I'd like to add a final instalment to our series on Ephesians in this segment. What we have done so far is to lay out its parts one by one and examine them, rather like those magicians you see on TV do with a pack of cards: they hold up the pack in front of you, and with one fluid movement spread them out on the table in a row so you see each card separately; then they flip them all back together again into a pack - and that's what I want to do now with Ephesians.
Paul's theme in Ephesians is nothing less than God's master plan for the whole life of the world from beginning to end of time. More than any other letter in the New Testament, it tells you the meaning of life as it is to be understood in the light Christ sheds upon it.
That master plan, the goal to which God is working, is stated in 1.10 - the key verse to the whole epistle: "God's purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, is: to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth."
I don't know what your aim in life is ... God's aim is community - a community that embraces His entire universe, with Christ at its centre.
Cosmic Community in Christ, I call it.
God created His universe at the beginning a marvellous structure of harmony in all its blended parts. As the Genesis narrative (and Isaiah 45) tell us, He created a cosmos, not a chaos. But sin has exploded in it like a bomb, and splintered it to bits like exploding shrapnel. What God has been after ever since is to reshape all the broken pieces and fit them back together again, restoring wholeness and harmony to His universe. He has appointed His Son to be His chief agent to head up the task of achieving it, so it's Christ's whole task too.
Reconciliation is what God's after.
He has set up a task force on earth to help Him with it. That 'task force' is the Church, and if we're to be any part of it, our whole aim in life is to be ... reconciliation. The one mark of Christians which, more than any other thing, distinguishes them from the rest of men, is to be the good fellowship they enjoy and their expertise in generating it, even among those who have been at enmity with each other. "By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, that you love one another", as Jesus said.
We hear a lot about goal-setting these days. Churches should set goals, and regularly measure their progress toward the achievement of them. What goal should we set for our church?
Well, if we want it to be God's goal, it should be, quite simply, love ... good fellowship ... our blending of all its parts into a harmony - and its parts are people, remember: you and me!). We're to be a dynamic blend of goodwill so powerful that it 'infects' everyone who experiences our shared life.
God's measure of a church is the quality of its fellowship.
When we try to assess our progress toward the goal God has set for us, what we have to ask is: how well do we love one another? ... how good is our fellowship?
How good are we, for example, at settling differences? ... how well able are we to forgive each another, so our life together is not soured by grievances, or resentments, or criticisms of one another? How well able are we to be hurt and offended and still show genuine love toward those who do the hurting and offending? How free of grumbling and complaint is our life together? How free of illwill are we?
On the positive side, how caring are we of one another? ... how much thought for each other do we take? ... how concerned are we to see others well served, and honoured? ... are we more concerned if someone else is ignored than if we ourselves are ignored? ... is it more important to us that the Gospel of God's reconciling love should be proclaimed in Nigeria and Panama and Bangladesh and the Solomon Islands by our member missionaries than that our own views should be listened to here in the church meeting - because God's purpose for the world at large matters so much more to us than anything in our own little world? ... how important is it to us that we should be expert reconcilers (peace-makers) since that's what God has called us to be? ... how eager are we to be learning all the time how to be better at it, so our thirst for sound teaching in the Gospel of peace is a stronger thirst in us than for any other thing? Is the spreading about of love and harmony and good fellowship by the Word and the Way of the Cross the ruling passion of our lives ... and of our life together?
These, and others like them, are the questions Paul's letter to the Ephesians asks and answers. If they're not the questions we're asking, we shan't feel that this epistle is very relevant to us; and if we do feel that, it has to be because we're not in step with God.
Let me review with you briefly how Paul unfolds this theme. Ephesians, along with Romans, is one of the most carefully thought-out letters he wrote. Romans concentrates the Gospel on our sinnerhood, you might say, while Ephesians concentrates it on our 'believerhood'! The Church is in focus in Ephesians in a way that it isn't in Romans.
1.1-2
Paul sounds the chief note he wants to strike right from the start, in the greeting with which he opens the letter ... "to "the anointed ones" (that's what "saints" means - those who have received a divine calling) who are also faithful in Christ Jesus (seriously committed to it), grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ" ... grace and peace.
1.3-10
Then he opens with a great shout of praise: "What a marvellous thing God has done with us ... given us a place in His own family by forgiving us through the shedding of Christ's blood, reconciling us thereby to Himself, equipping us with all the resources of His heavenly Kingdom, and commissioning us to serve in the ranks of the task force He has in the world to undo the effects of sin in His creation and refashion it to His original design. Verse 10 defines that goal: to unite all things in Christ - things in heaven and things on earth.
Paul supplies three clues to the purpose God is pursuing in the world's life:
The outstanding effect of Christ's entry into the world is His achievement of reconciliation to God by way of the Cross. Almost the whole of chapter one has for its theme the sheer marvel of the believer's experience of it. Most of Paul's emphasis falls on the positive results of our reconciliation to God. It's not so much our deliverance from sin and guilt that he underlines - though he does include that - as the possibilities and the power and the privilege into which it leads us.
In the church you can see God's plan for reconciliation taking real effect - most dramatically in the healing of the most vicious enmity in the world, the racial hatred between Jew and Gentile. That's the sort of thing God is after.
In verses 1-10, he describes the
process (of salvation) by which God achieves it in the real
experience of believers. The process can be described as 'grace
through faith': God lavishes mercy and love on His enemies (us!),
thereby turning us into friends who love Him.
That's the way it's always to happen. WE, now, are to be "carriers"
of that same hate-absorbing love to others, so that the church is a
sort of crucible in the fierce heat of whose love real people are to
be reconciled to God whose love inspires us.
In verses 11-23, Paul spells out the
way in which this love that rules believers in their life and
experience together has overwhelmed the racial enmity which is one of
the effects of sin in the world - the enmity between Jew and
Gentile.
They find themselves truly reconciled to one another in the person of
Christ Jesus and His love for them both, so they do truly love each
other where once there was only suspicion and hatred between
them.
The remarkable thing about his apostleship is that it was to the Gentiles. God's plan clearly embraces the whole world, not just the Jews. It's the world God wants should be reconciled.
Almost the worst feature of Israel's failure had been her failure of missionary vision and purpose. It was to that end God called her into being in the first place. He made that quite clear from the beginning: to Abraham He'd said, "In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." But Israel basked in the privileges God showered on her selfishly, and forgot His purpose in bestowing them. "What's in it for me?" was the only question she ever thought to ask, not "What's in it for the world?" It would be the final tragedy if the Church, the new Israel, repeated her mistake!
God made it equally clear at the beginning of the new Israel's life that His purpose was still for the world; and the way He made it clear was by appointing His chief apostle, not to the Jews, but to the nations.
God's purpose is never merely local, it's always universal.
A church that isn't evangelistic and missionary has simply lost its vision: it's lost sight of the reason God gave it birth; it's useless. It's the world God loves: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."
Paul rounds off this exposition of God's master plan in 3.14-21 with a prayer for the church to experience to the absolute limit the redeeming passion of Christ's love for the world. His prayer is that "Christ should dwell in our hearts by faith, that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the power to comprehend - with all the saints (Paul never loses sight of the 'togetherness' God creates by salvation, notice) - what is the length and breadth and height and depth of this love of Christ."
A community that knows how to love - that's what we're to be. That, supremely, is what we're to be. If we put any goal above that, we miss the mark.
The love of Christ, Paul says, is broad ... it isn't exclusive. It embraces all sorts and conditions of men. If our love is anything like Christ's, it won't be choosy!The love of Christ, Paul says, is long ... it doesn't weaken with time. If our love is anything like Christ's, we'll never give up on each other!
The love of Christ, says Paul, is high ... it's call is always upwards (the "upward call of God in Christ Jesus", remember? - Phil.3.15). It ever calls us to high aims, to high endeavour, to high standards. It doesn't compromise; it's committed to righteousness of life. If our love is anything like Christ's, we'll never lower our standards.
And the love of Christ, says Paul, is deep ... it isn't superficial. His love is as deep as our need. That's deep. Christ's redeeming love plumbs the depths of our sin and iniquity - heals the very worst ravages of the disease that is in us. It reduced Him to the deepest levels of our humiliation and wretchedness to do it. If our love is anything like Christ's, it'll never draw the line - won't ever back off from the demands it makes on us.
Do you know those moving lines of F. W. H. Myers from his poem "St. Paul", in which, describing Christ's redeeming passion, he speaks of ...
Desperate tides of the whole great world's anguish
Forced through the channels of a single heart:
He goes on ...
To the multitudes, I call and say,
"This is my King! ... I preach, and I deny Him:
Christ - Whom I crucify anew today.Let no man think that sudden, in a minute,
All is accomplished and the work is done.
Though with thine earliest dawn thou should begin it,
Scarce were it ended with thy setting sun.But speak the Word! The evangel shall awaken
Life in the lost, the hero in the slave.Oft, when the Word is on me to deliver,
Lifts the illusion and the truth lies bare:
Desert or throng, the city or the river,
Melts in a lucid Paradise of air.Only like souls I see the folk thereunder -
Bond, who should be free, slaves who should be kings,
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder,
Sadly contented with a show of things.Then with a rush the intolerable craving
Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call:
"Oh to save these! ... to perish for their saving,
Die for their life, be offered for them all."O could I tell ye surely would believe it,
O could I only say what I have seen.
How should I tell, or how can you receive it? ...
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him?
This shall He do, and can we still despair?
Come, let us quickly fling ourselves before Him,
Cast at His feet the burthen of our care.Fresh from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving,
Glad and regretful, confident and calm;
Then through all of life and what is after living
Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm.Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through living
He shall suffice, for He hath sufficed.
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
I know no poem that better captures the pulse-beat and the passion of Paul's vision of Christ our Saviour and our Lord.
4.1-16
From the beginning of chapter four, Paul gets down to the nitty-gritty of living the reconciled life congregationally.
"We have to be lowly and meek, patient and forbearing with one another," he says ... obviously. "It's what we've been called to!"
But before he spells it out more fully, he pauses long enough to underline a truth we must never lose sight of - that the unity and community of our life in the church is a thing God creates and gives to us when we believe in Christ. We don't have create it: God has already done that and gives it to us as a gift. Our task is to keep it in good repair. And Paul reminds us that God has supplied all the equipment we need to do that, in the shape of apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers; they are given to equip us for our task - for the vision and the motivation we need are supplied by the Word of God. The ministry of the Word is priority No.1 in the Church's programme. Let that weaken, and everything else weakens in its train.
And the goal of all ministry - both this inner ministry to the Church, and the outgoing ministry of the Church - is the building up of a living body, a well co-ordinated, efficiently functioning body comprised of church members in dynamic harmony with each other through their shared responsiveness to Christ its directing brain and beating heart.
4.17 - 5.20
Chapter 4.17 - 5.20 is a broad discussion of the practical aims we must set before us if we are to realise this goal. Under the general metaphor of the two natures - the "new man" and the "old man" - Paul contrasts the right attitude we must have in order to achieve it with the wrong attitude that destroys it. They mean the same thing as having "the mind of Christ" or having "the mind of the flesh". The mind of Christ is the 'mind-set' which is dedicated to wholesomeness and generosity, as opposed to the mind-set of the flesh (or of the world), which is dedicated to uncleanness and self-seeking.
That section too ends with an exhortation to drink and drink and drink in the living Word. 5.19-20
5.21 - 6.9
The next section, 5.21 - 6.9, commends the attitude which is to be absolutely the dominant one all Christians need toward one another over the whole range of their relationships - the attitude called "submissiveness. It is to be the mark of a Christian - the one thing which most distinguishes him from all others.
That attitude is "others-centredness" - the attitude in which we consistently put other's interests above our own. Paul specifies the way this works out between husbands and wives, between parents and children, and between workers and bosses.
6.10 - 20
Finally, Paul issues a call to battle - we're to stand side by side together and fight for the thing God has given us and which He is dedicated to developing among us, namely our unity in Christ. The armour we're to put on consists of all "Christ-like graces": truth, righteousness, the Gospel of reconciliation and peace, faith, salvation, the "Spirit-Word" and "all-prayer". These are unlikely- looking weapons with which to defend ourselves against the spirit of the world, dominated as it is by Satan; but they are the only armour and the only weapons we are permitted. If we keep our eyes on Christ we shall see how powerful and effective they are though.
The battle against the world won't be worth winning unless what we win with is these things and these things only. If we fill the world with anything else, we shan't have changed it for the better at all.
So we have to feed on the truth as it is in Jesus until the conviction grows and becomes established with us that the sheer power of goodness, truth and love is sufficient to win the day, and swamp out the world's evil. We're to be absolutely dedicated to being gentle, generous and genuine.
This material is
copyright; it may not be published, quoted or reproduced without
permission, nor may it be preached without acknowledgment!