Ephesians 3:14-21. In yesterday’s post Paul began a prayer, or rather he began a report about how he had been praying for the believers in Ephesus. As he began he mentioned the fact that he was in prison. Although he was being held by the Roman government awaiting a trial he says he was a prisoner of Christ Jesus. He then went on explain how God had a plan for his (God’s) household and how he (Paul) was a manager (the word stewardship) of that plan. He called the plan a “mystery” that God had now revealed. Earlier in the letter he had talked about the “mystery” and explained that it was about God saving mankind through Jesus. Yesterday Paul was a little more specific about how gentiles and Jews were equal partner in God’s forever family. Even though the Jews had had a little advantage, since they had originally had some information about how God was going to deal with the sin problem (see “A Tale of Two Trees” or maybe “The Old Testament Connection”). He also reminded them that God was the creator of all things, told them that this new family they were now a part of, the church, was showing to demons that God is wise, loving and powerful, and he reminded them that they were God’s children and could talk to God boldly and confidently if they had put their faith in Jesus as God’s solution to the sin problem (their rebellion, disrespect, and disobedience toward God). He ended his little side journey by asking them not to be discouraged by the fact that he was under arrest. He reminded them that he was there because he was out serving God by helping people find Jesus , and their honorable place in God’s forever family.

In today’s reading he returns to his report about how he had been praying for them. In verse 14 he tells them because God had given him the privilege of getting to help people know about Jesus that he “bowed his knee before the Father.” In verse 16 Paul says he is “bowing the knee” so that God would do something. This clearly tells us he is asking God for something. In Paul’s day the most normal way people prayed was standing up. The idea of bowing was something that people did before kings and people of great power, both of which God is.

In verse 15 he shows one way God is powerful when he tells the readers that it is from God that every “family” in Heaven and on Earth get their name. The Greek word translated “family” is “patria” (remember that the New Testament was written mostly in Greek, the language of Paul’s day).   We get English words like patriarch and paternal from that word. The Greek’s associated families with the father who was the head of the family. So God is seen here as the one who forms or founds every “family”. Bible experts don’t agree on what it means “in Heaven and on Earth”. Some believe that in Heaven human families will still have some connection, others say that the word is sometimes used for other social groups or even people groups. Sometimes we talk about a group of friends or people we work as a “family”. Also Paul has just been talking about God as a Father and we know that he often uses family language to describe how believers relate to each other, so the family in Heaven could be God’s family and the families on earth could be human ones, or it could be about other groups. Some experts even extend the idea to the “family” of demons in verse 10. The point though is that God has authority, he is the head over all of it. God is powerful.

Although God has power that is probably not why Paul is “bending his knee” rather than standing in front of God talking to him. Yes God is powerful, but remember that Paul just told the Ephesian believers that they could boldly and confidently approach God. In Luke 22:41-43 Jesus knelt down to pay to God. This is just before he was to be arrested, tortured, and executed. We see he was very distress and emotional about what he was facing. Sometimes when people are faced with something very emotional they go “weak in the knees”, they just lose all strength to stand up. In light of what Paul told the believers about approaching God and the use of the word Father for God the picture we have here is of Paul being very emotional as he prays for these believers in Ephesus. He barely knew them, if at all, but he felt very connected to and responsible for them.

In verses 16-17 we see that he is asking God to give them strength in their inner person (Inner man, heart) so that Jesus could be a part of their lives, influence how they thought and lived (dwell or live in them). There are two important parts to how the power of God to do this comes into their lives. It is through faith and with the help of the Holy Spirit(remember before we learned that faith, hearing about Jesus and believing what we know he has done for us and trusting our life and eternity to him alone, is what brought salvation from sin into our lives, Ephesians 2:8-9. Also the Holy Spirit is how Jesus actually “lives in us”, John 14:15-16, John 14:25-26, John 15:26, John 16:7).

Greek documents (like this letter) were written without punctuation and without spaces between the letter. Also they were written in all capital letters, though there were variations as to how letters were made for books verses quickly written documents like this letter; carefully hand printed verses “handwriting” or cursive. Translators need to consider what they are reading and what they know about the person, situation, etc. to figure out things like punctuation and capitalization. Some times translators have different ideas about that in different places. It’s that way with the end of verse 17.

In the Greek ( the way Paul wrote this, or had his secretary write this) the words “in love” come first. It literally says “ you in love rooted and founded” (like a foundation of a building). Or more completely “to dwell Christ thorough faith in the hearts you in love rooted and grounded”. Now most translations say something like “so Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so you, being rooted and founded in love” and then continue on into verse 18 “may be able to grasp or comprehend…” Interestingly the “so” or “that” that they put after the word “faith” really comes after the “rooted” and “grounded” words.

I hope you are still here thinking, don’t freak out, there’s a good point to all of this. You may not know that the Bible, as it was originally written didn’t have verse numbers, those were added around 1500 AD to help people studying the Bible find different parts. Remember it was written with no spaces between the letters and no punctuation. It’s really no problem for most people to read the language they grew up with if it is written that way. Also different languages put words in different orders. In English we talk about “the red car” but in Spanish they talk about “el carro rojo”. They put the adjective (red=rojo) after the word it is describing. So the fact that the Greek words and the English words are in different orders doesn’t mean that the translators did a bad job, and in fact the fact that many English translations have the same sort of order helps us see that they did a good job. Those translations were done a different times in history by different groups of guys so the fact that they agree is a good thing.

The reason I mentioned all of this though is because some experts in Greek think that the words “You in love rooted and founded” are a separate little statement. Since the word “so or that” is right before the rest of the words in verse 18, they think it should say something like, “so Christ may live through faith in your hearts; in love you have been rooted and founded, So you may be able to understand with all God’s people…” They say the grammar is a lot like Ephesians 2:8-9 “for by grace you have been saved; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”. So what’s the point? Both was of punctuation this have the same basic meaning, Paul want Jesus to be strong in them so they can understand something, that we haven’t come to yet. They are planted and have a good foundation but Paul wants them to have more. He wants the tree or the building to grow. All of this comes up because the grammar is very hard here at the end of verse 17. It even seemed that way to early believers near the time of Paul that were native Greek speakers (By the way Paul spoke an older form of Greek. Modern Greek is different, think English you use and the English in a King James Bible or the way actors talk when they are doing Shakespeare). We need to remember that Paul was dictating this. Some Greek experts think that Paul was becoming very emotional. Remember he cares about these people. He keeps taking them about the power of God and how they are all a part of God’s family. They are not second class Christians behind the Jewish believers they are all one “new man” one “family of God” one “house for God to live in”. Although this is a report of how Paul has been praying for them it is turning in to a prayer right then and there as he speaks, a fact we will see when we come to verses 20-21.

In verses 18-19 Paul says he wants the gentile readers (see Ephesus 3:4-6) to “be able to comprehend” (the word translated “comprehend” means to grab ahold of something). He wants them to have the ability to grab something and make it an active part of their lives. He says he wants them to be able to really understand know the size of something. Interestingly he doesn’t actually tell them at first what he wants them to know. In verse 18 he uses four different words for dimensions. Width, length, height,and depth this is his way of saying, “Dudes, I’m praying that you really have the ability to get this totally huge thing.” He finally tells them what the huge thing is though, “I want you to know the unknowable love of Jesus so you can be filled all the way up.” This doesn’t mean that Paul is praying that they will become like God or as strong as God or as smart as God he is praying that they will be strong in Jesus so they can be all God made each of them to be.

In verses 20-21 we see that this is no longer just a report about what he had been praying, all this emotion has turned his words into a prayer right there on the spot, right in the middle of his letter. He has just told them that he has been asking God to help them really understand the love and power of God that God has used for them and placed in them. How God has fixed their broken relationship with him and made them one new group for him. Here at the end of all that Paul recognizes that God can do way more that we can even imagine. When Paul calls God “the one who is able” he uses the Greek word for “power”, “the powerful one”. Then Paul uses two two ideas to describe this power. The first one means something like “way more” or “more extremely”. The second idea is something like “infinitely more than”. Both of these apply to what the readers could ask for or even imagine. Paul’s words are communicating an insanely powerful God who is using that power through the loving plan he has for us in Jesus. That power is working in us, and Paul want them to understand that. But he knows we will probably never really “get it” all the way because God’s actions are way big, more extreme, and unimaginable. Now in these two verses he says, “To that huge God who is working in us beyond what we could even imagine be honor and recognition (glory) in the church (all believers in Jesus from all time) and in Jesus (as the one who made the church possible through his actions as the “chosen one”, the “Christ”; chosen to be our substitute, our savior).

So Paul ends this first part of the letter the way he began, with a prayer that God would receive honor (Bible scholars like to call these types of prayers “doxologies” from the Greek word “doxa” which is translated “praise, honor, or glory”). This first part has been all about the power of God and how he used it to build Jewish and non-Jewish (gentile) believers in to one new group; a family, a house for God, a temple of God, the family of God. He has written especially to gentile believers who must have been feeling unwelcome or under other pressures from the people around them. He asked God that they would understand the immense size of His love in Jesus so they could be all that each of them was meant to be, as a person with a relationship with God. In the next few reading we will find out more about this full life.

I may have said this before but it is amazing how much God loves us. It is amazing that the creator of the universe would create a universe for us, a world , for us, friends and families for us, that he would create each one of us with a place and a purpose and that that place is with him and that the purpose is part of his world. Its amazing that we get to be with God, relate to him, share in the “administration” of the forever existence of us and the world. It’s amazing that we can talk to God boldly and confidently. It’s amazing that he took rebellious disrespectful us, rebellious disrespectful me and cleaned me up and gave me power to start living for him. We need to never doubt that God loves us, that he wants us with him. We do need to accept his forgiveness though. We need to admit we fail and need his powerful help. Once we accept that we are on the winning team. Hopefully we will understand the tip of God’s love for us. May he be honored in your life and mine as we live as part of his forever family.

God help me live and learn and honor you. Let my life bring you honor. Help the world understand you though my life. Help others respond to you. Let my life teach them. Thank you for opening your family to me, to us. You are way big, way powerful, more extreme, way better. You are “far out” and close in, thank you for your love.

Ephesians 3:1-13. In the first two chapters of this letter Paul has spoken over and over again about the power of God and how he is using it for the benefit of Paul’s readers. It’s good to remember that Paul was writing this letter to a group of believers in the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor (Modern day Turkey). In those days the world around the Mediterranean Sea was ruled by the Roman Empire. One part of how Rome ruled was by allowing people to maintain their ethnic and religious identities. As long as conquered nations world stayed peaceful they could keep their culture. There were things added to their lives by the Roman government but not major changes. We also want to remember that Christianity had its roots in the religious history of the Jewish people.

Who Jesus is and what he came to earth to do was foretold in the Old Testament and was hinted at in the religious practices of the Jewish people. In a way, the way God set up for the Jewish people to live and relate to him was like a movie trailer, “Coming to your existence soon, The Kingdom of God, a kingdom for al nations, ruled by God’s suffering servant, the Messiah!” (Jeremiah 10:7-10, Jeremiah 31:10-12, Isaiah 9:6-7, Isaiah 52:7-15, Isaiah 53). The first believers in Jesus were almost all Jews. It wasn’t long, though, before the message started going out to the non-Jews, Gentiles. In the beginning Christianity was considered a branch of the Jewish religion. By the time Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus all of that had started to change. Many Jews felt that what the believers believed about Jesus was wrong, and those Jews were very serious about their beliefs (remember that Paul started out as a Jew dedicated to killing believers in Christ, see “Paul Sent One to the Gentiles”). This tension came to the attention of the Roman authorities who came down hard on anything that disturbed the peace of the empire. Also the church (believers and followers of Jesus) was changing from mostly Jewish believers to a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish (gentile) followers of Jesus. Some churches were almost all gentiles.

So by the time Ephesians was written there was a lot of pressure in the church (or churches) both inside and out. Pressure from the government, pressure of non-believing family members to come back to the old religion (both in the families of Jews to return to Judaism and the families of Gentiles to return to their Polytheism (worship of many gods)) and pressure inside the church between the Jewish believers and the gentile believers about what things were really part of this new thing, this “one new man”, this “house or temple of God” as Paul called it in the last chapter. And we don’t want to forget that Paul was writing this while on house arrest near Rome, chained to a Roman guard, waiting a trial to see if he had been causing riots back in Jerusalem, a charge that could carry the death penalty.

In today’s reading Paul starts by saying “for this reason”, he wants to tell the readers something that is based on what he told them in the first two chapters. As I said above, Paul had been talking to them about the power God was using for them. More specifically he was telling them about God “saving” them, making them “alive with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5). You can look back two posts to see more about that. Paul used the term “Christ” instead of the name Jesus to get them to think about what Jesus came to do rather that about him as a person (we sometimes think of “christ” as a name but it is really a title, it means chosen one, and is a link by Paul back to ideas in the Old Testament). What Paul is linking back to is our broken relationship with God and God’s plan to fix it (see “The Old Testament Connection” and “A Tale of Two Trees”). Maybe even more specifically, what he is about to say to them is about this whole “new man” thing in Ephesians 2:15, also compared to a house in in Ephesians 2:20-22, and a kingdom in Ephesians 2:19. Paul is going to talk to them about the way God is combining both Jews and non-Jews into a new group of people, the church, who are going to be His family (see his use of “father” in Ephesians 2:18 and the idea of inheritance in Ephesians 1:14) and His people forever (see 1 Peter 2:9-10).

Paul then identifies himself as “the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you gentiles (non-Jews)”.What ever he is about to say to them is related to the fact that he is a prisoner. Notice that he is a prisoner of Jesus. Although he is in custody of the Romans it is really Jesus who limits or controls his life. Again the title “Christ” comes first to emphasize the mission Jesus came to complete, a mission he has asked his followers to continue and complete (Matthew 28:19-20) and a mission that drove Paul’s actions. Jesus told his followers to make other followers in the whole world and Paul was doing that specifically among non-Jews (gentiles). Paul had spent the last thirty years traveling around, suffering a lot of trouble and expense, to get the word out about Jesus (1 Corinthians 9:1-12, 2 Corinthians 11:23-28). So as a “prisoner of Christ”, who has spent the last 30 years working hard to help non-Jews (especially) come to understand that they could have a part along with the any Jewish people who would believe in God’s forever family, Paul has something to say to these gentile believers.

But Paul gets interrupted almost immediately. He wasn’t interrupted by something outside of himself but by what he has been saying. And he was probably literally saying what we are reading. In Paul’s day letters and other documents were often dictated by the author and actually written by someone else. In five different letter Paul makes a point that some part of the letter is being written “in his own hand” (1 Corinthians 16:21, Galatians 6:11, Colossians 4:18, 2 Thessalonains 3:17, Philemon 19). Paul makes this point to make sure his readers know that these letters are really from him and carry his full authority. But it also tells us that some part of these letters were probably written down by someone else. Colossians and Philemon were probably written at exactly the same time as Ephesians, so although Ephesians doesn’t specifically tell us that someone else was doing the writing it is very likely. So as Paul brings up the fact of being a prisoner it makes him think about that fact and he stops what he is talking about and chases that idea for a little bit, 12 verses or the rest of today’s reading to be exact. Tomorrow we will get back to what it was that Paul wanted his gentile readers to know about this “new man” they were now a part of.

Remember Paul is taking this little side trip because of the way he had identified himself in verse 1, “prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the benefit of you gentiles”.   Here in verse 2 he tells them that he assumes they have heard of the “stewardship of God’s grace given to him for them”. The Greek word translated “stewardship” is “oikonomia”, we get our word “economy” from that word (remember the New Testament was written almost entirely in Greek, the language of the day) . The idea behind the word is of running something like a business or a country. In Paul’s day though the main usage of the word was for running a household. Often a large household was like a small business and often servant would be given parts to run. The use of this word echoes back to the end of chapter two where Paul told the gentile believers that they were being carefully fit together with Jewish believers into a house for God. It also fits with the idea of us being in a family with God (the Father) who has given us an inheritance.   In this case the part of the “household: that Paul has been trusted with is God’s grace. Remember that “grace” describes an undeserved gift, Paul is handing out presents. Cool! We also see that this “gift” was given to him to hand out.

In verse 3 Paul tells them that it was only by “revelation” that he could make known to them the “mystery” that he had just written about to them. It is interesting that back in Ephesians 1:9-10 Paul talked about the “mystery” of God’s will; His kind intention which God set out to accomplish through Jesus. And how what God had a plan (administration in Ephesians 1:10 is the Greek work “oikonomia”) to add things together in Christ. So here in verses 2-3 we see the same words as Paul used in chapter 1 “mystery” and “oikonomia” and we also see the link to the house/household idea in chapter two where it was gentile believers and Jewish believes being joined together in to one new thing the church.

In verses 4-5 Paul links his next idea back to verse 3, he understands the mystery because God revealed it to him, he didn’t figure it out, the “insight” was all from God.   Here we find out that Paul uses the word mystery because this wasn’t something that was generally known or could be figured out. The mystery is also like with Christ and that this mystery was not known in the past. This mystery is only known now because God apostles (sent ones) and prophets (more guys who would speak from God) were giving out information that had been revealed to them. Paul was one of these “apostles”. We also see this stuff came to these guys with the help of the Holy Spirit, revealed directly from God, in other words. We aren’t sure why Paul decides to call these messengers of God “holy”. The idea is of someone or something that is given to or special to someone or something else. Perhaps with all the trouble going around (like being in prison) Paul wanted to make sure that the Ephesian believers understood that these guys were God’s guys and still under his protection. In verse 6 Paul becomes very specific about the mystery. In chapter 1 the mystery that was revealed seems more general, its God’s plan to fix the sin problem (see “A Tale of Two Trees”) through Jesus. The idea of “summing up in Christ” in that chapter might hint at what Paul talks about in Chapter 2 when he talks about gentile believers being full members of God’s forever family and his eternal kingdom. Here is verse 6 Paul says the mystery he is talking about is this same thing that Jewish believers and gentile believers are equal members of God’s family.

In verse 7 Paul returns to idea of God’s power. He says he was made a “minister” according to the gift of God’s grace when God used his power in Paul’s life. The word translated “minister” means servant. That idea ties in well with the whole family and “oikonomia” thing. So the work that Paul was doing, telling the world about God fixing our relationships with God and bring all believers equally together through Jesus, was a gift from God that he didn’t deserve and that this opportunity Paul had was because of the power of God. In verse 8 calls himself the very least of all God’s followers (saints, holy ones) and again says he didn’t really deserve (grace) the chance God had given him to tell gentiles about the unknowable (literally untraceable) plan of God to bring people together as His family. Paul also uses the idea of turning on a light to describe how he got to be a part of the working out of God’s plan to help the world know the mystery that had been hidden for ages in God. Only God knew exactly what he was going to do but he had hinted at it thorough out history.

Remember that the mystery Paul is talking about involves fixing the “sin” problem (see “A Tale of Two Trees”) but more exactly he is talking about how God was going to make all sorts of people a part of his forever family. To many it might have seemed that the benefits were only going to be for Jewish people but God’s plan included believers form every people group. In verse 10 when Paul tells us that this secret, that was hidden in the plan of the creator God, comes to light it reveals just how awesome God is. The Greek word “manifold” used to describe God’s wisdom in this plan of salvation is “polypoikilos”. This is a compound word and the interesting thing about this word is that the second part of the word “poikilos” means many colored, spotted, made with many colors, etc. The idea is beautify or complex. Paul could have used just this word to describe God’s wisdom but instead he magnifies it with the prefix “poly” which means “many”. God’s wisdom is “way beautify, way cool, way complex”, its awesome.   And it shows up best in how he is dealing with mankind; a mankind that defected from him, by making this “new man” out of many believers, this church. Interestingly the group that Paul is turning on the lights for is “rulers and powers in the heavenly places” this is talking about evil demonic powers. According to verse 11 this was a part of God’s plan all along. According to 1 Peter 1:12 angels are very interested in this whole salvation thing. When Satan convinced one third of the angels to join him in an attempt to overthrow God they were immediately judged and banished form Heaven as their home; there was no second chance for them. So this whole idea of God’s patience, and not punishing our sin immediately, and Jesus substitution for us, taking our punishment is all unknown to them. While Peter says the angels want to check this all out here in Ephesians Paul tells us that the demons are gett’n a little school’n. This was all part of that “way cool” plan of God that he brought about in Jesus, a plan that he made before any of this all even started (eternal).

In verses 12-13 we see why Paul went down this side street. He had mentioned his imprisonment. Everybody was worried about that, remember it could result in the death sentence if his accusers came and convinced the Caesar (Nero at the time, and he hated Christians) that Paul was a revolutionary. And many of these believes were feeling more and more threatened too. Not to mention gentile believers might have felt like second-class Christians. In verse 12 Paul uses all that he has said so far, the mystery, the plan of God all about bringing people from all tribes, tongues, and people groups together, each one fit together with the others, into his family, to help the gentile believes (and really all believers) understand that we can confidently and boldly talk to God. The language here is language of close friendship. What had been lost in the Garden of Eden was here restored through faith in Jesus (Ephesians 2:8-10). In verse 13 he makes it clear that this side trip is about what was happening to him because he tells his reader not to be discouraged by the trouble he was going through. He was going through it for them so they would one day enjoy that honored position as children of God in God’s forever kingdom (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

A couple of things I want to mention first some people don’t understand how Paul can call the salvation of Gentiles a “mystery” especially in Ephesians 3:5 when he said no one in the past knew about it. While non-Jews who didn’t have the Old Testament writings available to them were mostly in the dark (but see “A Tale of Two Trees”) and were “far off”, certainly the Jewish people who did have God’s word understood that gentiles would have some place in God’s forever kingdom. There are predictions in the Old Testament of people from all corners of the world coming to Jerusalem to worship or honor God. But the mystery is more than that, Paul is describing a situation where the gentiles don’t just come by for a visit but are equal members in God’s forever families with Jews. Of course this all only applies to those from both groups that have put their faith in Jesus to deal with their sin problem (their rebellion and disobedience to God). The other thing to think about is how troubling it must have been for the early believers to see their leaders being hunted down and even killed by people in power, religious or political. For me the words of verse 10 are sort of a “hey demons, check this out”. I wonder if they were like my dog when I take her over to show her something she has done wrong, “What did you do?”, and she tries to look away. If the demons, who are way more powerful than any human powers, could have their noses rubbed in the love of God seen in the church how much more to we have a real victory over human posers and authorities. All of today’s reading is really about saying, “Oh by the way god’s power is still working in my life, these chains are really nothing, I’m free to serve my real master where it counts and my service means you will have honored places in Heaven.” How cool is that message. Way better than Obi-Wan-Kenobi or Han Solo giving up their lives to fight the empire. Here we are on the winning team because Jesus has already won the victory. We get to help people join the winning side and all with real power, God’s power.

Thank you God for giving us places on your sinning team. Thank you that its not about our power and plan but about yours, a plan you made before any of these events even occurred. None of our lives is a surprise to you and we are really on the offensive, we get to act, we don’t have to react. Of course there is trouble in this battle we are sharing in but we need to remember that we have the victory in the end. Help me show many people the way back to you. Help me help back to a place of honor in your family. Help me turn on the lights and show them what has only been dim and vague in their existence. Thank you for the honor of being a part of your forever family. Help me do the work you have prepared for me to do since before time ever began.