Essays in Ephesians #21
As I wrote about Paul’s courage, a holy light filled my heart and I thought that God might be giving me words for a reader —or perhaps the Holy Spirit was speaking to me.
Ephesians 3:9-10
Part I
[Paul was given grace to preach the good news of God] and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Ephesians 3: 9 – 10
Paul was an apostle. The word apostle is bandied about a lot these days. And misused. Simply, an apostle is one sent by God. God sent Paul to tell the Gentiles about Jesus. And God backed Paul up because Paul spoke God’s truth. He didn’t preach psychological ways to health, wealth or happiness. He didn’t preach the daily news or the problems of the world. The Holy Spirit put life and power into Paul’s words because He preached
“Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:2
Paul lived what he preached. His entire life revolved around the truth that Jesus, God’s own Son, came, lived and died to show us the love of His Father in Heaven—the only true, all-wise and all-powerful God, our Creator.
Now, because
God is Spirit and those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Paul taught that the spiritual dimension is as real, if not more real, than the material realm of our earth-trained human senses. When Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he found out that the risen Christ was as tangibly real as the flesh and blood man whom the Roman centurions had crucified.
In Jesus, Paul met power strong enough to overcome all human and Satanic darkness. He met love and truth strong enough to take men and women out of fear, guilt, hopelessness, shame, deception, destructiveness and meaninglessness. In Jesus, Paul met mercy great enough to sinners new lives of righteousness, freedom, peace, hope, joy, courage, love and everlasting life.
Paul’s was courageous in love. In an era when Christians were imprisoned, beaten and sent into arenas to wrestle with lions before bloodthirsty crowds, Paul was not ashamed of Jesus’ Christ. When he taught that God’s love overcomes every fear, he was speaking from experience. When he suffered, he did not focus on the painful inequalities of this material world. His eyes were set, steadfastly, upon God’s justice. He knew that the spiritual world from which our cosmos was created was more real than the injustice of our lives on earth. He wanted lasting rewards rather than the temporary earthy kudos of wealth, power and position. Because Paul had died to self and lived to God, he could write,
It is no longer I who lives but it is Christ who lives in me,
He spoke of Jesus and Heaven with the authority of one who has been-there/done-that. First, because he actually met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Second, because he had been to Heaven and knew better than most of us that Heaven Is for Real.* Third, God had faithfully sustained him through days of hunger, poverty, disasters, false accusations, violent physical attacks and imprisonment. Through grueling near-death experience’s, Paul knew the truth of Jesus’s words
Surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Matthew 28:20
He knew that no matter how great our pain or problem, God will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
Like us, Paul lived in cultures formed by the traditions of men and influenced by (if not inspired by) the controlling demons behind religious legalisms, economic and political agendas and pagan idolatries. But cultural realities like poverty, foreign occupation, persecution, injustice, displacement of people and slavery did not turn Paul’s focus from God. Instead, Paul saw knew human beings need God’s loving supernatural power to sustain us. We need a life-giving God to guide us and help us through the tragedies of life on a planet shadowed by “a thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10). In contrast to the prevailing world systems, Paul lived and taught that the power of Christ in us is the way to God-filled lives of freedom, holiness and truth.
That is one aspect of our verse today—that Paul was given grace from God to live and to tell others about the good news of God.
Part II
As I wrote about Paul’s message of faith in Jesus Christ, I felt the Holy Spirit was giving me words for someone who does not have a clue what makes a Christian. Please pray that the Father will use these words to draw someone to find the love of His Son.
[Paul was given grace to preach the good news of God] and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Ephesians 3: 9 – 10
Many thought Paul’s message was bad news, not good news. He was run out of towns, stoned, whipped with lashes, imprisoned and sent to wrestle with lions. But suffering did not deter Paul. He knew that God had sent him. The eternal truth of human salvation through Jesus Christ was more important to Paul than his own comfort, safety or physical life. (Lord, may it be so for us if called to face opposition and persecution.)
Paul’s message was simple: believe in one The Holy Loving Perfect True God above all other Gods; believe we were created to live in joyous loving relationship with Him as our Heavenly Father; believe that we have all sinned against Him and others by not fully loving Him and others; believe that, because of our sin, we all deserve death —that is eternal separation from God and His goodness; believe that Jesus died for our sin, that He took the death we deserve on the cross; accept Jesus’ substitutionary death for the death we deserve; ask God to forgive us for our sins, to cleanse us and to give us His Holy Spirit to teach us, guide us and help us to obey God’s commandment to love Him and others.
That was the mystery of it all— a revolutionary, worldview changing, paradigm breaking truth—that had been hidden in the heart of God for ages. God (outside of time) had been waiting for the moment (in time) when the world was ready for a fuller revelation of His powerful love and plan. It was God’s plan for Jesus to die not just for the sons of Israel, but for the sins of all humankind. It was God’s plan to send the Holy Spirit to indwell all who would believe and receive. Every man, woman and child who believes in Jesus, receives God’s Holy Spirit, and worships God, foils Satan’s plan to win our souls, our service and our worship to himself.
That idea of God’s Holy Spirit indwelling Gentiles shook up the religious Jews. They had been were brought up to believe that only they alone could be clean enough to be part of God’s family and that every Gentile was ungodly and unclean. They were horrified that Paul would visit Gentiles, eat with them, tell them about Jesus and teach them that through faith in Jesus’ sacrificial blood (not the blood of animals shed in temple sacrifices) they could enter God’s family.
Although God had foreshadowed this mystery of His love for all people in the Old Testament, the idea of Jesus as God’s own Son and the ultimate passover lamb, who died to atone for the sins of all mankind was totally untenable for many religious Jews—a mystery impossible to understand.
Yet, as more and more men and women were converted from paganism to faith in Jesus by Paul’s message, believing Jews and Gentiles discovered that every wall of enmity between them began to dissolve. And the church, began to reveal the mystery hidden within the manifold wisdom of God to rulers and authorities in heavenly places.
Now this last comment of Paul is an interesting one. What exactly does Paul mean by the church showing God’s wisdom to rulers and authorities in heavenly places?
According to most Bible scholars, the rulers and authorities are high ranking spiritual beings. Some serve God; others, who joined Satan in rebellion against God, fell from Heaven. The home base for fallen spirits who serve Satan is in the second heaven, a spiritual realm between our earth in the third heaven. The third or highest heaven is home to God, his family and his community of spiritual beings. Earth belongs, or should belong, to human beings.
That last point, “Earth belongs to human beings” is crucial to understanding human history. God (who has ultimate authority) originally gave dominion over earth to humans named Adam. Adam was filled with God’s Holy Spirit and administered this planet, a paradise of peace, plenty and ease, as God’s delegated authority. At some point in time, Adam was tempted by Satan, disobeyed God, relinquished his delegated authority over the earth to Satan and lost the Holy Spirit. Since then, God, who obeys His own established order, must now (on earth) work through human beings**. The fallen angels who rebelled against God can exert their rule and authority over geographic areas whenever and wherever the area’s residents accept and serve demonic influences and the earthly idols they hide behind. The good-guys, God’s ministering messenger angels, work on God’s behalf in geographic areas where men and women follow God to establish His Kingdom purposes.
God’s manifold wisdom was revealed by the church to heavenly rulers and authorities in this way: when men and women repent of unbelief and sin and are filled with God’s own Holy Spirit, they begin to live honest, peaceful, forgiving, sane, self-controlled, creative, faith-filled, joyful, loving lives. Their Godliness began to displace the wickedness of pagan unbelief, contentions, greed, lusts, drunkenness, uncleanness, injustice, meanness, adulterous betrayals, hatred, abuse and other evils that tempted and enslaved those who knowingly or unknowingly were in agreement with ungodly rulers and authorities in heavenly places.
Does that make sense? That is my humble take on the meaning of this passage.
Opening the lens to a panoramic view, let’s review up the hidden mysteries that were unveiled to Paul and passed on to us.
The first is the incarnation. In a plan made before the beginning of time, God, the all-knowing Creator of all things, humbled Himself to become a man and entered the human history of His own creation as a baby born of woman with the goal of restoring to humankind the Holy Spirit that Adam forfeited by severing His relationship with God.
Second, all followers of Jesus Christ are joined together by God’s Holy Spirit—thus, in Christ, all barriers that keep people joining God’s family of love are broken down.
Third, as already mentioned, through the church, God is now making known His glory and wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
This is amazing! The revelation of God is being made known to God’s Heavenly Hosts as well as the dark angels who oppose God. In Ephesians 1:20-23 .
God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenlyplaces, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
This is the mystery that overcomes ethnic, religious, cultural and social barriers. It is the mystery that God has hidden from ages past. God was not caught off guard with the fall of Adam or with Satan’s attempts to beguile believers into worshipping him and agreeing with his culture of dissension, deception and destruction and death. God is never caught off guard. And now, at this time, in this century, through all who trust and obey the love of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God is continuing to unfold His manifold wisdom and plan to rulers and authorities in heavenly places.
By the power of God’s Holy Spirit and by the grace of God may we all humbly fulfill our high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
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*(Heaven is for Real is the title of a well documented book about a child who died in the ER, went to Heaven and returned to earth.)
** That’s why prayer is so important. When we invite or ask God to do something, He does it.
Note: All scripture is the unfolding of the progressive revelation of God’s plans. In the first century after Jesus’ life and resurrection from death, the rapid spread God’s good news of salvation to Europe and the British Isles was facilitated by the territorial expansion of Pax Romana, with over 7,000 miles of Roman roads and by the Roman rule circling the Mediterranean.
