here is a link to a Spotify recording of this message preached at HopeWhangarei June 15th 2025
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1PxsF5337MgdqqRhxJg1Zq?si=rQJ0NhkaRpKybHpPar24vQ
Over the
next six months we are going to be immersing ourselves in the letter to the
Ephesians.
A letter
that has been called the high point of Paul’s writing and theology, the queen
of the epistles.
There are
many people who have been bought to faith by reading Ephesians. If it were presented in a paperback with endorsements
printed on the back, you might have the words of prominent twentieth century Presbyterian
minister, educator and missionary John A Mackey printed there.
“… this
book saved my life…” he said after reading Ephesians as a boy amidst the rocks
and stars of the Scottish Highlands …“I saw a new world… everything was new… I
had a new outlook, new experiences, new attitudes to other people. I loved God.
Jesus Christ became the centre of everything… I had been ‘quickened’; I was
really alive.”
It might be
a bit of an insider joke, but I couldn’t help but think of the 1986 scifi film
‘The Highlander’ when Mackey spoke of being in the Scottish highlands and experiencing
the quickening.
Ephesians continued
to inspire and motivate him all his life. Mackey believed that Ephesians was
for today, the most contemporary book in the bible. "As the apostle proclaimed
God’s order in a time of social disintegration, so it offers us today community
in a world of disunity, reconciliation in place of alienation and peace instead
of war."
Likewise as
I read it I see it offering hope and a way forward in a world that is wrestling
with identity. Where people define themselves by gender, sexuality and racial
grouping, and ideas like critical theory pit groups against each other in terms
of power, in terms of oppressors and the oppressed, colonizer and the
colonized, allies and haters, often with only a dim hope of resolution. Ephesians
offers a new way a new identity that
gives real hope…being ‘in Christ’ a term used with several variants approximately
35 times in the letter. Karl Marx’s hope was in the new man and the new society
but Ephesians gives us the hope of a new creation in Christ.
This morning,
we are looking at the opening two verses. On one level they present us with a
simple generic introduction to a letter in first century roman culture. They tell us who it is from, the sender, who
it is to, the recipient , and brings a greeting… Kia Ora, gidday. But really
its so much more than that as Paul takes what is necessary, a social convention
and nicety and transforms it into an introduction for the whole book. He
transforms the identity of the sender and recipient and introduces to his
message…
While it
would be easy to start with the sender and the recipient, Paul’s introduction
and greeting identify for us the central characters of this letter and its
story. The main thing you notice about these introductory verses is the
repetition of the mention of God and Jesus Christ. Each of the three lines
focuses on God and Jesus. They and their work are going to be the center of
what Paul is writing about. One commentator speaks of the enthusiasm and
passion that comes through that repetition. If its not too disrespectful, Paul
comes across almost like an excited Labrador pup. Yet behind that you catch a
glimpse of the prominence and importance of this for us: The sender and
recipient are identified in relationship to them, and the sender and recipient are related
to each other through God and Jesus Christ. His greeting is bought and is an
extension of the work and ministry of God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace and peace are not just sentiments and hopes for Paul’s readers they are concrete
certain realities coming from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve
used that same repetition for effect.
The
Christian message and faith provides us with a starting point and a source for
meaning and identify that is beyond our selves, our situation and how we are
defined as an individual or as a group. It invites us to see our story in
relation not to history and place, but a larger reality, God’s redemptive
story. God working out God’s plans and purposes through Jesus Christ, in the
world.
Look I should
also add for those of you who are concerned about the trinity and wondering
where the spirit is in this. In Ephesians the Spirit is mentioned and seen as
at work. In his list of every spiritual blessing Paul talks of being marked
with a seal, showing we belong to God,
that seal is the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. In his prayers he prays
we may know the power that raised Jesus from the dead, and identifies that
power with the holy Spirit. The holy spirit gives gifts to the Church to grow
us up into unity and maturity lacking nothing.
Let’s identify
the sender and recipient.
The sender
we are told in Paul, there is some debate amongst scholars if it is Paul or
student of Paul’s using him as a pseudepigrapha, claiming his authority. It’s a
technical discussion, and there is enough evidence to see this letter being
written by Paul. But Paul identifies himself in relationship to Jesus and to
God. In Ephesians 4 Paul speaks of being a prisoner for the Lord so it is quite
possible he is writing from prison.
Firstly,
Paul calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus. Apostle means a send one, and in
the first century it indicated someone who was a sent official representative.
Another word you might think of is the word herald. Apostle is used in several
different ways in the New Testament, it applies to the twelve who were with
Jesus in his ministry and met Jesus risen from the dead. It can also mean
someone who has meet the risen Jesus outside that twelve, and in 1 Corinthians
15 Paul talks of being a witness to the risen Jesus as one untimely born. Later
it comes to mean a missionary someone who has the authority of the gospel
message. Paul’s other favorite title for
himself is that of a servant or slave of Christ, and he is not trying to obtain
status through using apostle. Rather as a servant of Jesus he is acting on his
masters’ orders. Paul here does not see being an apostle as an occupation he
had chosen or earned, rather it is by the will of God.
We are
reminded how Saul was a religious Jew, a pharisee amongst the Pharisees who had
persecuted the church, until he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. And Paul’s
life was changed, he now knew Jesus was the Messiah and God then chose him to
be an apostle to the gentiles. In Ephesians Paul will talk of the mystery that
the gospel was for the gentiles as well as the Jews that’s God’s plan all along
was for the two to be one people in Christ.
We see Paul’s identity formed by God through meeting Jesus Christ, by
grace. Paul shows us how that change of identity changes our attitudes and how
we relate to others. He is a totally
different person in Christ.
Likewise
the recipients of the letter are identified in relationship with God and with
Jesus Christ. This letter from an early age has always been associated with the
church in Ephesus but in the earliest manuscripts we have there there is no
mention of Ephesus. It simply says to the saints in God, the faithful in Jesus
Christ. This has lead some to see this epistle as a circular written to a group
of churches. Possibly the churches of Asia Minor of which Ephesus is the major
city. In Acts 19 we have a record of Paul’s three years of ministry in Ephesus
and we are told that the gospel became know throughout Asia Minor by his ministry, so
it would fit that Paul would write to those churches. Churches that were
predominantly gentile which fits the emphasis of the message of the book.
Again we
see that Paul identified his recipients in relationship to God and to Jesus. He
calls them the saints in God. We normally associate the term Saint with people
who are special who are morally superior people, who in the catholic tradition
preformed miracles and worth of canonization. In protestant circles saint was a
title from Celtic Christianity to denote the founder of a church, or a
missionary. But in scripture saint is never used singularly of a person. It is
always the saints, and it comes from the Greek word hagios which means being
set aside and holy. Paul is saying the people that he is writing to have been
set aside by god for his purposes. They are a holy people, as it says in 1 Peter
2:10. Like the instruments in the temple in the old testament were sent aside
for God’s use. The te paipera tapu the maori bible uses the term te hunga tapu.
Hunga means a group of people and of course Tapu means set aside from everyday
mundane use for the sacred. Again its not because they were good enough it is
because of God’s choosing. We can’t separate this word saints from the second
identification Paul uses ‘the faithful in Christ. Again we might think of faithful
as an attribute, a virtue we have. However it has more the sense that we have
put our faith in Jesus Christ. It is because we have trusted in Jesus that we
have been set aside for God, become his holy people. By grace as we confess our
sin and turn to God, Jesus imparts his righteousness to us, and we are holy…Our
identity comes from God by grace through Jesus Christ.
In the
later manuscripts it does say in Ephesus. Ephesus was a spiritual heavy place, the
center of the worship of the Greek Godess Artemis, we know that during Paul’s
time the goldsmiths who made their living making idols to sell rioted because
they feared that the gospel was making such inroads that it was cutting off
their income source. It was a city and
region where jew and gentile would have lived very separate lives almost been
at odds with each other. But now they equally have this new identity as God’s
holy people through belief in Christ, and it changes how they relate and live
in the world. It breaks down that enmity and calls them to live as family
together in Christ. It calls them to love & follow Jesus ethics and way not
the way of their pagan world. We too share this dual Identity in our time and
setting, in Whangarei, in New Zealand in our twenty first century world with
its challenges and difficulties, and in
Christ which we are given by grace and that calls us to live in a new way, that
reflects God’s purposes and plans and God’s mission.
That is a
good segue to look at the greeting that Paul uses for his readers. Grace to you
and peace through God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve become used
to Paul’s greeting that we don’t realize how radical it was for its original
hearers. The traditional Greek greeting was charin which means rejoice
or joyous greeting. But Paul uses a play on words and uses charis which
sounds similar but means grace. So to Paul’s original listeners it would sound
familiar but they would think ‘hold on there is something slightly different
and new here’. But also Paul ties that together with the traditional Jewish
greeting as well ‘Shalom’ peace. Writing to a church hat was working out how to
be this new people of God together that was important. It is like in New
Zealand it is becoming more and more common for people to greet one in te reo
and English, and depending on the circumstance other languages as well. It is a
way of articulating the hope of unity.
But they
are also not just pleasantries again they are made concrete and real as they
come from God through Jesus Christ. It is by grace that we are bought into
relationship with god, and here Paul emphasizes that new relationship by
affirming that God is ‘our’ father. In Christ we are being bought together as
children of God. AS john says in the prologue to his gospel to all who believed
in him he gave the right to become the sons and daughters of the Lord most
high. Later in Ephesians Paul will emphasis the universality of God’s saving
grace by prefacing his prayer in chapter 3 by saying we bow the knee to the
father from whom all families in heaven and earth takes their name. the book
starts with Paul speaking of the grace of God as he recounts the spiritual
blessing God has bestowed on those who believe. He will speak of how that has
made it possible for diverse people to become one and that God ha given gifts
to build the church up into maturity and unity. It is by grace, through Jesus
Christ.
Peace
shalom has the idea not of that feeling you might have sitting beside a calm
lake or with the absence of conflict or stress, but rather it has to do with
wellness, or as Leonard Sweet puts it right relationship. Peace with God, with
one another, with the create world around us, with our possessions and with the
spiritual realm. In the second half of the letter of Ephesians Paul will speak
of how our new identity in Christ is worked out in those relationships, how we
treat each other, how we relate in the power structures of the day… submit to
one another… and how we deal with the spiritual forces arrayed against us… put
on the whole armor of God. That peace comes though God’s grace but it is the
work that we need to do putting that into practice in our lives, with the help
of the Holy Spirit. In the beatitudes Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called the children of God. We are called to be peace makers.
Work at peace in our lives and world. Share the gospel so people can have peace
with God, love one another, work at being one, that means dealing with
injustices and conflicts, for the original readers it meant dealing with the
divide between Jew and gentile.
We’ve brought
those things together in the title of our series on Ephesians grace ‘every
spirit blessing and peace ‘new life in Christ’
I just want
to finish by inviting us to identify with Ephesians. Maybe as Ephesus wasn’t
mentioned in those earliest of manuscripts it’s easy for us to slide our own
address in there in Whangarei in New Zealand, in our twenty-first century home,
hear yourself addressed as the saints in God, people set aside for the purposes
the mission and glory of God, a hunga tapu. Hear that you are that because you
have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. That it is by grace and hear the
call for peace to live out of that new identity in a new way that reflects that
wholeness, right relationships that God calls us into. My Prayer is that as we work our way through Ephesians
that you too may feel a quickening… and feel fully alive in Christ. That you may
you know ‘Every spiritual blessing and new life in Christ'.
Grace to
you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
