Summary of Ephesians 2
We continue on under the posture image of “Sit”. We move to the second of the Five M’s, the nuts and bolts of becoming God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people. “Sit” means receptivity, a taking in, a meditative soaking-in of the unfathomable and undeserved gifts and graces of God the Father. This in-take is designed to fire our hearts and imaginations with the breathtaking scope and unendingly lavish plan and provision of God for his creation. Paul understands that our hearts need to burn white-hot with love for God and the work he has called us to. He also knows, though, that more is required to build a movement.
To catalyze us into committed adherents to his cause, God must also have some “skins” on the wall, some evidence that he is capable of doing more than simply dreaming big dreams and offering inspirational hope. He must have a track record demonstrating his prowess at delivering on his promises. That’s what Paul sets out to do in Ephesians 2. We might summarize it like this: God’s resume includes victories over the direst and profoundest enemies to his will and humanity’s well being - death and human division.
Memory
Memory in the Bible means far more than mental recall of various people and particulars that we have experienced or learned. To “remember” something in the Bible is to have it re-presented to you in such a way that you experience yourself as part of what you remember. Through such memory we find ourselves incorporated into, or becoming a part of the biblical story itself.
An example is Deut. 26:5ff. The second generation of Israelites is in the land. When they bring their first fruits to offer to the priest, they are to say:
“5A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God.”
Notice how the pronouns shift in this exercise of biblical memory. It begins in the third person “he” referring to the Israelites in captivity and under oppression in Egypt (v.5). However, it quickly shifts to the first person “us/we/our” (v.6). This remembrance incorporates or makes members of the second Exodus generation participants of events they were not even alive to experience! The actual Exodus liberation becomes a part of their experience, something they can pass on to their descendants in the same way.
We practice this memory today when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Included in the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving is a longish section devoted to recounting the deeds and mercies of God from creation on through to the birth of the church. We remember all this as that which God has done for us and to us though we actually lived through none of it. By the work of Spirit, however, we are caught up in this story in such a profound way that it truly becomes our story, an account of our family history, that decisively shapes us into God’s people.
Memory like this is what Paul summons his churches to in Eph.2: “So then, remember . . . (V.11). As noted above, the objects of our memory are the decisive victories of God over direst and profoundest enemies we have. This memory, biblical memory, functions to incorporate us into those victories. We have been and are the beneficiaries of God’s defeat of his enemies.
As we “sit” before God in and with the risen Christ (2:6), we ponder the reality of God’s having done all this not just for humanity in general but for you and me in particular! Thus Paul uses the second person “you” through the two sections of this chapter. As recipients of this divine warfare, we are moved not only to embrace the grand vision, the mystery, of God’s plan unveiled in ch.1 but also to become part of the ongoing divine liberation movement based on God’s victories of the worst of our foes. In this chapter we’ll look at the first of these two divine victories that move us to commitment to the cause of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement.
Divine Warfare Pattern
In the Introduction we noted Tim Gombis recent claim that Ephesians is structured according to a Divine Warfare pattern found in the Old Testament. He finds this pattern embedded in Eph.1:20-2:22. The main components of this pattern are a claim of kingship, a recounting of victories, and celebration and service at the temple. In Eph.1:20-2:22 we find just this pattern:
1:20-23 Claim to Kingship
2:1-10 God’s Defeat of Death through Christ
2:11-18 God’s Defeat of Division through Christ
2:19-22 Celebration and Service at the Temple
We looked at the first element, the claim of kingship, in our comment at the end of the last chapter. We see the rest of the pattern unfold as we make our way through Eph.2.
One further implication from Gombis’ work is that “Warfare” passages bookend Paul’s letter. This Divine Warfare pattern is the first bookend while the well-known “whole armor of God” passage at the end is the second. This has the effect of enclosing the material in between the bookends within the warfare imagery. That is, we can legitimately read 3:1-6:9 as constituting the detail and design of our subversive counter-revolutionary struggle against the continuing resistance to and rebellion against God. This is why I titled this study of Ephesians: The Making of a Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Church.
2:1-10
Each of these two descriptions of God’s victories follow a similar pattern. First, the old state we were in is narrated. Then God’s action in Christ is celebrated. And finally the new state we have based on God’s victory is recounted. Eph.2:1-10 can be divided this way.
vv.1-3: Description of the Old State: We are Dead in Sin
vv.4-7: Celebration of God’s Victory: We are Made Alive Together with Christ
vv.8-10: Recounting the New State: We are What He Has Made Us
2:1-3: We are Dead in Sin
This first section of ch.2 deals with God’s victory over death, the death God warned Adam and Eve about in the Garden. It was not principally physical death God had in view (for our first parents did not immediately die) but rather relational death to him. Humanity in Adam and Eve became insensible and unresponsive to God. Turning to ourselves and away from God we became like the dark side of the moon, unable to reflect light.
Paul jumps right in with his guns blazing: “You were dead . . .” he cries. We had made a lifestyle out of “trespasses and sins”. And this in consequence of turning from the true triune God to the false trinity that rules a world dead in sin. Instead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we turned and made ourselves vulnerable to the blandishments of that unholy trinity which Paul names the “world (v.2),” the “flesh,” (v.3), and the “devil” (v.2).
This unholy trinity systematically corrupts the Three P’s that form the core our identity and integrity as human beings: our priorities (deepest convictions), our passions (the drives and energies that move us to act), and our practices (what we do). In the devil we have a new ruler whose agenda and priorities we now serve. In the flesh we serve a power that corrupts our affections and thus the motivations for which we act. And in the world we have a master which at every turn entices us to do things that further cement our alienation from God and our allegiance to this infernal trio. Thus Paul says we have become so corrupted that we are “by nature children of wrath” (v.3).
With this grim litany of the rebellion in which all humanity is entrenched (“like everyone else,” v.3), Paul details the old state of the people in his churches (indeed of Paul himself, “All of us,” v.3). This is our plight toward God: insensible, unresponsive, beyond the ability or desire to help ourselves. If anything is to change for us, God will have to do it. And fortunately for us, God both can and will do that for us that we cannot and will not do for ourselves.
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