Ch.1: First Steps

Ch.1 First Steps

Resources

I have chosen not to overload this study with references to the vast array of resources on Ephesians. Instead I have selectively chosen as conversation partners a few studies that I have benefitted from most. I use the footnotes primarily to reference these resources where I have drawn directly on them. These references will take you further into matters briefly mentioned in the text should you want to know more about them. Where I have found these resources online I have given you the url for ease of following up on them.

From time to time you will find a sidebar, a box containing illustrative material of various sorts. This material tries to give you some “hooks” on which to discover some points of contact with Paul’s message in our contemporary world. Many of these illustrations come from art, movies, and literature. I do this in part because they are directly helpful for us in gaining a grasp on the material at hand. I do this also because they show the power of the imagination to visualize new worlds and situations, which I will argue Paul sees as essential to growing as a “subversive counter-revolutionary” people of God. As someone has said, “If you can’t imagine it, you can’t believe it.” Paul would surely agree!

On the Use of Military Imagery

In many circles today Christian use of military imagery is frowned upon. And for good reason! Christian misuse of this imagery to support militaristic mindsets and even Christian participation in military ventures through the centuries rightly makes us hesitant to use it today. In addition, the zeal and readiness of too many Christians today to support and/or resort to violence themselves to solve problems makes it nearly unconscionable to keep on using that imagery.

Yet I continue to use it for two reasons. First, this imagery captures something essential to the overall biblical picture of God’s people in the world. We are in a struggle, a battle, a war. It’s not physical warfare with weapons of steel and lead as in the Old Testament, but it is real warfare. Though our weapons are not those of military issue (2 Cor.10:3-5), we do practice a violence in the world – the violence of love. We wield the sword of the Spirit – the Word of God. It seems hard, if not impossible, to capture the sense of difficulty, danger, and urgency fundamental to the work of God’s people without this kind of imagery. Though care is required and, I suppose, the risk of misuse of never completely eliminated, I judge the loss of not using the imagery greater than the risk of using it.

This is one of the reasons I use the military image of Counter-Revolutionary for the church. There is no better image I can come up with to characterize the church that captures the Bible’s portrayal of the people of God and the ethos needed to sustain it. So I use these images with this large disclaimer: Military images connote the seriousness, urgency, and danger of the venture of living in the world as the people of God. However, the militance of the church is the power of its nonviolent love, its aggressive mercy, its unrelenting passion to reach others for Christ. Use of this imagery is in no way literal and

What's wrong with this picture of a German soldier's WWII belt buckle? ("Gott mit us" means "God with us"!)





should NOT be used to support or encourage attitudes and actions of a physical military type. Such is a grotesque and unjustifiable use of this imagery in a Christian context!
With these first steps behind us, on to Ephesians itself!