Ephesians - Lesson 2

I. Epistle Greeting Structure (Eph 1:1–2)

We’re going to now spend some time thinking about the first 14 verses of the letter. I’m going to begin with the first two verses in the introduction and salutation. In letters of the New Testament or the epistles of the New Testament, we have what we call an introduction or a salutation and a greeting.

In a typical salutation or greeting, the author will state who he is, in this case “Paul,” in verse 1. Then he’ll tell us to whom he’s writing the letter as he does in verse one, and then he’ll give some kind of wish, a prayer to those to whom he is writing. But in verse 1, Paul begins by telling us once again that he is the author of the letter and he’s Paul and he’s an apostle of Christ Jesus. 

II. Paul’s Story Behind “Paul, an Apostle”

Now I want to pause right there and unpack these first few words for a moment because not one of these words is a throwaway term. First, let’s think about Paul as a real person who lived and breathed and drank 1st century Mediterranean air. He’s not some character in a novel. He’s a real person. And Paul, while he was an apostle when he wrote this letter, had not always been an apostle. So, let’s think for a moment about this man Paul, who is writing this letter to these Ephesians. 

If you think back with me in your mind and look at your Bibles in Acts 8 and 9 for a moment—I’ll summarize some things in Acts 7 and 8 for you and focus more specifically on Acts 9. But in chapter 7, you remember this key moment in the Book of Acts where the gospel is beginning to do exactly what Jesus said it would do. The apostles were going to be his witnesses, according to Acts 1–8, after the spirit came in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. One means that God used to penetrate different parts of the ancient Mediterranean world with the gospel was persecution that broke out in Judea. So, when we meet Saul of Tarsus, whom we know to be Paul the apostle, he is not a Christ-following Jew. He’s not a Christian. He’s a Pharisee. Also, he is present when this person named Stephen is preaching the gospel about Jesus, outlining for them their heritage, the heritage of the Jews, and then reminding them that their legacy has been, in part, to not listen to what the prophet said about God and his redemptive promises.

Of course, there were exceptions. That wasn’t true with every single Jew. You have Moses and you have others. But the point Stephen makes in the sermon is that those who are listening to him preach are guilty by virtue of rejecting Jesus, just as those in the Old Testament who rejected the prophetic message from the prophets. Stephen appealed to them to trust in Christ as the risen Lord and said he has seen him exalted at God’s right hand. Consequently, there was a reaction to that, much like the reaction we saw in Acts 19 when Paul preached the very same message. The reaction was one of disagreement and one of violence. And Stephen was stoned to death.

When Stephen was stoned, you have a statement that is made in the letter regarding this person named Saul of Tarsus in the Book of Acts who agreed with Stephen’s death. In the Book of Acts 8:1 it says, “And Saul approved of their killing.” Verse 1 goes on and says that, “a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout,” listen to these words, “Judea and Samaria.” 

To my point, the gospel began to expand beyond Jerusalem and Judea by means of persecution. Notice again, Saul, whom we know to be Paul the apostle in Ephesians 1:1—he is beginning, in verse 3, to destroy the church. He’s trying to destroy the assembly of God. He’s trying to destroy these Christ-following Jews who believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He’s going to and fro, from house to house, dragging off both men and women and putting them in prison.

Saul was a fierce opponent of the gospel. Now, here’s why, however: It’s not because he was an evil God-hater, from his perspective. It’s because he saw himself in light of important Jewish figures like Phineas from Numbers 25, who had zeal for the Law. As a result, his zeal for the Law moved him to make sure the integrity of Yahweh’s name was maintained, which is why Phineas killed a couple of people in Numbers 25 in order to preserve God’s people from the wrath of God. 

Then there’s another figure that is someone who represents this Phineas-like zeal who shows up in the books that we call the Apocrypha. In 1 Maccabees, for example, it tells the story of this Maccabean revolt that preceded the birth of Jesus. It’s a revolt that took place as these Jews, who were zealous for the Law, sought to realign their identity with a Jewish way of life in accordance with the Law of Moses because this Greek tyrant had imposed his Greek way of life onto them, forbidding them from worshiping their God and living a Jewish way of life in compliance with the Law of Moses.

And one thing Mattathias, the father, and Judas Maccabeus, the son, and others did was to invite those who were zealous for the Law of God, who wanted to honor Yahweh to resist this imposition upon them from this Gentile way of life that compelled them or sought to compel them to dishonor Torah. So, they fought against Antiochus and they fought against this invasive Gentile way of life. Saul of Tarsus here, sees himself as a Pharisee, I think in line with this Jewish way of living as these Jews are, from his perspective, dishonoring Israel’s God as they are now turning their faith toward Jesus Christ. 

Now, here’s an important point about Paul here when he is not following Jesus. He was not angry, I don’t think, because Gentiles would have given their lives to Christ. His concern is these Jews are turning toward this crucified blasphemer (from his perspective) and hailing him as Lord and consequently dishonoring their God.

So, Paul is motivated—Saul of Tarsus is motivated—to agree with what’s happening to Stephen because that’s what you do to a blasphemer who dishonors Yahweh. The problem is that Paul at this point doesn’t understand in the narrative of Acts, yet that Jesus is in fact the crucified and risen Lord. Therefore, when the Messiah enters into history, the ages have turned.

We now move from the age in which the Law marks off God’s people to the age in which the Messiah marks off God’s people. Paul, at this moment in the story of Acts, hasn’t had what we call an epistemological shift in his thinking. In other words, he hasn’t learned how to tell time yet. He thinks that he’s still operating under the Mosaic time. But when Messiah comes, it’s the Messianic time frame. And that’s what these early Christian Jews understood and against which Saul of Tarsus pushed because he had not yet encountered the risen Lord.

III. Conversion & Apostolic Calling (Acts 9)

As you know how the story continues in Acts 9:1, he is “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.” He went to the high priest and asked him, in verse 2, “for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way,” there’s that word again, “whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.” As he neared Damascus,” in verse 3, “on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.” This is a very important moment in the story of Acts, but also in the story of Paul’s life. I mean, ask yourself this very important question: How do we get from a man who is zealous for God who shows that zeal by means of seeking to uphold a Torah-observant life and seeking to realign these Jews who follow Jesus with a life lived in compliance with the Law of Moses to the point that he’s willing to break up families, to extradite people, and to incarcerate them? The way we get to the shift in his life is what Luke records in 9:4. I’ll paraphrase it. He heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And so, he asked a very important question, “Who are you?” And Jesus responds, “The crucified and risen Lord, now!” The one whom Paul does not believe is the Messiah, is proving himself to Paul to be the risen Messiah from his exalted position at God’s right hand, speaking into Paul’s life, radically shaking up everything that he had thought about this movement prior to this moment. And Jesus responds and says, “I’m Jesus whom you’re persecuting, and then you’ll get up and you go into the city that I’ll show you.”

Paul records further in other places in his writings about his conversion in Galatians 1, for example. We also see another telling of his conversion story. And later on, in the Book of Acts, when he stands on trial before Agrippa in chapter 26—but recognize something very important about the first words here in Ephesians 1:1, “Paul, an apostle…” this is a man who has been radically transformed by a vision of the crucified and risen Lord. He moved from Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the church in his way of living, to understanding that the right way— hear this very carefully—the right way for him to exercise his devotion to Israel’s God and to a Jewish way of life is placing his exclusive faith in the Jewish Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus broke into his reality, that changed everything about him.

Notice something about the Acts narrative, that his conversion—and I have no problem with saying Paul was converted—rightly understood. His conversion happened at the same time as his apostolic calling. The moment he encountered the risen Lord, Jesus sent him to go on to Damascus and to wait. When the person for whom he should wait shows up and he’s baptized and the scales roll off his eyes, the first thing he does is preach that Jesus was the Christ. He’s forced out of town. He goes off and does missionary things, I think, before he’s officially called on his missionary journeys. That’s who wrote this letter, Paul. 

IV. Meaning of Apostleship

Is Paul an apostle? The word ‘apostle’ means he’s an ambassador. When he drops this word in the text, he’s not simply, again, wasting words. He’s dropping his credentials card. Now, of course, there are other occasions wherein, for example, in 2 Corinthians, Paul will play down the credentials and play up his suffering. In fact, suffering for Christ is his chief credential, he argues, at certain points of his argument in 2 Corinthians. Contrary to these so-called super apostles who claim to have these “letters of recommendation” that validate their apostolic ministry. Paul says the Corinthians are “my letters of recommendation” because they have the Spirit written on their hearts and their transformation proves the validity of his ministry (2 Corinthians 3:1–2). But also, his suffering proves the validity of his ministry. So, he’s not bashful about dropping the apostolic card or credentials, but at times he plays them down. But one thing he does in the introductions of his letters in order for the letter to carry weight to the audience to whom he’s writing is to remind them that he’s writing to them as an apostle, which means he saw the crucified Lord exalted.

He wasn’t one of the original 12. He didn’t come to faith in Jesus when Jesus was on earth, but he’s qualified to be an apostle because he saw the risen Lord. When he says, “I’m Paul, an apostle,” this is a word that means he’s an ambassador, sent one by Christ. He was uniquely sent, not like we send missionaries, though they are sent. But he is sent with the authority of Jesus in a way that requires them to listen to everything that he says. He’s one of those upon whom God is building up his church as they preach the gospel of Christ. And he says, he’s Paul in verse 1, namely, an apostle. 

V. Titles & Identity

Notice this phrase, “an apostle of Christ.” This is how it would translate the next statement of Christ: who is Jesus? What he’s doing in verse 1, when it gives you this title for Jesus—he’s not telling us what Jesus’ last name is. We often do this. I often say this when I talk about Jesus: Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, like Jarvis Williams, Jarvis Williams, Jarvis Williams. That’s his last name. But it’s not his last name. That’s his identity that Paul is identifying Jesus as the Messiah here. 

Jesus, the savior, means to save. He’s going to save his people from their sins. It’s a Jewish name, right? Joshua in the Old Testament. In Christ, there were many kings in the ancient world.

There were rulers when Paul wrote. There was an emperor who was king, but there is one Jewish eternal Messiah, namely Jesus. Of course, Saul was a Messiah-like figure. David was a Messiah-like figure. [Inaudible] he was the king, but there was one eternal king that Saul and David pointed to. David, being the good king appointed by God and the one to whom God promised to give a seed in 2 Samuel 12:7–12 and following, he promised to give a descendant who was in one sense Solomon, but not Solomon because Solomon sinned and he died. God promised to give David an eternal kingdom that would never end, but that would reign forever.

Solomon’s kingdom did end, but Jesus’ kingdom does not end. It’s a kingdom that is eternal. So he’s writing as an apostle, an apostle of King Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the one to whom he called them to trust, to follow, to believe, the one who was exalted above Artemis, the one who is exalted above the emperor, the one who is exalted above all these idols, which are not gods.

Paul is an apostle of Christ Jesus, and notice he says he’s an apostle of Christ Jesus in verse 1. I’m going to add a word here. It’s not in the Greek text. I’m going to add it. He is writing to the Ephesians in verse 1, but he’s an apostle, notice it, through the “will of God.” Now, that’s there, but he’s an apostle of Jesus Christ, an apostle through God’s will, and he’s ‘writing’—that’s the word I’m adding—he’s ‘writing’ to these Ephesians. So why is Paul—hear this very carefully—why is Paul preaching this message about Jesus? Why is Paul an apostle? Because it is God’s will. That’s very encouraging to me.

When I think about my life, and I’m no apostle of Paul—I’m not saying that—but when I think about my life, I was running away from God and had no desire to follow him. And God, by his sovereign will, desired before the foundation of the world that he wanted to redeem me, a young man from Eastern Kentucky, from my sins. He chose, for reasons I’ll never understand, to use a tragedy, the death of my young Christian friend, whom I loved dearly as a friend. She died, and as a result of her death, I gave my life to Jesus. When I ask myself, “Why did I do that?” it’s because it was God’s desire, it was his will to redeem a sinner through a tragedy for his glory. 

So, he’s Paul, an apostle, through God’s will. God’s will is not always easy to discern. Whom should we marry? Where should we go to school? What job should we take? What church should we join? Those things are not always clear. But what is clear is, is that Paul is an apostle because it was God’s will. There is no way, when you read his story, that that man, by his own initiative, by his own insights, would have chosen to worship Jesus as the risen Lord. But it was God’s will to make him a chosen vessel, to be a means by which the gospel penetrated the ancient Mediterranean world. So, as he writes to the Ephesians, he says to them, I’m an apostle of Christ Jesus, an apostle through God’s will.

And notice he’s writing to—I said to those who are in Ephesus—but he’s writing—notice these words—to the ‘saints,’ to the ‘holy’ ones. That’s the word there. The English might say to the ‘saints.’ Every believer—hear this—every believer is a saint. You don’t have to wait until you’re dead and be venerated by a church to be a saint. You are a saint in Christ, every believer, because what’s the saint? It means you are holy in Christ. That’s what he says, isn’t it? To all the holy ones who are in Ephesus and—look at this next word—and to the “faithful in Christ Jesus.” What makes believers saints and what makes them faithful is their union with Christ. Paul used this language of ‘being in Christ Jesus,’ ‘being in Christ,’ quite a bit in the doxology in verses 3 down to verse 14. 

But he anticipates that in verse 1 by linking the Ephesians’ identity with Christ. This is so important for what’s coming later in the letter. We might be tempted to skip over the first two verses as if the verses are throwaway words, but what’s coming later in the letter emphasizes some things he says in verse 1, such as the ‘in Christ’ language in verses 3 and following, that in Christ Jesus God “chose us,” as he says in verse 4, and that in Christ Jesus we have all these spiritual blessings, as he says in the rest of the verses. But with respect to being holy and faithful, he tells us in Ephesians 2:1–10, for example, that we were dead in trespasses and sins, but then God raised us alive together with Christ, and he raised us to walk in good works for which he prepared us to walk. And then he talks later in Ephesians 4:17, throughout chapter 5, about the importance of these Gentiles to walk in a manner worthy of their calling, living contrary to their old pattern of paganism before they came to faith in Jesus. He says here in verse 1—he’s writing to these holy ones, those who are holy in Christ, sanctified in Christ, faithful ones in Christ. We as believers, we are not perfect. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In fact, 1 John says that if we say we have no sin, we are liars, “and the truth is not in us.” And if we claim, on the other hand, to walk in the light, but we walk in darkness, we are liars and don’t practice the truth.

We recognize, on the one hand, that as believers we will never reach a point in our lives where we are perfect in this life. Perfection is coming, praise God, because Jesus is going to give us resurrected bodies like his, and God is going to recreate the world and regenerate the world because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

But brothers and sisters, this is good news for believers who live in a broken world.

While we are not perfect, we are holy in Christ. We are sanctified in Christ, and we, by the power of the Spirit—we’ll see later—have the ability to live like holy people in this world. So, we are faithful in Christ, sanctified or holy ones in Christ.

VI. “Grace & Peace” Implications

Then in verse 2, he offers to them a ‘soteriological blessing,’ as I like to say. He gives them a blessing that’s anchored in concepts related to salvation. Grace, in verse 2, and peace.

“Grace to you,” in verse 2, “and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Let’s unpack that a bit. First, let’s talk about grace. A lot of important work in New Testament scholarship has been done on the concept of grace. When we think about grace, we often think of it in the Western context, as this idea that God gives us something without any expectations of a return. That’s the typical way people think about grace, I think, as believers. But if you think about grace in terms of a gift and how gifts work in the ancient world—a New Testament scholar by the name of John Barclay talks about this quite a bit in his book called Paul and the Gift. While I do not agree with everything in the book, I think he’s helpful in terms of thinking about how to think about the concept of grace or gift, that the ancient concept of gift was a social contract that bound the giver of the gift and bound the recipient of the gift. The gift giver and the recipient understood that there was a social contract, a binding that took place by means of receiving and giving that gift, which required the reciprocal return.

So, there was an act of reciprocity that would take place in the gift-giving. One example of this would be if I invited you to a meal in my home in the ancient world, that is a gift. Your appropriate response to that gift is to receive the invitation and to come. The reciprocity is your presence. But to reject my gift would be an act of shame to me, and therefore I would feel dishonored. 

If we think about the concept of gift, of grace as gift, it has, I think, a deeper soteriological or theological impact. And this would be it: So, Paul prays upon them grace or prays upon them the reality of this gift that they have from Christ, the gift from God that he’s going to talk about later in Ephesians 2. What’s the gift from God? It is God’s saving action in Christ. Christ is the gift. The gospel is the gift. All of the promises of salvation in Christ are the gift. What does the gift do to those who receive it? It creates in them worth and transforms them, so they respond with the appropriate reciprocity. What’s the appropriate reciprocity? It is a life lived pleasing to God. This is why, in fact, you have Paul saying in Ephesians 4:17 and following, “they cannot live as Gentiles anymore.” Why? They’ve received the gift of the gospel. The gift of the gospel transforms their lives. Yes, it forgives them of their sins. Yes, it makes unworthy recipients worthy by what it does to them. It transforms their lives and moves them to live in the appropriate godliness and reciprocity as believers who honor God by how they speak, by how they’re patient, by how they pursue unity, by how they avoid sexual sin, by how they forgive even when it’s hard as Christ also forgave. So, as he says to them, grace and peace to you, he’s praying for them at the very outset of the letter. 

A quick word about this ancient understanding of ‘gift.’ In the ancient understanding of gift, the person who gives the gift would give it to a worthy recipient because worthy recipients were only the ones who could give the appropriate return. But the gift of the gospel is the opposite of that. A worthy gift-giver in Christ is the worthy gift. God gives the gift of Christ. He gives it to unworthy recipients, to sinners who are dead in trespasses and sins. And that gift transforms us and makes us something that we’re not. It makes us holy ones. Verse 1. It makes us faithful ones. Verse 1. It transforms us to walk, Ephesians 2:10, and the good works for which we’ve been prepared. 

Saints understand when Paul says “grace and peace to you,” he’s not simply throwing away words here. He’s praying for them to experience the grace and the peace that comes from the gospel and how they live their lives. That word ‘peace’ there—peace could be the idea of Shalom, peace, goodwill. But I also think because these two words together, ‘grace’ and ‘peace,’ do appear in Paul’s soteriology, that we ought not to ignore the soteriology or the salvation ideas attached to these terms. For example, in Romans 5:1, Paul says, “Therefore, because we have been justified by faith,” declared not guilty by God, by faith, “we have peace with God.” As he goes on throughout Romans 5, he talks about how we were enemies with God when we were outside of faith in Jesus. But because we’ve been reconciled to God by the death of Jesus Christ, we’re now friends. We are guaranteed to be delivered from God’s wrath. He uses this idea of ‘peace’ in Romans 5 and in the context of justification and salvation in Romans 5. 

In Ephesians, he uses the concepts ‘grace’ and ‘peace’ in these similar soteriological spaces where he talks about, for example, in Ephesians 2, that we were headed for God’s wrath as sons and daughters of disobedience. But God, who was rich in mercy, did something that was unexpected in Ephesians 2:4, that this God who was rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, verse 5, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, he made us alive together with Christ. Later on, in Ephesians 2:11–22, when he talks about the one new humanity that exists because Jesus broke down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, namely the Law of Moses, that there is peace between these two groups of people in Christ Jesus. That peace is linked to, of course, kinship language and family language, but it’s also connected to the salvation experienced by those who are in Christ.

So, grace and peace to you from God. Now notice this, this very high, high christological language. When I say high christological language, I mean that Paul is esteeming Jesus as God here while distinguishing him, distinguishing him from the fathers. Very important. Paul has a robust view of the Trinity. While the Trinity was precisely articulated and precisely defended at a certain part of the church where there were theological heresies, we do have Trinitarian language in the Bible. We have it in Paul. Paul has a Trinitarian theology. He talks about the spirit and the Father and Jesus all in this letter. And notice here in verse 2 he says, “Grace to you and peace,” notice it, “from God.” Now who’s that? The Father. He identifies God as the Father. When Paul calls Jesus God, most often in his letters, he uses the word ‘Lord’ to do that with possibly the exception of Romans 9:5. That’s a debated verse. And when he identifies the Father, he calls the Father “God.” In this case, he tells you clearly God, namely the Father. Then he identifies Jesus as “Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice that both God and the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are the ones giving the grace and the peace. That’s very powerful. 

Sometimes people have this mindset of Jesus that he is somehow inferior to the Father or he is ‘God Junior.’ Years ago, I taught in a college context—I taught a lot of students who weren’t believers, or who were not majors in biblical studies. I remember teaching through the Gospels and emphasizing the deity of Christ, that Jesus was God and asked a very—what I thought was a simple question to answer correctly. The question was, “Class, is Jesus 100% God or is Jesus ‘God Junior’?” To my surprise, a student said, “He’s ‘God Junior.’” And I exclaimed, “No, he is 100% fully God! He’s God, the Son, but God, the Son.” This is so important. God, the Son as the second person of the Trinity is sharing in Yahweh’s divine identity as the Son. That’s language drawn from a famous New Testament scholar named Richard Baucom, that Jesus is not the Father. No, but Jesus is Yahweh. Yes. And he’s Yahweh, the Son. That’s what Paul says in part here when he says that God refers to the Father and he calls Jesus, “Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Now that word, ‘Lord,’ I think, has massive theological power. In one sense, he is suggesting that as Lord, he’s more powerful than the emperor or any other king. But there’s something more happening here, I think, theologically, given the fact that Paul was a good Torah-observant Jew and that he loved Israel’s God. For example, in the Old Testament, when the Old Testament identifies Yahweh as ‘Yahweh’—there’s a word that it uses that we pronounce as Yahweh. It’s the covenantal name that God reveals to Israel and the covenant that he makes with them as Yahweh God. There are passages in the prophets, for example, like Joel, that say anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Greek translators often translate that Hebrew word for ‘Yahweh’ as ‘Kyrios.’ Now, the word ‘Kyrios’ can mean lord (with a small letter ‘l’). It could refer to a non-divine being such as, for example, when the Bible talks about masters, it uses the word ‘Kyrios.’ But when the word is applied to Jesus and then when the word is used to translate a verse that clearly refers to Yahweh in the Old Testament, it has a divine title or divine idea attached to it. So, when Paul says in Romans 10:13, “Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” citing Joel 2, he’s applying the word ‘Lord,’ he’s applying the identity of Yahweh to Jesus. This was a key point of his ministry.

This is one reason why his gospels were rejected because Jews had to confess that Jesus was Yahweh, the one and true God of Israel, not the Father, but the one and true God of Israel, the second person of the Trinity sharing in Yahweh’s divine identity. So, Paul begins in verse 2 by saying, “I’m praying, grace to you and peace comes from God, our Father, and from Yahweh, Messiah, Jesus, or Yahweh Jesus, Messiah.” 

A couple of thoughts of application here are worthwhile before we move into verses 3 and following. When we worship on the Lord’s Day, we gather with our local churches, and I hope we all do that faithfully, regularly, sitting under the preaching of the Word, celebrate the ordinances, singing the Bible, praying the Bible, encouraging each other in the Bible, sitting under the preaching of the Bible. The question I want to ask you and me would be, “To whom are we offering our worship?” A God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons. 

When I first became a Christian, the Trinity was very hard for me to understand, and I didn’t have any Bible background. I wondered in my young Christian brain, when I worship Jesus, do I dishonor the Father? The answer is an emphatic “No!” When you worship Jesus as Lord Jesus Christ, you’re honoring the Father. That’s what Jesus himself says in the Gospel of John.

If you want to honor God, you have to honor him, and you can’t worship in spirit and truth if you reject Jesus as Yahweh, Jesus as Lord, Jesus as Messiah. So, you worship Jesus. 

Number two, for whom do we live? We live our lives wholly committed to Jesus Christ, because Paul says it here, doesn’t he, in verse 1, that we are saints “who are faithful”? The word ‘faithful’ has the idea of, I think, of course, of being united with Christ, but also faithfulness implies that we are living in a certain way that we are sanctified in Christ. So that we should live our lives and move and have our being in this world by surrendering everything under Jesus’s lordship, which is easier to say than to do. I can be a very forgiving person when I don’t need to forgive anyone. I can be a very patient person when I don’t need to be patient with someone.

When I’m by myself, I’m the most patient person in the world, because there’s no one with whom to be impatient. But as followers of Jesus—and we’ll see this later in the letter—as followers of Jesus, because he is our Lord whom we worship, whom we love, whom we serve, who is our king. We are motivated and moved to live in a way that honors him in how we live our lives. 

And then thirdly, how do we love other brothers and sisters as a result of this? I’ve been a Christian for several years, and I’m not only a seminary professor, but I’m also a faithful servant of the church. And church conflict is real, like any other family. Families have conflict. It’s a part of being in a family. It’s real. Sometimes that conflict can be so painful and so hurtful that you have to transition out of one space into another space. I understand all of that. But here’s a basic truth too, I think Paul wants us to lean into, because Jesus Christ is our Lord and Jesus Christ is our king, our Savior. He wants us to practice the rhythm of forgiving those as we’ve been forgiven. 

So, what does it mean for Jesus to be the Lord Jesus Christ? What does it mean for grace and peace to be part of our lives? It means that while it’s hard and it’s painful and it may take time, it may take me a long time to get to where I can forgive. Here’s the challenge that we’ll see later in the letter, because of who Jesus is for our lives, because of what he is, who he is, and what he’s done for us, that we are motivated, or should be at least, to forgive those who likewise love Christ. For me—I don’t know about you—for me it’s often easier to forgive unbelievers who wound me than to forgive Christians who wound me. At times it’s easier to love unbelievers than it is for me to love brothers and sisters in Christ, because Jesus is our Lord, he’s our Messiah, he’s our God. This then applies at least in a way that shows we manifest our union with Christ by faith, our devotion to Christ by faith, that we practice the same kind of forgiveness in a human way, empowered by the Spirit, as Christ has exemplified for us. 

VII. Questions

Dr. Williams: Any comments or questions? 

Student: Why is it easier to forgive non-Christians than our brothers and sisters? 

Dr. Williams: Yes…

Student: Well, what is that dynamic inside of us? 

Dr. Williams: Yes, that’s a great question. Well, I’ll just speak personally for me. I sort of expect an unbeliever to reject my faith, and that has implications for what our relationship might be like. And I sort of expect there to be tension when a way of living that is anchored in Jesus collides with a way of living that’s not. But I don’t expect, I should perhaps, but I don’t expect there to be the same kind of conflict with those who share my faith. I know for me personally, it’s harder because I don’t have any categories for why there would be the kind of conflict that you experience with Christians. Now, I should have categories for it because we’re all sinners, but it’s the kind of—sometimes I, in my own Christian experience, have been the reason for the conflict, and I’m too prideful to admit it. And I think I’m thrown off by the fact—why does that even, why is that even there? And I guess sometimes I think I have—perhaps we can have a sort of idealistic view of how the Christian life works, and we forget that just like we work hard to take care of ourselves, we have to have discipline to maintain healthy, life-giving relationships in the body of Christ. Maybe for those reasons, at least—but for the basic reason perhaps for me is because I expect there to be conflict with unbelievers, but when I have conflict with believers, that wounds me in a different way than an unbeliever’s conflict does. It causes me to want to push away from pursuing renewal when there can be renewal. Sometimes you have to push away because people can hurt so much, and if we’re talking about—especially the kind of hurt that is criminal—then you have to isolate and separate from those spaces. But I think the pain that I feel when I am hurt by someone that’s a believer—it just does something to me that’s different from a non-believer. It doesn’t affect me the same way, and it causes me not to know how to react at times. 

Student: You pointed out that Paul was an apostle. Do we still have apostles today, and should we have individuals in our local church serving in that capacity? 

Dr. Williams: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s a controversial question for certain people. In my view, one thing that qualifies someone to be an apostle was that he saw the risen Lord. In my view, we don’t have apostles today walking around. We have people who are ‘sent ones,’ so if someone means a messenger or sent one in a non-technical sense, we’re all sent ones as we live in the world and serve Christ. But we don’t have people walking around, in my view, who have seen the risen Lord or who have encountered the risen Lord the same way Paul did. I think of someone like, in 1 Corinthians 15, James, the Lord’s half-brother. We see James, the apostle, who was one of the original 12 in the Gospels, and James, the Lord’s brother, is called an apostle after the resurrection. But in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says something very interesting. When he talks about his apostleship, he says it was a bit abnormal because of how he encountered the risen Christ. He was exalted in heaven. But James, he says, the Lord Jesus appeared to him at some point in his life before he ascended. So, it seems to me that a key component to apostolicity is encountering the risen Lord, seeing the risen Lord, hearing the risen Lord shortly after the resurrection. In my view, I don’t think there’s—you don’t have that now.

Of course, I can’t prove or disprove someone’s claim that they’ve experienced that. But based on how I understand Scripture, I don’t think that happens. Secondly, I have a high view of Scripture so that—not to imply that folks who believe in modern-day apostles don’t believe Scripture is authoritative—but it seems to me the closing of the canon and Scripture also are important here in terms of whether we have apostles today or not, because we have 66 books of the Bible. We have the authority anchored in, of course; Jesus in Scripture and then preached from pulpits and taught from Scripture, from pulpits and lecterns and churches. So that the apostolic authority that we see Paul exercise we have bound for us in the apostolic writings and in the New Testament Scriptures. 

So, my answer to the question is, no, I don’t think there are any apostles today. I don’t think anyone should have an office of an apostle in their churches. What do I read? Bill’s much more of an expert on this than I am, but the pastoral epistles talk about offices, deacons, and elders. 

Student: Yeah. Thank you.

Dr. Williams: No qualifications for apostles in there.