Ephesians 3:1-13

June 16, 2020 Brian Newman Ephesians 3:1-13

Men’s Study guide

Quick Review

1:1-14

Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus probably about 5 or 6 years after he had been there. He writes while he is in prison in Rome. He reminds them of identity – who they are (we are) in Christ. We are blessed in the Beloved of God; that divine relationship in which God exists. We are forgiven, adopted, chosen – enveloped in God’s purpose for all time, which is to unite all things in Christ.

1:15-23

For this reason, Paul continually gave thanks for them and for what God has done in

Christ, and that the Ephesians would know the hope to which they had been called in

Christ – the fullness of Him who ﬁlls all in all.

2:1-10

And then Paul reminds them (us) that we were once dead in our trespasses, without hope in God and by nature children of wrath. But God made us alive in Christ, saved by His grace, not by anything that we do, but by His free gift of salvation. Not only that, but we are His workmanship created in Christ for works that God has prepared beforehand for us to do.

2:11-22

Therefore, Paul writes, remember that you gentiles were separated from God and alienated from Israel – God’s people. But in Christ, God unites both Jews and gentiles;

1 outsiders become insiders as God builds His Church, His people, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone. We, God’s people, are being built into a dwelling place for God, by the Spirit.

3:1-13

Now Paul is about to close in prayer, saying “For this reason I bow my knees before the

Father…” but he interrupts himself ﬁrst for 13 verses. It’s almost as if Paul remembers that it’s been a few years since he’s been to Ephesus and that there may be some new people that aren’t familiar with his story. So he writes in verse 2: “assuming that you have heard…” and then continues to explain. Today we’ll consider his interruption.

Read the text

Paul is a prisoner of Christ on behalf of the gentiles. God called him to this task by making him an apostle, though he considers himself the least of them. The mystery of Christ has been made known to him by revelation, and his mission is to preach this

Gospel of God’s grace – the unsearchable riches of Christ – to the gentiles. Because through the Church, the uniting of Jews and gentiles, the multi-faceted wisdom of God is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realm. The redemption of creation, the transformation of broken and sinful lives into wholeness, and the glory of

God revealed in that process working in His people, the Church, is not just for our beneﬁt, but to show His glory in all the heavens – in all of everything. This is so big,

Paul expresses, that he understands his small part in it as totally worth the suﬀering.

He concludes in verse 13:

“I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suﬀering for you, which is your glory.”

This is all a big deal, he says, don’t forget that!

2 We can break this passage down into three areas to consider:

Paul’s identity and purpose, The Mystery of Christ, and then the Gospel.

We’ll look at these one at a time.

I. Identity and Purpose

Paul’s identity was as a prisoner of Christ on behalf of the gentiles – That was God’s calling on him. This is what Jesus himself said about Paul’s calling:

This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. (Acts 9:15-16)

Throughout the time of the early church in Acts, there was tension between the

Jewish believers and gentile believers. In Acts chapter 15 the apostles and elders met in Jerusalem to sort this out. They concluded that God includes gentiles in His plan of redemption, referencing the prophet Amos 9:11-12, and that they should not impose the law of Moses on them, but instead encourage them to abstain from idolatry, sexual immorality, and from blood. Even though this pronouncement was made, there remained such tension over this matter that years later, after Paul had been to Ephesus on his third missionary journey, he went to Jerusalem where he was attacked by a mob of angry Jewish believers. They had seen him with a Greek, a guy named Trophimus from Ephesus, and assumed (wrongly) that Paul had taken him into the temple.

Anyway, you can read about this in Acts 21 & 22, but long story short, Paul ends up in prison, in Rome. While in prison he writes this letter to the Ephesians. I’m sure he used his time to reﬂect on all these things; it certainly shows in the letters he wrote not only to the believers in Ephesus, but to those in Colossae and Philippi as well.

3 Prisoner sounds harsh; like punishment. But that is in stark contrast to everything he has described about life in Christ. It’s a great and powerful irony, considering how we are blessed in the beloved. Paul was a follower and imitator of

Christ to the point of suﬀering. He describes his calling as being a prisoner, but it’s in this identity and purpose that he is fulﬁlled as he dies to self and lives for Christ. His life and calling were inside out from how he began. Remember he was a highly educated

Pharisee who took his religion so seriously that he hunted down these heretical Jesus followers and put them in prison. When he calls himself a prisoner of Christ, it is with poetic irony. He had died to his original life plans and submitted himself to Christ. He understood the big picture such that his suﬀerings were put into proper perspective.

He exhorts us to do the same.

II. The Mystery of Christ

When I say mystery, we all tend to think of a certain genre of stories and perhaps these characters (Agatha Christy or Scooby-Doo or Father Brown). When Paul uses the word mystery in the New Testament, it has a slightly diﬀerent meaning – in this case it means a hidden secret or the wonder of how something works without understanding the details. Some versions translate this as the divine secret or God’s secret plan. It’s diﬀerent than unmasking a villain or solving a crime. It’s more about the marvel and wonder of something beyond our understanding. Smart phones are like this; we know they work somehow, but if you grew up with mechanical things, you look at a smart phone in awe and wonder because it has no gears or much in the way of mechanisms

– it’s mysterious. In a much bigger way, the mystery of Christ is something that God

4 had in place before humanity – that as Messiah, He would be born of a woman, fulﬁlling the Genesis 3:15 promise; that he would come through the line of David, from

Abraham and winding in genealogy through Judah & Tamar, Rahab, Ruth the Moabite, the evil king Manasseh, and all the way to Joseph and Mary. All the kinds of people He came to save were in his human heritage. The mystery is that though He was the creator of all, He humbled himself as a man – as part of creation. The maker of the universe entered humanity as a helpless baby. He ministered to His people, healing the sick and diseased, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, throughout Galilee and

Jerusalem, as a homeless Rabbi followed by the dregs of society. To quote one of my favorite songwriters:

“Birds have nests foxes have dens But the hope of the whole world rests On the shoulders of a homeless man You had the shoulders of a homeless man And the world can't stand what it can't own And it can't own You 'Cause You did not have a home"1

God’s plan is to unite all things in Christ. He does this with the Church (Jews & gentiles). Our passage today tells us this mystery is made known through revelation

(vs.3) revealed to the apostles and prophets by the Spirit (vs. 5). Mystery is made known through the Church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (vs. 10).

When we speak of God, we refer to the tri-unity of Father, Son, Spirit – the divine relational being who is suﬃcient in and of himself as one, existing and preexisting beyond time. This God created the cosmos, the universe, all things seen and unseen –

1 Rich Mullins, The Jesus Record, 1998

5 to demonstrate His glory. In that glory is salvation for all creation. This is “the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth (Eph.

1:9-10).

And this mystery of the unifying of Jews and gentiles as one in the Church, resulted in Paul being put in prison. This doesn’t sound very unifying. Paul’s suﬀering was the result of dis-unity in the Church. And yet, he stayed on task, writing to and encouraging the believers in the cities and towns where he had previously shared the

Gospel of Christ. It would seem Paul believed the words given to him that he wrote in

Romans chapter 8 – that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called to His purpose.

You would think that as the Church, we would all believe together and get along together. But He does His work in and through us in spite of our messy lives, and all while we are in process of being made whole. Think about how it works today. The

Gospel has reached every continent. Christianity has impacted the world like no other religion – it is trans-cultural beyond all others; no culture can claim Christianity as solely its own. Jesus continues to build His Church all over the world. And yet, we have seen great factions and even much bloodshed in the name of the Gospel throughout the

Church’s history. Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant are the main veins, but each have spawned many subdivisions over various doctrines and interpretations. The potential for discord is very great. And yet. And yet, God uses His Church for His purpose, to bring His salvation to a dying world. God works in the midst of our human frailty.

Despite our human mess-ups within the Church, God unites us in Christ.

III. The Gospel

“In Christ” The plan of salvation is part of the Gospel. The Gospel, the good news of Christ, is God reconciling, uniting all things in Christ – redemption and new creation. It’s the unfolding of the mystery. We often think of the Gospel as the prayer we pray to be saved. The Gospel is more than the entry way – it is God’s transforming work within individuals and within the whole Church and aﬀecting the whole world. This manifold – multi-faceted – wisdom of God is on display and made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realm.

The Gospel, the good news, is that God, in His ultimate wisdom and strength, power and love, made provision for the broken relationship with Him to be restored.

Here’s how He did it:

God came to earth, to us, to make things right, even though the broken relationship was our fault. Jesus, being one with the Father, humbled himself, being born in human

ﬂesh, living in our muck, bearing the consequences of our rebellion, and suﬀering humiliation to show God’s mighty power over evil. Jesus, being fully God and fully human walked among us in our human skin and experience as an example of right- relationship with the Father and as the means for reconciliation – the way to life.

Jesus says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” You see, at just the right time, while we were still sinners – victims, perpetrators and revelers in rebellion against God – Jesus Christ died for us, paying our penalty, bearing our shame, demonstrating His power over evil, making the way for us to be forgiven and restored to right-relationship with God. To prove this, God raised

7 Him from the dead, conquering death, seating Him at the right hand of the Father for all eternity. And not only that, but Jesus gives us His Spirit within us that we may be forgiven, healed and delivered – transformed into the people He has created us to be; not the victims and perpetrators and revelers in rebellion that we have been.

Paul says in verse 7: “Of this Gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of His power.”

Conclusion

Paul knew who he was and why he was here; his identity and purpose. He knew because he had an encounter with Jesus; he was literally knocked oﬀ his horse. When

Paul submitted his life to Christ he was made a new man with a new mission. The way it played out was kind of ironic, but it showed all the more how God works His purpose inside-out; contrary to how we’ve been conditioned by the world. The mystery of Christ revealed through God’s Spirit at work in His people, the Church, is powerful, world changing, and a testimony to all the hosts of heaven, proclaiming God’s glory.