3:8-13
Thus far Paul has modeled for his comrades in God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement how to read their lives in light of their guiding convictions, their priorities. Because the power of God the Divine Warrior is at work in him and his circumstances, Paul does not allow apparently negative situations dissuade him from his calling or dissipate his passion or dilute his faith. This is not, as we have seen, pollyana-ish positive thinking that engages in denial of or refusal to face reality. It is an intentional choice to embrace God’s way of being in this world.
-It is the theology of the cross.[1]
-It is the life of Jesus at work in and through Paul.[2]
-It is the crucifixion-resurrection dynamic in full gear.
-It is grace.
And grace is where Paul picks up in this new paragraph: “Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me . . .” (v.8). Under the rubric of grace there is a good deal of overlap with the preceding paragraph but it is not redundant. Paul adds texture here to model he provides for his churches.
“Least of all the saints” – what does Paul mean by this? Is it merely rhetorical overkill to highlight God’s grace? Or is there something more? I believe the latter is the case. God’s grace is highlighted to be sure. Paul could never quite forget that as a former persecuter of the church, he was perhaps the most unlikely believer and, as he puts it here, “least of all the saints”. But I think there’s even more here than that. Being the “least of all the saints” alludes to the servant posture Jesus admonishes disciples to adopt (Jn.13:1-17). “But many who are first shall be last, the last shall be first” (Mk.10:31), he said. Jesus here turns the normal “pecking order” on its head. Those who serve others and give themselves up for Jesus’ sake are the ones who are fit to share in the work of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement. I think that’s what Paul is ultimately pointing toward here. He has accepted that he is the “least of all the saints” and he ministers from that place (I am convinced he truly believes this; it is not manipulative rhetoric as it too often is among us!). Is this not part of what he is modeling here for his readers to emulate?
The following words from the opening prayer in “The Way Down is the Way Up”[3] capture this perspective well.
“Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,
You have brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths, but see you in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold your glory.
You have brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths, but see you in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold your glory.
Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter your stars shine;
and the deeper the wells the brighter your stars shine;
Let me find your light in my darkness,
your life in my death,
your joy in my sorrow,
your grace in my sin,
your riches in my poverty,
your glory in my valley.”
your life in my death,
your joy in my sorrow,
your grace in my sin,
your riches in my poverty,
your glory in my valley.”
Thus, paradoxically, God has given this Paul the privilege and commission to be the primary mover of the Gentile mission and the one who announces the “mystery” of God’s heretofore unrevealed plan to bring Jew and Gentile together in Christ in one body as a new humanity.
At this point another aspect of the modeling Paul practices comes to the fore. Notice how he shifts the emphasis from himself and his calling to the church. All of his work leads finally to the church. It’s the church, not Paul, or anyone else, that stands at the center of God’s “eternal purpose” (v.11) as the new humanity in Christ (2:11-22) and body of Christ (4:15-16).
Even Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles, is de-centered as he engages God’s call to service. And he willingly accepts and confesses such as God’s will for him. His task is to take the news of God’s glad incorporation of the Gentiles into his people. The “boundless riches of Christ” (v.8) translates into a boundless (i.e. boundary-free) church with members from all “boundaries” present together as one in Christ.
Paul further specifies that a part of his task is to make it clear to the whole world (“everyone,” v.9) what God the creator’s (v.9) ultimate plan and purpose are (the great “mystery”; 1:9-10). Paul shares and even takes the lead in God’s work of gathering this great multiethnic, multilingual body of people together, but in so doing he de-centers himself. The emphasis shifts from the work of gathering (though of course it continues on) to the gathered community. They are the goal of Paul’s work and the result of his labors. Paul does what he does so the church may then do what God has called it to do. And it to that Paul turns in v.10.
“Through the church,” he writes, “the wisdom of God in its rich variety” is to be made known to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (v.10). Paul then declares this “in accordance with the eternal purpose” of God which he has enacted in Christ (v.11). Wow! We need to spend a little time unpacking this!
Imagine (because I know you’ve never actually seen it) a church whose vision/mission/core values/whatever statement read: “We are here to make the full panoply of God’s wisdom known to the powers of this world.” What would this mean?[4]
Whatever this means, it mean in the first place that this is what the church (not the individual believer) is to do. Whatever this is that God intends to do, he intends to do it through the church – this body of Jew and Gentile bound together by the cross of Christ. God works through his people.
That’s a hard one for us North Americans to get our hearts around. I heard a quip the other day to the effect that: Americans agree on only one thing and that is to never be attached to anyone else. When it comes down to it we see ourselves as billiard balls, separate, self-sufficient in ourselves, rolling around the big billiard table of life occasionally bumping into other balls but remaining essentially unchanged by these encounters.
The Bible, on the other hand, sees human beings like those models of molecules we used to make in high school out of Styrofoam balls and pipe cleaners. Here our connections with each other and the networks of relationships formed by those connections define our humanity. In other words, we can almost say we are our relationships. In my tradition’s A Brief Statement of Faith we read:
“In sovereign love God created the world good
and makes everyone equally in God’s image
male and female, of every race and people,
to live as one community.”[5]
and makes everyone equally in God’s image
male and female, of every race and people,
to live as one community.”[5]
Ironically, individuality, that sense of who we are as the unique image-bearers God, comes to us only through community. Only in the give and take, loving and living, serving and searching, worshiping and witnessing together as a family, do we discover who we truly are and shall be.
That’s the biblical context, then, in which Paul’s astonishing claim about the church takes place here. We sort of have to learn to look at things a bit differently than we usually do, look cock-eyed, as it were, to see with Paul what he is getting after.
This body, community, church, then is to make known God’s “wisdom” in all its hues and colors (think of a male peacock’s tail fanned out). Wisdom is in essence living in sync with, or with the grain of, God’s world. In a world radically out of sync or living against the grain of God’s world, well, you can see that there will be conflict and tension. The church will be the focal point or lightning rod for much of this struggle, as Jesus was himself (Jn.15:18-21).
Can we say more about this wisdom the church announces to the powers of the world? We can say, first, that the church knows (or should know) what God is up to in the world, the “mystery” at the heart of the world (1:9-10). This “open secret”[6] is now to be made known to all God’s creation. Thus the church ought to shape its identity and ministry in light of this “mystery” which it embodies.
Second, this divine wisdom comes in a “rich variety”. It is multidimensional, covers all areas of life, comprehensively “schools” God’s people in living in sync with his will and way for us, and enables the visibility and practices of credible witness. As a good Jew Paul grew up with this vision of divine wisdom as Moses announced it to Israel in Deuteronomy
4:5-8:
“See, just as the Lord my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?”
From the evidence within Ephesians we can identify with Yoder Neufeld the following three areas where this wisdom is needed.[7]
Disobedience to God (2:1-10);
Divisions within the human community (2:11-22); and
Darkness of a culture sunk in lawlessness, greed, and falsehood (4:15-5:21).
These areas are obviously not exhaustive or definitive. The church in every time and place and in each cultural setting needs to discern the particular places and practices in which God’s wisdom must be demonstrated.
In the third place, our audience is “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places”. This undoubtedly is the strangest part of this verse to our modern western ears. What in the world is this all about? These figures, which I discussed in the introduction, reside “in the heavenly places”. I suggested earlier that this cosmological imagery represents the place of Christ’s victory (1:3, 20; 2:6). This setting already tells us that we are in the reality established by the Divine Warrior’s victory over these very powers.
These powers are probably best understood as suprahuman creatures charged to maintain the structures and conditions in which humanity lives, part of the creational substructure, as it were, of human life. They rebelled against God and turned their mandate to maintain the conditions for humanity into a grab for mastery over them. This resulted in warped conditions for human life, and the feeling of helplessness we often feel before the nameless “they” that seem to thwart our freedom and conspire against our flourishing.[8]
This warping takes place on every level of human existence: economic, cultural, political, and religious. The church, then, must make known the wisdom of God on every level of human existence. In ch.2 Paul begins this work by undercutting the religious and social powers active in the world. The church announces to the powers of distorted religion that its strategy of inducing us to remake “God” in our own image and using “religion” to enslave humanity under a load of guilt and obligation is over. The true and living God has raised us from death to new life in and with the victorious Christ. Faith rather than religion is our new reality and in faith we discover freedom from forgiveness and new power for obedience; guilt and obligation are bad and distant memories of our slavery under “religion”.
Likewise, in the second half of ch.2 Paul narrates how God in Christ has freed us from the tyranny of division, all kinds of division on any and every level of life – economic, social, political and so on. The church through the quality of its own life and its witness to the wider world makes known to the powers of division that their day is over, their power bankrupt, and their demise certain.
Elsewhere[9] I have described the church as a sign, sacrament, and steward of God’s kingdom (adapting the categories of Lesslie Newbigin). As the church lives into this identity – pointing to God’s kingdom, embodying the reality of the kingdom so that it may be seen, handled, and heard (1 Jn.1:1), and implementing the reality of the kingdom – it will necessarily be announcing God’s wisdom and truth to the folly and falsehood of the “world according the rulers and authorities”. Christ’s victory won at the cross and in the resurrection takes on flesh and blood as the church fulfills this, it’s God-given vocation.
Now, if you see a church mission statement that reads “We are here to make the full panoply of God’s wisdom known to the powers of this world,” you will know both what it means and why it is perhaps the most appropriate such statement we have!
All this is rooted in the “eternal purpose” (v.11) of God the Divine Warrior who won the victory “Christ Jesus.” And in him, Jew and Gentile together are ushered into the very presence of God whose “eternal purpose” is just this – that his creatures and he may live together in communication, communion, and community throughout eternity in God’s new creation. This is why Paul concludes this paragraph encouraging his churches to not misread his sufferings, his imprisonment. They are neither his shame nor a sign of the gospel’s defeat but rather God’s victory at work and Paul’s readers’ “glory” (v.13).
[1] "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is." Martin Luther, cited in Douglas John Hall. The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (Kindle Locations 243-244). Kindle Edition.
[2] 2 Cor.4:7-12.
[3] http://trevinwax.com/2011/07/24/the-way-down-is-the-way-up/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wordpress%2Ftrevinwax+%28Kingdom+People%29
[4] That we cannot envision using this as a church’s mission statement or what it might mean if we did suggests why the church is in difficulty in our country and why we so need the teaching of this letter.
[5] “A Brief Statement of Faith,” The Book of Confessions, 10.3, ll.29-32.
[6] Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret
[7] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 358.
[8]A rough paraphrase of Miroslav Volf’s description: “all pervasive low-intensity evil . . ., the interiority of warped institutions, structures, and systems . . . under which many suffer but for which no one is responsible and about which all complain but no one can target.” Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 87.
[9] Lee Wyatt, The Incredible Shrinking Gospel: The Crisis of Evangelism in the 21st Century (forthcoming ebook)
