Paul’s writing to the church in Ephesus, a key port city in the area of Asia Minor, where
Türkiye is today. Ephesus sits on major trade routes connecting Rome with the
east and south, something like Vancouver today, a busy cosmopolitan city that
drew people from all over. It’s here that a church is planted by Paul and it
grows, not only in numbers, but also in reputation, so Paul writes them a
letter. It’s one of his more joyful letters; a letter to help the people know
God better and more deeply. It’s a letter to inspire faith and hope, a circular
letter written to the community, not to individuals; a letter that likely would
have been passed on to other churches in the region as well; especially a
letter like this one filled with teaching about God, Jesus, and the Holy
Spirit.
It's Paul’s prayer that they’ll know and live out the hope we have in Jesus; that their
relationship with Jesus will continue to shape them and inspire them to
continue their walk in the way of Jesus. These letters were read out to the
people as they gathered together each week to worship God, to study the
scriptures and teaching of Jesus as they ate together to grow in their
knowledge of God, and to grow more deeply together into the body of Jesus as
they shared in fellowship. Gathering together to learn and study together helps
us to grow together in knowing God and Jesus through the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, and coming together over food and friendship builds strength into our
relationship with God and each other.
I love how Paul affirms and builds them up with
encouragement and blessing; “For this reason, ever since I heard about your
faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped
giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.” Paul has heard
how their faith inspires compassion and generosity to others; he’s thankful for
the work of the Holy Spirit in them, leading to a living active faith.
Paul prays that God will give them the Spirit of
wisdom and revelation. The goal is to
know God better, especially those who had not grown up Jewish, with the stories
of a God who saves us out of slavery and oppression, a God who guides and leads
his people, a God who provides, sometimes even in miraculous ways, a God who
loves his people so much that he even punishes them at times so that they come
back to him, a God who is gracious and forgiving, a God who provides justice
for those who are taken advantage of, or for whom life is difficult and hard. Paul’s
hope is that they’ll go deeper in their faith and trust in Jesus, by showing
them who Jesus is, calling them into even deeper love of God and neighbour,
deeper in the love, forgiveness, and grace of Jesus, filling them with even
greater hope.
Paul reminds them that they’re God’s holy people; that God’s power is for them, and for us today because
we’re his children. This is not like the power that’s so often practiced by the
culture of that time, or like the way power is so often used and abused today,
this is a power that raises Jesus from the grave so that God’s people are saved
from their sin and given new life and hope; this power is used to bless and
renew. God’s power for us calls us to live our lives in his power and for the
kingdom of heaven. Professor Sammy Alfaro writes, “The letter to the
Ephesians, as well as in other epistles of the Pauline corpus, the Christian
life is represented in pneumatological terms as living in the Spirit. In the
interim period as we await our redemption, the Spirit guides us to produce
fruits of justice and righteousness, which are the marks of a true Christian.
It is the Spirit’s work in the believer, which marks them as “God’s own people, to the praise of his glory,” as Paul
writes in verse 14.”
This power leads us into a new life shaped by the
Spirit from lives where we were chained in sin and
hopelessness, even if in the moment it felt freeing and empowering as it was
all about me and my wants. Paul’s prayer is that the eyes of their hearts might
be enlightened so that they can see who Jesus really is, the Son of God who is
sitting at the right hand of God, a position of power, where freedom looks like
being God’s holy people, dedicated to him.
The world Paul and the church lived in at that time isn’t much different than the world we live in today.
The Jews were often persecuted and subject to injustice and violence, it’s no different
today. It was a time of political chaos with Caesars like Nero and Caligula;
when you look around the world today there’s much political chaos in so many
countries and our own country is not immune to it. Violence was common, and
it’s more and more common today, even in our own communities. There were
natural disasters such as wildfires, tsunamis, floods, drought, earthquakes
same as today.
Doug
Bratt writes, “If we assume that greed dominates our world, might we be more
likely to lose hope? Might assuming that only sheer luck governs our
world make us unlikely to trust that God rules over it? Paul writes… to the Ephesian
Christians who also see much chaos all around them. After all, they live
in both the world and in God’s kingdom. What’s more, Ephesus is the
capital of the pagan cult of Artemis. Perhaps that partly explains the
apostle’s gratitude that begins Ephesians 1. In it Paul gives thanks,
after all, not only for the Ephesians’ faith, but also for their “love for all the saints” that grows out of it. It
stands in sharp contrast to the chaos that surrounds them. While the “eyes of our hearts” is a somewhat mysterious concept,
it seems at least to refer to Christians’ minds that God needs to open for us
to fully recognize God’s truth. What truth does Paul want his readers to
recognize? He prays that we’ll recognize the “hope
to which God has called us.” The apostle prays that we’ll see more
than what we assume is going on around us.”
When
we see all the brokenness and hurt around us in the world, we can be
tempted to believe that there’s no hope left for the world. This thinking can
even seep into the church, and you see a growing number of churches today focus
more on the end times because they can only see the evil and wrong in the
world. Their only hope is that Jesus is coming back, but they forget about the
power of Jesus here now in the Holy Spirit. They forget that Jesus is seated at
the right hand of God and is “far above all rule and
authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the
present age but also in the one to come.” They overlook what Paul
reminds us of, that “God placed all things under Jesus’
feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his
body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” This is
happening right now; Jesus is in charge and working his power over all things
right now.
Doug
Bratt goes on in his reflection on these verses, “So those
whose heart’s eyes God has opened don’t live for the moment, ourselves or even
just the people we like. God’s adopted sons and daughters also live to
know, love and serve Jesus Christ and our neighbors, including even our
enemies. Paul also prays, however, that Christ’s followers will more fully see
what verse 18 calls “the riches of” God’s “glorious inheritance in the saints.” God, after all,
promises God’s sons and daughters an unimaginably glorious future. God’s Spirit
equips God’s adopted children to do something similar spiritually. We learn to
live by watching very carefully for God’s work in our world. Christians learn
to look for signs of God’s power, faithfulness and love that aren’t always
obvious to the untrained eye.” This doesn’t come naturally, this is why
Paul is points them to the Holy Spirit who enlightens our hearts so we can see
Jesus at work in our world, even in the brokenness; often using us as his body
to be his presence and hope. We grow in faith as we gather together to learn so
our eyes are opened, both by the Holy Spirit’s presence in the world and
through the Bible’s testimony of who Jesus is. This past week I was able to
talk with Val who just came back from Mexico and Fuentes de Vida and she shared
how she was impacted by the pastor’s work there; living out the presence of
Jesus in the hardness of life there. It’s important we learn to see how God
working in our own community here.
We’re connected to God through Jesus. Sarah Heinrich writes that, “in these verses we
come to the mystery of our connection to God in Christ. Jesus Christ has been
made the “head” or kephale of all
things “for” the church…. kephale makes
more sense as the head in headwaters. It is the source from which flows all
that he is, his “body,” the “fullness of him” which fills all in all. Jesus raised
to God’s presence is like the headwaters of the Mississippi that now expands to
fill, shape, even become his people… Jesus has broken the levees, the dykes,
and he has overflowed all things for the life of his church which may live “in praise of his glory.”
The Spirit of Jesus flows into us, calling us to go into our daily lives with a spirit of hope,
shaped by Jesus’ message, life, death, and resurrection to bring the message of
hope of Jesus to lead others into the kingdom of heaven. We follow Jesus’ call
to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
them to obey everything I have commanded you. Now, go bring the good
news of Jesus wherever you are this week!
No comments:
Post a Comment