at best.  Very rarely do I pause long enough to get a glimpse of God's glory and then allow myself to be floored by it (figuratively or literally).  All too often I turn to the unholy trinity of me-myself-and-I.  I can handle it myself.  Either that or I have yet to fully commit myself to a cause or endeavor big enough or daunting enough to elicit much knee-bowing behavior on my part.  Failing here, I fail ultimately.  One day I will stand before that heavenly throne, or rather bow, falling on my knees before the Glorious One Who sits upon it (ALL knees will bow), and I will be called to give an account for how I lived my vaporously brief life here on earth, how I invested the time and the blessings and the gifts He gave to me to make an eternal difference in the world and in the lives of those around me.  Believing prayer moves mountains.  What am I moving?

Ephesians 3:13 - The Why Behind The What

"Therefore I am asking not to be losing heart in the afflictions of me on behalf of you, which is [are] your glory."

-Paul here finally concludes the huge tangent he took after verse one, where he mentioned his imprisonment on behalf of the Gentiles.  Being in prison was not some grave misfortune, no tragic mistake.  God had a plan (as always), and He planned to get the glorious Good News about Jesus Christ to every nation, to the Gentiles - through Paul.  Paul was in prison for declaring the Good News to the Gentiles, yet even in prison the Gospel was not imprisoned. Somehow this circumstance, this occasion of suffering, much as Paul may have wished for it to be different, was part of God's plan.  So for this, Paul was all in - he was good with it.  And he wanted these believers to be good with it.

-It certainly makes a difference to have a purpose in suffering, to know or to remember the why behind the what.  Suffering and hardship will always conspire to slow you down and get you off track, but when there seems to be no reason for it, no higher purpose behind and above it all, that'll suck the wind right out of your sails.  Even when you are not the one who is suffering, it is all too human to observe individual suffering or tragedy on a larger scale and ask, " Why?  Why, Lord?  Why did this happen?  Why is this happening?  Why did You ALLOW this to happen?  Because You could have prevented it, right?  You SHOULD have prevented it."  And so we call into question the goodness of God, His wisdom or His power, and even His very existence.  We see the suffering, we look for a reasonable justification for it, and finding none we find God wanting.  Always, no matter what hand we or those around us are dealt, we have a choice, to doubt, or to enter in and believe, to trust that God is and that He is good and working all things together for good.  That is the very essence of faith, a daily exercise in seeing what you cannot see, even and especially when you are seeing something which appears to fly in the face of what God has told us.  To be sure, even the belief and awareness that God is good and that He has a plan does not usually change the circumstance.  What this inner conviction does is to surround our hearts with incomprehensible peace and help us to keep our head up and to keep moving forward. 

-So Paul says, Hey, Ephesians, don't lose heart, don't be discouraged, don't blame yourselves, and definitely don't stop what you are doing on account of me, because what I am doing is on account of you, for your glory and the glory of God, for your benefit, for you (and others) to be able to experience the breathtaking goodness of God.

-IS THERE SOME CIRCUMSTANCE IN YOUR LIFE (OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW) RIGHT NOW WHERE IT WOULD HELP YOU TO KNOW/REMEMBER THE WHY BEHIND THE WHAT?  OR, HAS THERE BEEN IN THE PAST?

Ephesians 3:12 - No appointment necessary!

"...in Whom we are having the boldness and access in confidence through the faith of Him."

-Note the change of pronoun.  Twice in four words, Paul uses the first person plural (the Lord of US, in Whom WE are having boldness...).  Suddenly it is not Jews and Gentiles (which has been his subject since chapter 2 verse 11), nor is it me and all you Colossians, it is all of us together.  What he says here is true of all of us, with one qualification...

-But two truths in fact.  Jesus Christ is Lord - He is Lord of all.  AND in Him we can see out and find new life and boldly go where no mere mortal in his fallen state would dare to go or could ever go - we are able to confidently approach the throne of the King of the universe.  Access refers to the ability and permission to enter the presence of a king. Normally one does not just walk into the king's presence. You must be summoned.  And depending on the king, any attempt to enter his presence unsummoned can be punishable by death (cf Esther 4.11). One does not simply walk in on the king, a truth which no doubt is lost on most in the US, as we threw off the king many moons ago - and yet not one of us would even presume to go see POTUS without an appointment (and to be sure, we're talking about Someone far surpassing POTUS).  But guess what?  No appointment needed here. The most powerful, most holy Sovereign in all the universe has given us standing permission to approach Him whenever we want, whenever the need arises. And we are more than merely allowed into His presence - boldness is for speaking!  We can go right up to Him and talk with Him about anything, anytime.  It is like a child with their father - they go right up to their dad as he sits in his regal dad chair and hop (or crawl) into his lap and start talking away (or perhaps they simply sit there and enjoy the reassurance and security of being close to him). They are not simply tolerated - Abba Daddy gives them his full and undivided attention. Of course this is a best case scenario with a gracious and kind and patient and undistracted father, but isn't this exactly what we get with our Heavenly Father?  Faith unlocks unique unparalleled access to the King of the universe.  And therein lies the qualification - faith.  Faith - faith in Jesus Christ - simultaneously unlocks our access and emboldens it (Hebrews 4:16; 10:19, Ephesians 2:18; 2 Corinthians 3:4; Philippians 3:9, 1Peter 3.18).  It's like this unbelievably awesome cheat code which completely unlocks everything in the game (but no game, this - our eternal destiny is at stake!).  We are completely forgiven and declared right with God when we put our faith, our trust in Jesus' death, in the blood He shed on the Cross of Calvary.  And if we have truly done this, if we are trusting in Christ (and in His finished work as opposed to our own 'good' deeds, the best of which are filthy rags), then in God's eyes we have done everything right.  A difficult truth to embrace, no doubt, as our reality tells us otherwise, yet it is precisely this truth which sets us free.  Having done everything right in His eyes, we are free to approach our heavenly Daddy, the King of the universe, at any time.  And we have the confidence to do so when we know in our hearts that we are right, not in an arrogant or cocky way but rather with calm unhesitating assurance.  A standing appointment - to this we have been appointed, simply through faith in Jesus.  Praise Him...!

Ephesians 3:11 - Definitely a 4-letter word

"...according to [the] purpose of the ages which He did in Christ Jesus the Lord of us..."

-The purpose of the ages...  Now we along with the angels in Heaven behold that this was God’s purpose of the ages, His idea and plan from the very beginning, from eternity, His doing, and in these last days He is finally and fully bringing it to pass, gathering in the nations from every corner of planet earth, in His many-colored wisdom creating a many-colored congregation of Christ-centered worshippers.  He had this in mind all along, before He even created the first Adam, and this is what He had in mind in sending the ‘Last Adam’ (1Corinthians 15.45), His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to live and to die on behalf of Adam’s race.  And now, being gathered from every tribe and tongue and from every corner of the globe, the Church, this assembly of redeemed and rescued souls, Jew and Gentile together, THIS is the why behind it all, the why of why's, the very reason why God has done all that He has done - assembling a multitude of eager worshippers who celebrate and spread the knowledge of His breathtaking goodness throughout the world and on into eternity.

-And to be sure, all that has been accomplished in gathering this new people, God did in Jesus Christ, through His work on the Cross and His work in human hearts, the hearts of those who are completely His (2Chronicles 16.9).  And He is the Lord of us, Jesus is Lord.  Not some distant monarch who we can reject whenever his demands seem unreasonable or out of sync with what I want.  Not some lackey president we can vote out of office every few years.  In fact, I don’t think that word at all means what we think it means.  ‘Lord’ is more than a name to use while praying or a mere title of respect, it is a designation of AUTHORITY, for which we descendants of rebels have quite a dim(inished) view.  “Why do you call me Lord and not do what I say?” (Luke 6.46, cf Matthew 7.21, Malachi 1.6)  He comes first in everything.  I do what my Lord says, whatever He asks, whatever He wants.  But when I bring it in weak, when I follow with only half a heart, when I hold back and struggle and stray and deviate in my devotion, I betray the bitter reality that Jesus is in fact NOT Lord of all, He is not Lord at all, at least not in my life, not in my heart.  'Lord' does indeed tend to be a four-letter word to my fallen flesh.  Yes, this is authority and feality which THE Lord certainly deserves, and which He could easily force (and will someday - Philippians 2.10-11), but instead what I get for my wavering submission to the King of kings and Lord of lords... is grace.  Patience.  Rich, long-suffering mercy.  He began with grace as He poured out that precious crimson flow on Calvary, He continued with grace when He formed me in my mother’s womb fearful and wonderful and yet fully bent towards self, and He continues with grace to this day, each and every day as I fall short of full-on white-hot devotion to the One Who is truly worthy of nothing less, nothing less than my all, my whole life, my whole heart, whole-hearted love (Matthew 22.37), whole-hearted service (Matthew 4.10).  He is the great I AM (with a capital 'I').  He is Lord, and He must increase.  i must decrease, must learn to live in the lowercase 'i'...

Ephesians 3:10 - Mind-blowing Wisdom and God's People 4.0

"...in order that it might be made known now to the rulers and to the authorities in the heavenlies through the assembly [what is] the manifold wisdom of God..."

-The manifold wisdom of God... The manifold wisdom of God.  How ‘manifold’ is it exactly?  poly-poikilos in the Greek, it means many-colored.  Used only here in the NT, the root is used in the LXX for Joseph’s coat of many colors (Genesis 37.3).  Beautiful, fascinating, glorious, mind-blowing, unsearchable, inscrutable - far beyond the capacity of finite man to even comprehend (see Paul’s mind blown in Romans 11.33).  Layer upon layer upon layer of beautiful, many-colored wisdom, God’s knowledge and His ability to apply it is inexhaustible, never waning or wavering or failing, always and forever infinite, glorious and unfathomably creative.  He knows the name of every star in the universe (since He made them), He knows every hair on the head of every person on planet earth (since He made them), He knows every thought in my head and every word I speak before I speak it, He knows every single thing that has ever happened, and every single thing that ever will happen, and some suggest that He even knows every possibility of even what could happen.  But wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge, and this too God possesses in vast and beautiful infiniteness, multi-layered and many-leveled and breathtakingly beautiful.  What’s more, He shares it with His image-bearers, and that generously (James 1.5).  Wisdom comes to us from God Himself (Daniel 1.17, 2Peter 3.15, James 3.17, Ephesians 1.17) and from His Word (2Timothy 3.15, Colossians 3.16, Psalm 19.7, Psalm 119.98).  That relative morsel of wisdom He bestowed on Solomon made David's successor the wisest person who ever lived, amassing for him vast amounts of wealth and land and power as well as favor (1Kings 10.23-24).  But this is about God’s wisdom on display in all it’s wonder, a beautiful tapestry of color.  This is certainly seen in the creation (Proverbs 3.19, Psalm 104.24), where God out of His manifold wisdom has OUT OF NOTHING made indescribable beauty and fascinating complexities.  An evening sky; the human eye; flowers and birds and trees in the fall - a wondrous cavalcade of flora and fauna (too many to list); the daughters of eve; the way of a man with a woman - who could ever imagine all these things, much less engineer them for real?  Man, for all his pomp and posturing, can merely try to study and explain it all and at some point perhaps he sits back and marvels (or scoffs - haters gonna hate).  This is the manifold wisdom of God on display, and it is now on display through the church, the body of God’s people...

-Get your arms and mind around this - the glorious breathtaking mind-blowing many-colored wisdom of God that we see manifested in all its slendor throughout the entire universe is now being shown off THROUGH THE CHRUCH!  This church, the beautiful bride of Jesus Christ, the worldwide assembly of those of truly follow Him and the localized expressions of this Body - this is now providing a glimpse into the mind-boggling wisdom of our amazingly creative Creator.  The glimpse apparently is primarily for angels, those rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, and no doubt they are amazed, but we here on earth also get a glimpse.  Having already witnessed a handful of what eventually turned out to be less-than-stellar beta versions of God’s people (1.0 - Adam’s wicked descendants were destroyed in a global deluge, 2.0 - Noah’s haughty descendants were deposed in a global dispersion, 3.0 - Abraham fathered a nation whose own prophets repeatedly berated it for being stiff-necked, half-hearted, self-righteous xenophobes), we now see that what God has been working towards through all of created history has been to ultimately gather to Himself a diverse many-colored congregation of contrite and faithful worshippers who freely humble themselves in His sight and whom He is transforming by His now-indwelling Spirit to be able to truly devote themselves to loving Him, to loving one another, and to loving their neighbors and the nations.  In the end these will have surmounted seemingly unassailable obstacles of sin and pride and of opposition and persecution and of language and culture and geography to reach and bring in a vast multitude which no one will be able to count, but ultimately it was God’s Who did it - no sweat.  and it was His idea - mind blown...

Ephesians 3:9 - The holy playbook

"...and to illuminate [all] what [is] house-stewardship of the mystery having been hidden from the ages in God the [One] the all things having created...’

-Paul was given two undeserved gifts by the Lord, the first being to evangelize to the nations the unfathomable riches of Christ (previous verse), and the second (here) to shed light on how God is implementing His age-old plan to include all the other (non-Jewish) nations in the assembly of His people.  The former helps bring about the latter in fact, as God’s plan to gather the Gentiles in to His forever family involves the use of human messengers - evangelists, church-planters, missionaries, teachers, disciplers, pastors, neighbors, etc...and Paul, Christ’s apostle to the nations.  And while Paul was not the first Jew to be used to lead a Gentile to faith in Christ (by all accounts that distinction belongs to Peter - cf Acts 10.44ff), he was  the first official ambassador of Christ to the nations, called and sent first to Asia Minor and subsequently to Macedonia and regions beyond.  And everywhere he went, to everyone who would listen, he was faithfully unpacking the details of God's mysterious and wonderful plan.

-But the greater point here is that God has a plan, a holy playbook if you will, and He is carrying it out.  He created all things, everything-that-is out of nothing-that-ever-was.  He simply spoke it all into existence (whoa), and all things were VERY good.  But He created them all for a reason, for the ultimate pupose of the showing off and the celebration of His breathtaking goodness, and He is superintending every last detail and minutia in order to bring it to pass.  The same mind-blowing omnipotence behind the creation is the very same power now employed in the implementation of God’s eternal plan.  God has a plan, a plan fantástico, He knows what He’s doing, and He is way more than able to make it happen...

Ephesians 3:8 - An unlikely journey of infinite proportions

"To me the least of all saints was given this grace, to evangelize to the nations the unfathomable riches of Christ..."

-From the least of all to unfathomable riches, an unlikely journey of infinite proportions... But that’s what He do, this almighty God of wonders, and this was the attitude embraced by the one who penned this letter.  Was he really the least of all the saints, the lowest of all the men women and children on the proverbial Body-of-Christ totem pole?  Hardly, but this is how he really saw himself.  God had taken a murderous persecutor of the saints and had transformed him into a Spirit-empowered producer of saints.  From saint-hater to saint-maker.  And he lived into it.  His life was indeed not his own, and he lived as fully and completely into others-first others-better as he could by the gift of God’s grace.  Obviously God was doing the heavy lifting, but Paul was the instrument, and he was all-in for letting the Lord pour him all out for the would-be believers he would have once seen in prison or worse, or better yet for those who would never even have come to faith in the first place.

-But again, God did Paul an immense undeserved favor, as his God-given responsibility was to announce to the nations the priceless Good News about Jesus.  In fact, what valuation, what price could you even place on the Gospel, or on Jesus Christ, or even on just one of the countless souls for whom He gave up His life?  How much is one soul worth?  How much are you worth?  What indeed does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul (Mt 16.26)?  Your soul, my soul, the soul of even the worst most vile and evil person on earth, is worth more than all the riches in the cosmos.  It is worth whatever anyone is willing to pay for it, and the price God Himself was willing to pay was the life of His only Son.  And THAT, my friends, is a price beyond valuation.  True riches beyond compare.  Incalculable.  Inestimable.  Truly unfathomable.  Worth your life...

-But this is in no way about me.  It’s not about how much I am worth to God, it’s about the incomparable riches of Jesus Christ.  He is better, simply better, better than anything or anyone, and we waste our lives on manure and slummy mudpies when we give our hearts and time and devote ourselves to anything else (Phil 3.8).  It is He, it is He, it is He!  The fairest of ten thousand and billions more beside.  He is the Buried Treasure for which one would sell all that he has, He is the priceless heavenly Pearl for Whom we would do well to develop a magnificent obsession (Mt 13.44-46).  Our mind is filled with Him, and we are preoccupied continually, intrusively and to a troubling extent.  Or ought to be, no?  My soul knows this to be true, but my head and my heart fall so short, so far short of full devotion, so fickle and failing, chasing after so many lesser suitors, so caught up in the fleeting and the temporal and in those things which will never ever fully satisfy.  In this, as in so much else, I myself have a long long way to go...

Ephesians 3:7 - God's Waiter

"...of which I came to be a servant, according to the gift of the grace of God, the [one] having been given to me according to the working of the power of Him.’

-Paul is a prisoner, he is a house-steward, he is one entrusted with a magnificent mystery, and now he calls himself a servant.  A minister.  The Greek word gives us our English word, 'deacon', which is typically a servant leader in a local church, but for a better picture of this word, think 'waiter', aka a server.  These are the ones who do the thankless dirty work, working hard and tirelessly on behalf of those they serve, meeting needs, not at all in it for themselves or advancing their own personal interests.  Definitely not a job to which most would typically aspire.

-Paul, however, was not catering to the whims and fancies of some spoiled, hard-to-please resaurant-goer - he served on behalf of Jesus Christ and His Gospel, THE Good News, the News which was incomparably better by far than any news ever.  and to Paul, getting to be a servant of the Good News was a gracious gift from God.  God did him a glorious favor, 'cuz there was no greater privilege on earth than this.  Altho' Paul technically didn’t have much choice in the matter - God literally called him and chose him for this, arresting him as it were on that Damascene road, but in fact God had set Paul apart and was preparing him for this work from the day he was born (cf Galatians 1.15).  All his skills and gifts and education and experiences, not one bit of it was wasted, every last ounce of preparation honing him and getting him ready for the work God had for him.  And really, is there any greater blessing than to be spent in doing that for which you were always meant to do, what God made you to do?  And is there any higher privilege than to be used of Him in helping to advance the great Good News in the lives of others?

-Now, in spending himself as a servant, frequently in extreme hardship and beyond the point of exhaustion (cf 2Corinthians 11.23-28), Paul nevertheless was tireless, constantly faithful to his God-given role and filling up his calling, up to the task because he was powered up by almighty God Himself.  He understood and lived into the truth that God of all power indeed was the One Who was constantly at work in him, giving Paul all the power and motivation he needed in order to do all that God wanted him to do (Philippians 2.13).  He was going to finish the race, and he was running to win.

Ephesians 3:6 - Denigrated denizens no more!

"...to being the nations [are] co-heirs and co-body members and co-sharers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Good News..."

-So, the precise point that God was revealing to the apostles and prophets - trying to get across to them, these custodians of the early church - was that yes, other nations (goyim) besides Israel were including in God’s promise of salvation in Jesus Christ.  In 21st century western (Gentile) Christendom, this seems like a no-brainer, a universally-accepted truth, but not so for the Jewish mind.  God pretty much had to twist their arms to embrace the (other) nations, in fact, as accustomed as they were to thinking of non-Jews as being unclean, unacceptable, and excluded from God’s purposes.  To a Jew, God only had use for a Jew, or at least that's how their spiritual sensibilities had evolved.  There was no place for an uncircumcised Gentile (i.e. filthy idolatrous pagan) among God’s people.  The best a non-Jew could hope for was to receive circumcision and begin to observe the law of Moses, and even then they would not ascend to the status of one of God’s chosen people.  Good Jews would have no dealings whatsoever with despicable goyim (which is the Hebrew word simply meaning nations but which had taken on rather pejorative connotations over the centuries), those denigrated denizens of the rest of the world.  And this is precisely what we see as the early church began to spread its wings and spread out from Palestine - those first Jewish believers carried the Gospel only to Jews.  The dramatic breakthrough came when God had to force one of the apostles - Peter, their leader to be exact - to go to the home of an unclean and despised Gentile in order to bring him and his household the Good News about Christ (Acts 10.9-20, 10.34-35, 11.2-4, 11.17-18).  Only by repeated direct revelation was God able to convince Peter to first go, and only when He poured out His Spirit on that household of Gentiles and manifested sign gifts through them was He then able to convince Peter that He fully intended to included the Gentiles in the assembly of God’s people.  The Lord subsequently used Peter to initially convince the leaders (apostles and prophets) in Jerusalem of this, and later used Paul to confirm and clarify His plan to include the Gentiles in the Church, on which the entire leadership subsequently signed off (Acts 9.15, 13.46-48, 14.26-27, 15.1-29 - especially Act 15.28).

-Same inheritance, same body, same promise - every way that God chooses and blesses the nation of Israel He now chooses and justifies and blesses those of every other nation, all through faith in Christ.  There is no longer any distinction between Jew and Greek or anyone else for that matter (Acts 15.8-9; Romans 3.21-24, 10.11-13; Colossians 3.10-11).  No dividing line, no tiers or levels of acceptance or benefit, no separation or division - Christ is indeed all, and in all.  Or should be.  How the heck are we doing?  This whole same-body thing is so messed up, so fractured.  Perhaps it was inevitable that as the Church grew and assemblies multiplied out of practical necessity that within certain more populous locales you would find different assemblies developing along ethnic lines due to custom and language, etc.  Nevertheless, so many unnecessary divisions within the body of Christ.  But I digress.  Gentiles are in, everyone’s in, case closed.

Ephesians 3:5 - In the Spirit (or not?)

-’...which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as now it was revealed to the the holy apostles of Him and prophets in [the] Spirit...’

-Altho this Mysterious Message, this Good News of great joy for all peoples was mentioned throughout the years to other generations as God was communicating with His people, it had never been unpacked with the level of detail and specificity and clarity with which God’s Spirit revealed it to the apostles and prophets in that first century A.D.

-Note that Paul mentions both apostles and prophets.  The office/gift of apostleship was indeed a select and fairly finite group, but the gift of prophecy was apparently accessible to all, post-pentecost (cf 1Corinthians 14.1).  And yes, these were New Testament prophets Paul was talking about (cf Ephesians 2.20), not the ones we find operating in the Old Testament (one or perhaps two at a time, speaking to entire nations).  The whole point Paul is making is that even those previous guys, in spite of receiving some scant details from the Lord as to His plans for future rescue, even those guys were kept at least somewhat in the dark.  These New Testament guys (and gals!), while they operated perhaps on less of a national level than did their predecessors, speaking more directly to local assemblies, there is no doubt that they were indeed operating and that they were accorded considerable respect and status in the life of God’s people, at least in the early days of Christianity (cf Acts 11.27, 15.32, 21.9; Romans 12:6; 1Corinthians 11.4-5, 12.10, 12.28-29, 13.8-10, 14.1-6, 14.22, 14.29-32, 14.39; Ephesians 4.11; 1Timothy 1.18, 4.14).  And it was these prophets (some of them at least) who along w the apostles were collectively given much greater clarity about the mystery.

-It is rather unfortunate that in many modern uber-educated evangelical circles today (at least in the west) this prophetic function has all but ceased to be exercised in any formal or substantive way.  Some insist that the gift of prophecy itself has ceased, been phased out and removed altogether, along with the other so-called sign gifts, that there is no longer any need for the sign gifts now that the Church and the Canon (of Scripture) have been established, or perhaps that the sign gifts still are being given on a limited basis among those peoples where a Gospel foothold has yet to be established.  Is it not possible that for all our advanced western learning and reasoning skills we have immunized ourselves against much more than a whiff of the supernatural?  Instinctively skeptical, we doubt, we explain it away, we expect it not, and we settle for a far cry less than the greater works which Jesus promised.  It is written that Jesus could do no miracles in a certain place due to the unbelief of those who lived there - could perhaps the same be said of the Church in the west?  Have not many in the west in a quest to quench false teaching along with charismatic excesses have gone so far as to quench the Spirit right out of the church?  We know so much (and we need - and pray - so little).  We have it all under control.  And we have become an impenetrable fortress of formal doctrine and practice, practically impervious to the moves of the Spirit, the rushing Wind, that divine Zephyr, blowing where He wants, filling and gifting and guiding and empowering and unifying - and speaking.  In the Spirit - that’s what Paul says.  In the Spirit.  The atmosphere in which God’s people live, the air we breathe, the clothes we wear (clothes of power! cf Luke 24.49), the means by which we conduct ourselves (as one!), the wings on which the Church soars to show off the love and breathtaking goodness of Christ.  But have the wings been clipped?  Largely devoid of the Spirit, do not God’s people fairly resemble the newly-(un)clothed emperor, rather naked, suffocating in denominationalism and worldliness?  Are we not mostly fractured, impotent, insignificant, cultural afterthoughts?  God help us...

Ephesians 3:4 - The Marvelous Mysterious Message

-’...toward which you [all] are empowered [when] reading to understand the insight of me in the mystery of Christ...’ 

-The mystery of Christ... The mystery of Christ.  A Message which is strange indeed, difficult to explain and understand.  In this instance the difficulty arises because man in his fallen state instinctively and simultaneously tries to hide from God and make peace with God.  We feel guilty (because we are guilty), and so we try to avoid the One Who will hold us accountable.  But then our corrupted native impulse is to try and work our way back to God, using our own efforts and on our own terms.  In this state our minds are completely unable to divine what is necessary to restore Divine favor, to rebuild what was lost, that personal relationship with the God Who made us.  Thus the need to be able to understand what is the extent of the guilt (all have sinned), what is the just and necessary punishment for the guilty (the wages of sin is death), and more specifically how our Creator God planned to satisfy the requirements of righteousness and holiness by punishing an innocent substitute in our stead (His only begotten Son).  All these concepts are beyond intuiting really, beyond the capacity of fallen man to glean on his own (and sadly he is too often loathe to lend them much credibility if he ever gains so much as a glimpse).

-Yes, it was always going to be necessary for God Himself to reveal to us this mystery, these hard-to-understand truths, for Him to explain precisely how we can/need to be restored to fellowship with Him, and by extension how He plans to gather from every nation an assembly of restored worshippers who will be with Him forever in glory.  Fortunately God has been more than willing to reveal these truths - to His prophets and apostles and in this case to Paul himself.  But what became further necessary was to be able to explain both to the people God chose first (Israel) and to the rest of the peoples (referred to as Gentiles by the ‘chosen’ people) that the plans always included all the nations, every one of them in fact, the ends of the earth hearing this marvelous Mysterious Message of salvation through faith in that long-ago promised seed of Abraham, the very Son God sent to be our all-sufficient Sacrifice (Genesis 22.18, 26.4; Psalm 2.8, 22.27, 65.8, 67.1-7, 86.9, 96.3, 117.1, Isaiah 42.10, 45.22, 49.6, 52.10; Daniel 7.14; Micah 5.4; Luke 2.10; Matthew 28.19; Acts 1.8, 13.47; Revelation 5.9, 7.9).

Ephesians 3:3 - Uncovered - pay attention!

"...[that] according to revelation it was made known to me the mystery, just as I wrote before in brief..."

-What Paul is doing, his specific calling, and what he knows and is proclaiming about Jesus, this he received via direct revelation.  The word is apokalupsis (from which we get our word 'apocalypse'), but this word which was used to name the last book of the New Testament today in English has taken on implications of the catastrophe and destruction depicted in that famously cryptic tome.  The original Greek simply meant an uncovering, a revealing of a mystery or something hidden.  The Revelation of John (or rather to him) of the destruction and judgment and glories to come at the end of time was simply that, God uncovering those things for John to see and write down for posterity.  Same for Peter (2Peter 1.16-21).  Similarly, we find several mentions in Scripture of where Paul received direct divine uncoverings from the Lord (Acts 22.17-21, 26.15-18; Galatians 1.12, 2.2; 1Corinthians 11.23, 15.3; 1Thessalonians 4.15; 2Corinthians 12.1-7).  All that Paul was teaching and proclaiming, all his insight into mysterious truths about Who Jesus is and how to follow Him - he received directly from the Lord.  Thus we would do well by the grace of God to pay attention to it and try to understand and apply it as thoroughly and as faithfully as possible, because this is divinely-sourced (2Peter 1.19).

-Paul says that he mentioned this in writing (in a letter) to these Ephesians at some point previously.  This suggests the possibility of a now-missing letter.  Some maintain that Paul is simply referring to the previous two chapters in this letter.  It is important to consider whether Paul is saying that he wrote them about the mystery, or about the revelation he received regarding the mystery.  He has of course been unpacking the mystery in the preceding chapters, and he does in fact mention revealed knowledge earlier in this letter (Ephesians 1.9, 17), but there he is describing shared revelation.  The context here seems to indicate that Paul is focusing on the fact that God gave unique revelation (as well as specific instructions) directly to him, and nowhere else does he mention that in this letter.  Thus it is not unreasonable to assume that he had written them another short letter prior to this one where he told them that God had in fact given him direct revelation.  Clearly he did this rather frequently (writing letters AND mentioning his revelation) - no doubt he wants to remind his readers to keep in mind just who/what they are dealing with.  And to that point, Paul’s claim to direct divine revelation must be considered carefully.  Either he is lying, or we would be wise to pay very close attention to his heavenly words...

Ephesians 3:2 - The Way of God's People

-’...if indeed you heard [about] the house-stewardship of the grace of God the [one] having been given to me unto you [all]...’ 

-Paul is Christ’s prisoner, but no onerous obligatory prison sentence, this.  God gave Paul a job, a specific calling - He put him in charge of His grace, to help to spread it to the nations, to those nations and peoples who were not Jews.

-He uses the word oikonomia, which is the work done by someone who manages a household, someone who the Owner of the House puts in charge of taking care of the House, of running the affairs of the Home and Family.  This is clearly someone the Owner trusts, and with whom He entrusts a precious and in this case sacred possession (since this is God’s household we’re talking about).  God put Paul in charge of His House (or parts of it), the Church, which is entirely made up of people on whom God had lavished and poured out His grace by pouring out the blood of His only Son.  Grace at Calvary, grace leading up to and at conversion, and grace every day after that as His people walked with Him.  And so Paul’s job, this high calling and task which God had entrusted to Him, was to minister this grace to the nations, to help them learn about and begin to experience and multiply to others this amazingly rich undeserved favor. 

-And here’s the thing: anyone and everyone who is so blessed as to be a recipient of God’s grace is likewise expected to channel it to others, just like Paul, and while the scope perhaps may not be quite as broad, the calling is similar.  I will bless you, and you will be a blessing, God says (Genesis 12.2).  I will show you My grace and mercy, and you will spread it to others (Matthew 18.33).  This is the way of God’s people - we don’t hide it under a bushel (NO!), we don’t bury it in the ground.  We are the city on a hill, multiplying God’s grace to all around.  We get really good at loving and blessing and giving grace to one another and then our neighbors and the nations.  A most precious possession, but one which is meant be shared.  Failing here, God’s people fail entirely.

Ephesians 3:1 - So what?

"For the sake of this - I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ [Jesus] on behalf of you the nations...’

-Paul now prepares to tell us about HIS response, about the part he is playing in this great worldwide building project - and what actually comes out is a thirteen verse biopic detour that begins with twin truths about who Paul really is.  He is a prisoner, a prisoner OF Christ, and a prisoner FOR the nations. 

-The word for prisoner here refers to someone or something who is bound, tied (or possibly chained) up.  It can refer to a donkey or to a bundle of sticks or to one held prisoner.  The one thus bound is under the direct control of that which has bound them/it.  Contained, no longer free.  Paul of course had become well acquainted with this condition in real life (cf Acts 16.23-24), and if this letter was indeed written while Paul was in Rome, he would have been a prisoner for years at this point (Acts 21.33 is where his Jerusalem-to-Rome capitivity actually began).  But it is more enlightening to consider WHO Paul holds responsible for the binding and their reason for doing so.  So notice what he does not say here - he does not say that he is a prisoner of Rome, or of Caesar, or of the Jews who in fact were the ones most directly responsible for his imprisonment.  No, he is a prisoner of Christ, and this works on two levels.  In all likelihood, Paul is in prison or under some kind of house arrest in Rome at this time, but he sees the big picture, and knows Who is ultimately in control of the situation.  It is neither the Romans, nor the Jews.  Whether in prison or free, Christ is in control - He’s got this.  And Paul knew that if he was literally in prison, it was because Christ had a reason for him to be there.  But wait - there’s more.  Paul was bound by Jesus in a much more all-encompassing sense, such that were he to find himself free from any physical bonds, his heart was forever bound by Christ.  He at no time saw himself as being free and self-determinant.  He had been bought with a price, and was no longer his own man, not at all free to go and say and do whatever and wherever whenever he pleased (1Corinthians 6.20).  Yes, he was imprisoned when he wrote this, but he had been a prisoner ever since he surrendered his life to Jesus.

-Paul gives us the reason WHY he is imprisoned as well - for the nations.  Of course he is refering to the Gentiles, and that includes every other nation and people besides the Jewish one.  But both the cause and the purpose for him being bound is because he is called to carry the Good News about Jesus to the Gentiles, if you will to the entire rest of the world.  He was doing that all throughout Asia and on into Europe, which is what stirred up the Jews to try to get him arrested and killed in the first place, but (don’t miss this) he is still doing it!  He is leveraging his imprisonment, making the most of it and every opportunity to help advance the Good News among the Gentiles.  No pity partying or navel-gazing here.  He’s in prison, chained up between two Roman guards - so what?  If I am in prison, or wherever I am, so what?  I’m in the hospital - really, so what?  It is so not about me.  Whether free and healthy or sick or in prison, God’s got this.  This - whatever this is - can and should ultimately lead to an opportunity for me to tell my story about Jesus to someone.  I may not have a calling with a scope as broad as Paul’s, but I am to be just as much an abassador as he was, representing the One Who sent me to those around me wherever and in whatever circumstances I am.  No one is out to get me.  Life is not out to get me.  And even if they were, so what?  'Mine' is not mine to spend as I please.  Remember that all things are from Christ and by Him and for Him.  When we leave Christ out of the equation in essence we become practical atheists.  He is behind this and in the middle of this and orchestrating this, all for the nations and for my neighbors, those who do not yet know Him.  So I can fairly say that I am whatever I am because of Him - I am His prisoner.  Whatever hand I may think life has dealt me, He is the Dealer, and He is the House.  And in reality, I am ALWAYS playing with house money.  So what?  So, I am not ever just a prisoner.  I am a prisoner OF Christ FOR Christ.  I am not ever just a cancer patient - I am a cancer patient of Christ.  I am not just a doctor treating a cancer patient - I am a doctor of Christ.  I am an orphan of Christ.  I am a widow of Christ - I am His widow.  I am His teacher, lawyer, engineer, coach - whatever I am, wherever I go, whatever I do, I am His.  All this is for Him.  For the nations.  Or should be.  Once again, I have a long way to go...

Ephesians 2:22 - Temple Version 3.0

"...in Whom also you [all] are being built together unto a dwelling of God in [the] Spirit."

-You all, the people there in Ephesus, this locally gathered assembly of believers in Christ, particularly Greek and Jew, are being built/brought/joined/united together, a holy temple, yes, becoming a place where God Himself lives permanently, and God’s Spirit is the One making it happen... 

-Yes, almighty thrice-holy God Himself is living and dwelling in their midst, right there in Ephesus and the midst of every assembly of bona-fide Christ-followers.  This New Testament temple (version 3.0) is holy not only because God has declared it so and set it apart but also because He. Is. Present.  No shekinah glory this time round per se, but nevertheless I AM is here.  The ground on which we conduct ourselves as a church is holy ground because God is present (cf Exodus 3.5, Joshua 5.15).  It is ours to show off God’s breathtaking goodness to all those around us through the way we relate to one another (John 13.35), and we dare not bring the filth of the world into our midst, but that it should be washed and cleansed and healed by the blood of Jesus (which is what He do).  We can be so flippant, so nonchalant, so unaware and disengaged and so casual in our disregard for assembly, for OUR own assembly and responsibilities thereto, for our mutual need and connectedness and of what God is growing and building us to be.  And it’s not about me getting my fire insurance and getting a good enough weekly dose of ‘church’ to keep my faith intact until I can get another fix next week.  The gathered Church universal and the localized expressions of it, the people to Whom God has entrusted His blessings and the Good News, we are His rescue plan, plan A for revealing and bringing Jesus to a lost and broken and dying world.  We are, we must be that city on a hill, the light of the world (Matthew 5.14).  Tag, we’re it - the mission now is committed to us, Good News being borne by a whole bunch of beautiful feet.

-As we will see later, all that needs to happen for this unity thing between believers to get cranked up is for them to be together, not merely in proximity but in relationship.  But simply spend some time together, admittedly something more than sitting in a pew next to each other for an hour once a week.  Share a meal (or two).  Study, discuss, pray, serve together, play, do life together, go somewhere together (have you ever been on a mission trip? - it can literally happen in a week if you have the time).  The potential is there, just waiting to be tapped, the possibilities are endless, and yet so are the distractions and excuses.  So many things I think I’d rather do apart from God’s people, so much time I spend doing my own thing.  Remember the words of Jesus: ‘where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.’ (Matthew 18.20)  What will it take for God’s people to actually gather and BE together, spend time together, more than 18 inches of pew once a week?  And how about STAY together?  Definitely more on that in chapter 4...

Ephesians 2:21 - On building a NOT-a-building...

"...in Whom [the] whole building being fitly framed together is growing unto a holy temple in [the] Lord..."

-No ordinary building, this.  A holy temple, set apart, wholly other, unique and special and sanctified, clean, pure, undefiled, a remove-your-dirty-shoes kind of place where God puts His Name and where He is present, where people can learn about Who God is, what He is like, where all the nations of the earth can see and access and worship the one true God.  And yes, scattered throughout the Old Testament, are glimpses of a holy place of worship which serves as a beacon to all the peoples of the earth (Micah 4.1; Isaiah 56.7, 2.2-3; 1Kings 8.43).

-Indeed, the entire universal Church of Jesus Christ is one big temple, a place where worship and celebration can (should) be found and where God is present, where He has caused His Name to dwell, where the nations can come to glimpse and learn about God - or should be able to.  Any unbeliever should be able to show up at any localized expression of this Temple and get a glimpse of what God is like and how to know Him.  The building and framing process is still happening, the Master Architect has a master plan which He is steadily carrying out, more and more people and peoples are being added in and all the more in these last days, people from every nation tribe and tongue, from all walks of life with all kinds of backgrounds and abilities, and each one is gifted in various ways to join in on this magnificent mother of all construction projects.  But again, the Church is NOT a building, not some physical edifice manufactured with human hands, with hammer and saw and chisel.  It is a living entity, a growing assembly of the redeemed, of those who have bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and in whom His Spirit now lives and reproduces the very life of Christ.  This is true for both the worldwide Church as well as the localized expressions thereof.  And the raw material which causes the growth and which holds it all together?  Neither nails nor screws nor any kind of earthly gorilla glue - it's love.  The love of God which those who have received from Him manifest to one another.  Build well today...!

Ephesians 2:20 - Blood, sweat and tears...

"...having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, being [the] cornerstone Himself Christ Jesus...”

-No brick and mortar edifice, this.  We’re talking heart and soul and real flesh - and real blood which was poured out in order to begin building this house that is the family of God.  

-And of course for these readers there was no brick and mortar whatsoever.  Theirs was to meet in homes.  Yes, they were perhaps in many cases small enough to pull that off, but they were also poor enough and persecuted enough that building a building was neither practical nor wise.  Not to say that what they had was better but for them it was all about people.  People loving people, people reaching people, people who need people.  For us, the modern western Church, it tends to be more about buildings and programs.  And the preacher.  Preacher does the heavy lifting while we watch and listen.  Or until we find him wanting and find ourselves a better preacher with a better program.

-But to the point, we have the foundation of this family home being built on the backs of the apostles and the prophets - their blood and sweat and tears, their lives, and their words.  Most commentators tend to agree that these are New Testament prophets, by the way.  But what these guys did was drive the growth and expansion of the body of Christ in the first century after He was crucified, beginning with Christ as their jumping off point and carrying on through the enabling of the Holy Spirit.  They are our example, and their words - aka God’s Word delivered to us through them - is our spiritual milk and bread and meat (along with the Old Testament too, of course).  And most importantly there is no other starting point than Christ.  He is the Chief Cornerstone, the first and primary brick that must be laid in the heart and life of every would-be believer and assembly.   It is said that the ancient traditions associated with the laying of cornerstones for buildings or temples included the offering of a sacrifice which would be buried under the cornerstone and whose blood it was believed would give strength and stability to the entire building.  In this case it really is the blood of Christ which He Himself offered up that kicked off the entire enterprise to begin with.  He it is Who both inaugurates and perpetuates this new household of faith, this new temple, this new way even to enter in.  There is no starting without Him, no growing or continuing apart from Him.  Yes, progress in the Christian life begins with Christ, and is fueled by God's Word and by being in community (i.e. doing life) with His people.  How are we doing?

Ephesians 2:19 - More than just a meeting

"So therefore no longer you [all] are strangers and aliens but rather you [all] are fellow-citizens of the holy ones and family-members of God.”

-There is a new citizenship, a new national identity, one which trumps temporary earthly nationalities and ethnicities - those in Christ are now citizens of Heaven, they belong to God’s country.

-But it’s not just a new country.  It’s a new family.  The word here is oikeios.  It refers to an oikos, a dwelling where a family dwells (think of a rather large extended family!), and the oikeios refers to those who dwell there as part of the family.  This is God’s house, His home, His family, His clan, His people, into which centuries of goy were forbidden any access or part whatsoever.  Fast forward to the called-out-people under this new covenant - the predominance of Gentiles in this assembly in Ephesus were now part of God’s extended family.  Before, they were aliens, strangers, non-members, but now they belonged, they belonged to God’s family.  forever!  They had a permanent seat at the dinner table of Heaven, a place in paradise, a room with their name on it.

-And yes, it is a family... to many, their experience of ‘church’ is just a meeting, or perhaps like some kind of a business or civic club, where they spend part of their time and derive some personal benefit.  Or perhaps they view it as a team, where there is some level of mutual cooperation for the furtherance of some stated goal.  But these approaches all have one thing in common - whatever connectedness exists is sporadic, seasonal at best, part-time relationships which result in partial impact and incomplete transformation.  But family - family is enduring, constant, loyal, rootedness, faithfulness.  Family is acceptance which is unconditional.  Family is warmth and love.  The world is dying to see a family, desperate for more than a meeting and a creed, not compelled in the least by formal ritual and cold polite handshakes, its curiosity barely piqued by slick preachers and fancy programs and new buildings.  They want real, authentic relationships with people who really care, who accept them without precondition and who will journey with them through thick and thin.  They say blood is thicker than water, but ours is a family whose lifeblood is thicker still, flowing from the veins of almighty God, coursing through the lives of His children whose hearts beat to the rhythm of His Spirit.  God’s household, what we call "the Church", is a forever family, with doors and hearts that are open, open to our neighbors and to the nations, ready to love and embrace any and all who would believe.

Ephesians 2:18 - When 2 x 1 equals 1...

"...since through Him we are having the approach the both in one Spirit toward the Father."

-Everybody now, Gentiles and Jews, those who were far away and those who were in the neighborhood, now approach God together, and together in one Spirit through Christ make it all the way...!  And don’t miss the Trinity sighting!  Jesus - God the Son is the Way, God the Father is the Destination, and God the Spirit is the catalyst, the impetus, the unifying force.

-Two groups, one Spirit, resulting in one body.  Which gives us the equation, (1+1)x1=1.  In fact, you could put any number you want in those parentheses, any number of otherwise disparate groups or individuals, and the Holy Spirit will make them one.  In math, there is would be what is called the Inverse Property of Multiplication, and, like that mathematical expression, in a sense the Spirit does flip the natural order of division on its head.  The same Holy Spirit Who indwells each and every person who truly trusts in Christ is indeed the supernatural unifying force between believers and between otherwise disparate groups of the same.  History, ethnicity, race - all temporal differences and relational roadblocks are made of no effect by the Spirit of God.  And to be sure, there may be no greater divide than that which grew up (and which still exists outside of Christ) between Jews and Gentiles, since by very definition the latter group is defined simply as those who are NOT the former, the distinction becoming extremely important to the Jewish people, going back for almost as long as the very beginnings of nations themselves.  With a one-of-kind culture derived from an exclusive long-standing religious tradition, and a parallel strict prohibition against racial intermarriage, the ancient divide emanating from Jews towards Gentiles and back again is long-standing and wide.  The divide seems rather a non-starter in modern day Christendom, dominated as that is by Gentiles who have grown up with post-holocaust sensibilities (altho there was a time when even some well-meaning Christ-followers could have held onto a strain of anti-semitism against the ones who "killed Christ"), but it was quite real in Paul’s day, and today is still very real to most who are of the seed of Jacob aka Israel, having been widened and exacerbated by centuries of additional subjegation as well as occasional genocide on the part of Gentiles, even those in the guise of Christians (think the ‘holy’ Crusades and Hitler’s ‘final solution’).  But this divide of divides (and all others) is totally abrogated and superceded by the Holy Spirit.  There is no divide too wide, no wall too high, no rivalry too ancient but that the Spirit does not difuse the hostility and overflow oneness and unity and love in its place...

Ephesians 2:17 - Glad tidings!

"...and having come He evangelized peace to you [all] to the [ones] far and to the [ones] near."

-Paul here quotes Is 57.19, but the whole section is tremendous (Is 57.15-21): 

For thus says the high and exalted One 

Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, 

“I dwell on a high and holy place, 

And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit 

In order to revive the spirit of the lowly 

And to revive the heart of the contrite. 

“For I will not contend forever, 

Nor will I always be angry; 

For the spirit would grow faint before Me, 

And the breath of those whom I have made. 

“Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry and struck him; 

I hid My face and was angry, 

And he went on turning away, in the way of his heart. 

“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; 

I will lead him and crestore comfort to him and to his mourners, 

Creating the praise of the lips. 

Peace, peace to him who is far and to him who is near,” 

Says the LORD, “and I will heal him.” 

But the wicked are like the tossing sea, 

For it cannot be quiet, 

And its waters toss up refuse and mud. 

“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” 

-No, there is no peace for the wicked, they know no true peace, but this Evangel, the Good News which Christ came to proclaim and procure is all about peace - peace not only between God and man but also peace between these two disparate groups - Jew and Gentile.  Peace with God, and peace on earth - this is the message of the Advent, is it not, the Coming of the Promised Peacemaker whose birth was announced by a mighty chorus of angels?  Shalom, lasting, everlasting peace and overall well-being to those who have been near to the life and promises and blessings of God, AND also peace to those who are far from Him.  They are far away both religiously, and also geographically, as we are talking about the entire earth to the ends of the earth, to the distant islands, to places and peoples who have never heard, who need to know the Way of peace.  Peace, peace - peace today, in this moment, and forever.  Glad tidings of comfort and joy for those in desperate need of peace, whose hearts and spirits are sorrowful and humble, creating lips overflowing with praise, all peoples united in one group, one body in a great chorus of praise to this One Who is high and exalted...!

Ephesians 2:16 - World peace

"...and [that] He should reconcile the both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the enemy-hatred in it..."

-Good news!  God Himself has removed the barrier between God and man as well as between Jews and Gentiles.

-The instrument of nullification, with which God abolished the Law?  The cross.  Both the ultimate representation of Roman (think Goy) imperial occupation and power, and a brutal, bloody, horrific symbol of torture and execution.  Fast forward a couple millenia and it’s a long-standing symbol of reverence and worship for multitudes who trust in God’s Messiah.  And again, it is Who was crucified that makes all the difference.  This ancient means of punishing criminals beame the locus for punishing the collective crimes of humanity against God.  God Himself laid our many many crimes on His own Son, and allowed the guilty to execute the Innocent One Who stood (and hung) in our place.  But such perfect irony, that God would choose such a glaring figure of the age-old enemy-hatred that existed between Jews and Gentiles, a cruel Roman cross, one which during that time had been used to torture and execute many Jews and to ultimately help keep them in subjection - God chose this symbol of the enemy-hatred on which to kill the enemy-hatred.  Perfect.

-And so God actually put to death the enemy-hatred.  He killed it when He killed His Son.  The crimes which separated man from God - and the Law which highlighted them - now no longer even separate humanity from itself.  Note that the Law itself was not killed - the enemy-hatred was killed.  The Law was not abrogated or repealed in any way - it has been fulfilled.  Jesus both lived into and fulfilled it perfectly, and then perfectly filled up every divine legal requirement for justice in order to bring us all (back) to God.  And thus we have reconciliation.  To reconcile, to restore friendly relations between, to cause to coexist in harmony - in this case, a dual reconciling, where Jews and Gentiles now have been brought together to coexist harmoniously in one body, and altogether all the nations as one are restored to friendship and fellowship with the God Who made them.  Shalom.  Breathtakingly good, glorious (and potentially global) peace.

Ephesians 2:15 - THE New Deal

"...the law of the commandments in ordinances having abolished, in order that the two He should create in Him unto one new man making peace..."

-Paul here pinpoints the actual cause of the enemy-hatred which existed between the Jews and the Gentiles:  The Law.  It was the Law.  God gave the Jews the Law, more than 600 commands in fact, and that made them better - in their eyes.  Special.  Cleaner.  Cleaner in God’s eyes than the other nations (providing they actually kept the Law).  The word ‘clean’ is used 198 times in Leviticus alone.  And as if being chosen by God didn’t already make them more special, the fact that He entrusted His Law to the Jews only made it moreso (cf Romans 3.1-2).  They were doubly chosen by God, called out to be His people and the sole recipients of His Law.  Ultimately they proved completely incapable of fully following it in its entirety (as was to be expected) - but two out of three is still pretty good.  Thus we have a fertile seedbed not only for extreme ethnocentricity but also for religious bigotry which naturally devolved into the kind of enmity which was never a part of God’s original plan.  Unfortunately the more the Jews tried to pursue a relationship with God through the Law, the more they kept themselves aloof from Goyim and related to them as religious inferiors, the more they were subjegated and persecuted by the nations, the greater the enemy-hatred grew.  But at the heart of this divide was the Law.  Even in the hardest times, knowing they had God’s Law, knowing they had the only known way to try to be clean in God’s eyes still reinforced everything.  But in truth what they were suffering from was a bad case of spiritual pride and blindness...

(Some commands in the Law were far easier to keep than others as a matter of habit.  So for example, God said to the Jews, don’t eat pork - it’s dirty, and it makes you dirty.  So we can just eat beef or chicken, no big deal.  Everyone who eats pork is dirty.  Oh how dirty are the Goyim who eat pork.  We never eat pork - we’re not as dirty as they are.  We’re cleaner.  We’re better.  And so on and so forth ad nauseum.  But the sad truth is that no one is able to keep the whole law and all are hopelessly dirty, filthy rags at best (Isaiah 64.6).  How about the greatest command in the whole Law - love the Lord with all your heart (Deuteronomy 6.4-5, repeated 9 more times in Deuteronomy, restated throughout the OT, and finally reiterated by Jesus Christ Himself, cf Matthew 22.36-38)?  Throw in the second one to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22.39-40) and the case is close-ed.  Each and every person on planet Earth falls so far short on just those two that we wind up only talking about degrees of moral filth and culpability.  One single command is all it takes (James 2.10).  No, the law doesn’t remove dirt.  It highlights dirt - or at least is intended to - and the need for a Savior, the Ultimate Dirt-remover!  Thus the need for a new covenant, a new arrangement between God and man... THE New Deal!)

-Imagine then how Paul's next words might feel to a self-respecting Jew: in Christ, through His blood, God ABOLISHED the law.  Really, He nullified it, this thing which was both the spark and the fuel on the fire of the enemy-hatred to begin with, the Law which made the Jews think they were even more special, cleaner than the all the rest.  Technically He fulfilled the Law in Christ, but in nullifying the enemy-hatred, God has made the two groups - Jews and Gentiles - into one new people.  He has created a new ‘man’ if you will, a spiritual body, an entirely new group of people where there is no difference between Jew and Goy, none whatsoever at least in so far as it relates to relating to God.  Not all good news to the Jews, this?  Definitely a hard pill for many of them to swallow, at least on a religious and social level.  But to the nations?  Cause for celebration!  And it really should be that for the Jews as well.  Because we are talking about a way for all the nations to finally glorify the God of Abraham.  That, and peace, peace on earth (Luke 2.14), Shalom, the peace in which all men aspire to rest, a real and enduring peace and place of total well-being, both between God and man (all people) as well as between people, individuals, tribes, nations - beginning right here.  Peace between Jews and Gentiles.  No more reason to hate each other, look down on each other, distrust each other.  Now Paul does an excellent job elsewhere in Scripture of unpacking how God has not entirely nullified His special relationship with Israel, but that is for another day.  For now, we’re focusing on peace...

Ephesians 2:14 - Better than Coke

"For He Himself is the peace of us, the [One} having made the both one and the middle wall of the fence having removed, the enemy-hatred in His flesh..."

-Yes, it’s about two groups being brought together and made one.  And the one group only existed as a group because they were the ones excluded from God’s family, whereas now they are no longer excluded.  Collectively those referred to by the Jews as ‘Goyim’ were many peoples, but they had one thing in common - God did not choose any of them.  They had many languages, many customs, many beliefs, but no knowledge of God and no hope.  God initially made the nations at the Tower of Babel, confusing the languages and scattering the peoples throughout the earth from there.  Then as part of the first covenant, God chose the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be His people, a new nation, His nation (goy) - one that would bless (with a distinct call to do so in fact) all the other nations/goyim (Genesis 12.2-3, 18.8, 22.18, 26.4), one that would help the world know what God was truly like (Psalm 67.4-7).  What happened instead is that the relationships between Jews and non-Jews went straight downhill.  Things became politicized, militarized, adversarial.  Self-righteousness reared its ugly head, and the Hebrew word for nations - Goyim - came to refer to all non-Jews in a derogatory sense.  Jews looked down upon the Goyim, disrespected them, saw themselves as being better since they were supposedly so in God’s eyes.  Standards of ethical treatment did not always even apply towards Goyim.  Contrary to the edict to bless the nations, the prevailing perspective came to be such that self-respecting Jews were not actually supposed to have any dealings with Goyim - never go to their homes, never eat with them, walk around their region if you can, and never associate with them.  And gentiles returned the favor of mistrust and mistreatment with regularity.  This is one practical reason why Jesus was ultimately rejected by the Jews as Messiah - the Jews wanted a zionist Messiah who would deliver them from subservience to the dirty rotten Goyim, one who would defeat the Gentiles and kick them out of the promised land God had only given to His chosen people.  They wanted Jesus to clean out their country, clean out the Gentile riff raff, not clean out their temple.  They would never embrace a Messiah who would make peace with the Goyim, much less let Himself be killed by them or bring them wholesale into the fold.

-And so into this racially-charged divide plunged Almighty God, the consummate Peace-maker forging an unlikely peace between two parties who had come to hate each other going back hundreds of years.  God sent an emissary, an Ambassador of peace - His only Son, to blow up the barrier and create peace where there was hatred and hostility.  Christ removed the barrier separating the two.  That’s what He does - He removes barriers of separation.  Barriers of personality, of economic disparity, of racial diversity, of familial disharmony.  Remember that peace is not simply absence of war or conflict.  We must harken back to the Jewish concept of shalom.  It is overall well-being and harmony, completeness.  Peace on earth - announced by angels at His birth (Luke 2.14), that is why He came in the first place.  World peace, peace and harmony - an elusive Shangri-La, this.  Many seek it, some promise it (the old Coke jingle would have us believe that Coca Cola could somehow produce it), but only Jesus actually delivers.   In Christ, in the Prince of peace Himself, both groups, all the peoples of the earth will be finally brought together in real and deep abiding shalom towards one another as well as towards their Creator.

Ephesians 2:13 - The price of admission

"But now in Christ Jesus you [all] the [ones] formerly being far came to be near in the blood of Christ.’ 

-But now...  Complete transposition.  We were far, now we are near.  We had no hope.  No God.  We were strangers to the promises of God, excluded, having no place among God’s people whatsoever.  But now...all that has changed.  Now we have hope, we have God, we have His tremendous promises, and now we are members, we belong to His people, no longer excluded.  We are near, and we are in - and it is all because of Jesus Christ.  We are in the club, so to speak, and the price to join, the membership fee if you will, was paid by Him.  The fee was not waived.  He paid it - in blood.  His blood which He shed on the Cross made all the difference.

-Yes, blood.  This was the price of admission.  Blood is the life of all flesh (Genesis 9.4), and it is the only way to atone for sin (Leviticus 17.11, Hebrews 9.22).  Where you have transgression against deity, there must of necessity be some payment for that to make amends - assuming that deity is holy and just and omnipotent.  Which of course in this case He is.  But what we see in Scripture is that from early on, God began showing the world how HE was going to be the One to make this atonement.  HE was the One Who killed one of the animals He created (shedding that blood in effect) in order to make suitable clothes for Adam and Eve after THEY transgressed against HIM (Genesis 3.21).  Then it was the blood of the spotless lamb by which the destroyer passed over (Exodus 12.13), it was the blood of a bull and a goat which would temporarily and imperfectly atone for the sins of the high priest and all Israel (Leviticus 16.11-19).  These rituals, though imperfect (Hebrews 10.4), were to be repeated every year in perpetuity in order to prepare God’s people (and the nations really) to embrace the Messiah HE would eventually send to make the perfect once-and-for-all atonement for the sins of the world (cf 1Peter 1.19, Colossians 1.20, Romans 3.25).  O the blood, the o-so-precious flood, crimson flow, makes me white as snow.  Nothing.  Nothing else, nothing but the blood of Jesus could accomplish and secure my rescue.  However - it turns out that this passage is not as much about me personally - it’s about the integration of two groups of people into one.  Paul continues on this in the next verse...

Ephesians 2:11-12 - The way we were (redux)

"Therefore, you [all] be remembering that formerly you [all], the nations in flesh, the [ones] being called uncircumcision by the [ones] being called circumcision, in flesh [being] hand-made...that you [all] were being at that time without Christ, having been alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and godless in the world.’’

-A command to remember something means we are apt to forget it, when keeping that something in mind will actually help us.  Here Paul tells (us) Gentiles to keep in mind that at one time we were not part of God’s chosen people, not part of His family.  The way we were.  Remembering the way we were helps us to appreciate where we are, as well as what has been accomplished in order to bring us to this different way-better place, helps us to be grateful for and even humbled by the work which was done as well as who did it.  The way we were - the point of that old song is that the hard stuff tends to fade from our memories, we forget the bad and the ugly or gloss over it, but when we do we lose the understanding of how hard or bad off things really were.  And to be sure, we were without Christ, far from the life of God, no access to Him whatsoever.  In fact we had no real god and had no real hope.  We perhaps lived under a delusion of hope, possibly devoted ourselves to some false idol, but it was emptiness.  We were aliens, strangers, completely shut off and shut out from the blessings and promises which God gave to His people.

-It’s interesting to note how Paul here shines a light on the historical distinction between Gentiles and Jews.  For hundreds of years, only one group of people enjoyed any kind of a real relationship with the one true God, and it was marked by the rite of circumcision, the physical cutting off of the foreskin of every male 8 days after their birth.  Only the Jewish nation did this as part of demonstrating that they were God’s people, a part of His family.  At the time Paul wrote this, some of the distinction still remained in that circumcised Jews were still calling the other nations ‘uncircumcised’, but the distiinction had been rendered surface only.  Physical circumcision was now something which man did with his own hands, relevant only to the ones who prided themselves on having been circumcised.

-One might ask if a delusion of hope, a false hope, might actually be a better or more preferrable state than having no hope.  Being hopeless.  Paul says we had no hope.  For many people, up to their necks in brokenness, life is indeed hopeless.  They feel hopeless.  But I think false hope is a far worse state, because you are apt to be less (or totally) unaware of your neediness.  You may have no clue as to the desperate nature of your situation.  When I am hopeless I am far more likely to reach out for help, driven out of desperation to find a remedy.  Which is exactly what Christ did...

Ephesians 2:10 - Greetings, Good Work-lings!

"For we are what He made, created in Christ Jesus upon good works which God prepared before, in order that in them we should walk.’

-Those who thus trust in Christ and follow Him are created FOR good works, not BY good works.  God Himself prepared these good works before we ever heard of Christ, and He intends for His people to be living a life characterized by these good deeds, yet they are not means of grace but rather by-products of it.  But wait,  there’s more...

-The Greek word here for ‘workmanship’ is the noun form of the verb ‘to make/do’ (poieo).  There multiple nouns in the Greek actually.  There is the one who is doing the making - that english word is ‘maker’ (poietes).  And then there is the thing they are making (poiema) - but we have no English noun for this, at least not one which derives directly from the verb.  We have ‘to do/doer/deed’, but not a noun for what is made (so, a doer does a deed, but a maker makes a ____?).  But in this case, those who believe are clearly having been made by God Himself - we are "what He made" - twice, in fact!  Those who believe are His creation (where incidentally English does have all three words - create/creator/creation-creature).  They are what they are because of what God did - again, not because of anything they did.

-Note also that while most English translations use the phrase "created UNTO good works" or "FOR good works", that is not what it says in the Greek.  One would expect a different preposition (the Greek word eis) for that.  But the word Paul uses is epi - meaning "above" or "upon".  When refering to creation, it means the place where the Creator creates His creation, where He intends it to live.  God created man upon the earth (Isaiah 45.12) - as His creatures we were meant to live on, to inhabit the earth. (the very first command God ever gave to man speaks to this - Genesis 1.28).  But now in this instance, God has (re)created those who believe in Christ UPON good works, intending for His people to live ON good works, to inhabit them, to live into them and fill them up, which is exactly what Paul says in the next phrase - "in order that we should walk in them".  The meaning is essentially the same, but the word picture is certainly more nuanced than what we get in the English.  It is not just what we do, it is who we are.  It is our life.  It is as if God pre-formed this planet named Good Works, and He breathed the breath of spiritual life (His Spirit) into so much spiritual dust and formed those who believe in Christ Jesus to live on planet Good Works.  We are now Good Work-lings.  Good works are our life, they are where we live, we live into them, inhabit them, and fill them up.  It is as much about identity as it is about function, if not moreso.  And again, good works are not any kind of rocket ship that takes us to the planet - they are the skin in which we live having now been born upon that world.  They are not the means to the destination - they ARE the destination.  Or part of it, at least...

Ephesians 2:9 - The way back

"...[it is] not out of works, in order that not anyone should boast."

-Man’s default posture in relation to deity is one of works, trying to curry favor with whatever god we believe we have to do by whatever means we believe to be necessary.  Atheists and skeptics generally excepted, of course.  But the native instinct of fallen man is to try to work his way back to paradise.  For all his hiding and hurling, he wants to get back to the garden, and he assumes it is on him.  Generally be a nice person, throw in some good deeds for favor, and (hopefully) you’re good to go.  For those who are convinced that there is some greater being who has at least some level of authority over the things that concern them, the way to relate to said being is by trying to do whatever good works are perceived to be required in order to cultivate right standing in their eyes or otherwise appease them.  Whatever it takes to make them happy.  Or at least to not make them angry.  But it's all on me.

-One inevitable byproduct of such a system is the tendency for man to ‘broaden his phylacteries.’  In other words, to show off to my fellow man how successfully I am performing the prescribed good works within whatever religious system I happen to be operating.  Fallen man in his insecurity desperately wants to feel better about himself in relation to deity as well as compared to his fellow man.  No doubt there is no end to the ways we might invent to cast ourselves in a better light, to show off our progress and relative superiority to those around us.

-None of this in true Christianity, however.  It’s all out the window (or is supposed to be).  Turns out there is not one good deed we can do, not a single thing we could ever do to help effect any rescue from the eternal consequences of our sins or otherwise do anything to improve our standing in the eyes of our Creator.  He is the One True God, and He is holy beyond compare or comprehension.  Totally perfect in every sense, and His standard is perfection.  You are perfect, or you fall short - there is no middle ground, no degrees of separation or some sliding scale of spiritual progress.  A level playing field, this.  And it is readily apparent that there is not one work (or any combined amount of works) that anyone could ever do to attain the moral perfection required to get back to paradise.  The way back is through the foolish-looking narrow door, simply to believe - in Jesus.  He is the Way, the only Way.  For those who do make it - based solely on the gracious gift of God through Christ - once there, there will be no boasting, no bragging about what he did or she did to get there.  No, all who make it back to paradise will be fully aware that they had nothing to do with it.  All they did was believe, and theirs is a completely unrepayable debt of gratitude.  Unending celebration, yes, but boasting - no way.

Ephesians 2:8 - Hold out your hand...

"For by the grace you[all] are having been saved through faith.  And this not out of you, [it is] the gift of God, not out of works, in order that someone should not boast."

-I was dead.  I was a child of wrath, stuck in my sins, separated from the life of God and disobeying Him at every turn, unable to do what He wanted or please Him in any way whatsoever.  AND I was hurtling towards destruction as a result, lost for all eternity apart from my Creator, forever separated from all glory and goodness and beauty and light.  But God (that blessed but!) - He stepped in and saved me.  He rescued me... from me.  He made me alive with Christ and raised me up and seated me with Christ in glory, one day soon to be there forever.  No more dying or death, and no more living a life unable to bring God pleasure.  Just the opposite in fact!  And all this, every last bit, is by His grace.  Undeserved favor.  I have done not one thing, absolutely nothing to deserve to be saved, not in the least.  But I have done one thing, the one thing which is actually the key that unlocks the whole heavenly treasury and opens the floodgates of glory, the one thing which Scripture tells us is absolutely necessary in order to bring God pleasure - faith (Hebrews 11.6).  Belief.  Trust in the Lord, trusting that He is and that what He says is true, trusting that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, and specifically trusting and believing in the One He sent to pay the penalty for my many many sins, to be the Savior of the world.  By this faith in Jesus death on the cross I have been saved and rescued from eternal death!

-This salvation, this divine rescue from death and destruction - it’s a gift, a free gift straight from the hand of almighty God.  It’s the ultimate Christmas present from the original Author of Christmas Himself.  And as is true with all real gifts, it is totally free.  It is not out of us, and it is not out of works.  There is not a single thing we have to do or even can do to buy it or earn it (much less deserve it) in any way.  No need to pay it back ever, nor could we - spiritual beggers we, spiritually bankrupt in every way.  We bring absolutely nothing to the table.  Unlovable even, and yet He loved us and provided us with the one thing we needed more than anything else.  Ours is simply to receive it, to hold out our hands of faith, and let God pour out and drench us with life, His life, eternal life, all over us, over our past, our present, our future, completely and constantly covered over with boundless grace and mercy and love and acceptance and forgiveness and blessing and glory.  From the glorious One Who is breathtakingly good and Who makes all things VERY good - we get not a good gift, no, way better than good, the best gift.  Ever.  And it’s free.  Will you believe?  Will you hold out your hand and receive it?  Will you trust in Jesus?