Recap and Background

This is the second episode in our first series on the book of Ephesians. If you listened to the first episode, you will know it is a book that I really love. I mentioned in the first episode that I often ask people what their favourite book is in the Bible, Ephesians comes quite high on the list. I think a lot of Christians find that it is very reassuring and faith-building. It gives us a big picture of our salvation; it puts our lives in a bigger context. I think that is an amazing result of this incredible book. It is even more incredible when you think what difficult circumstances Paul was in when he was writing - at the end of his life, in prison in Rome, under house arrest, with the threat of execution at the hands of the imperial judges. He was able to produce this amazing book despite considerable suffering, difficulty, and the ageing process.

In the first episode, Paul immediately painted a very big picture of our salvation. He didn’t talk about any problems in the Ephesian church or address any particular people in the church. He was writing a general letter, a letter to motivate, to encourage, to build up faith. He told about the incredible purposes of God. He expressed very clearly that God took the initiative to bring salvation. It is not that man reaches out to God on his own to find him. Of course, many people do reach out to God, but we are not going to find him unless he is revealing himself to us. Paul talks about this in the first episode in terms of what he calls God’s predestined purpose. We saw later in the episode, the other side of the process of salvation - not only does God reach out to us, but we must make a decision. There is a time when we believe. Paul went on to explain that at the time we believe something incredible and miraculous happens, the Holy Spirit comes and lives within us; God living inside us. It is almost too incredible to believe, but that is the reality of what happens. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside us. Paul teaches this in a variety of different places in his writings and in Ephesians 1 there is a very good example at the end of the passage. So having explained that, Paul now continued in this passage to talk about his thanksgiving for salvation.

Thanksgiving has already been a big theme, as we saw in the first episode, but it is going to become an even bigger theme in this passage. Already we have a clue that a mature and a strong Christian life is filled with thanksgiving to God for the things that he has given us. We must keep remembering the blessings that we have received as we face the challenges, problems and difficulties that will inevitably come in our lives as we follow Jesus.

Paul’s Prayer Life

“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. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your hearts may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 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. And God placed all things under his 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.”

Ephesians 1:15-23, NIV

Wow, that’s a powerful passage!

It starts with an interesting point about Paul - how much he prayed. Paul was an activist; he loved being on the move. He travelled all the time going from place to place. He was busy preaching, discipling, and teaching. But Paul was also a man who took time to pray. It is extraordinary to think of the number of people, situations and churches Paul had responsibility for, to whom he said specifically in his letters, ‘I am praying for you.’ He planted so many churches in so many different places and countries. But whenever he wrote to them, almost in every case, he reassured them that he was praying for them. This takes time, faith and commitment. He prayed for the church in Ephesus, and this is a challenge to us. I was challenged about this many years ago; I have committed myself to pray for my church privately, and with others. That is your responsibility. You should be praying for the church you are in and follow the example of Paul. I want to encourage you to do this. Even if there are problems or difficulties in the church, pray for that church. Paul didn’t stop praying when there were problems and difficulties. He continued to pray for the churches, believing that God was going to intervene, change things, bring his purposes about and sort out problems in the churches. One of the most powerful means of doing that is continuous prayer.

True Salvation

Paul also prayed that they would have a better understanding of their salvation. One of Paul’s greatest fears is that people didn’t really understand what had happened to them when they became believers. Maybe they had gone through a difficult patch in life, or they felt guilty about something that they had done, and they thought that Christianity, or the gospel, or Jesus would help fix their problem. Or that God was going to bring material blessing into their life; if they believed in this God, maybe he would give the money, or property, or land they needed. Maybe people thought that God could be bribed by faith so that he would bless them materially. Many people in the modern world think exactly the same way. Paul was very concerned about it, that they didn’t really understand what had happened. God has not come to patch up your life or to give you the things that you want. He has come to change your life totally, to start all over again, to make a completely new life that is focused on him and his purposes, and not on your selfish interests. Paul wanted them to know God better, and to know their eternal hope better.

Resurrection Power

Paul then talks about the incredible power that God exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realms, verse 20. This is important and expresses the view that the power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that is given to Christians. That is a remarkable thought. Many people have been inspired by that idea. What was the power that raised Christ from the dead? Remember the situation: on Good Friday Jesus was crucified in the cruellest possible way. He said to one of the criminals on the cross who was crucified with him, but who believed, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” What he meant was that the soul of Jesus, the inner person of Jesus, was going immediately to heaven, along with this other man who had believed in him. But his body died totally. Jesus, in the physical sense, was as dead in the middle of the afternoon on Good Friday as anyone else who has died; he was buried, and his body became cold and still in the darkness of the tomb, like any other body. But on Easter Sunday, just as the dawn was breaking, angels came from heaven and the Holy Spirit moved in power. The stone was rolled away, and Jesus’ body and his soul, being in heaven, were united there in the tomb, and Jesus walked out of the tomb, his body completely transformed. That is an incredible power. Such a thing has never happened to anyone else in history in the same way, before or since. Any other resurrection of the body that has been done in the name of Christ has been a temporary one. That person will die at a later stage in their life. But Jesus’ body was perfect and eternal when he was raised again from the dead. Then Jesus was seated at the right hand of the Father.

Try to understand what Paul was talking about here, what incredible glory and transformation he was talking about in Jesus. Then we can see how this applies to us, because Paul wants to make an application to the Ephesians. There were several things that happened to Jesus. First of all, he was raised again from the dead. 40 days later, in the presence of the apostles, angels appeared on the Mount of Olives, a hillside outside Jerusalem, and Jesus ascended into heaven, physically. It says, “he was taken up into heaven”. God’s power removed him from the earth to heavenly glory. That was another miracle. Not only that, but as he pointed out here, Jesus was seated at the right hand of the Father. The right hand of the Father means the position of the highest possible authority, privilege and power. That is the position that Jesus holds now. That was what Paul was thinking about when he was writing these words. He described it as an incomparably great power. He was going to make an application to us, but we need to think about what he was talking about in terms of Jesus, first. We need to understand, as we think about Jesus now, that he is seated in incredible power. Later Paul says that Jesus is “far above every dominion and power, rule and authority on earth”, both now and at any other time in history. We can honestly say that Jesus is the most powerful person in the universe, along with his Father and the Holy Spirit. He is in a position of authority and power right now.

We often don’t think very much about Jesus now. We think of Jesus when he was born, when he was traveling around in his ministry in Galilee, when he was in Jerusalem, when he was crucified, his miracles, his parables, his teaching. We think of his resurrection, we think of his ascension and then we stop thinking any further. But the New Testament tells us in several places, and it starts here in Ephesians. We can fill in some of the extraordinary implications of Jesus being at the right hand of the Father from other passages. In Acts 2: 33, we find Peter speaking of Jesus just after his ascension, “exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear”. When the Holy Spirit is poured out on the earth and there is a revival or a miracle, or a great work of God or renewal in the church, we can know that it was initiated by Jesus himself, and the Father alongside him. Peter said on the Day of Pentecost, the work you see of the Holy Spirit, that is because the Father and Jesus together decided now is the time to pour out the Spirit. It was their initiative.

Secondly, because he is at the right hand of the Father, Romans 8: 34 tells us that Jesus “is at the right hand of the Father, and is also interceding for us”, praying to his Father for you and for me. Jesus’ love for the church goes on through the generations. It was not just love expressed on the cross, it is love expressed now. There is prayer in heaven for the protection and wellbeing of true believers by Jesus himself to his Father. This brings about the work of the Holy Spirit who comes to reveal things to us, to help us, to empower us, and to deal with the challenges of our life.

Not only that, 1 Peter 3: 22 tells us something else. “He has gone into heaven, and is at God’s right hand with angels, authorities, and powers in submission to him”. The angels of God, such immensely powerful eternal beings who never fell into sin and work tirelessly on behalf of the Kingdom of God, are under the authority of Jesus. Angels are sometimes sent to assist Christians and churches to protect them, to guide them, to lead them, and to provide for them in miraculous ways. We see some examples in the New Testament. When that happens, the initiative came from Jesus in heaven.

Then, because he is at the right hand of the Father, at the end of time, John 5: 27 tells us “And he,( God), has given Jesus authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” So, Jesus is going to be the judge of all people when he returns. Paul is thinking about the greatness of Jesus and the work of God raising him from the dead, causing him to ascend into heaven and be seated at the right hand of the Father, as he writes this.

Holy Spirit Power

Then Paul said, that incomparably great power is also at work in us. That same Holy Spirit. We are back to where we were in the last episode, thinking about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the individual believer. It is a major theme for Paul, and it is often forgotten. We often think of the Christian life in terms of obligations, things we need to do, the rules of the church, the things that we shouldn’t be doing, and the feeling that we need to please God and try harder, but Paul points us in another direction. He says, in effect, honour the Holy Spirit who is in you. Ask for a filling of the Spirit. Ask him to lead you and show you how to live your life. Many Christians find that very hard to do. We need to have a quiet humble attitude to say, ‘Holy Spirit, I want to listen to you. I want to read the scriptures. I want to learn from them, and I want to do the things that you tell me to do and not be worried about my relationship with God and trying to achieve things, trying to please people all the time, but rather just listen to that voice within’. If we do that, even the most difficult circumstances can turn out in remarkable ways.

Let me give you an example from Paul’s life that was happening at the very time that he was writing this. Paul was in prison in Rome under house arrest, it says at the end of the book of Acts. The Roman authorities had said they were going to put him on trial, but they were not going to put him in prison as they didn’t have much spare capacity in the prisons. He could rent a house but was not allowed to leave the building. Several soldiers were on duty night and day in that building. That was Paul’s circumstance. Whenever Paul went to a new place, and he had not been to Rome before, he wanted to go out and preach, to go to the marketplace, to the synagogue and to the debating halls and meet the political leaders. He also wanted to go and have a look at the pagan temples. He couldn’t do any of that. How could he share his faith when he was confined to this building for an unknown period of time - which turned out to be two years? Philippians 1:12, describes a similar circumstance. Paul was on his own most of the time, but he could talk to the guards because they were there. They had to be there. Paul talked to the guards about the gospel message. These guards were from the special military unit that protected the emperor himself - the most powerful man in the ancient world. The imperial guard had their own barracks just on the edge of the city of Rome. They were given responsibility for important prisoners and for the protection of the emperor.

The guards rotated their duty. This went on for two years. What was the result of Paul telling of Christ for two years?

Philippians 1:12 “Now I want to I want you to know, brothers and sisters, what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.” In other words, Paul became well-known in the imperial court because all the soldiers kept talking about him. Even the Emperor and his family were hearing the gospel message because Paul was talking to the guards. In such a difficult situation, God can still work. How amazing is that?

Reflections

Think again about the power of prayer. If you can’t be active, you can pray. Even if you can be active, you need to give time to pray. You must set aside that time on your own and with other people. Please rethink how you do that in response to this message.

Secondly, to repeat what I said in a reflection in the first episode, here is another wonderful example of the power of thanksgiving. If you are in difficult circumstances, can I encourage you, without forgetting how serious those difficult circumstances are, to give thanks for everything that God has given you, and you will be amazed at the number of things you can thank him for, even in difficult times.

My final reflection is that Paul wanted our love for Christ to grow, but he also wanted our love for the church to grow; those two things are closely connected. People don’t love the church if they don’t love the head of the church. They tend to treat the church for their own purposes - useful in certain circumstances, but maybe we cannot bother with it in other circumstances. But for those who truly love Christ, they will love his people. Paul is interested in the church here, and he goes on to develop teaching about what the church really is, all the way through this book and we get a tremendous climax of his teaching about the church in chapter 4, which we will come to in Series 2. Let us love Christ with all our hearts, and then let us love the church. The church that you are in - whatever its difficulties and problems - it is worthy of your love and your commitment. God will honour you, as you commit yourself to your local church. If that is a challenge to you because you are listening to this episode, but are not actually connected to a local church and you know that you should be, can I encourage you do something about that? Find a local church that you can belong to. You might be in a country where this is very difficult and where churches meet privately in houses and elsewhere - seek out those gatherings. Maybe you are in a Western context where many people live lives without real commitment to local churches, can I encourage you to change that in your own life? Get your life in line with the teaching of the New Testament, which puts a very high priority on the local church and connects a love for Christ with our love for the local church and for other believers.

Thanks for listening and I hope I can welcome you back to join us in our third episode shortly.