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Ephesians: Conclusion

Just as Paul's opening comments are pregnant with theological life, his conclusion can't help but carry deep truths. This last section, a kind of addendum to the earlier three-part structure, offers Paul's closing words to the Ephesian church. Finally, says the apostle, be strong in the Lord, and in His might. Why? Because the Christian life is a war. It might be best here to break Paul's conclusion into two parts. First, Paul pinpoints our enemy (6:10-12). Second, he tells us how to fight (6:13-20).

In the first place, then, whom do we fight? The picture is intimidating. Paul describes terrible, powerful enemies: "principalities, powers," "rulers of the darkness of this age," "hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." The ESV is particularly descriptive: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."

Paul asserts that the primary warfare in the Christian life is non-physical. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. One of the devil's greatest victories has been his ability to turn mankind against itself. Nation against nation. Race against race. Cain against Abel. Politicians thrive on this kind of animosity, pitting us against the West, or against the USSR. Against Israel. Against the Arabs.

All this human infighting–what Douglas Jones would call misplaced antithesis–stems from a basic misunderstanding of our real battle, which began in Genesis. After Adam and Eve fell, God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel" (Gen. 3:15). Satan's war with Christ–and, by extension, with us–is the backdrop of the ages, the conflict that drives the plot of human history. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested," says John, "that He might destroy the work of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Paul calls us to this invisible battle, this spiritual war, saying that behind all human evil lies a network of spiritual forces or rulers hostile to God and man.

So how do we fight this war in which we find ourselves entrenched? Paul tells us in verse 14. "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all taking the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one."

No Marine general would think of sending men into battle without kevlar armor, proper weapons, and plenty of ammunition. Similarly, Paul wants to equip us appropriately for battle, and he presents six pieces of spiritual armor/weaponry. Obviously a detailed discussion of each of these weapons is beyond our scope here (check out Martyn Lloyd-Jones or James Montgomery Boice for a more thorough study), but notice how each of the weapons fits in with Paul's epistle as a whole. He speaks about truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation, each of which forms a key part of previous chapters.

Paul opens the letter thanking a sovereign God for the salvation of His church. Christ's righteousness, which comes to sinners through faith, is the only solution for the sin described in chapter two. Christian peace leads the discussion in chapter four, and Paul makes it clear that this peace or unity must be based on truth. All these concepts come together to form the Christian tools for defending against and attacking the enemy–what we often call "spiritual warfare." But our first step as Christians is usually to misunderstand and take things out of balance. When it comes to spiritual warfare, we do two things: We either sensationalize it, or we intellectualize it.

I grew up largely in Charismatic churches, and one strength of the Charismatics is that they don't sweep spiritual warfare under the rug–they acknowledge that demonic forces really do try to influence human events. Yet I grew up thinking of spiritual warfare in terms of loud prayer sessions (sometimes addressed to God in unknown tongues, or sometimes addressed to the devil himself in the form of "rebukes"). Spiritual warfare became a flashy prime-time affair; I never knew much about the dogged, daily struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil in my own mind and heart. "But come by this Sunday evening for our special Spiritual Warfare service." It reminds me of a Christian comic book I saw at one point. The superheroes, instead of Batman or Spidey, were angels and archangels, and the villains were demons. While of course we don't want to deny the reality of the war between good and evil, isn't all this kind of missing something?

Reformed Christians, on the other hand, emphasize the intellectual part of spiritual warfare. And Paul certainly does lay stress on renewing our mind (Romans 12:1-2), as well as the importance of taking thoughts and arguments captive to Christ: "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God…" (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Yet over-intellectualizing this war is as bad as sensationalizing. Certainly the mind has its role; part of spiritual warfare deals with apologetics–with defending our faith against secular critiques. But Peter saw our warfare as more than this when he rebuked Ananias and Saphira (who were moved by satanic power to lie to God) in the book of Acts. Jesus knew it when he rebuked Peter, who was influenced by Satan himself to try to stop Jesus from going to the cross.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the Christian warfare is to use Paul's own words from Ephesians. Here's the ESV: "Take…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints…" (6:17-18).

We're not stuck on defense. Though weak in our own strength, we have a sharp sword that allows even mortals like us to take a swing at the evil one. I'm reminded of the story of David fleeing from King Saul (1 Samuel 21). David has no weapon, and asks the priest if he happens to have a sword nearby. The priest answers that they have no sword except the one David had taken earlier from the dead Goliath. They keep this sword back behind the ephod, wrapped in a cloth. David says, "There is none like that; give it to me."

The book of Hebrews describes the Word of God as a double-edged sword, alive and deadly. Keeping the passage from Ephesians in mind, we could think of one edge as Scripture and the other edge as prayer. The two go together. How many times have you been weaker, more vulnerable to temptation, because you've neglected the Word and prayer? I've lost track of my own failures. But when I do study the Word, when I do pray ("pray at all times…with all prayer," says Paul, using repetition to make us get it), especially when I pray for others ("making supplication for all the saints"), I'm stronger. I have a sword to thrust with.

It's important to remember one thing in closing. While spiritual warfare is real, and we play a real role, we will destroy ourselves if we trust our own strength. The psalms in particular drive this point home: "The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength" (Psalm 33:16). "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side–let Israel now say–if it had not been the Lord who was on our side…then the flood would have swept us away; the torrent would have gone over us" (Psalm 124:1-4).

Christians must fight, but the real warrior is Christ, and the real victory is already His. In one sense, an important sense, the battle is already over. That's why John is able to say in 1 John 2:14, "I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one."

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Ephesians: God Saves Cultures

Paul ended the last portion of his letter with a doxology (a brief exclamation of praise to God) and an amen. It's as though he's pausing for breath for the first time since he began. Chapters 1-3 could almost be considered as one long, rambling introduction–and it's humbling that Paul's intro contains more theological meat than many evangelical books and sermons today.

Paul begins this new segment with a "therefore," drawing our attention momentarily to the previous pages. "I, therefore, the prisoner of God, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called." If all this is true; if everything I've been praying about you is right, then please, please, walk and live as though it's true.

What Paul is getting at is that God doesn't just save people (though we rejoice at that) or a church (though His church will be glorious). He redeems the totality of our lives and culture, and expects us to do everything we do as if we were doing it to God (Paul will get to this in 6:6), to His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31), even to the point of bringing our thoughts and reasoning under Christ's authority (2 Corinthians 10:5).

For this reason I've put the final section of Ephesians under the heading God saves cultures. Paul is trying to get us to see how God's grace is infectious; it redeems and renews us as whole persons, not merely as souls waiting to die and go to heaven. In these remaining chapters, Paul is going to explain how grace applies to church life (4:1-4:16), personal life (4:17-5:21), family life, (5:22-6:4), and work life (6:5-6:9).

When we talk about "the church," or "church life," it's important to have some idea of what we mean. To many folks' minds, the church is an institution–a building, an organization, a place you go on certain days. While these ideas aren't exactly false, Paul sees the church as so much more. Again, this blog post isn't the place to dive into a full-length discussion of ecclesiology, but Paul offered some images of what the church is in the last section.

One metaphor Paul used, as we saw, was that of a temple. The church is like a glorious temple made up of what Peter calls "living stones." And yet the church is also the priesthood serving in the temple. St. John even uses the term "kingdom of priests" in Revelation 1:6 (NIV), which fits with Jesus' frequent discussion of the "kingdom of heaven." In Ephesians 3:15 Paul also describes the church as a living person: "…to create in Himself one new man out of the two…." My point here is just that even though much of what Paul is going to say will involve the local, institutional church, we need to keep in mind that, biblically speaking, the church is so much more than local.

In Ephesians Paul lays particular stress on love and unity. He beseeches us to bear with one another in love, "endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all" (4:3-6). Again, Paul is so theologically meaty that whole seminary courses could be taught on this chapter. But if we're looking for just the basics, we can sum up the unity that Paul preaches as a unity of love and a unity of sound doctrine.

Paul sees it as simple: There's one God, one faith, and one baptism; therefore, the church should strive to be one, rather than fractured and disjointed. You can't build a temple if the stones will only stick together in small groups and cliques. They all need to be joined together, and the mortar Paul proposes to use is love.

I have a feeling Paul would lose patience with many of us conservative evangelicals, who will split a church because the pastor didn't come out strongly enough against supralapsarianism. But true Christian unity isn't a union in which anything goes, or in which doctrine doesn't matter. Unity must be a truthful unity, founded on the core beliefs of the saints and apostles, with Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. Consider how verses 14-16 bring in the importance of sound doctrine without de-emphasizing the importance of love. Unity, for Paul, means neither splitting churches over minor issues nor drifting aimlessly in the postmodern tide pool.

Paul calls the church to walk this fine balance of love and truth. I'm reminded of a quote from C. S. Lewis: "The world of dogmatic Christianity is a place in which thousands of people of quite different types keep on saying the same thing, and the world of 'broad-mindedness' and watered-down 'religion' is a world where a small number of people (all of the same type) say totally different things and change their minds every few minutes. We shall never get re-union from them" (God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972], p. 60).

When Paul moves on to speak about personal life (4:17-5:21), he reminds the formerly pagan Ephesians to walk in the light now that they've been set free from their former darkness. We don't become Christians through behavior changes or do-gooding; we're not saved by works. Yet new life in Christ calls for a new way of life, a way that's honoring to the one who called us. Paul exhorts his readers to renounce a life of sexual promiscuity, drunken excesses, dishonesty, and uncontrolled anger, taking up instead the "new man"–a kind man who speaks words that encourage and build up those around him.

Paul then touches on family life (5:22-6:4). He addresses wives (5:22-24), calling on them to submit to the leadership of their husbands just as the church submits to Christ. He addresses husbands, reminding them that their leadership role doesn't make them innately superior to their wives; rather, it means they should love and cherish their wives like Christ loves His church (5:25-33). He speaks to children (6:1-4), reminding them of Moses' law: Honor your father and your mother. This law actually contains a promise for future well-being, Paul notes. At the same time, Paul reminds fathers not to be tyrannical with their children, but care for them in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord."

The final aspect of this section (and really the last words before Paul's conclusion) deals with what we'd call work life (6:5-6:9). Yet Paul isn't actually speaking to managers and employees; he's speaking to masters and slaves. Obviously this isn't the place for a full-blown discussion of slavery–and even the term slavery is too ambiguous. Are we talking about Hebrew slavery, allowed and regulated by the law of Moses? Are we talking about Greek slavery, which often involved immense education? Roman slavery? Nineteenth-century racist slavery? The current form of slavery we call corrections or the penal system?

We can learn from Paul's other letters that slavery isn't ideal, and if his readers had the opportunity to gain their freedom, it was a good thing. Yet Paul never endorses a violent overthrow of the current Greco-Roman system, encouraging his readers instead to work within their current circumstances. And what Paul says here can be applied to contemporary job life as well; we all have "masters," though they tend to be corporate monoliths instead of Greek landowners. Paul is telling us to do our jobs as if we were doing them to Christ, not with mere "eyeservice, as men-pleasers." Similarly, those in authority should reject "threatening," remembering that they too have a Boss, and He rules heaven and earth. Imagine how a simple application of these verses could reshape our culture. Imagine that Christians were known at work, not as holier-than-thou coworkers with evangelistic one-liners, but as hard-working, selfless people with a secret motivation that make those around them curious to know more.

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Ephesians: God Saves His Church

In the last post we looked at how God saves individual sinners. Paul next explores how God saves His church (2:11-3:20). The apostle isn't satisfied with just "How do I get to heaven when I die?" He wants his readers to understand that they're now part of something. If you want to take a literary image, we are now characters in a great play or story; if you prefer engineering metaphors, Paul is saying that we're key elements in a structure that God is building.

In fact, keep that construction image, because Paul is talking about both demolition and rebuilding. In the first place, Christ's work is to break down walls (2:11-2:22). In the timeframe of the Old Testament, the Gospel was only foreshadowed; God was hinting at what was coming, and He set up prophetic pictures or symbols of what He would do when His Son appeared. Some of these shadows, for example, involved sacrifices; the laws of Moses hinted at the one perfect sacrifice of Christ by commanding the Jewish people to offer lambs or bulls. The idea was that sin required a penalty, and the sacrifice of the animals was a picture of what Christ would eventually do for his people once and for all to gain their salvation.

Another of these important Old Testament "types" or "shadows" involved the special treatment of one tiny Middle-Eastern nation: Israel. From the day God first covenanted with Abraham, the Israelites were His chosen people. He spoke to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He released the Jews from Egypt; he led them through the desert; He gave His laws to Moses; He even disciplined and judged his children when they rejected Him.

During this time, the rest of the nations were for the most part left out. With just a few notable exceptions, salvation resided in Israel. To be outside of God's covenant people (i.e., to be a Gentile) meant that you didn't have God's favor. "You were without Christ," Paul reminds his readers, "being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (2:12).

Again, all this had symbolic significance. God was visually and historically demonstrating that He was going to save a people for himself by making a covenant with them and providing atonement for their sins. The point was that when Christ came to earth, what was planted in seed form in Israel would then bloom throughout the earth. What was foreshadowed dimly in one nation would take place in every country. As the carol puts it, "Joy to the world! The Lord is come; / Let earth receive her king." Being an "Israelite" would take on a new meaning as people everywhere became "children of Abraham" by believing in Jesus.

The problem was that many of Abraham's genetic kids didn't grasp this. They'd lost the real faith of their heroic ancestor (who looked for Messiah to save the whole world) and were content to think of themselves as God's only people. Messiah, for these people, would be a patriotic, conservative, militaristic Jew who would take David's throne back from the Romans and restore a glorious kingdom to Israel.

Jesus shattered these expectations. He warned that His kingdom didn't originate from or operate like the world system. He befriended hookers (social outcasts), tax collectors (political outcasts), and even Samaritans (racial/religious outcasts). As far as the moral majority of Jesus' day was concerned, this so-called Messiah clearly didn't get the whole Jewish kingdom thing. And He had a bad testimony to boot.

What Jesus did know, however, was that His Father was gathering a people from all corners of the earth. "When the Son of Man is lifted up," He told his friends, "He will draw all men to Himself." Jesus stressed that His Gospel was for all nations. In Ephesians, Paul emphasizes that Christ's work heals the division between Jew and Gentile, making one new spiritual man out of what had previously been two antagonistic groups.

To return to the construction metaphor, Christ is building a glorious new temple, and we're the building blocks (2:21). Peter uses the same image in his first epistle; he calls us "living stones" that build up this new spiritual temple (1 Peter 2:5). We're the new priesthood, a priesthood embracing both genders and all nations. Through Christ, says Paul, "we both have access through one Spirit to the Father" (2:18).

Paul reminds his Gentile readers that "now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ….Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…" (2:13,19).

In what we call the third chapter of Ephesians (remember, Paul didn't include the chapter divisions we now have), Paul solidifies and applies this truth, telling his readers that because all of the preceding is true, we can have access, even boldness, to the very presence of God (3:12). Paul uses his own access to the Father to pray that the Ephesians will be inwardly strengthened by God (3:16), that "Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may…know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (3:17-19).

What Paul is saying is that the theological truths laid down so far–the sovereignty of God, salvation by grace through faith, and the equality of all races in Christ–work themselves out in our daily experience, and he's asking God that his readers might see these truths applied fully in their own lives. And in the next section of his letter, Paul is going to explain just what this application will entail.

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