Ephesians 1:4 - Everlasting splendours

"...inasmuch as He chose us in Him before [the] foundation of [the] world to be us holy and blameless before Him..."

-God chose us.  Think about that.  If you are in Christ, that means that God chose you.  Let’s just camp out here for a moment.  Let that truth sink in.  He wasn’t coerced into choosing you.  He wasn’t obligated.  He didn’t have to choose you.  He wanted to.  He wanted to choose you.  He deliberately chose you.  You.  He wanted you.  To be with Him.  To be a part of His forever family.  It wasn’t because of what you’ve done or haven’t done, or who your parents are, or where you went to school, or how you look, or how smart you are, or how big and strong you are.  He simply wanted you.  He is so for you.  No more pity parties.  No more looking down on yourself.  No more of this negative self-talk.  No more talking bad about this one He chose.  God wants you, and He always has.

-Because note when it was that He chose you.  This will blow your mind.  Before you had breathed a breath or cried a tear or filled a diaper or done anything even remotely noteworthy, before you ever made your appearance on planet Earth, before you were conceived even, long before that, before the world was made, He chose you (Psalm 139.16).  He has always wanted you, always loved you, always liked you a whole lot, and He always will.  It does not depend in the least little bit on what you say or do or don’t do.  He has always wanted you.

-He chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless.  Chew on that for a minute.  Holy. That which is worthy of worship, before which one would stand in awe, which is not to be profaned, containing not one bit of moral spot or stain or imperfection, thus also blameless.  Completely without blame.  There is nothing that anyone can point out in your life, no wrongdoing or misstep or unwholesome word or impure thought even.  Nothing.  Thoroughly unblemished.  This side of heaven it is aspirational (1Pet 1.15), a state yet-to-be fully realized and yet gradually being manifested in me as I walk in step with God’s Spirit Who lives in me.  And one day, when fully revealed in glory, will be something so inconceivably awesome that it would potentially inspire worship.  To quote C.S. Lewis: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations... There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”  To be sure, God has chosen us to be an everlasting splendour... 

-And this is before Him.  In His presence, face-to-face, no pretense or veneer of religiosity, fully and finally naked and unashamed, the way we were and were always meant to be.  We will stand before our Master and Maker and He will look at us and He will say, ‘Well done! Rejoice and celebrate with Me, now and forever!’  Yes, what a day that will be, when the pure and perfect thrice-holy God welcomes us into His sacred presence and embraces us with a huge daddy-hug which only our Abba-Father in heaven can give only to those He has washed whiter-than-snow, forever perfect and spotless in His sight.  No longer and never again any need for hiding or covering up or pretending or apologizing.  No fig leaves, and no fear.  Only basking in the warmth and glow of His pure holy light, His amazing grace and everlasting love and acceptance.  We will indeed stand before Him and see Him face-to-face as He really is - and we will be like Him, exactly as He always designed us to be.  Forever holy and blameless.  Everlasting splendour.  Mind. Blown.

Ephesians 1:3 - All eyes on Him

"Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the [One] having blessed us in every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ..."

-Yes, God, our God, blesses us (Psalms 67.6-7).  This is what He does.  He cannot help Himself in fact.  From the very beginning, He began blessing His creation - Genesis 1.22, 1.28, 2.3, 5.2, 9.1, 12.2-3.  And so we glimpse the dance of creation.  God, the God Who blesses, blesses His people, who bless Him in return and bless others.  He asks us to the dance, dresses us up, takes the lead, and when we get in step with Him two things happen.  We get caught up and lose ourselves in the rapturous joy of the dance, returning joyous worship to Him.  And then all eyes are on Him, the blessing, blessed God.  

-There are two words in the Greek (as well as Hebrew) which are translated by the same English word, bless.  eulogétos, which corresponds to the Hebrew word, barakh, and then makarios, which is equivalent to the Hebrew asher.  The latter means happy, a state of “blessedness” for having received or done or not done something - but it is not in play here.  The former, when directed towards man, means to endue with (or invoke) power for abundant and effective living, for success, prosperity, fruitfulness, longevity, etc (cf Genesis 24.60, 27.27-29, 31.55 49.28), with God being the ultimate source of any and all blessing.  It is commonly paired with the antithetical curse (Genesis 12.3, 27.12; Numbers 22.6, 24.9; Deuteronomy 11.26, 30.1, 30.19; Psalms 37.22, 62.4, 109.28 Proverbs 3.33; Jeremiah 20.14; Zechariah 8.13; Malachi 2.2; Luke 6.28; Romans 12.14; James 3.9 - a person or land or nation thus cursed would be deprived of the power or resources needed for success).  But when people direct blessing towards the Lord, clearly we are not adding to His power.  The word becomes a formalized means of expressing thanks and praise to the One Who has blessed and given out of His abundance.  The actual concrete meaning of the word in Hebrew is to kneel (Genesis 24.11), which would be the common posture of someone who is either receiving a blessing from God (or a superior), or perhaps returning a blessing to Him.

-And so we arrive at a better understanding of this two directional blessing Paul gives us here.  We are blessing God, returning thanks and praise to Him, this One Who has given us out of His abundance everything we might ever need for spiritual success, all the spiritual resources and power necessary in order to be fruitful and multiply our faith, in order to love Him with all our heart and soul and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And because this transaction takes place in the heavenlies, we are talking about resources which generally we cannot physically touch or feel and which may in fact not be confined to this time or space.  It encompasses something like prayer, in which we can participate in seeing God’s power unleashed in both the present and the future and in places where we are unable to travel - whether the other side of the world or the other side of the street and into people’s hearts.  But much more than that - we cannot name one single blessing, one single necessary spiritual resource that God has withheld from any one of His people.  He has given us every single one of them.  That right there is enough to put us on shouting ground.  But really, how is it possible to even begin to wrap our arms around that?  Thus we get our first glimpse of the mind-blowing nature of our relationship with God that Paul unpacks in this letter.  Get ready...

Ephesians 1:2 - Out of my way

"Grace to you and peace from God [the] father of us and [the] Lord Jesus Christ."

-Paul greets the Ephesian believers with wishes for both grace - God’s amazing undeserved favor apart from which nothing is possible - and peace, which would be the Jewish shalom, that all-encompassing experience of God’s goodness in one’s life, body and soul.  And he rightly attributes both to both God the Father and to God the Son, Jesus Christ, Who he refers to as Lord, or Kyrios, one having power, might, ownership, control of people and things.  See note on Phil 1.2 for thoughts on how we all desperately need grace and are caught up in a lifelong search for peace.

-Grace is in fact something that we all need to extend more both to others as well as to ourselves.  We can be so demanding, so hard on ourselves and hard on others, on our kids, on our leaders, on those who mess up or who disappoint us or hurt us.  We strain out specks and gnats, forgetting the log in our own eye and seeming to forget that most times folks who disappoint us are not doing it on purpose.  They are not out to get us personally but rather they are simply fellow fallen pilgrims, trying to make their way and navigate the brokenness of life, struggling with their own limitations and failings.  And even if and when they may be out to get us, we have a divine calling to extend them grace by forgiving them and giving them the other cheek.  Yes even to that jerk of a driver who pulled out in front of me or rode up on my bumper.  Furthermore we have some of those very same limitations and failings - which is why we also disappoint ourselves.  But it is also why we need to live with ourselves and those around us with grace and understanding.  We need to realize that nobody is perfect, that we all make mistakes.  We all mess up.  And that’s ok.  We need to learn to tell ourselves and others that that’s ok.  Which is grace in a nutshell.  God as the fountainhead of all grace is the Ultimate Grace-dispenser.  He has a limitless supply of ‘it’s-ok’.  This is the fundamental message of the New Testament, that God does not give us what we deserve but rather shows us favor which we in no way deserve.  And if we have indeed received of this amazing grace from the Lord, surely we can be conduits of that grace to those around us.  Surely we can give others glimpses of God’s favor and unconditional love.  If grace is God going way out of His way to do us a favor, then that is another way we can think of practically showing it to others - go out of your way to do someone a favor today.  And they don’t owe you one in return.  Grace to them, and grace to you today...

-Peace.  Shalom.  That sense of well-being, of wholeness.  That place of rest, of resting from our work and struggle and pain, where we are basking in the breathtaking goodness of God, where it’s all good.  We all want to be there.  We all wish we could get there and just push the pause button.  Peace to you...

Ephesians 1:1 - What does God want, indeed...

"Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus through [the] want of God, to the holy ones the [ones] being in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus..."

-What does God want - the ultimate question of questions, this.  God wanted Paul to be an apostle, a sent-out one, sent out to spread the Good News among the Gentiles, the ethné, the nations.  It was not at all a question of what Paul wanted.  God wanted Paul to go out, and so he went out.  It is so easy just to blast off into our days and lives without ever stopping to ask the question, ‘What do you want, Lord?  What do you want to say to me right now?  What do you want me to do today?’  And then we need to actually pause, and listen...

-Destination: Ephesus.  At least that’s what it says - some expositors have called this into question, as nowhere in this letter does Paul mention ANY believers by name, as he was wont to do in his letters, nor does he even mention his having been to Ephesus, which is remarkable in that Paul had spent as much time in this strategic port city as any place he ministered, something approaching three years by most reckonings (brief visit in Acts 18.19-21 after his first visit to greece, a 3-month visit in Acts 19.1 & Acts 19.8 which extended to two years Acts 19.10 with a possible additional ‘while’ in Acts 19.21-2, then one last farewell visit on his way back to Jerusalem where he would be finally arrested before being sent to Rome.  In that farewell we glimpse the closeness of the relationship Paul had with the Ephesian church, Acts 20.16-17, 20.36-38).  Paul is certainly in prison at the time of writing, cf Ephesians 3.1, 3.13, probably in Rome - most affirm that Paul’s roman imprisonment where he enjoyed a modest level of freedom as well as opportunity to preach fits nicely with Paul’s prayer request in this letter for boldness while in prison, Ephesians 6.19-20.  But a few of the earliest manuscripts do not contain the phrase ‘in Ephesus’.  Some suggest that Tychicus (an Ephesian who accompanied the slave Onesimus back to his owner Philemon along with the letter from Paul which bears his name as well as the letter to the Colossians) carried this letter to be circulated among predominantly Gentile assemblies located along the main roman road from Ephesus to Colossae, churches which Paul had not founded or even visited (Ephesians 1.15, 2.11, 3.1-3).  And since that road started in Ephesus, that could explain how this letter came to be associated with that great city, but if the letter was always intended as more of a circular letter it thus would not contain any of the personal pleasantries which Paul usually includes in his letters.  one of the cities on that road to Colossae was Laodicea - some think this could actually be the letter to Laodicea mentioned in Colossians 4.16.

-Now, Paul is writing not to the Baptists or to the Catholics or to the Pentecostals in Ephesus.  No oxymoronic divisions in the body of Christ here.  There is only one body, one assembly, one church.  All who are in Christ and thus made holy, set apart to celebrate and show off God’s breathtaking goodness, they all belong to the same family.  Paul (should) need only write one letter to those who follow Christ in any locale, and of course all those who follow Christ in Ephesus are being addressed by Paul in this letter.

-And he calls them faithful.  Loyal, constant, steadfast.  Ones you can trust and count on.  Faithfulness, never to be underestimated, yet so often in such short supply.  So easy it is to succumb to temptation, to vacillate with the vagaries of health and weather and economics, to waffle based on how I feel or what I had for dinner or what the preacher said or did or didn’t do.  In my flesh, in my own stabs at faithfulness I find that I am in fact rather weak and fickle, too easily offended or distracted or defeated, a creature of whim and caprice, here today and hopefully tomorrow, but we’ll have to see how I feel.  

-Faithfulness is in fact a fruit of the Spirit, a divine attribute which God possesses to an infinite degree and which He Himself desires to reproduce in my life in superabundance, a superntural quality which shows off in so many ways the amazing goodness of the One Who Himself is constantly and forever faithful.  Who cannot readily attest to the wondrous blessing that is a faithful friend, a faithful son or daughter, a faithful spouse, a faithful parent, a faithful colleague or employee, a faithful minister, a faithful servant?  These are the unsung heroes, rarely if ever the lead story or trending topics on twitter.  But who has not felt the sting of betrayal and disappointment of one who was unfaithful?  Sad indeed that these instead wind up making the headlines.  We expect faithfulness, and yet take it so for granted and rarely hear about it.  Never underestimate the precious worth of faithfulness, whose fountainhead is God, the Faithful God (Deuteronomy 7.9).

Colossians 4:18 - A (very) good bye...

"The greeting [is] my own hand of Paul.  Remember the bonds of me.  The grace [be] with you."

-For some of Paul’s letters, including this one, he specifically states that he is writing himself (the closing greetings here and in Galatians 6.11, 1Corinthians 16.21, 2Thessalonians 3.17, and then possibly the whole letter to Philemon? Philemo 19), presumably because it was customary to use what is called an amanuensis, a stenographer of sorts (cf Romans 16.22).  Some letters make no mention of either: Philippians, Ephesians, 2Corinthians, 1Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy and Titus, and really all the other NT epistles.  But it could be particularly helpful for an individually addressed assembly like this one that only knew Paul by reputation but not personally to have some kind of assurance that he was in fact the one behind the letter.  Or perhaps on certain occasions Paul was inspired to (or perhaps not otherwise prevented from) taking the pen and signing the letter with his own hand.

-Nevertheless, in this closing greeting he again asks folks to pray for him, specifically to remember his bonds (cf Hebrews 13.3).  Long days in a prison cell with very little if anything to do, limited opportunities for ministry perhaps, few if any visitors (altho there were six guys with him somehow in this instance) - whether he is feeling forgotten or just wanted to emphasize that the need of the hour was for prayer, he requests this of them a second time.  Life moves so fast, and the tyranny of the urgent incessantly beckons our attention.  Truth is, the impact of brokenness often continues well beyond the initial onset - matters of health, loss of a loved one, crises affecting others which recede all too quickly from the front page of the news and of our minds.  No doubt we would do well to cultivate a habit of continually and faithfully reloading the burdens borne by others in our hearts and prayers...

-And finally he closes with his customary albeit shortened benediction (short form used here is found in only two other of his letters - 1Timothy 6.21 and 2Timothy 4.22), a wish for ‘the’ grace, for these hearers to experience and continue in the surpassing riches of God’s divine freely-bestowed undeserved favor.  We are called and believe and are saved by God’s grace, we live under and stand in His grace, we continue by grace, we conduct ourselves in grace, all that we need for every good deed, all that we are is by the grace of God.  We don't deserve it.  We can't earn more of it.  Yet we are lost without it.  What better way to say goodbye to those you love than to wish them a continued and deeper experience of God's favor...?

Colossians 4:17 - Focus! (No dilly-dally)

"Also say to Archippus, 'Be seeing the ministry which you received in [the] Lord, in order that it you may be fulfilling.'"

-One last personal exhortation from Paul to a man named Archippus.  Clearly a member of this assembly, he was associated with Philemon (Philemon 2 - some have suggested that Archippus could have been the son of Philemon and Aphia).  But he was also connected to Paul in some way, as Paul calls him his fellow soldier.  Epaphroditus (Philippians 2.25) is the only other ever to bear this title, possibly Timothy (2Timothy 2.3), so Paul must have had a very high opinion of Archippus.  Regardless, Archippus had been given a ministry ‘in the Lord’, and he needed to watch out and pay attention to it so that he could fulfill it.  A soldier was one who had been given a specific mission, a strategy for achieving some kind of victory, typically in defense of one’s own land or of conquering another.  Archippus for his part likely had been charged by God (along with Paul) with either advancing the kingdom of God by conquering souls with the Gospel or with defending the kingdom from internal heresy and/or external attack.  The battleground was most likely this assembly in Colossae, this one that met in Philemon’s home, as well as the surrounding community.  Perhaps he struggled with fear or doubt or distraction of some form?  He wouldn’t be the first, nor would he be the last to do so.

-And really, all those who follow Christ have been given a specific mission, some kind of a ministry, one which we are each expected fulfill (cf Matthew 25.14-29; Ephesians 4.11-13; 1Corinthians 3.10-15, 12.7).  We each have a race to run and finish and win (1Corinthians 9.24, Hebrews 12.1, 2Timothy 4.7).  In a race, runners are focused on exactly that - run, finish, win.  When the gun goes off, I run.  No detours, no stopping (unless doing so might somehow help me keep going), no dilly-dally.  There is no time for anything else.  It is not time to do anything else.  'Cept run.  Do you and I know that we are in a race?  Do we even know what it is?  Do we know what God has given us to do?  And are we aware that our faithful best efforts to run our own individual races contribute directly to how the team does?  Our goal, our calling is both a solo and a team victory.  So we must focus.  Focus on the finish.  Focus on the race, one foot in front of the other, every day another step forward towards the goal, the prize which awaits us.  Focus on the One Who broke the tape first and is waiting for us there at the finish line.  May God give us the grace each and every day to exert ourselves with every last ounce of effort towards breaking the tape where we can collapse into the arms of this One Who went before us and hear Him say, ‘Well done! Great race!’

Colossians 4:16 - The lost art of "The Reading"

"And when the letter should be read with you [all], do in order that also in the assembly of Laodiceans it should be read, and the [one] out of Laodicea in order that also you should read."

-In some circles a lost art, this - "the reading".  Paul told the young pastor Timothy to be sure to be paying attention to the public reading of the Word of God (1Timothy 4.13), which was a customary part of Jewish worship (cf Luke 4.16; Acts 13.15).  Granted, for most this would have been their only access to the Scriptures since most homes would not have had even one copy in them (much less virtually unlimited access via some futuristic global network of computers).  Additionally in those days the default medium for conveying God’s Word to people was most definitely oral (cf Matthew 13.20-23; Luke 8.21, 11.28; John 5.24, 8.43, 8.47; Acts 4.4, 13.44; Romans 10.14, 10.17; Galatians 3.2; 1Thessalonians 2.13; 2Timothy 4.17; Hebrews 2.1; James 1.22-25 - hence they were called oracles, Hebrews 5.11-12).  Still today, many of the worlds peoples are oral cultures, transmitting news and truth and tradition via word of mouth. 

In the west, the advent of the printing press and public education have done much to erode our dependency on oral forms of communication.  We are both literate and "literated",  literally inundated with literature, including what we now casually call the Bible - copies can be found in practically every home and hotel (in the US at least).  And because of this, God’s people today are no longer entirely dependent on strictly oral intake of that which is our spiritual milk and bread and meat (assuming we depend on any intake whatsoever).  Sadly, this is not entirely a good thing.  Paul knew the benefits of actually hearing God's Word - as a regular part of our corporate gatherings, "the reading" affirms Scripture for what it truly is (cf 2Timothy 3.16-17) - and since his letters not only conveyed the truths of God but were also the inspired Word of God (this one was at least - the letter to the church of the Laodiceans never made it into the canon and was lost), Paul insisted that these assemblies read both letters he had sent with Tychicus and Onesimus.

Colossians 4:15 - NOT a building!!!

"Greet the brothers in Laodicea and Nympha and the assembly according to her house."

-Most versions use the word 'church' here.  We do know of several ‘churches’ connected with Colossae.  Of course there is the one to which this letter is addressed.  There was one which gathered in Philemon’s home (cf Philemon 2) - which could have been one and the same.  There is the one in Laodicea to which Paul refers here.  Nympha had a church meeting in her house - it is unclear whether she is mentioned specifically by Paul as the one who in fact hosts the Laodicean believers, or if hers is a completely separate church.  There is also a nearby church in Hierapolis - these churches were in close proximity to one another and as best we can tell were all planted by the same person (Epaphras, as has already been noted, cf Colossians 4.13).

-But the Biblical idea of church has nothing to do with a building.  When we use the word ‘church’ today we think of what?  A building.  So much bricks and mortar and steel.  A cross and a steeple. Open the doors and you see all the people, right?  But on a Sunday morning, right?  Maybe a clever sign out front.  Classrooms and an office and occasionally-gaudy-carpet.  We talk about 'going to church', and we think about this structure where some kind of ritualized meeting takes place once a week.  We think of a meeting in that building with its forms and its message and how we feel about all that, whether or not we like it or 'get something out of it'.  But ‘church’ in the Greek means something entirely different.  The word is ekklesia, and it means ‘that which is called out’.  It refers to the people of God who He has called out of the world and gathered (assembled) together to be His people who will convey His Good News and love and blessings back to the world.  Church is the people.  We don’t ‘go to church’ - we gather together with the church, we belong to a church, but the church consists of its people.  Paul is writing to people, to an assembly if you will, not to a building.  No buildings back then - God’s people gathered together in their homes, in their cities and towns wherever they were.  They were a people who knew each other and needed each other and were there for each other, they did meals and life together, they shared and celebrated and served and suffered together and labored together to spread the Good News about God’s love through Jesus to a world that desperately needed it (and still does).  They were devoting themselves to the Lord AND to one another.  They were... a family, brothers and sisters, a spiritual family where the ties could be even thicker than blood.  And to the extent that our experience of 'church' is devoid of these kinds of relationships, we are missing out big time on what God has provided for us.  And let us be perfectly clear on this point - if I am in Christ, there is a local assembly of Christ-followers that needs me, and I them.  We need each other.  We need each other in order to become all that God wants us to be, individually and corporately, a people who come together to help one another become more like Christ (cf Ephesians 4.16) and to celebrate and show off the breathtaking goodness of God with one another and with a dying world.  Our world, our community, our neighbors need us to be that people who need one another.  Let’s not settle for merely going to church - let’s be(come) the church, the assembly of people God has called us to be, that community of (un)common unity, the church in all its glory as God always intended.  (And believe it or not, we’re more likely to find it in a home than in a building...)