I am way behind this week. Life gets crazy, I am sure you can relate. Last week I had a number of exhausting days at work that resulted in me lying on the couch all night staring blankly at the roof. On days like that, I have no energy to blog. Now that it is Monday and I have caught up on some sleep, I feel ready to share some thoughts on last weeks CYOA, Ephesians 1.
Paul is a rambler. Brilliant. But a rambler none the less. I, like Duncan, cannot help wonder what provokes one to write a letter that is so detailed yet appears to say almost nothing. This is the text though, so here we go. Paul does have some logic in this letter, the difficulty is unearthing it from the plethora of extra words, phrases, and clauses. One way to do this excavation is to break up the text into phrases and read it that way. (due to the restrictions of formatting on a blog it is not as beautiful as I would like but give it a try).
Paul,
an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God,
to the holy ones who are [in Ephesus]1
and/also
faithful in Christ Jesus:
Grace to you
and
peace
from God our Father
and
[the] Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
who blessed us
with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenlies
in Christ
just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the cosmos
to be holy
and
blameless before him in love,
who predestined us for adoption
through Jesus Christ for him
according to the pleasure of his will,
to the praise of his glorious grace
which he gave to us in the Beloved,
in whom we have
redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of sins
according to the wealth of his grace
which he lavished on us
in all wisdom and
understanding,
who made known to us the secret of his will
according to his good pleasure
which he established beforehand in him
for the administration of the fullness of times,
to gather up all things in the Christ
—things on the heavens and
things on the earth in him—
in whom we,
the predestined,
have been allotted an inheritance
according to the plan of the one who energizes all things
according to the resoluteness of his will
so that we might exist for the praise of his glory
who first hoped in the Christ
in whom also you
having heard
the word of truth
the good news of your salvation having also believed in him
were sealed with the Holy Spirit
of promise
which is the guarantee of our inheritance toward redemption of the possession
to [the] praise of his glory.
For this reason also
I,
since I heard of your
faith
in the Lord Jesus and
love
toward all the saints,
do not cease to give thanks for you,
remembering you in my prayers,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory
might give you a spirit of
wisdom
and
revelation in knowledge of him,
having the eyes of your heart enlightened,
so that you might know what is
the hope of his calling,
the wealth of the glory
of his inheritance in the saints,
the surpassing greatness of his power
for us who believed,
according to the energy of the strength of his might
which he exercised in the Christ,
having raised him from the dead, and
having seated him at his right in the heavenlies,
far above every
rule and
authority and
power and
lordship and
every name that is named,
not and only in this age
but in the one to come,
he put all things under his feet, and
he gave him to be head over all
through the church which is his body,
the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
So what does it say?
Well for starters, Paul begins with a threefold reason for his blessing of God. The reasons are 1) Who blessed us 2) who predestined us for adoption 3) Who made known the secret of his will. So in essence God should be blessed because of what he has done for humanity.
Then the second section of this first chapter is Paul’s response to this action of God. His response is that he does not cease to give thanks for the church’s faith and love for one another.
That is this text in essence. Praise of God for how he has acted towards us, and then thanksgiving for how people have responded by loving one another. Paul just uses many more words to say it.
Beyond that, it is not every week I get to write about an epistle, we have been stuck in the OT wars and genocides for far too long. So I thought I would share some of my favourite parts of Ephesisan. Neat tid-bits, if you will.
Ephesus is the most referenced place in the NT (minus Palestine because the Gospels take place there). Ephesus is a key place in Acts, Ephesians, Timothy, and Revelation. They really could not get their ducks in a row, it is a huge success and a huge failure. Thus, when one considers the how a small movement manages to spread from Judea to Rome and then to the ends of the earth, Ephesus cannot be ignored.
Point 2. Ephesus was a rough city. This was largely due to the temple to Artemis/Diana. This temple attracted people requiring healing, as well as those who were seeking asylum. It was a safe haven for people who had committed crimes. There were also many temple prostitutes. I state all of this because it ought to influence how we understand Paul’s vice and virtue lists in this book.
Third and finally. There was a large magic culture within Ephesus. Knowing about the use of magic enables us to understand the mystery talk Paul uses. It also explains Paul’s usages of the Cosmos, the high heavens, the low underworld, the powers of the air, etc. The question then becomes “Is Paul affirming such a cosmology or is he simply speaking in the language that would be understood?” The magic culture also might have something to say about the spiritual warfare in this book. I find thinking about magic incredibly revealing, as Paul argues strongly against it in this book. It causes me to wonder if Christianity does not become magic. One thing required in magic is the necessity of saying words in the correct order, or saying the right words. Maybe this has crept into Christianity in our: “Dear Lord Jesus”, “Father, Father, Father” “I pray it in the blood of the Lamb”. It is certainly worth thinking about, has God become our genie in a bottle?
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