Ephesians 4:2 - The Road-less-travelled

"...with all low-mindedness and gentleness, with long-suffering, holding toward one another in love..."

-And so what does this worthy walk look like, this conduct which is in keeping with our lofty calling?  In the end, as we are about to see, it is all about how we relate to others in the Body, those walking beside us who have received the same call that we have, following the same Jesus we are on the road less travelled.

-It begins with humility, low-mindedness.  We are not better than anyone else who is following Jesus, not by our education or our intellect or our looks or wealth or whatever flavor of doctrine or practise we espouse.  In Christ, we have been given a level playing field, we are equals, and yet even still we do not relate as equals - we get on the road-less-travelled and go further and go low.  We do exactly what Jesus did and we empty ourselves, we let go of our rights and our status and we take the very form of a slave.  We become servants.  Others-first, others-better.  This one who sits across from me on Sunday morning - she is better.  I serve her.  That one who greets me with a smile each week, that one who lovingly teaches my child each Sunday morning, that one faithfully cleaning the bathroom stall for me every week, even this one who lives across from me and who goes to a different building than I do each week - these are all better.  Nobody lives like this, right?  But if you and I are following Jesus, then I am your humble servant.  And in fact it is with ALL humility we are to walk.  How much is that, one might ask?  More than enough, flowing out to those around me at all times, always.

-ALL gentleness as well.  Christ said, ‘blessed are the gentle (meek), for they will inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5.5).  One would assume on the contrary that the earth would go to those who don’t back down and are aggressive and dominant and assertive and strong in taking what they deserve and what is theirs (along with what is not).  But that is the wide path - taken by many - which leads to destruction.  No, ours is a different strength, it is strength under control.  It is strong enough not to fly off the handle in anger nor retaliate in kind when provoked or offended.  Not weak nor mousy or timid, this.  Like the One we follow Who was gentle to the core (Matthew 11.29) and not afraid in the least, gentleness is strong enough to turn the other cheek (Luke 6.29), to go the extra mile after being forced to go the first, to have someone take the coat off our back and then to give them our shirt as well.  It loves grace and mercy and hangs out with forgiveness and restoration and thus firmly allies itself with love.  And make no mistake, gentleness goes hand-in-hand with the low-mindedness.  Far less gentle are we when dealing with those we deem inferior.  Think about it - the gentleness I could readily conjure towards the president or the queen evaporates all-too-rapidly when I am dealing with my kids or my spouse or the hapless clerk in the store/restaurant or to the bumbling ‘servants’ (leaders) in the local church who have let me down and fed me up, those whose job I know I could do better.

-To this we add patience.  Long-suffering.  Willing (and able) to wait.  How long, how much?  Macro.  As long as we need to.  As long as it takes for God to do what He do.  Those things and people which let us down and aggravate us and offend us and make us wait and make us want to pull out our hair in anger or frustration - we wait.  Patiently, gently - strength under control, not flying off the handle.  We wait on the Lord.  We wait for Him to show up and do His thing.  Love is patient first and foremost, right (1Corinthians 13.4)?  The fruit of the Spirit is patience, right (Galatians 5.22)?  Here again we follow the One Who is the Supreme Example, perfectly patient, Who has always waited on us with such long-suffering patience and mercy and grace, enduring our weakness and waywardness and mistakes and manifold imperfections (2Peter 3.9).  All kinds of circumstances and people will conspire to try our patience, but here Paul is thinking primarily about the need to be patient with one another, with our fellow Christ-followers, those in our local assembly, the ones who will have more opportunity to try my patience simply because we are part of the same church.  I must wait on them with the same long-suffering the Lord shows to me each and every day.  Do I lash out, or leave, or do I love?  Of course there is but one option, the road less travelled...

-And so this long-suffering goes hand-in-hand with forebearance.  It is a holding towards, enduring and putting up with, a bearing with, as in difficult people or situations or words - Luke 9.41, Acts 18.14, 2Corinthians 11.19-20, Colossians 3.13, 2Thessalonians 1.4.  I hold on and hang in there.  Invariably when I belong to any institution which is comprised of imperfect people, I will be thrust face-to-face with people who are fallen, well-intentioned (mostly) yet nevertheless selfish and difficult (just like me).  They will try my patience and offend me and even wound me.  There will be decisions and habits which annoy and anger me.  And no, this is not what it is supposed to look like, but I’m not yet what I am supposed to look like either (precisely where some of that all-low-mindedness comes in handy).  But absent a quick-fix most likely my flesh will begin to pine for greener pastures, easier circumstances, an escape clause.  The old man is loathe to hang in there and wait.  Tragically, leaving has become the norm.  Far easier to leave than to hang in there, to go low, to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile, to love him who seems unloveable, to forgive what seems unforgiveable, to endure what seems unbearable.  If I don’t like it, I can leave.  Everyone’s doing it, right?  It is true in Christian marriages, people who promise before God and witnesses to love until death they do part, and yet they do part.  It is certainly true in the Church.  Who in their right mind would hang in there in a marriage or a church when they are unhappy?  Oh, how far we do fall, willing (yet unwitting?) accomplices of the thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy, stealing and destroying our love, our would-be-worthy walks which might otherwise make a lost world stand up and take notice.  The world doesn’t want to know about our leaving - that’s all too common for them already.  They will want to know how - and why - we hang in there and wait with a love that is uncommon, unheard of, so unnatural because it is in fact supernatural.  THIS is what it is supposed to look like.

Ephesians 4:1 - The Call

"Therefore, I am urging you, I the prisoner in [the] Lord, worthily to walk of the calling of which you [all] were called..."

-It’s all about our calling, a high calling.  How high?  We have been summoned by almighty God Himself, called into His family, into His very household, into an assembly consisting of gathered peoples out of every nation, Jews and Gentiles, and we/you all are being built into a holy temple, a dwelling of God in the Spirit, a place where He dwells and shows off His breathtaking goodness to and through His people.  This is what Paul was talking about before he got sidetracked in Chapter 3 (Ephesians 2.13-18, 2.21-22).  Our calling to salvation was not in isolation, it was not only about me and my fire insurance, about me-myself-and-I getting my sins forgiven.  Our calling was about a joining of peoples, the assembling together of the nations, about removing dividing walls and enmities and about creating a body, a holy temple of united worshippers who will be known by the love they have for one another, the body of Christ, brought together through the blood of Christ.  One group, one new man, one body, one Spirit.  Our calling is not simply out of the world and into heaven, it is into a new nation, a new family.  Brothers and sisters.  Compatriots.  Where peace reigns.  Love.  Forgiveness.  Reconciliation.  Tremendous sacrifices have been made in order to bring this about, by God Himself as well as by His servants like Paul who have endured extreme hardship and persecution and even martyrdom for the sake of this Body of Christ, this assembly of called-out-and-called-together ones which we call the Church.

-And there are multitudes still to be gathered into this assembly.  The stakes couldn’t be higher.  The cost has been incalcuable.  Because of this it is absolutely imperative that those who are now alive on the earth and who belong to this Body conduct themselves in a way that is in keeping with the call, upwards and outwards.  We are talking about both a holy household which does life together like a family and in doing so increases the knowledge and celebration of the breathtaking goodness of God, and we are also talking about an ongoing rescue mission, full-on all-in commitment to loving and serving and getting the Good News about Jesus to a lost world and to the lost souls around us who are stumbling headlong towards a huge spiritual cliff, a horrible and irreversible fate awaiting them if we fail to intervene with the Good News.

-And actually the first step here is to begin with manifesting God’s goodness within the body....

Ephesians 3:21 - The Story of His Glory

"...to Him [be] the glory in the assembly and in Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of the ages, amen."

-To Him be the glory.  Yes, amen, to God be the glory.  The great and ultimate Why of why’s, this.  This is Why Paul is praying for what he is praying.  This is Why Jesus did all that He did.  This is Why we the people, the Church, the gathered assembly of those who follow Jesus, do (or should be doing) all that we do.  For the glory of God, to show off and increase the celebration of His breathtaking GOODNESS, increasingly so to the end of time and beyond on into eternity.  It is the great all-encompassing Why of the universe, why the God of glory, the King of glory, chose to create it all in the first place, and this theme is repeated over and over throughout Scripture from beginning to end, permeating the entirety of what God has communicated to us in His Word.  The Bible has been rightly called, "The story of His glory."  Observe:

‘And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good’ (Genesis 1.31). ‘You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good’ (Genesis 50.20). ‘Show me Your glory. And He said, I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you’ (Exodus 33.18-19). ‘Indeed, as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord’ (Numbers 14.21). ‘Tell of His glory among the nations’ (1Chronicles 16.24). ‘Yours O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all’ (1Chronicles 29.11). ‘The heavens are telling of the glory of God’ (Psalm 19.1). ‘In His temple, everything says, “glory”’ (Psalm 29.9).  ‘May the whole earth be filled with His glory’ (Psalm 72.19).  ‘All the nations which You have made will come and worship before You, O Lord, and they will glorify Your Name’ (Psalm 86.9).  ‘Let the glory of the Lord endure forever; let the Lord be glad in His works’ (Psalm 104.31).  ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your Name give glory’ (Psalm 115.1).  ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory’ (Isaiah 6.3).  ‘The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together’ (Isaiah 40.5).  ‘I am the  Lord that is My Name; I will not give My glory to another’ (Isaiah 42.8).  ‘For My own sake, for My own sake I will act; for how can My Name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another’ (Isaiah 48.11).  ‘They will possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified’ (Isaiah 60.21).  ‘They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified’ (Isaiah 61.3).  ‘You led Your people, to make for Yourself a glorious Name’ (Isaiah 63.14).  ‘The time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they will come and see My glory’ (Isaiah 66.18), ‘For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the water covers the sea’ (Habakkuk 2.14). ‘Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven’ (Matthew 5.16). ‘Glory to God in the highest’ (Luke 2.14). ‘Father gloriy Your Name. Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again”’ (John 12.28). ‘Whatever you ask in My Name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son’ (John 14.13). ‘I have glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was’ (John 17.4). ‘Immediately an angel of the Lord struck Him because he did not give God the glory’ (Acts 12.23). ‘[They] exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures’ (Romans 1.23). ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3.23). ‘And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy’ (Romans 9.23). ‘For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. to Him be the glory forever. Amen’ (Romans 11.36). ‘You have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body’ (1Corinthians 6.20). ‘Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God’ (1Corinthians 10.31). ‘So that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God’ (2Corinthians 4.15). ‘Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Philippians 2.11). ‘Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen’ (1Timothy 1.17). ‘Equip you in every thing to do what He wants, working in that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to Whom be the glory forever and ever, amen’ (Hebrews 13.21). ‘So that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to Whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever, amen’ (1Peter 4.11). ‘Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and because of Your desire the existed and were created’ (Revelation 4.11).

Ephesians 3:20 - The stuff of miracles...

"But to the [One] being powerful beyond all to do, way far beyond what we are asking or thinking, according to the power energizing in us..."

-Yet another inconceivable reality here - the limitless power of almighty God.  Again, how much power are we talking about?  We touched on this in verse 16 - it is the very same mind-blowing inexhaustible power which created and sustains every blazing star (and all other matter for that matter) in the universe, which raised Jesus Christ out of the dead, always and forever limitless, never waning or tiring in the least.  Far beyond the capacity of our feeble efforts to approximate in the slightest, and way beyond the ability of our finite minds to even grasp, miracle of miracles it is constantly at work in and through the lives of those who believe, always at the ready for reproducing miracles upon miracles.  God’s unlimited power is what green lights wonderful impossibles in my life, including the ones for which Paul is praying here - for God’s people to be able to fully grasp His knowledge-surpassing love, and to be fully filled to overflowing with His infinite fullness.  Simply put, nothing is too difficult for God, not ever.  The primary impediment to His supernatural power working wonderful impossibles in and through me is my own unbelief.  Scripture tells us that Jesus was unable to do any miracles where the people were mired in unbelief (Matthew 13.58).  Ours should be the prayer of the desperate father - ‘help my unbelief’ (Mark 9.24).  Or that of Elisha for his servant - ‘open our eyes that we may see...’ (2Kings 6.17).  Yes, Lord.  And here’s why - what follows in the next verse is the Why of why’s...

Ephesians 3:19 - From inconceivable to uncontainable

"...so to know the love of Christ surpassing the knowledge, in order that you [all] should be filled up unto all the fulness of God."

-Here now we ascend into the rarified air of God’s breathtaking goodness, a place where finite fallen man can 1) know that which Paul says surpasses knowing, and thus 2) be filled will all the fullness of the infinite God Himself.  Inconceivable.  No, neither one is conceptually possible, and yet Paul is still praying this for these believers.

-Having begun with a foundation of love and proceeding to being able to somehow apprehend the immensity of God’s everlasting love for us, we now are brought to the point of actually knowing what is beyond knowing, the love of Christ, knowing just how much He loves us, arms stretched wide, nailed to the cross, embracing an entire world of lost souls.  Not merely knowing facts about love or some textbook definition of it - we’re talking about internal, intimate first-hand experience, an internal comprehension of that which is beyond comprehending.  And it’s not simply knowing that God is love or that He loves us when we’re good and do the things we supposedly should, but He has always and will always love us, even when we are bad, when we lie and cheat and steal, when we are unloving and unkind and impatient, when we love other people and other things more than Him, even when we were His enemies and objects of wrath - I know that I know that I know that He loves me, always has, always will, loving us with an immeasurable uncontainable everlasting love.  He made us, He designed us - to live forever with Him in glorious breathtaking goodness.  And now He woos us with the same love and care and concern that any artist would have for one of their priceless designs.  Love like this is the ultimate motivator.  It grips and compels us, drawing us upward to our eternal home and spurring us forward to live for eternity in the ephemeral now.

-But it is somehow being able to grasp the enormity of this love of Christ which enables us to be finally and fully filled up to all the fullness of God.  An awesome byproduct of this is that He is then what spills out.  What fills me not only controls me, but it is what spills out of me.  If I am filled with anger, anger controls me and then spills out of me.  Uncontainable.  But consider what Paul says here - to be filled unto all the fullness of God.  Here again we have something which is conceptually impossible.  You cannot fill a finite space - me - with an infinite.  And yet this is precisely what Paul has in mind.  So what we wind up with is a life literally bursting at the seams with the divine, uncontainable, inexplicable, irrepressible, unrestrained and unleashed on an unsuspecting world in and through said life - could be any one of us, and should be, if Christ actually does dwell therein.

Ephesians 3:18 - 4-Dimensional Breathtaking Goodness

"...in order that you [all] should be fully enabled to grasp with all the holy ones what [is] the breadth and length and height and depth..."

-How wide?  How long?  How high?  How deep is His love for me?  Look to the left, look to the right, to the east towards the rising sun, to the west where it sets in all its glory, on either side as far as the eye can see and what do you see?  Definitely not my sins - those are gone, removed forever as far as the east is from the west.  No - I see love.  To the horizon and beyond as far as the eye can see in every direction.  Amazing, magnificent, bountiful, overflowing love.  Look ahead, far beyond the limits of my vision, and look back, both in space and in time love ever-boundless and everlasting, always there, never wavering or waning in the least.  Look up, into the sky and to the ends of the known universe and beyond, love, uncontained and free.  Then look down, under my feet and as far down as I can go all the way to China, everywhere my path may lead - love.  A steadfast indestructible foundation, God’s love supports me and holds me and hems me in on every side in 4-dimensional breathtaking goodness at all times, whenever, wherever.

-Paul’s prayer is for these believers and by extension for all the saints (and for us!) to be enabled by God Himself to fully grasp just how great His love (for us) actually is.  How great is it?  Even the apostle John, the one who had a special appreciation for being loved by the Lord (John 13.23, 19.26), finds himself at a loss for words actually.  For God SO loved - that little adverb is all he can muster as he contemplates the immensity of God’s love with which He loves us, which He lavishly poured out on humanity in a crimson flow of precious blood issuing forth from the veins of His only Son as He bled out and died in our place on that cruel Roman cross (John 3.16, cf Romans 5.8).  Emptied Himself of all but love, amazing love, how can it be that You my God should die for me? (Charles Wesley)

Ephesians 3:17 - Lord of the manor

-’...to dwell the Christ through the faith in the hearts of you [all], in love having been rooted and having been founded...’

-The same place where these believers will experience this mind-blowing power - the inner man - is the place where Paul wants Christ to dwell.  Actually he is asking and longing for Christ to be so welcomed into the hearts and lives of these believers that He settles down and makes Himself at home in their lives, not merely as some honored guest but as the new Owner Himself, Lord of the manor, King of my castle, a Divine Interior Redecorator, an ever-diligent House Steward and a very hands-on Landlord all rolled into one.  I sign over the title, hand Him the keys (to every room in the house), and He gets free reign, the full and unrestricted run of the house.  This goes hand-in-hand with the supernatural empowering.

-Imagine what this would look like, this heart of mine, a permanent residence of the King of kings, this One Who is pure and gentle and humble and full of mercy and Whose lovingkindness is everlasting.  The idea is that if Jesus is making Himself at home in my life (which again is the work of His Spirit), if my heart is His temple, a place where the God of glory has caused His Spirit to dwell, occupying what used to be enemy territory, things begin to look different.  And that is a gross understatement.  But you take a look under someone’s roof, poke around their living room and their bedroom and their closets, and you learn whole lot about who they are, what they are like, what they like, what they value, what they do.  I think ours will increasingly resemble a royal palace for a gracious and glorious King Who doesn’t mind sleeping without a pillow or even being homeless for that matter (cf Luke 9.58).

Now this marvelous and mysterious dance of ownership and stewardship and redecoration and power proceeds on the feet of faith.  AKA trust.  We trust and proceed in the assurance that He is, and that He is Lord.  We trust that He really is there, or rather here, here in my life, in my heart, even when we typically neither see nor touch nor even hear Him.  And we continue to trust, convinced that the changes He wants to and is making in (and through) my life are truly beneficial.  He is a Rewarder of those who trust in Him (Hebrews 11.6), and His reward is great (Psalm 19.11; Matthew 5.12; Luke 6.35; Hebrews 10.35, 11.26).

-One immensely practical outcome of this inner empowering and divine indwelling is that in doing all this God lays a foundation of love in my life.  His love, endless, selfless, giving itself away with no strings attached for me and for the nations.  For God so loved the world - this is why He has done all He has done.  He sent His Son, He let us kill His Son, He put our sins on His Son and punished them there, He raised His Son out of the dead, He returned His Son to His side and sent His Spirit into our hearts.  Now (through faith in His Son) we are rescued, made fully right and forgiven, adopted into His family, and now His Spirit lives inside our hearts.  All this God did because of His great love for us.  How great is it?  Next verse...

Ephesians 3:16 - Two keys to LIMITLESS power

"...in order that He should give to you according to the riches of the glory of Him power to be strengthened through the Spirit of Him unto the inner man..."

-Power.  Limitless, life-changing, mind-blowing inexhaustible Power.  The same Power which placed a billion trillion stars throughout the universe and which sustains them still today, each blazing giant giving off power equivalent to a million atom bombs every second of every day since the beginning of time, this very same Power is available to me - every second of every day!  Power to love.  Power to serve.  Power to give.  Power to forgive.  Just a tiny morsel of this hyper-nuclear stuff is more than enough to set off a miracle - to heal, to move mountains, to tear down walls or rebuild a broken heart, to change a life - or the world - forever.  These are the greater works which Christ Himself promised.  This is the Power which raised Jesus from the dead. This is the very same Power which is at work in the lives of those who believe in Him.  This is the Power which Paul is entreating the Father to be detonating in the lives of these believers.

-The extent of God's ability to answer Paul's prayer and empower these believers (and us!) is tied to the riches of His glory.  Here again, limitless. Unfathomable, and breathtakingly great.  It will never, ever run out.  But this answer will also conform to God's glorious riches.  When the Power goes off (i.e. is exploding) in and through my life, the results themselves will take your breath away, and will show off how truly great and indescribably good God really is.  There will be no other explanation other than that God did it.

-Two keys then to unlock this supernatural display of God's power in my inner being, as Paul puts it, in and through my life.  The first we have seen, and that is prayer.  Like Paul, on our knees, dependent, more than just a little dab'll do ya.  How much more?  Simply more.  Always more, until we are praying without ceasing.  Prayer is the fundamental currency with which we conduct the business of Heaven, energized by faith, deposited in the divine "bank" of Almighty God and His Word, trustworthy beyond measure.  Suffice it to say that you and I and all God's people most likely fall way short in leveraging this first key.  As it turns out, the second key is the Spirit, Who actually helps us with the first key (cf Romans 8.26).  He is the Promised Helper, the One Who Jesus so eagerly wanted to send in His place and into the heart of each and every person who trusts in Him.  He is called the Spirit of Power. And each and every time He shows up and goes off we see the miraculously inexplicable, things which are humanly impossible but which are entirely possible with God.  And to the extent that my life does not fit well into the garb of greater works, it is highly probable that I need to closely consider whether I might not be able to benefit from a bit more knee-bowing and Spirit-empowering, more of the Spirit in my life.  Or rather He gets more of me...