Around A.D. 62 Paul writes to the Ephesian churches, from prison in Rome.
While Ephesians is not the longest or most comprehensive of Paul’s writings, it does give us wonderful bird’s eye view of the terrain of Paul’s letters.
In this letter we get a breathtaking overview of early Christian reflections on;
God,….. the World,,,,,,,, Jesus our deliverer,,,,,,,, the Church,,,,,, the means of salvation,,,,,,, Christian behaviour,,,,,, marriage and family, and spiritual warfare.
Our passage from Ephesians is short…. consisting of only 5 sentences…and significantly in those 5 sentences ”in Christ/Him” occurs some 10 times.
Here after the briefest of openings, and prompted by the Holy Spirit, Paul bursts into a formal prayer of praise and thanksgiving for all the blessings the Father has lavished us ‘in Christ’.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…
The prayer in style is reminiscent of the traditional Jewish blessing form that re-echoes to this day in Christian worship.
Two examples come to mind from our worship here…..
for instance, the ancient Hebrew blessing over bread …a blessing which Jesus likely recited each time before breaking and eating bread.
”Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, Ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.”
”Blessed are You God, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth.”
Very similar to our Eucharistic prayer;
”Blessed are You Lord God of All creation,through Your goodness we have this bread to offer which earth has given and human hands have made’ .
And later we together will sing ancient prophetic blessing;
”Baruch haba b’Shem Adonai.” Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD.
The Prayer of Paul has mighty doctrinal brushstrokes…. calling on us to bless God, for what He does + has done for us because we are ”in Messiah”.
The multi faceted concept of being ‘in Christ’ is both straight forward and simultaneously and mind blowingly mystical.
Bishop Tom Wright gives a v helpful image of being’ in Christ”;
”When Paul speaks of us as being ‘in Christ/King Jesus/Messiah the centre of what he means is that, as in some Jewish thought, the king represents his people, so that what happens to him happens to them, and what is true of him is true of them.” NT for Everyone. T. Wright.
Christians not only have faith in Him; their life/well-being is in Him.
As the root in the soil, the branch in the vine, the fish in the sea, the bird in the air, so the place of life for us is ”in Christ”.
Physically our life is in the world; spiritually our life is lifted above the world to be in Christ…For we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.
Great saints testify that…all words are rendered obsolete, inadequate and redundant; incapable of ever expressing their earthly mystical experience of the love of Christ which is us-bound.
Paul’s prayer divides into 3 parts……….. (4-6) (7-10) (11-14)
Because of Jesus, God has
has blessed us in Christ our King (verse 3)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be— holy and blameless before him— in love.
We are to bless our Father -God…Why ?. Because he has and does bless us.
Bless (abstract)…Barakh……….He made his camels to kneel down (barakh) outside the city. Gen 24.11. The camel kneels so what they carry is accessible….God kneels down,(in point of fact comes down) like a good father, to make Himself available to us. To meet both our immediate and eternal needs.
Paul’s prayer contains great truths about our status.
V4……………God chose us in Christ ….
He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be— holy and blameless before him— in love.
Make this truth is a great comfort. We were/are, despite all our asinine misjudgements and stubborn waywardness, chosen by Our Father God and are being transformed ,through grace, into His Son’s likeness…He choose us not to dispose of us…… (Never leave you.)
V 5.+6……. we read He foreordained us ‘through Christ’….and poured grace on us ‘in Christ’.
5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
In these verses we see the sovereign plan of God ,for us, unfolding. In His love of Christ ,the Father, with pleasure, freely lavishes grace upon us. God unorphaned us by adopting us. …making us joint heirs with His Beloved.
From (7-10) Paul shows what the death of Jesus released for us.
We have redemption in Him (verse 7),
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us.
V9. God set out the mystery of His plan in Christ.
Do we wish to seek and search out the wisdom and will of our Father for all cosmic creation? Then look to Jesus.
With all wisdom and insight (God) has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ,
God intends to sum up everything in Christ. All that has been created. This will be the eternal inheritance of the Christ-redeemed.
(in) the fullness of time,(God plans) to gather up all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have.. an inheritance,…
And our inheritance… is the whole world, renewed by a fresh act of God’s power and love. God intends to flood the whole cosmos, heaven and earth together, with his presence and grace. The new Jesus centred world, that results, will be the ‘inheritance’ for which we long .
The final verses of the passage show that because we have set our hope on Christ we shall not be disappointed, for we have been sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit as the guarantee….the deposit.
13 In Him (we) heard the word of truth, the gospel of (our)salvation, and had believed in Him,…( we) were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
The Holy Spirit is more than just a leader, guide and comforter.
He is part of the promised inheritance, because the Spirit is God’s own Presence. In the new world He will be fully and personally with us for ever.
Let us rejoice and be glad…. ,for the Holy Spirit is our guarantor …
He marks us out.
He stamps us with God’s official seal.
Look around…we are a people, here in the present, who are guaranteed to inherit God’s new world and who will know the eternal ectasy of His presence.
For then, as it says in Revelation21, ‘the dwelling of God is with humans’.
Amen.