The Breastplate of Righteousness (Ephesians 6:10-17, Romans 3:21-26)

 

Here is a link to an audio file of this message preached at HopeWhangarei November 2025.

My friend Nick was a police officer. We had him speak at an Easter camp we were running at Ohope. He told the story of being with a group of offices that met with the providers of bullet proof vests. The representative of the company providing the vests went through the specifications of the vest. What it was made of. How it stopped projectiles. He had a top notch PowerPoint presentation and promotional video on it. He demonstrated how to put them on. It was designed to give the officers confidence that this vest would protect them when it came to the crunch… at the end of the presentation he took them to a gun range and put the vest down range and fired at it bang, bang, bang and showed how it stopped bullets. Then he asked do you believe this vest will stop bullets? To which the officers replied yes. Ok  he said who’s going first?... to which there was stunned silence… he repeated himself… who is going first? Who is  going to put the vest on go down range and take a bullet… yes it would hurt… yes they’d have a bruise for a few days… but it was the test of confidence in this body armor…  nick said no one moved. There were nervous glances at each other, shuffling of feet and the odd nervous laugh. But no one volunteered.

Nick used that story to talk about putting faith into action. But it also applies today as we continue to look at Paul telling his readers to put on the whole armor of God and stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For nick it was only a demonstration but for us putting on the armor of God is an essential as we  find ourselves in an ongoing everyday spiritual battle.

It’s a good introduction as we look at the breastplate of righteousness… Bullet proof vests are the modern equivalent of the breastplate. They provide protection for the vital organs of the person who wears them.  They like their ancient equivalent are designed to stop projectiles and weapons. While bullet proof vests are made of new synthetic materials like Kevlar roman breastplates were made of metal, bronze over leather. The more affluent soldiers would wear a vest of chain mail under that as well for added protection.  

Of course the question needs to be asked how does righteousness as  a breastplate  protect us from the schemes of the enemy. In scripture righteousness is used in several different ways, it is an attribute of God. In Isaiah 59 the prophet has God saying he is putting on righteousness like a breastplate as he goes into battle for the redemption of his people. God is always righteous, just in all his dealing with humanity. As we put our trust in Jesus he exchanges our sinfulness for his righteousness.  Also it is used to talk of our living up to the calling that we have in Christ, as Christians living in a way that reflects God’s righteousness. Right living, right relationships, acting justly… Is Paul talking of moral perfectionism? And what do we make of scripture elsewhere talking of our righteousness not being bright shine armor but as filthy rags. Well I actually believe that when Paul talks of righteousness here we need to look at both understandings. The book of Ephesians itself gives us that insight.

Remember Ephesians starts out talking of all the spiritual blessings we have received in Christ. In Christ we were chosen before the beginning of the world, adopted into God’s family, put right with God, we have been sealed by the presence of the HOLY Spirit. We were dead in our transgressions but are now alive in Christ. We have been made a new creation, a new holy people of God from across the divides of society. It is what God has done for us… in Jesus Christ  and in Ephesians 6 Paul talks of putting on the armor of God. The armor comes from God. Then in the second half of the letter Paul talks of living the new life in Christ. We are to live up to the calling we have, to live in unity, we are given gifts to as a body grow up into the fullness of Christ. Not to walk in the ways of the gentiles but in the way of love putting off the vices of the world and developing the fruits of goodness, righteousness and truth. To walk in the ways of wisdom and be filled with the Holy Spirit and allow it to permeate every relationship in our lives. Finally to put on the armor of God and stand strong, praying in all situations. There is that element of becoming what we all ready are in Christ.

The theological word for the righteousness we receive is that it is imputed righteousness. We receive the righteousness of another person. In this case Christ. Our reading from Romans this morning spells it out. We have all sinned, all fallen short of God’s glory. If you want to continue the idea of armor and warfare, the word for sin there is like an arrow that is fired and misses the mark. But, this is the good news of the Gospel. Jesus who lived a righteous life and obeyed totally the will of God exchanges his righteousness for our sinfulness. On the cross Jesus took on himself all that we had done wrong. He became sin itself. And in a most wonderful and profound mystery in return for that we receive Jesus righteousness. We are made right with God through Jesus once and for all sacrifice for us. It’s the catch cry of the reformation we are justified by faith in Christ. It’s the most profound and amazing grace. Christ take our filthy rags and exchange them for his royal robe. In Ephesians 5 talking of husbands loving their wives like Christ loves the church he speaks of presenting the church as a bride in the most wonderful wedding garment without blemish or wrinkle.

You know one of the schemes of the devil is to make us think that because of who we are and what we done that God could not possibly love us and accept us. That can push us away from God as we focus on all those unlovable things about ourselves, all those things in the past we have done wrong, they can come and parade themselves before us and push us further and further away from God.  One time I found myself saying to God…

“God how could you possibly love me I am such a flawed human being, you know what I am like… how could you love me.”

Right away, as Adrian Plass puts it this voice at the back of head that I equate with God, I heard God  said… “but it is all about grace”…  

“yes God” I said “but I don’t deserve your grace…”

 and I sensed God smile and his eyes crinkle… “yes Howard, but that’s what grace is all about. I love you.”

 And I had to laugh and say “fair cop God”…  

Being put right with God, being made righteous is a free costly gift from God through Jesus death and resurrection. Roman 8 says it so well there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no truth in the devil lie, we are loved and accepted by God, because of Jesus Christ.

The flip side of that lie is that need within us to try and earn God’s acceptance through works righteousness. Like the Pharisee in Jesus parable whose prayer was like a tick box list of doing things right. I fast twice a week, I give money to the poor, I, m not like those other people. For the pharisee it was the arrogance of self-righteousness that he had earned God’s favor by doing the right thing. The older brother in the story of the prodigal son, who says But Dad I’ve always done what you wanted me to do, what I should, you’ve never thrown a party for me, I’m not going to join in your celebration. In both those parables it is the one who knew they were wrong but asked for forgiveness who is put right with God through grace.  We can find ourselves like a hamster or Guinea  pig going round as fast as we can on one of those wheels and getting nowhere. Trying to earn God’s favour… And when I googled hamster wheel I noticed you can get a wheel with speedometer to see how fast you are getting nowhere  We can find ourselves on that spiritual tread mill rather than a spiritual journey knowing and following Jesus.

Imputed righteousness enables us to get off what is a spiritually fatiguing track and to know it is not our endeavor that counts but Christs. Ys we are all sinners… we can never earn God’s love and acceptance. But by grace in Christ alone we have been made right with him.  

The other type of righteousness talked of in scripture is imparted righteousness. Christ daily working in us to live for him. The Holy Spirit is the one who enables us to do good deeds and is working to conform us to the image of Christ. The big theological word is sanctification; we are becoming what we already are in Christ Jesus. We are justified by faith, and we are sanctified by the Spirit. God is working his righteousness in our lives. The potter and the clay is a great illustration of this… for us it’s not a passive thing, we cooperate with the spirit… as it says in Galatians 5 we learn to walk in step with the spirit. Its not an instantaneous thing, it’s a process… God’s word God’s grace and time.  Paul even talks of that process in romans as a battle within between the old self and the new self in Christ. We know that god gives us the spiritual armor and weapons we need for that fight. It is a process a journey we go through.

One of the schemes of the devil of course in the face of this is to convince us that sin isn’t that bad a problem, and really our vices and sins are not as bad as that person next to me, or over there. We can make friends with our sin, we can keep them like a pet… However those areas that are not totally being conformed to the likeness of Christ can become chinks in our armor, places where the devil can get in and start to do real damage to our vital organs, the heart of our faith. Pull us away an occurrence can become an often and develop into habit and become a full blown addiction.  Again the answer here is the righteousness of God. That when we recognize these areas and things, attitudes and vices in our life as sinful, the work of the Holy Spirit is not to condemn us but to convict us of our need for God, so we will repent, turn away from them. We need to confess them before God and ask for his forgiveness. 1 john 1;9-10 are amazing verses that speak such truth… if we say we are without sin we call God a liar, and the truth is not in us… but if we confess our sins then God is faithful and just (there is that righteousness thing again) and will forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. John goes on to say not so we continue sinning, but we know we have an advocate in heaven who pleads for us.  Then work with the Holy Spirit and often with people in our Christian community to allow transformation to happen. To live in a new way.

The flip side to that of course is we can find ourselves thinking that what we have done disqualifies us from God’s love. Man I’ve blown this time, and yes when we do mess up big time there are consequences. But again, the devil will try and pull us away from God but the answer comes back to the righteousness of God… God’s forgiveness and aid to get up and start walking in the light again. Dependent on God’s armor to stand strong. To hold hold hold.

It's reformation Sunday today, on October 31^st 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral. Affirming that salvation was by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Christopher M Kennedy starts his chapter on the breastplate of righteousness in his book Equipped: The armor of God for everyday strugglers, with the illustration of Martin Luther. That really hit home to me. He talked of the noise of that reformation day the bang, bang, bang of Luther nailing the thesis to the door. Reminding us of  Christs sufficiency for us… But then he said that Luther’s life before that resounded with a bang, bang, bang… he would beat himself up over his own sinfulness and shortcomings. Literally at night he would flagellate himself whipping his body to try and over come his carnal nature… he would spend hours confessing his sins to a priest each day until the priest could take it no more. Kennedy says ‘Luther’ as a former law student saw God as a harsh judge just waiting for people to sin so he could punish them. What freed Luther was coming to study the book of Romans and he came across the verse ‘the righteous shall live by faith’.  Again we hear the bang, bang, bang but this time the driving of nails into the hands and feet of Jesus to the cross, where our sins as well were nailed and we received Christ’s forgiveness and righteousness in return.  Righteousness that transforms our lives to be like Christ’s… Luther’s response was to say ‘I felt as if I had been born again and paradises gates were opened to me.’

Bang, bang, bang that breast plate of righteousness protects us from the schemes of the evil one. Are you willing to go first… to put it on… to put on the whole armor of God and stand strong in the Lord.

Ephesians 6:10-20 Hold, Hold, Hold... An Introduction to the armor of God.

here is a link to an audio recording of this sermon Preached at HopeWhangarei October 19th 2025. the first 1.40minutes is the audio of the below video 

That scene comes from the 1995 movie BraveHeart, depicting the battle of Sterling in the first war of Scottish independence, where William Wallace and the Scots defeated a much larger and stronger English force. Actually defeating the English heavy cavalry with infantry. While it apparently bears little resemblance to the historical battle, it does provide us with a wonderful illustration of the portion we had read to us today from the book of Ephesians. Maybe in a way that resonates with our Scottish Presbyterian hearts  “Hold, Hold, Hold” is a great paraphrase of Paul’s exhortation for his readers to be strong in the Lord. Put on the full armor of God and take your stand. Stand firm, stand your ground, as we face the ongoing struggle to live out the victory that Christ has won for us in our every day life. A spiritual battle against spiritual forces that Paul tells us God has given us spiritual resources to fight. The armor of God.

Over the next six weeks we are going to finish off our journey through the book of Ephesians with a sort of mini series looking at the Armor of God and how this Armor: truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the word of God and Prayer can help us in that battle. As Author Christopher Kennedy  puts it ‘the armor of God for everyday strugglers’. This message today acts as an introduction to that series. Putting the armor of God into context.

Paul starts his exhortation to stand strong in God’s armour, with the word finally. This is not that what Paul is about to say is an add on at the end. Rather Paul here acts like a sports coach giving his team one last inspirational talk as they go out to play the game. You need to go out now and live out what I have been telling you in the playfield of everyday life, against a strong opponent. Finally also points back to what he has been saying all along. He had started by talking of all that God had achieved for us in Christ. By God’s mighty power. He has saved us, raised us up, chosen us before the beginning of the world, adopted us into his family, our inheritance sealed by God’s Holy Spirit being within us . In Christ we have been saved once we were dead in our sins, but now are alive.  We were not a people but now are God’s new people, a new creation from across the divides of society. ‘every spiritual Blessing in Christ’. That is why Paul can say ‘Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  It is God, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, who has done these thing. It is God and his power that we can stand strong in. It is dependence of God not independent personal strength.

Because of what God has done in Christ, we are called to live a different life, to walk in a new way. To live up to calling we have in Christ, to walk in Unity, not to live as the gentile do, but to walk in the way of love, to walk in wisdom and be filled with the Holy Spirit, allowing it to fill us with joy and permeate all our relationships.  To live the new life in Christ. That is what God’s power has done in us… new life in Christ.  Paul now says trusting God stand in this new place you find yourselves. Don’t give up ground, don’t give it back. Don’t give in, Don’t give up.

We often think of stand strong, as a defensive posture. There is an element of that here, but the idea of standing firm is holding the ground that has already been won by Christ. I am into military history, and one battle that fascinates me in the battle of the bulge. In Belgium and France in December 1944. The allies had stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6^th, they has slogged through the hedgerow country, then broken out and driven the forces of Nazi Germany back across France and Holland and Belgium, to the borders of the Reich. Hitler released a last ditch desperate counter attack to reverse inevitable defeat, striking through the Arden in the middle of winter…where the allies were least prepared. It was a counter attack that was stalled and defeated largely by the 101 airborne divisions stubborn defiance, standing their ground at the important crossroad town of Bastogne.  When asked to surrender their commanding officer Gen. MacAulffie gave one of the most succinct and inspirational replies…’nuts’. I’m not sure I could see Paul saying once your put on the full armor of God say Nuts to the devil. But Satan was defeated at the Cross, not the crossroads, and what we face is the desperate counter attack of an already defeated enemy. Strong? yes, Wiley?  yes, cunning? yes… determined? Yes… but defeated.

Paul then defines who our enemy is. He says that we are not fighting against “blood and flesh but rather against the rulers, against the authorities, against powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms.”  It is easy in our age of social media and such polarization in society to demonize people who we disagree with, that we find on the other side from us. But Jesus said we were to love our enemies, pray for them bless them… not demonize them. Rather Paul says we are fighting spiritual forces. Later in verse 16 he will identify  the evil one or devil or Satan as chief of those spiritual enemies. The one who is the deceiver and scripture calls the father of all lies.

When it comes to thinking about evil spiritual forces or demons Christians can fall into two camps. Two opposite extremes. We can adopt our western materialist worldview and deny the existence of these demonic forces. We can see all difficulties and challenges having natural causes. Some Biblical commentators see Paul as a first century man using the idea of these evil forces in the heavenlies as personifications of all the isms we face in the world today in terms of political and economic and social issues… racism, militarism, materialism, nationalism and these various -isms do exert power in our world today. But as Mark Roberts says this fails to do justice to Paul or to the millions of Christians whose worldview is not shaped by Western philosophical thought. If you listened to the interview I did with a missionary about her work in Mozambique, she talked about some of her students being delivered from demonic oppression bought about by being dedicated to spirits by witch doctors when they were young.

The other extreme is that we can over emphasis the power of the demonic. We can see a demon behind every bush every problem or setback in our lives. Which results in living in fear. Some people develop complex and far-reaching hierarchies of demonology. There focus in on that more that on what Christ has done for us

C S LEWIS in his introduction to ‘the screwtape letters’ puts it like this

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

Perhaps the right balance comes from Ephesians itself. In Ephesians 2:1-10 Paul talks of the human condition of being dead in our transgressions and describes that as following the spirit of the age; the prevailing human philosophies and culture, following the spirits of the air, the way that the Greeks spoke of the spirit world, and following the desires of our flesh and senses, our own sinful desires as we are fallen human being. In the second half of Ephesians Paul addresses each of those talking of not living as the gentiles do. Speaking of walking in love and not having anything to do with the vices that reflect our own sinful desires. Then here in this final section turning to speak of the evil forces in the heavenlies. Remember Paul is writing to the city where in response to his ministry they had gathered up a fortunes worth of books on witchcraft and burned them, a city ripe with idol worship.  It takes real discernment and prayer to see where the enemy is at work and where we are dealing with these other challenges. Often the enemy will use the other two as points of attack into our lives.

Paul then goes on to talk of the spiritual Armor that God has given us in this fight.

I’m not going to delve that much into it today as it will be the focus for the following five weeks. Except to say. Paul had as his model the roman soldier and describes the Armor the soldier that would have been guarding him would have worn. In his imprisonment he would have probably watched these guards put their Armor on. But more than that Paul was inspired by the Old Testament where in passages like we had read to us today from Isaiah 59 God is seen as a warrior donning his Armor and going to battle on behalf of his people. As we are in a spiritual battle God gives us spiritual Armor and weapons to fight it, and his is the victory.

Some people see putting on the Armor of God as a prayer as they prepare for the day or prayer ministry. That’s cool. It is a good way of praying for God’s protection in our lives. I also think we need to see it as more looking and seeing what God has done for us and applying it to our lives.  Robert Marks talks of the Armor of god in his prayer life and says he finds himself using it like a check list about how he is living out his faith… Is he committed to the truth of the gospel? Is he acting righteously, is he seeking peace? Putting his faith in the Lord, remembering God’s salvation? And wisely believing, speaking, and living the word of God?’ he asks God to show him where he is letting his Armor slip and lowering his shield. In the other sermons in this series the preachers are going to be looking at how these pieces of armor really defend our lives from Satan’s schemes. It may not come across as very ‘OOKie Spooky’ stuff it might sound like real practical spiritual advice to everyday challenges. 

Lastly, I want to focus on what Paul tells us to do when we have put our armor on. In most bible translations there is a paragraph split between Paul talking of the word of God as the sword of the spirit and Paul talking of Prayer. We may think that Paul is staring a last final point. But its important to see Prayer as one of the Spiritual weapons that God has given us. In fact when you are all dressed up in your armor you might ask how then do we fight? How do we enter into this battle. Paul’s answer is Prayer. It is God battle our first and most important port of call is Prayer. It is where we enter into the heavenly battle it is how we stay in contact with our commander in chief the one who has won the victory. It is calling out to God that we see God answer and move. Some people might think of prayer in spiritual warfare as praying against demonic powers and presence. Speaking to them and rebuking them. But here Paul actually gives us a wider and more wholistic view.

As you read the last part of this scripture the word ‘all’ comes through again and again… Pray in the spirit in all circumstances. With all kinds of Prayers and requests… keep on praying for all God’s people. Pray in the Spirit in some circumstances is associated with praying in tongues, and I use this gift of the holy spirit on a regular basis, Listening to Geoff New’s message a couple of weeks back we were reminded that  the Spirit prays and intercedes for us in groans too deep for words… as we find ourselves wrestling and struggling with the difficulties of life… Paul’s focus here is as we are in a spiritual Battle we need to depend on the Spirit (of God) to lead us and guide us in our Prayer. All occasions means not just difficult times but in good times as well. If we are using military terminology, we hear Paul say be alert… like a solider or a watchman manning their post. This praying is also a communal activity, we are not called to be this battle alone, we are called to be in it together. Roman soldier fought in a phalanx their shields were interlocked to protect each other. They were able to stand strong because they relied on the man on their left and right. Brothers in arms has been used to denote the close bond between soldiers who have faced combat together since the 1400’s it is also used to denote close connections between people in the civilian world who share a common challenge or purpose. We are so much more than that we are brothers and sisters in Christ and so we need to be battling for one another in this spiritual conflict we find ourselves in… not battling each other.

We’ve looked at the battle of Stirling and Bastogne as illustrations in this message but in Paul’s closing plea for prayer… pray also for me’ we get a wonderful example of what it means to stand firm with the Armor of God on. Paul is in prison, an ambassador for the gospel in chains. His prayer is not centered
on asking the people in the churches he has founded to pray for his release or freedom. Paul knew that this was part of god’s plan for him and by being a prisoner he would be able to preach the gospel at the very heart of the roman Empire. In fact in his letter to the church at Philippi he says because of his captivity the gospel was spreading. Even through the elite roman army unit the Pretorian guard. Paul was a captive, but the soldiers were a captive audience as they had to guard Paul… they would have heard his prayers, seen his interactions with believers who came to seek Paul and they would have listened to his explaining the Gospel. 

Paul’s prayer request is that that when ever he speaks, words maybe given to him so he will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel. In the situation that he is in he would do what God has called him to do be an ambassador for Christ. Yes in other places he prays for his own needs. In 2 Corinthians 12;1 Paul talks of paying for relief from a thorn in his flesh. But here we see that standing firm for Paul is that he desires to speak God’s word when the time comes and do it in a way that it will explain the Gospel to his hearers. We’ve been doing the ripple effect  evangelism course on ‘difficult questions’ and we looked at Paul’s speech to the Athenians in Acts 17 and how he was able to taylor the gospel to speak to that situation. It is a great example of what Paul is wanting. In Spiritual battle frontline prayer is about the extension of the kingdom of God, the effective sharing of the Gospel so peoples lives are transformed, about us being able in all the situations we find ourselves being ambassadors of Christ.  It is the gospel of Jesus Christ through the power of the spirit that brings life and light and change into the darkness of this world.

Paul’s exhortation to be strong in the Lord, to put on the armor of God and stand firm are all in the present tense in Greek. It gives it the emphasis of an ongoing action the continuing outworking of what Paul has been speaking about in his letter. We are in a spiritual battle, however daily we can depend on God who has provided us with the Armor we need to fight this battle and to fight it God’s way. It’s a spiritual battle we have spiritual resources to fight spiritually… just as Paul’s talk on this spiritual battle and the Armor of God comes at the end of his teaching about who we are in Christ, new creation because of Jesus life dead and resurrection, a new people, living a new way… in the way of love filled with the spirit. That standing firm in the armor of God manifests itself in the way we live and love in a Christ honoring way. In how we express the Kingdom of God.  People… Hold Hold Hold. 

Ephesians 5:21-6:9 Submit to One Another Out of Reverence for Christ worked out in the con text of the roman household... and today.

 

here is a link to an Audio recording of this message from HopeWhangarei in October 2025.link to HopeWhangarei

When I preached  on this passage in 2023 as part of our One another-ing series I finished that message with an illustration from a book by Gerald Sittser and I want to start with it today…  He and his wife love watching old movies, particularly musicals. They loved watching the mesmerizing, magical ball room dance routines of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. Dances that were filled with such grace. Sittser quoted an interview with Ginger Rodgers after Fred death where she said he was so good that he never seemed to be leading and her following. There was a seamlessness, an elegance, as if two people were dancing as one.  You could see the care they had for each other and the love of the dance. I use it because it is a great illustration of the focus on unity and oneness and love of something greater than ourselves which is the focus when Paul says ‘submit to one another out of reverence to Christ’… and applies that basic principle to relationships with in the very hierarchical roman household.

( thought it was good to add this feedback... One women in our church said to me after the service she had heard a comment that while Fred Astaire was a great dancer, that Ginger Rodgers was equally good... and she had to do it all backwards and in high heels.)

The idea of submission does seem to be out of step with our modern 21^st century world. When I grew up dancing even dancing together seemed to be more about individual moves and gyrations than cohesively moving as one.  It was about individual expression. Our western world values individualism… focusing on personal rights, striving for, securing and maintaining our own social status and standing. Dancing to our own tune, thank you very much.

Now, the most common dancing I see is in tic-tok videos.  Where people dance doing the same steps the same routines. No one leading and no one following… it reflects the flatter understanding we have of society than the very hierarchical first century Roman world Paul speaks to. A hierarchy where the husband, father slaveowner was seen as being in the position of power and this was seen as the natural order of things, because men were viewed as superior to women, and freemen superior to slaves. That is the social context Paul is writing to and providing a radically different of relating.

Maybe I’m dancing around the issue because as bible commentator Mark Roberts says there are controversies swirling around this passage. ‘Including the idea of mutual submission,  Submission of wives to husbands, the idea of husband as the head, and the exhortation to slaves to obey their masters, a command that seems to endorse slavery.’ We can’t see slavery without looking through the lens of the north American and European experience that is synonymous with racism. People tend to come to this passage with predetermined ideas about its meaning, embracing ideas of hierarchy or railing against them, which makes it difficult for us to engage the text on its own terms. And hear its radical nature.

Lets view the text in its context in the whole flow of Ephesians

Paul starts his letter to the Ephesians by speaking of Jesus being exalted at the right hand of the father and pouring out every spiritual blessing on his people. Saving us setting us free, giving us new and eternal life, making us a new creation, a new people together, praying that we may grow up into the fullness of Christ. Then he turns and brings that down to earth to show in the light of what God has done for us, who we are in Christ, how we should live and how the church should manifest both unity and purity in all relationships. The section where our bible reading today is situated starts way back in Ephesians 5:1 with Paul saying “Since you are God’s dear children you must try to be like him. Your life must be controlled by love, just as Christ loved us and gave his life for us as a sweet smelling offering and sacrifice that pleases God.” The focus on relationships is reflecting that Christ like love.

Then in the passage that Cath Bremner looked at last week. Paul Talks of walking in wisdom. That we should not be drunk on wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Being drunk on wine may make you happy and cheery but says Paul being filled with the spirit bring us Joy which is expressed in words and songs of praise. In giving thanks for everything to God our Father. And then in also submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. Whereas drunkenness has a detrimental affect on social cohesion and relationships, being filled with the spirits is to lead to harmony. With all the talk of music and singing in this section it gives us a good metaphor to think about submitting to one another. For songs and music to happen and make sense everyone needs to play their part, to defer to others or to take lead roles, to take direction from a lead or conductor and be willing to step back and play a lesser role for the overall good. It takes discipline and deference. If that does not happen, then instead of music all we have is competing noise. Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 13 without love even all our wonderful words are just like a clanging symbol, a loud obnoxious noise.

It's also important that we put submit to one another in the wider context of the New Testament.

Firstly in most Greek to English lexicons the translation of the Greek word for submission has the sense of ‘voluntary yielding in love’… In society this was seen as only working in one direction down to up…lesser to greater… and often the volunteer element was not stressed or the love part. However in scripture we see a different understanding of how we as believers are to relate. There is mutuality that goes directly against the power structures of the world. In Philippians 2 we hear be humble towards each other, always consider others better than yourselves. And look out for one another’s interests, not just for your own. Of course Paul goes on there to give us that wonderful attitude of Christ who though equal with God emptied himself became a human, a servant and was obedient even to death. In Galatians 5:13 Paul says ‘ serve one another humbly in love”. Maybe the great example of that is Jesus the rabbi, the Lord stooping to wash his disciples feet. Submit to one another reflects not only Jesus example but Jesus teaching… In Matthew 20 as Jesus disciples spurred on by motherly ambition, want the highest place Jesus tells them ‘ not to be like the gentiles, whose ruler lord it over them (dominate them) rather whoever wants to be great amongst you must learn to be the servant of all. Who wants to be first must be the slave. For even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. As I said before it shows the radical nature of  submitting one to another… out of reverence for Christ, who loved and gave, came and served.

Now let’s turn and look at how that applies in the context of the roman household code. To a church which would have been made up of men and women, children, both free children and salves, and slaves and masters.

Paul does it by addressing three sets of relationships. Husband/wife, children/ parents, slaves/ masters. He does it by applying that principle of mutual submission to each member in that pair. Giving them a reason why they should behave that way. One of the unique things about Paul’s household code is that he speaks to the person in that pairing who in their society would not have any power, and treats them as brothers and sisters in Christ, actually gives them moral agency in that relationship, elevating what was in society a forced lower position dignity. We also don’t probably catch it but in his words to the people with social high status Paul's words would have been even more radical. In Roman society there was the expectation that the power positions would be reinforced in their ruling. But Paul speaks more of service, care and love.

Wives are told to submit to their husbands unto the lord. The first thing I need to say is that this is the exact same word Paul has been using for all believers. The word is in the middle voice in Greek… it’s not an imperative or order rather as Harold Hoehner puts it ‘the submission is to be of her own accord and not the demand of her husband’. It’s also important to note its not women to men, but a wife to her own husband. The New Testament had a radical understanding of women and men’s equality in Christ there was neither male nor female, Greek or barbarian, jew or gentile, slave or free. Which hasn’t always been affirmed in the church or Christian influenced society.  

The reason that is given is as Christ is the head of the church, of which he is the savior. The good news translation uses the word authority over the church which highlights one of the problems we have when we think of the word 'head' as a metaphor. We often see it in terms of authority, but in scripture it can also have the meaning of source, like we use the word headwaters. But also the emphasis of head and body is again the oneness. And connection with the body. Shown in Christ giving himself for the church. Earlier in Ephesians Paul will talk of Christ as the head putting all things under his feet but the church is not one of those things, we are lifted up to be with Christ, growing into the fullness of Christ who is the head. A lifting up and seating with.

Then Paul, addresses the other side of that pair the husbands. In Greek roman times it would be difficult to talk of the husband submitting. But Paul does it by speaking of Husbands loving their wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for them. The word of course is agape which has the sense of seeking the highest good for the other person. A point Paul emphasizes by talking of what Christ has done for the church his bride,  Christ washes them, presents her to himself as blameless and without blemish or wrinkle. Lynne Cohick, comments that in this she sees Paul talking about Christ doing what would have been women’s work in preparing the bride, washing her, making her clothes spotless without wrinkle, ironing in other words. The husband here sees himself as both the groom but also the bride, part of the church. Paul goes on to emphasis the mutuality and unity in loving one’s wife by referring to Genesis where a husband will leave his family and cleave to his wife and the two will become one body. No one does not love their own body, but cares for it.

Then Paul addressed the second pair in the roman household. Children and parents. Again addressing the group in that pair that would not have had power or status. He does give the imperative for children to obey their parents but again gives it n added dynamic by saying in the Lord. Commentators see this both as giving children the agency to do it as part of their Christian disciple but also limiting that obedience. Not to obey in things that go contra to their faith in Christ.  The reason that is given points back to the Old Testament where Paul says that honoring mother and father, not just father, is the first commandment with a promise. That the person will live long in the land. Honoring parents is seen as setting the best platform for a long life. It’s interesting if you watch many Hollywood movies that are designed for older children and tens the prevailing wisdom seems to be that children know more than their parents, but biblically the parents are to be seen as a source of wisdom for life.

Fathers, then are addressed, in Greco roman society fathers had complete control, even life and death, over their children, even married ones. Paul again calls fathers to serve their children by not exacerbating, or angering them, but rather to focus on nurturing them and bringing them up in the way of the Lord. Parents are the primary source of Christian education for their children.

Paul then addresses the pairing that we probably struggle with the most. Well maybe if your married its that first one. But its also one we can catch the radical nature of Christ’s transforming love. Slaves had no status and very little protection in Greek roman society. Up to about 30% of the population would be slaves… either through debt, war and conquest or being born into it. You’d kind of hope that Paul would speak here of emancipation for slaves. The seeds of the abolition movement are in passages like this. However as one commentator said for Paul to imagine a world without slavery was like for us to imagine a world without electricity.

The first radical thing is Paul addresses the slaves as equals. He talks of reward and inheritance which they will receive in Christ, which was totally the opposite of roman Greek society. Where slaves were seldom rewarded and did not inherit in the family. Rather were passed on as property. But Paul calls them not to just obey their master’s because they have to, but in a way that shows their Christian faith. He turns their service into worship. Not because of socially mandated servitude but out of reverence for the one who rewards all such service by free or slave. Not just when they are being watched or to get ahead but out of genuine love for Jesus.

Then Paul addresses masters, and calls them to treat their salves in the same way to serve and care for them as a way of serving the Lord. He puts in a negative encouraging them not to threaten or mistreat their slaves. The reason is we remember we have the same master in heaven who shows no favoritism. We have something of how that would be worked out in Paul’s letter to Philemon, whose slave Onesimus had run away, but had been saved and came to work with Paul. Paul calls Philemon to treat Onesimus as a beloved brother in Christ.

Lastly, we need to look at submit to one another out of reverence to Christ in our context. How do we walk the difficult bridge between the then and there and the here and now.

Modern leadership theory talks of leading where you are or 360 degrees leadership. Where you show leadership and excellence in what ever position you are in. the mail room, on the end of  shovel, right through to the board room.  Here wives, children and slaves, husbands, fathers and masters are called to show their Christian faith in the situations they find themselves in. By the way they show Christ like love to one another. Seek the highest Good of the other person. Submit to one another out of reverence of Christ is still the key for us today.

When it come to marriage… Some people want to bring the hierarchy across that bridge and emphasis the headship of husbands in a household. If that is the case then along with that we need to bring the radical teaching of submit one to another. That it is a call to love and serve one another in a Christlike manor not a dogmatic insistence on a particular order.

Equally, for those who want to hold to our culture’s idea of a marriage more as a partnership between equally this radical teaching needs to be heard and lived out. The call for mutual submission and love, for wives and husbands to give this relationship priority in life. To seek the best for the other, not simply to follow our own desires and wants.

Children, in showing their Christian faith in how they treat their parents. In our fatherless generation, by being parents who invest time and care into our children, and are prepared in deed and word to instruct and show the Christian faith. The great thing is even when we get it wrong, we can teach about honest repentance and forgiveness.  Also I know many of you are still wrestling with honoring your parents and it is a life long thing, as you are now taking up the role of caring for them in their old age. Many of you parents are having to learn a new way of submitting by allowing them to make decisions and help care for you.

Slavery is still a scourge in our own time. It does challenge us in our places of work, to not be slavish about how we work but to se work as worship and service to Christ. Employees it opens up a real challenge on fairness and care for workers.

I just want to finish with a quote from Darryl Bock  “when Love, care and service abound, the presence of the Holy Spirit can shine in the relationships God gives to us.”

Ephesians 5:1-14 walk in love... the parable of Taumanu reserve.

here is a link to an audio version of this message preached at HopeWhangarei in October 2025.

 https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/hope-whangarei/episodes/Walk-In-Love---what-it-is--what-it-isnt-and-the-enlightening-process-of-change-e38g9ni/a-ac5t4ao  

When we lived in Onehunga I used to go for walks along the Taumanu reserve on the Manukau harbor. That is the beach at the end of Onehunga that was reclaimed with the dirt and rocks from the excavation of the Waterview tunnels. It was a great place for doing bird photography.

One day I was walking along and saw what I thought was a white-faced heron out on the mudflats. They are the common heron you get in New Zealand. Except it didn’t move or walk like that heron. It’s behavior was different. It was squatter and walked with its neck pulled in. When I looked through my telephoto lens I realized it was a totally different bird. One I’d never seen before.

I took a photo, went home and put it through a google image search and found out it was a Pacific Reef Heron. Its totally grey, has a thicker bill and neck and shorter green legs. While common in the tropics it is  rare in New Zealand, with only between 300-500 birds. As it’s more at home in the tropics there is a larger population in Te tai Tokerau Northland. I’ve seen a few of them since we moved up here. This one was at Onerahi… Now! just because of their stance and movement the way they walk, I can spot them right away even from a distance, and differentiate them from a white faced heron even before I can see their coloring. They walk different.

We are working our way through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The series is called ‘every spiritual blessing/new life in Christ’. Paul spends the first half of his letter ( what we call chapters 1-3) talking about the fact that we have received every spiritual blessing in Christ. We have been chosen, adopted into God’s family, saved, filled with the Holy spirit, we were dead but now we are alive in Christ. Made into a new people in Christ from across societal divides, jew and gentile. He finishes that with a prayer that the believers, that we, may know this reality more and more in our lives.

Then the second half of the book focuses on how we are to live that new life in Christ. Ethics following on from theology. You are this therefore. He does it by talking about that being a new person in Christ, we should walk like it, walk different. He uses walk as a metaphor for live. Just like the Pacific Reef Heron was a different bird and walked in a different way so we who are new creations in Christ, are to walk, to live differently. Not to earn God’s favor but because we have been made new in Christ. He does that five times... In 4:1 he says we are to ‘walk or live up to the calling we have received… walk in unity. In 4:17 to no longer live as the gentiles live, no longer walk in their ways. Billy and Cath talked about that over the last couple of weeks. Then in the passage today in 5;2 Paul gives the alternative way to walk or live… we are to walk in love. Then in 5:8 we have live or walk as children of Light. And finally in Ephesians 5:15 to walk in wisdom.

In the passage we had read out to us today Paul explains what it means to walk in love. He puts it in a positive way, like the track we should be on. Then he explains that in a negative way by listing actions and speech that are direct opposites to the way of love and should not part of our Christian walk. Final he uses the idea of light and darkness to reinforce that and I believe gives an enlightening process for us to deal with the darkness in our lives. To change.

Firstly the positive.

Paul starts by exhorting us to imitate God. elsewhere in his letters Paul will talk about becoming imitators of him and by that becoming imitators of Christ. But its more challenging to think of imitating God. How this idea is used elsewhere in scripture helps us to understand what Paul is talking about. In our Old Testament reading from Leviticus 19, the people of Israel are told to be Holy just as I the Lord am Holy. In Leviticus it acts as the introduction to the retelling of the ten commandments with some other laws around ritual cleanliness. It is a call to reflect God’s nature in how we treat each other. In the Sermon on the mount Jesus commands u to love our enemies and says in this we reflect the nature of our heavenly father, who makes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the righteous and unrighteous alike. We are to walk in the ways that reflect God’s righteous nature.

Paul goes on to say that we do this as beloved children. In Roman society an adopted child was expected to reflect the character and values of the family and in particular of the father who had adopted them. So we who are adopted into God’s family are called to reflect the family likeness.  I took the photo behind me at Taumanu reserve in 2018 and loved the way the son seems to reflect, imitate, the movements of his father. There is an expectation of a family likeness. I love the term beloved as it reminds us of 1 John 4:11 beloved because God first loved us let us love one another.

Paul then commands his readers to walk in the way of love, and expands on that by pointing to the example of Jesus Christ. As beloved children we emulate the love of the beloved son. Our example is Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. It is the kind of love that places the good of the other person before even our own. That gives sacrificially.  Paul says this is a fragrant offering to God and acceptable offering. In the preceding verses we see this lived out in forgiving one another, not letting anger lead us into sin, how we speak the truth to one another. In verse 9 Paul will list the fruit of walking in the light as goodness, righteousness and truth.

Then in verses,3-7, Paul gives us a negative, he zeroes in on vices that should not be part of the Christian Walk and community.  

The first is Sexual immorality. God’s design for the expression of human sexuality is within the confines of a faithful loving mutual marriage between a man and a woman. The word for sexual immorality here covers everything outside of that, as biblical commentator Darryl Bock says ‘it’s a wider term than adultery. It deals with any sex outside of marriage, consensual of not.” In fact the Greek word here is pornia from which we get the modern word pornography.  Pornography with the internet has become pervasive and is destructive and harmful to society. It exploits women and promotes sexual gratification without the need for that loving mutual relationship. It predominantly promotes and glorifies all the expressions of sexual immorality that stand outside God’s standards and purposes. The other thing that makes it dangerous is that it is a very private vice, or sin.

The next word is impurity and covers other moral areas of behavior outside the sexual realm. As an example comes from classic Greek literature where the same word used in Ephesians is used to describe the actions of a character in the story who commits perjury with the intent of injuring another person. You hear echoes of the ten commandments in this passage as It talks of not stealing, or  killing and Jesus teaching in the sermon on the mount of how that goes to our very heart attitudes.

The third word is greed. Wanting things wealth money etc for our own gratification. Again the tenth commandment against converting our neighbors property comes to mind.

Paul sums these three areas up by saying they are idolatry. Idols are things that compete with God for  first place in our lives. They revolve around us and our wants and desires rather than the walk of love which emulating Jesus seeks the common good, the highest good for each other. It is that love not these vices that should characterize the Christian walk.

Then Paul covers speech that goes along with these vices. Obscenity, foolish or empty talk, and course jokes or as another translation puts it destructive sarcasm. Our talk  should reflect our new creation just as our walk does. James chapter 3 draws the connection between taming the tongue and Christian maturity, he says that what comes out of our mouths reflects the nature of our hearts. We can not praise God and curse other humans who are made in God’s likeness. Paul says something similar by saying our words are to be for thanksgiving, can we worship God and use our language in these other ways that go against God’s nature?

We are called to express our new life in words and deeds. The list Paul makes reflects those who are sons of disobedience, not sons and daughter of the Lord most high, through faith in Christ. Sadly in our society like the first century Christians we find ourselves compromising with our prevailing culture. The royal commission to abuse in care is an example of that, as it uncovered so much abuse in society and sadly in the church. Bible commentator Andrew Lincoln talks of Paul's list being like the big three that trip Christians up… sex, power and money. Our headlines are full of high-profile Christian leaders who have fallen in these areas, and that reflects a wider problem within the church. We need to repent and cry out to God for him to renew us.

The portion of scripture from this morning finishes with Paul reiterating what he has been talking about using the metaphor of light and darkness and also leaving us with hope, for change to become what we are new creation in Christ. He sums it up by saying, we are to walk in the light, walk as light. The fruit of that is Goodness, righteousness and truth. The opposite virtues to the vices he has been talking about. Some see this as a summary of the fruit of the Holy spirit in Galatians 5:22-23…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These qualities reflect God's character, imitating God, and grow as individuals live in relationship with God. It is finding the things that please God and doing them. Paul then tells his readers to have nothing to do with the works of darkness. Not to partner with people who do these things. Note its not that we isolate ourselves from those outside the faith in fact we are called to be a light for them, rather we need to be in the world, as Jesus said, and not of it. To walk and talk differently.

Then Paul speaks of the fact that what light does is that it exposes darkness. It is easy for us to see this exposing of darkness to do with uncovering what is happening out there. That is what the church kind of gets a reputation for doing pointing the finger… one of the reasons we are to walk differently is that it does show the difference between light and darkness, it shows people that following Christ provides a more wholistic and healthy way to live. Jo Aldrich in his book life style evangelism says the gospel is like a song, the gospel itself is the lyrics and how we live and love is the music that goes with it and makes it catchy. But here Paul is speaking to a church that like us is wrestling with living this new creation out in their lives. Who may not have changed their walk in certain areas, or who find themselves drawn in to sin.

Paul here gives them and us a way out a way to change. Often sin is able to exist in our lives because it is done in secret… we are good at covering it up. Putting on a good face… a mask… But the thing about light is that it exposes those things brings them out into the open reveals them for what they are. Gunna Raman says that too often do Christian make friends with sin in their lives. When it is revealed by the light, by Christ, either as we expose ourselves to God’s word or we are challenged about it by a brother or sister. We then need to acknowledge it as sin and ask for repentance and sometimes it’s a process of working out how to disentangle ourselves for it. Paul’s direction to not partner with it anymore speaks to with the help of the Holy Spirit to stop doing it.

An area in my life that has come to light recently through reflection and through the loving challenge of people who love me is my tenancy to speak down about myself. Now there is an element of self-deprecating kiwi humor. But when faced with stress and difficult situation I find myself denigrating myself… calling myself useless… I’ve wrestled with it a lot in my life. I come from childhood and internalizing paternal disapproval. I’ve had to confess it as speaking in a way that James talks of ‘cursing someone made in the image of God’. It stops me from recognizing what God has given me and just leaves me battered and exhausted. In a conversation with my supervisor, in a way that fits in which Paul's talk of walking, he said its like the stone in your shoe… I’m working through healing that and repenting from. From how I see me to how Christ views me.

We all have sin and areas in our life that as God shines his light on we need to do that as well. To confess it and repent and work through the process of learning to walk a new in the light.  Maybe Taumanu reserve is a great parable for that. Simply the rocky side of the south eastern motorway that cut across the bay like a constantly humming scar… and the leftover rubble from massive excavation. That has been turned into something new and beautify.

As we open ourselves to the light we will know the hope of  the hymn that Paul finishes this portion of scripture with

Wake up sleeper

Rise from the dead.

And Christ will shine on you.’

Christ death and resurrection allows us to be free from sin and live that new life we have received from him.

Ephesians 5:11 The five fold Gift for building up the Church

here is a link to an audio version of this sermon    https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/hope-whangarei/episodes/The-Five-Fold-Gift---Howard-Carter-e377q2l/a-ac49qfb 

If you were here last week you may be suffering a bit of de Ja Vu with the portion of Ephesians we had read to us this morning… yes..it is the same ? and No it’s not a glitch… We are doing a two part mini series on this passage. Specifically on the list of gifts Christ gives for the building up of the Church in Ephesians 4:11.

Last week Roland looked at the purpose of the gifts. That they are to be used for the building up of the body of Christ for us to function and minister together. To grow in our grounding in the gospel, our unity, into maturity, and the fulness of Christ… that we can function as the body of Christ with everyone doing their part, And embody Christ in the world.  We all belong and we all have a part to play…

Roland emphasized that we are all called to use our gifts to build one another up. We are blessed to bless others. That being the body is a team sport, with everyone playing their part. Using their gifts in unison. That God may be glorified in the church and in Jesus Christ.

Today, we want to focus in on the five-fold gift of grace that is given to the Church… some to be apostles, some to be prophets… some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers. It seems strange to start that by making a disclaimer, but there are many ways this passage and this list has been interpreted and applied down through Church history. Some have tried to confine at least apostles and prophets to the early stages of the church, Paul in Ephesians 3;20 says that the church is founded on the apostles and the prophets, some even equate the evangelists with those who gave us the written gospels. On the other hand, there are those in the words of bible commentator Mark Roberts who have tried to make elaborate missional models based on the five-fold schema in Ephesians 4:11. It also has been used almost like a personality test for believers  to find themselves in one of these ministry areas… Mark Roberts points out that the passage does not give us information on each of these gifts, rather its emphasis was on what they have in common, namely their source and their purpose.

Having said that I want to have a look at these grace gifts and what that has to say to us today. We’ll do that by looking at how they are used in scripture and making some reflections.

But first I want to make some opening remarks.

The first is that we have several lists of holy spirit given gifts in Paul’s writing. Apostles, prophets and teachers appear also in the list in 1 Corinthians 12, and prophecy and teaching appear in Romans 12. These lists are not designed to be exclusive or exhaustive… if you don’t see yourself in this list… it is not that God has not given you gifts to use to build up the church… nor are they less valuable or important. The Holy Spirit is poured out on all who believe, it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to serve and minister to and with one another and provides us what we need by God’s great grace. We all belong, share the one spirit one lord, one baptism, one father we all have a part to play as God gives us gifts by his grace.

Secondly, these gifts, or gifted people are given to the church and such roles are always to be seen as servant roles. The Christian ideal of leadership or gifts is that Christ gives them by grace and they are to used for the good of all as it says in 1 Corinthians 12:7 . Paul acknowledges that he is an apostle but his favourite way of introducing himself is as a servant or a salve to Christ. They are given to build up the church not to build up the person. We do tend to in our culture to admire and almost put on a pedestal the gifted person. The gifted athlete, speaker, musician Where as these gifts are by grace, not merit…

 Following on from that. These are gifts and not offices in the Church, not positions. Yes people can be acknowledged as apostles, or prophets or evangelists or teachers and we use pastor now as a title for people set aside for a leadership role… however in the pastorals where Paul writes about establishing leadership in churches. It is not these roles that are looked to be filled but rather elders, and overseers. Our church the presbyterian church, comes from the Greek word for elders, our leadership is based on group decision making, overseer is where we get the word bishop, or Episcopalian, as the Anglican church is called in America.  The other role is Deacons, who oversee the practical running of the church. The criteria for these roles is more to do with depth of faith and character than giftedness. Remember  God gives us the gifts we need. However one of the criteria for an elder is apt to teach… in our system what we call ministers are in actual fact teaching elders people called and set aside and trained  for the ministry of word and sacrament.

Following on from that, when we think of the body of Christ, in this passage we have to be careful to realise that Paul can be talking about the church universal or the local expression of the church. Remember Ephesians could be written to a whole network of churches in Asia minor. We do need to be aware of that as it maybe that we have to distinguish where and how these gifts were and are to be used. Some seem bitinerary and other fixed in a local.

The final opening point, and they seem to take up half my message is that a key part of each of these gifts listed here has to do with the proclamation of the gospel. In Ephesians 3:7 as Paul is talking about what God has sent him to do, his role as an apostle to the gentiles he declares that he is a servant of the gospel. It the gospel and the word of God that ultimately by God’s holy spirit builds up the church, that brings us to maturity  and unity and which causes us to function as a body in the fullness of Christ. In writing to Timothy Paul speaks of the scriptures as being good for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Almost the same as what he says of these gifting here in Ephesus. ” Apostles, prophets, evangelists pastors and teachers kind of fit in there as the way the scriptures and the gospel are conveyed to do there work.

Ok lets look at these five gifts. How they are used in scripture and what they are.

Apostle: Apostle literally means a sent one… some one who is sent by a king to represent him and tell his message. A herald…

It’s used in three different ways in scripture. Firstly it is a word that is used for the twelve, those who were with Jesus that he called and set aside, and who were witnesses of the resurrection. We normally refer to these as the Apostles with a capital A… The number twelve of course relates to the tribes of Israel and the establishment of a new people of God. So after Judas killed himself, in Acts 1 the believers get together and chose another to take judas’ place.

Secondly it is used of those who have a specific calling and ministry to take the gospel to new regions and places. Paul is called an apostle to the gentiles, which he would say he received from seeing the risen Jesus, as he puts it in 1 Corinthians 15 as one untimely born… but in the category you also have Barnabas, who was Paul’s mentor, and like Paul set aside to be an apostle to the gentiles by the church in Antioch. Which he had gone to help and build up when he heard of the gentiles there coming to faith, remember he went and got Paul from Tarsus.

There are a third group known as apostles that we know little about… James the brother of Jesus, Apollos, salvinias,  Epaphrodities possibly Andrionius and Junia… mentioned in Romans 16. Junia by the way is most probably a women’s name.

They are authoritative representatives of the Gospel charged and called to go into new areas with the gospel, plant and build up Churches in those places and spaces.  Some equate them with Missionaries today, or pioneers who plant and grow churches in new environments. They were in scripture itinerant sent to go and pioneer. Today some would say they provide entrepreneurial leadership.

I love the way Elaine Holwell talks of pioneer missionaries, as those who hack a path through the jungle with the gospel which others will walk and follow on with. Be it new places or fresh people groups in our own society.

Prophets: There is a great tradition in the Old Testament of Prophets people who receive revelation from God… in a way that uses the covenant Israel has with Yahweh with God, to critic and encourage and comfort the people. In the new testament we have  mention of people as prophets on several occasions. In Acts Agabus is called a prophet, he predicts a famine in the roman empire, which facilitates a collection for the care of the church in Judea, he also predicts Paul’s captivity as Paul heads to Jerusalem.  The people with Paul see it as a warning and try and tell Paul not to go, Paul sees it as God letting him know that even though this is going to happen it is in God’s plans so he goes, trusting God. In Acts 10 at Antioch, the leadership there is said to be made up of prophets and teachers, and they believe Paul and Barnabas are to be set aside for their mission to the gentiles and commission them to Go. In each of these occasions the prophecy is weighed by the community of faith. In Pauls list of gifts in Corinthians 12 Gordon fee sees gifts given in pairs, discernment of spirits is paired with prophecy, to test what the Spirit maybe saying.

 The four daughters of Philip the evangelist are also called prophets. Women seen as prophets.

We do tend to think of prophets as having fresh revelation from God, seeing visions, and they can do that. However in the pagan temples people would come to get a word from the oracle, in the Greek a Mantis, from which we get the word manaic, but a prophet is the one who would take what has been given, and interpret it and apply it to the person who had come to consult the oracle. Harold Hoehner defines it as one who is gifted by the Holy Spirit for the sake of edification, comfort, encouragement further understanding and communicating the mysteries and revelations of God the Church. This may include a predictive element. We talk of taking the timeless word of God and applying it in a timely manner. To the situation here and now. You may have noted how a bible verse or something that someone says hits home, and its as if God is Speaking. That is prophetic…  Paul wishes all would prophecy, tell forth god’s word… and some who are more used in that way are seen as prophets. Although there is no office of prophets in early church history.

Evangelists: Literally good new people. People who proclaim the gospel effectively in a way that brings people to faith in Christ. The word only appears in scripture three time. Here in this list, in 2 Timothy where Paul encourages Timothy to do the work of an evangelist and in Acts where we have Phillip the evangelist. Who God transports to places and people to share the gospel with them. On a one on one  like the Ethiopian eunuch which has amazing ripple effects as he goes back to his country, and various towns around Judea.  There are people who are gifted at sharing the faith, but we are all called to be good news people and share our faith. Maybe with Julie Anne laird’s visit recently you can see how a gifted evangelist can inspire all of us in that role.

Pastors and teachers, In the Greek these two seem to be bracketed together. There is no definite article before teacher like the other four. Pastors are shepherd leaders who look after the flock, probably more on a local level. Jesus calls himself the good shepherd and in the way he walks with his disciples and leads them to grow in their knowledge of who he is and his teaching, you can get a picture of pastoring. By the way no one in the New Testament is called a pastor. A key function of pastoral leadership is feeding the sheep and so it is appropriate that pastors and teachers are bracketed together here. One commentator puts it that  all pastors are to be teachers, but not all teachers are to be pastors. A pastor is one who focuses on the wellbeing of the flock, who is able to lead them to green pastures and still waters. It is both a caring for role and a moving people together role. Again its both a roll of feeding from the gospel but also moving people to maturity in the gospel.

Teachers Is used 59 times in Pauls letters and depicts instruction… in factual matters, the essence of the gospel… also skills and moral education. How to live out the gospel together as God’s new people. An interesting example of teachers is in acts 18  where  Pricilla and Aquila, hear Apollos preach, he’s a gifted speaker, and they, a woman and a man,  take him aside and  give him a better understanding of the way of God… Apollos then goes and establishes churches in other places, he is an apostle.  It may be seen today as discipling people today, teaching our children the basics of the faith. We are blessed at the moment to have Geoff New and Seb Murrihy involved with lay preachers in northland, equipping people to preach and minister the word.

That is a quick look at these gifts and I just want to make some comments on the implications for us.

Again the key focus of this whole passage is what these gifts have in common, their source… from Christ by grace through the Holy Spirit and their purpose for building up the body of Christ. It is important for that to remain central. I’ve encountered many harmful situations where the focus comes on to the gifts and the person who uses the gifts and the focus moves away from Christ and it becomes about building up the person or a cult of personality rather than about service and building up one another.  One of the keys of using gifts of the Holy Spirit is a willingness to be open to accountability to one another. Realising they are given for the good of all.

Secondly, it is important that we all realise we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit draws us together as the body of Christ and is the one that gives us gifts to use to minister to one another and together to the world around us. We need each other connected and held together. We all have a place to belong and a part to play. So I would encourage you to look nd see how you can serve in the church and as a church how we can serve and share our faith with our wider community, using the gifts God has given us. connect groups are a great place to learn about using our gifts together, as we encourage and build one another up. If you are not in a connect group I’d encourage you to join one.

Lastly, can I encourage you to seek God as to how he has gifted you and how you can use those gifts to encourage and build each other up.

Ephesians 3:14-21 More than we could imagine: growing in the powerful love of God

 

here is a link to an audio recording of this sermon from August 2025at HopeWhangarei. 

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/hope-whangarei/episodes/Sermon-3rd-August---Howard-Carter--Eph-3-14-21-More-Than-We-Could-Imagine-e36cavv/a-ac3nr12 

J A Robinson says of Paul’s prayer for the church in the portion of scripture we had read out today ‘That no Prayer that has ever been framed has uttered a bolder request’…we’ve maybe become used to the words, we’ve domesticated them, but when you think of what is being prayed its pretty amazing… that we may be strengthened through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in our inner most being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts that we may know the vastness of God’s love for us in Christ and that we may be filled with the fullness of God. That's radical beyond comprehension right… But says Paul the great thing that makes it possible is we have a God who is not limited by our ability to ask or even our ability to imagine, but can do immeasurably more than that.  It’s a prayer made possible because of the love and power of God.

In the first half of his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul has laid out the gospel, the riches of God’s mercy. That in Christ we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, chosen, adopted, sealed, reconciled with God, we were dead but now are alive, objects of God’s wrath but now adopted children welcomed at his table,  he has talked of the amazing fact that, through Christ, Jew and Gentile have been bought together to form a new people a new creation, a new temple in which God resides, and Paul had even taken a bit of an aside and talked of the amazing fact that God had graciously called him to unveil this amazing mystery to the gentiles. Before he goes on to talk about how this new life in Christ is to be lived out in the second half of his letter, he concludes this section with that prayer. That the church, this new group of believers, may know the reality of what he has talking about, know the one who has given us these blessings,  and grow in that. Be strengthened, have the power to grasp and be filled… the three main verbs in this prayer.

As I was thinking about how to illustrate this I couldn’t help but think that it is forty years this year, back in February… since I was first surprised by the smiley-est grey blue eyes I have seen. I had been at Bible College (now Laidlaw) for about a week and came round into the main courtyard and there was Kris, barefoot splashing about in a puddle, with those wonderful smiley eyes…. Over a three year period we got to be friends and a romance bloomed as we spent time together. We got engaged sitting on a broken trailer on a pile of weeds down the back of the bible college orchard, we’d been talking about weddings and I asked kris to marry me only after checking out that if I did she’d say yes. Who says romance is dead. We’ve been married for thirty seven years and our love for each other has grown deeper and deeper year by year. I’ve been greeted by Kris smiley eyes in a hospital bed a she has had each of our four children, and we’ve worked at parenting them together as well as we could… Like all marriages we’ve been through rocky times… ups and downs… We are still learning and growing to love one another. To work and make decisions and act as a couple… out of our love for each other… There are many of you who are further along that track than we are… and I know some of you when I speak of this feel that ache of sorrow as you have had to face the death of a spouse. Paul’s prayer is inviting the new believers, inviting us, to go together on that same journey of growing in intimacy and love with God and allowing that to bring transformation and change… to strengthen, give the power for them to grasp and be filled…

Ok, lets unpack this prayer a bit, or more technically a prayer report, Paul tells us what he prays, and then I want to draw out some applications and implications for us.

The portion starts off ‘for this reason, it ties us back to Ephesians 3:1. The gospel had made the two people, jew and gentile one people, and Paul had been part of that as God had called him to be an apostle to the gentiles. Because of these two things he now Prays. He describes his prayer by the posture of kneeling. For Jewish men the usual praying position was standing. We have instances of kneeling to prayer in scripture, for example in Daniel and Jesus in he garden of gethsemane… to knee denotes both a fervency in prayer and also a posture of reverence acknowledging the sovereignty of God. In Philippians 2 Paul talks of Christ’s self-emptying and humbling himself and then God’s exaltation of him and in that Paul says every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. Paul kneels to pray.

Paul addresses his prayers to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth derives its name. It seems an appropriate way of speaking of God as the God of all the nations of the world, the clans, tribes, people groups, Whanau, hapu and iwi when they are being bought together as a new people in Christ. Isn’t that a challenge for us as a church in New Zealand…maori/pakeha… and this new multicultural nation we have become in the 21^st century.

 God is the father by right of being the creator of every being in heaven, and families in heaven here is best understood as the different ranks of angels, and on earth. AS God is our creator we are all on one level God’s children, human dignity comes from being made in the image of God. In Christ it becomes a greater reality.  Also in the ancient world the right to name something is seen as having authority over it, here God as the sovereign father and creator has that power. Paul is praying to the sovereign God of all nations all people all family groupings, in Christ making it possible for all to come to be part of God’s new family and people.  

Then Paul’s prays that God out of his glorious riches, which he just spent the last three chapters explaining, might strengthen the believers by filling them with the power of his Spirit in their innermost being. In Ephesians 1 Paul had talked of God giving us his spirit as a seal of belonging. Paul is asking for that we may have more and more of that. That the presence of God would strengthen us, again he’d been talking of the new people of God as the new temple. I hate to bring up the idea of earthquake strengthening, but it’s like Paul is praying that the spirits presence in us would strengthen, not just the individual but the whole temple, the whole body of Christ, tying these different people groups together… That we may stand strong and be this new people together. If you think of a bouncey castle, its filled with compressed air and it stands up to the constant pounding of children joyfully jumping up and down.

So that Christ may dwell in our hearts by Faith. The way that we experience the presence of the risen Jesus in our lives is through the spirits indwelling. Here Paul prays that we may know that. We are used to speaking of receiving Jesus in our heart, but this is the only place in the New Testament where Christ is said to dwell our hearts… In our western world we think of the heart as the seat of emotions, however in Jewish and Greek thought the heart is the centre of reason, and decision making of the will. I have real feelings for those smiley eyes, but marriage is based on making decisions to live for and with each other… So Paul is saying as we are filled with the Spirit his prayer is that Christ would be the centre of all we do individually and as a church. This is shown in the fact that right after this prayer we have the therefore moment in this epistle where Paul turns from theology to talk of ethics, how we live out that new life.

Paul had spoken of the fact that the church was built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ as the corner stone… now in his prayer he picks that up again by talking of the fact that the church has been rooted, an agricultural term and established, a construction term, in love… That the Church is this new people of God because of what Jesus Christ has done in the cross and his resurrection and that it was in fulfilment of the scriptures and proclaimed by the apostles. With that base Paul now prays that the spirit would give us the power to grasp the dimensions of God love for us in Christ.  

I couldn’t help but have a New Zealand music moment and remember the band Supergrooves song ‘can’t get enough’ which used the old spiritual refrain… ‘so high can’t get over it, so low can’t get under it so wide can’t get round it O rock my soul.’ We need the spirit’s power to understand the dimensions of what God has done for us in Christ. The height, the breath, the depth and the length of God love in Christ. Some commentators see here a cruciform shape, the shape of the cross, when we think Of God’s love we cannot move away from the cross. Praying for a church that is multi cultural from across the various barriers of the world, it invites us to see God’s love stretching out beyond those barriers we put up to all people.. It gives us hope as the amazing thing is God’s love reaches down enough to gather me and you up and raise us to life in Christ. After coming to Christ Australian musicians Robert Harkness and C.Bishop penned the hymn such love in 1929..

That God should love a sinner such as I,

should yearn to change my sorrow into bliss,

nor rest till He had planned to bring me nigh—

how wonderful is love like this!

 

This love that surpasses all knowledge… does not mean that we down play intellect but rather as that hymn expresses, it is so incomprehensible to think of all the love God has for us. We can know of it know it but we also need to experience it.

Paul's final request is perhaps the most bold… that we may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God. this prayer is a trinitarian prayer, did you note that we may know and be filled with the whole of the God head, the Spirit, the son Jesus Christ and with the whole of God. Again Paul thinks back to the idea of a new temple, being the place where God dwells… Just like with the old temple as Solomon dedicated the temple the cloud of glory came and settled on it, Paul is praying for us, and again the you throughout this prayer is plural it’s talking about the Church might be the dwelling place of God. The reality of ‘God with us’… Immanuel.

Paul finishes his prayer with a doxology by giving glory to God. Glory to God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power at work in us. Again we are reminder of every spiritual blessing that Paul has been speaking about. The fact that the spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us, we have been made alive again in Christ, all adopted into his family and forged into this new people this new creation together in Christ, and God dwells in our midst. That is the work of the spirit and we can trust that this God is not limited by our ability to ask or dream or imagine, God has done so much and will do so much more… sometimes I’ve sort of heard this used in a way that makes God to thin… that tries to turn God into a cosmic credit card. For Paul it gives him the ability to pray that God might be glorified in the Church and in Jesus Christ, throughout all generations forever and ever. The amazing thing is that at the end of this prayer we come into view. The dimensions of God’s love the power of God’s spirit the fullness of God dwelling with his people is for us as well, as we are drawn into relationship with God, from across the barriers of our own world and time. Paul is praying for us. Praying that God would be praised and exalted and given glory in the church this church today. God is glorified in the church as we glorify Christ when empowered by the spirit we live it out in a way that reflects his life and love. In the therefore that Paul now talks of after his amen.

Ok that’s a lot of unpacking, so I just want to finish with two implications and applications for us.

Firstly, Paul gives a model here of how to Pray. For the church and for one another. Our prayer for one another can simply become what one commentator calls hospital prayer. We pray for each other as people find themselves in difficult situations. There is nothing wrong with that, it is an amazing way in which we can care and for and love one another. There have been times when I’ve been in hospital, and I know people are praying for me… I love how our connect group and men’s pray group pray for each other’s needs. God answers those prayers.

But when you see Paul’s prayers you see time praying for the growth of the church and the growth of our knowing and being known by God. That the gospel would become more and more a reality in our lives and in our actions and words. That God would be glorified through us. Paul’s prayers echo Christ’s. Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven… Father make them one as I am in the father and you are in me… These are what that same commentator called ‘frontline prayers’. Kingdom edge prayers. I remember my mentor Jim Wallace gave a sermon on Spiritual warfare one time and he said that we can spend an awful lot of energy and effort praying against things, but in the end what makes the difference is pray for the gospel to spread, for God to be at work, for the spirit to do its work in and through us. Not to focus on the negative but to be good news people… of course we are going to look at spiritual warfare later in this series when we come to the armour of God in Ephesians 6.

One of our city to city 90 day goals is that as a church we might be come more unified as we pray for one another. That we are held together by a web of prayer. That we not only pray for each others needs but also for each others growth…strengthening, ability to grasp the dimensions of Gods love  and be filled with the fullness of God…

The second is just as Paul prayed for those first believers to know the reality of every spiritual blessing in Christ that is our hope for this church as well… that we would grow in our knowing of God and help others connect with God… As a group our leadership did a revisioning workshop with City to City we saw at the core of our church were two desires. The first was that people might welcome and experience the presence of God’s anticipating ripple effects far beyond the life of your congregation from this. The second was spiritual formation that changes people and takes them along a significant pathway towards spiritual maturity. In a cyclic manner the growth in maturity would facilitate an ongoing desire to experience God more.  

Maybe talking of my relationship with Kris may have romanticized this idea a bit. But we don’t want Paul's pray to be domesticated words and nice sentiments… we want people to know the strengthening of the Spirits presence, we want you to have the power to grasp just how high and wide, and deep and long is the love of God in Christ for you. That you are beloved beyond your wildest dreams. To embark or to continue and take the next step on that life journey eternal journey of growing in intimacy and love with God allowing it to flow out of you in word and action. That you may be filled with the fullness of God in Christ. That this boldest of requests might be a reality.