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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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Posted in Ethics & the Church Theology & Philosophy • 0 Comments • Permalink • 409 views

Ephesians: God Saves People

What is St. Paul getting at in his letter to the Ephesians? What are the main ideas he wants to get across? The book can be complex, talking about theological concepts like predestination and salvation and ranging to practical advice for those dealing with the slavery that Roman law still permitted. At the same time, Ephesians offers us a richness of familiar and encouraging passages about God's grace, Christian unity, and spiritual warfare.

In the next few posts I'd like to take a brief look at Ephesians–a sort of bird's eye view that will follow Paul's flow of thought and mark his main points. I suggest the following three-part outline of Paul's focus: First, God saves people (Paul covers this from the first verse roughly to 2:10). Second, God saves His church (Paul takes this line from 2:11 to 3:20). Third, God saves cultures (we can see this from 4:1 through 6:9, followed by Paul's closing thoughts).

Paul's first point, if you will, explores how God saves everyday sinners like you and me. Gratitude overwhelms his whole discussion; the first chapter is a long prayer filled with run-on sentences about how glad Paul is for the salvation of the Ephesians. Yet even Paul's rambling introduction carries massive theological weight.

He first covers how salvation is planned (1:1-1:6). In theological terms, we would call this the doctrine of predestination or the sovereignty of God. God, says Paul, "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." The result is "the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted" in Christ.

Some shy away from the strong emphasis on God's sovereignty; they look for something in us–such as our choice of Christ–for the reason that God chose us for salvation. God, in other words, being the great psychic that He is, looked into His crystal ball, saw who would eventually chose Jesus anyway, and then predestined them to salvation. Paul's reasoning is much different. God, according to Paul, made this decision "according to the good pleasure of his will" (v. 3). Verse 11 will later say that we are "predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will." God needs no reference point outside Himself; He makes His choices based solely on His own will, so that no one will boast, but rather give praise to "the glory of His grace" (v. 6).

Paul continues, explaining how salvation takes place (1:7-2:10). Unpacking the rich theology of this passage could take a whole book, but if we hit only the major highlights, we see two key themes: redemption through Christ's blood, and the overpowering grace of God. "In Him," Paul goes on, "we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence…" (1:7-8). Paul can never separate the good news of the Gospel from the bad news of sin; the bad news is the necessary prerequisite. We are saved from something, and Paul doesn't shy away from this.

But not only are we saved from something; we are saved by something. Salvation isn't just a free pass or a Monopoly pardon card. Salvation cost the blood of God the Son. Paul here uses the term blood as a summary of what we now call the doctrine of Christ's "substitutionary atonement." That is, Christ stood in my place, bearing my sin legally before God, and took upon himself the punishment that a just God required. In the article linked above, I've tried to collect the biblical passages that support and develop this idea further.

Second, Paul wants us to focus on God's amazing grace. The word grace itself is packed with meaning; it tells us that even though we're at fault, God shows us undeserved favor because of the work of His Son. Have you ever heard some "positive" or "prosperity" preacher on TV say that we should just focus on grace and not worry about sin? The concept makes no sense; grace and sin go hand in hand. And Paul certainly has no desire to BS us when it comes to the severity of man's condition apart from God: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked…and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others [no sense of self-righteous superiority here]. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)… (2:1-5).

Paul then gets to some famous verses: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (2:8-9). Paul leaves no room for bragging rights; not only are we saved "by grace through faith," but even this faith is "not of [our]selves." It's "the gift of God."

There's a powerful line about this in the recent movie Amazing Grace. Named after John Newton's famous hymn, the film explores the work of Englishman William Wilberforce to abolish the slave trade. In the movie, Albert Finney plays Newton, who was Wilberforce's mentor. Newton had captained a slave ship; he'd committed unspeakable acts of barbarity against fellow members of the human race. But grace was powerful, and Newton was able to say, "I know two things: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior."

Posted in Ethics & the Church Theology & Philosophy • 11 Comments • Permalink • 448 views

Wilson on Dead Cats

With election year underway, we're sure to see our culture worshipping at the shrine of our political gods. The political process, we've been told, is our savior, and everyone seems to have his favorite apostle. Some hail change-embracing Democrats; some idolize law-and-order Republicans; others insist that only unknown third-party candidates can save us.

But, as Doug Wilson points out, all these saviors are false, despite the religious zeal with which they're embraced. This critique applies equally to socialistic leftists (some of whom profess Christ) and libertarian conservatives (some of whom profess Christ). Statism is an idol no matter which side of the aisle it sits on.

Wilson also points out how the modern political system, like a priesthood, uses threatenings and impending crises to build up its own messianic image:

The looming "crises" vary, and the contending saviors vary accordingly. This is not to deny the reality of genuine threats in the world, for they are out there, and we do need competent leadership to deal with them. But in modern political campaigns, the momentum that carries them forward is an emotional investment in the candidate as a person (which by itself is fine and healthy), but when this is combined with the crisis/savior approach it leads directly to a weird civic idolatry. People get attached to their candidate with a religious fervor (and even Christians do this), and when it comes out that you are not voting for that guy, they respond as if you had just heaved a dead cat into the Holy of Holies.

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Posted in Politics & Current Events • 0 Comments • Permalink • 313 views

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