Ephesians - Lesson 9

So practically speaking before I walk through verses 21 to 23, it's helpful to remind ourselves of the joy of knowing that we are free from trying to raise dead sinners from the dead. Gospel ministry is not about Jarvis trying to change and convert a dead heart. It's not about me trying to resurrect dead hearts by my own craftiness or persuasiveness.

Of course, we want to be clear communicators of the gospel, but we don't want to think that someone's spiritual resurrection is based upon us having all of the answers. There are many answers that I still do not about the Bible. I've been a Christian for several years.

I've been in scholarship for several years, and I still read texts where I must at the end of the day take a guess at what they mean or admit that I do not know what they mean because I'm a fallen sinful human being. And there are people who ask me questions who don't believe for which I do not always have answers. But the good news is that their salvation is not based upon my rhetorical power or intellectual power or apologetic power or exegetical power.

It's based upon God taking the simple, clear gospel message and resurrecting their hearts from the dead and displaying that their salvation, just like Jesus' resurrection, is based upon His supernatural power. The second thing, I think, in terms of practical application is that we can conquer our sin. We can love our enemies.

We can love our neighbors. We can love brothers and sisters in Christ. We can fight against pride.

We can resist the devil and his lies. We can resist and oppose his deceptive trickery because the same God who raised us from the dead by the power that He displayed when He raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who can enable us by the Spirit and His supernatural Spirit-empowered power to live a Spirit-filled life. That my obedience to the gospel rests not in my ability to obey the gospel but in God's work in me to enable me to work out my salvation with fear and trembling because God is the one who has worked in me both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

As I said earlier, the same God who redeemed me and forgave me of my sins by means of His saving power is the same God who can enable me in Christ Jesus by the Spirit to have victory over sin, to have victory over the devil's wicked devices. Those devices are real. He is evil and He hates us.

He wants to destroy us and He loves to destroy the body by causing disunity. But one thing the power of God can do is move in us to love in a way that transcends our earthly categories because it's anchored in God's resurrection power. So another practical word here is, so let's pray for that power.

We should pray for that power that Paul is praying for these Ephesians to understand what they understand. When we pray for ourselves and we pray for other believers, it's to start with our own hearts first. God, help me to understand the work that you've done in my life and the power that you've displayed when you raised Jesus from the dead, that that power is displayed in my life.

Help me to understand that. Help me, Father, to understand when our hearts, when our hearts are hardened toward love, when our hearts are leaning toward hate, when we're unwilling to forgive, we plead before God and we pray, God, work in me supernatural power. Free my heart from this evil and this inclination toward resisting forgiveness and resisting love of this brother or sister in Christ and free me up to love as Christ loved by your power.

If you show no power in my life, Father, I have no power to love these people. We need God's power to exercise love in the Christian life. We should pray this for our lives.

We should pray this for our churches. And if we do, maybe God will answer those prayers and work because God desires to work in ways that brings him, that will bring him glory. And so if you're asking yourself, you're watching these lectures, how can I pray for you, Jarvis? Pray this for me, that the eyes of my heart would be enlightened, that I would understand what I understand that I would understand that the power of God displayed through the resurrection of Jesus is in my life, and that I would tap into that power.

Pray that for your pastors, for your teachers, for your kids, for your family members, for your coworkers, for all those you want to see love Christ and honor him with their lives. You've noticed in verse 21, he's going to now explain for us what it means for Christ to be seated above or to be seated rather in the heavenly places. It means that he is seated, verse 21, above, notice the emphasis, notice these adjectives, above every ruler.

I take these to be earthly and demonic rulers, not either or. As I said in the introductory lectures, in the Greco-Roman world, the power structures, the economic structures, the political structures of the day are anchored in a certain worship of particular deities, that the deities, paganism, pantheon of gods and goddesses are linked with earthly structures. So it's earthly and demonic structures and earthly and demonic rulers.

That's supported in chapter six, when Paul talks about putting on the full armor of God. When he talks about us resisting the devil, he jumped there, you can see it with me, resisting the devil, withstanding his plot, his trickery, because our battle, verse 12, is not, chapter six, verse 12, against flesh and blood. It's not a human battle.

It's not like we're fighting against an enemy that we can see. It's a supernatural battle against the rulers, against the authorities, against, notice this, the cosmic forces of darkness, against the spiritual powers of evil in the heavenly places. We're fighting all the anti-god powers who are sovereign over the realm of darkness, but we're fighting them in the supernatural power of God that raised Jesus from the dead, who is reigning over all earthly and demonic powers.

He says God displayed this power over all earthly and demonic powers when he raised Jesus above every ruler, including the emperor, every authority, including the emperor, every power, including Artemis, every lord, including Caesar, and every name which is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. Jesus reigns triumphantly over everything in heaven and upon the earth. And now in verse 22, he's going to support that by a scriptural citation.

He did it once already by citing Psalm 110, verse 1, and here he's going to do it by citing Psalm 8. So notice in Psalm 8, it's an interesting Psalm. I do want you to turn there to see it. I'll read the verse that Paul cites, and then we'll think about Psalm 8 together.

He says, and in verse 22 of Ephesians 1, and he submitted all things under his feet. That is, after he raised Jesus above everything, he submitted all things under his feet. This language of submitting all things under his feet seems to be drawn from the Psalm 8 passage, verse 6. If you read the verse 6 here, let's read verse 6 first of all out of context, and then we'll go back and read the whole Psalm in context to get a feel for what Paul is doing with the Psalm.

He says, you have given him dominion over the works of your hands, Psalm 86, you have put all things under his feet. It's a fascinating statement because in the context of Psalm 8, he seems to be reflecting upon the fact that God has given humanity power over creation, to rule over creation, to subject creation to its power. So he says in verse 1, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You set your glory above the heavens out of the mouth of babes and infants. You have established strength because of your foes to steal the enemy and the avenger. Verse 3, when I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon, and the stars which you have set in place, clearly seems to be reflecting upon Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him.

You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and you crown him with glory and honor. Now, I think, again, there is a messianic tone here because this Psalm is also picked up on in the book of Hebrews. But my point here is that in the context of the Psalm, he seems to be reflecting the Psalmist and meditating upon the creation narrative.

And when he talks about making him a little lower than the angels, in a historical context, he could very well be talking about creating Adam in his own image and creating human beings in his own image. And he's given him, Adam and Eve, given them, rather, a unique relationship with himself in comparison with all the other aspects of creation because they are created as image bearers who can procreate with each other, but also who can reflect God's character and behavior on earth in ways that can't be reflected by other aspects of creation. I think that's why the language of crowning him with glory and honor pops up, because Adam and Eve, on that sixth day of creation, they're the pinnacle of creation.

The whole point, in my view, of the order of creation, the way Moses gives it to us in Genesis chapter 1, is that the sixth day is the climactic part of the story, the most important aspect of the story, because God created male and female in his image. They're the prize and the pinnacle of his creation, which I think Genesis 2 supports by the fact that Moses recapitulates the creation narrative by highlighting and focusing on the creation of Adam and Eve. So he's given them this unique role as image bearers in creation, and you've given humanity, you've given him, you've given Adam dominion over the works of your hands, and you have put all things under his feet.

What did God say to them? He says that you have the authority to name things, and whatever you name them will be. You have the authority, both he and Eve had the authority to subdue creation, to rule over it as image bearers who represent God on earth. Well, if you go to the New Testament and you look at how Paul is using this psalm, he interprets this psalm to have a messianic tone to it, and he applies it to Jesus, so that the one to whom Paul thinks the psalm points is Jesus Christ, and under whom God is submitting all things under his feet.

You have a similar language in 1 Corinthians 15, where all things are submitted under Jesus' feet, and the last enemy of death is defeated, but here in verse 22, he's clearly, in my view, reflecting upon Psalm 8, which is a meditation upon the creation narrative, to emphasize that the power he just displayed, or discussed, that God displayed in the previous verses, is anticipated by what Psalm 8 says about all things being subjected under Adam's feet, because Jesus is the new Adam, is he not? He's the one in whom all of God's redemptive promises have been realized. So he's submitted all things under his feet, he's reigning over all things, all earthly and demonic powers, and then God, God is submitting all things on his feet, but he's also giving Jesus, he's giving Jesus authority, that's what I think he means when he says, and he gave him, he gave him to be the head over all things. Now I'm going to go back to the ESV here, that was my translation, but we're to the ESV here, and the ESV reads it this way, he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church.

Now this word for head here is a Greek term that has a lot of scholarly commentary on it. I don't want to get into the details of the different scholarly views of what's happening with the use of the term, read the various commentaries, read Thielmann's commentary, read Kohik's commentary, read Hohner's commentary to get a feel for, Shriner's commentary, you get a feel for what the scholarly discussion is by different scholars. But it seems to me at the very least we can be able to say from this text that head refers to authority, that as the head he is, notice the language of the text, that God gave him as head over all things.

When you link that phrase, over all things, with head, and you link it with what Paul has previously stated about God raising Jesus from the dead and seating him at God's right hand over all earthly and demonic powers, and he's emphatic about the number of powers over which he reigns, every power, every Lord, so on and so forth. It seems to me that he is describing Jesus as head to describe him as one who has sovereign power over all things. He's just said that, has he not? That he has raised him from the dead over all things, and he is head, he's authority over all things.

And here's a question for us exegetically, for what reason is he sovereign over all things? He's sovereign over all things, verse 22, for the church. Now, another way to read that is he's sovereign over all things to the church. So it all depends on how one might think he should translate the particular term here and in the form in which it occurs.

But I think it's reasonable to say that Jesus is head, he's sovereign over the authority over all things for the purpose of the church. That is, this benefits the church. Of course, he's sovereign over all things with respect to the church because he's sovereign over all things.

In my mind, why would Paul say he's sovereign over all things with respect to the church when he's already said that by saying he's sovereign over all things, over all powers, earthly and demonic. He's sovereign over everything. That includes the church, absolutely.

But he's sovereign over all things, earthly and demonic powers with respect to the church or for the church. And that assumes he's sovereign over the his sovereign power. Here's my reading of the text.

His sovereign power benefits the church of Jesus Christ because they have in them, those who make up the church, God's power. And if Jesus's supernatural resurrection is a display of God's power in his life, and that same power is living in us, then Jesus is reigning over us with supernatural power. And that power is for the good of the church, of course, with respect to the church, but it's for the church.

He is reigning over us in a sovereign way for the benefit of the church. But what is the church? Church is not a building. Thank God for buildings.

Thank God I go to a comfortable building on Sunday morning to worship. We have heat and an air conditioner and we have lights, we have chairs, we have a sound system. We thank God for those things, but those things are not the church.

The word church here is the Greek term that you perhaps are aware of. It's the term ecclesia. The term can also be translated as assembly.

The word is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to describe the assembly of Israel. So the concept of what we call the church is an assembly, but more specifically, it's an assembly of people who worship the Lord Jesus Christ, who follow him and who are sealed by the Spirit, redeemed by the blood of Christ, who've been raised from the dead. And there are other aspects that make up what the church is, the preaching of the gospel, the celebration of the ordinances, so on and so forth.

So when he talks about the church here, he uses the word church sometimes is talking about local assemblies and sometimes he's talking about universal people of God. But I think we can say here is that Jesus Christ is sovereign over all things for, they say it this way, the people of God who are those Jews and Gentiles in Christ. And that sovereign power over the people of God in Christ at a collective level includes my individual localized church in Louisville, Kentucky.

It includes your individual localized church that's scattered throughout the world wherever you are watching these lectures. He is sovereign over the church and his sovereignty is for the church, which then means that Jesus is the authority in the church. It's not the pastors or the deacons.

Of course, there is real pastoral authority. The pastoral epistles teach us that. That's where the authority is in terms of boots on the ground in the church.

It's in the hands of those who are teaching and preaching the word. Yes, I understand that. But the one who's preaching and teaching the word has no authority apart from preaching and teaching the word because the authority of the church, the sovereign power of the church is in God and in Christ who is reigning over all things for the church.

We need to remind ourselves of this. I need to remind myself of this because I can think that I'm the one who might run the church or that you're the one who might run the church. But Jesus is the sovereign over the church.

So everything we do in our churches, everything we do as the people of God, we must ask ourselves, does this bring glory and honor to Jesus Christ who is who is the Lord, the sovereign over all things for the church? We'll see later in Ephesians when Paul starts talking about the purpose of teachers in the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. He talks about the foundation of the church, so on and so forth. But we have to remind ourselves regularly that the church includes us, but it's not about us.

It's about what God has promised to do to save Jews and Gentiles in Christ. And there are many times in my own life I must repent and remind myself, God, too often I've made church about me, my likes, my desires, my preferences, my disagreements, my frustrations. Those are all real.

Those are all part of what it means to be part of the Christian community. But no matter where we go, no matter what church we attend or what people of God we hang out with, we're going to find something that we do not like. And what we have to remind ourselves is, is that the number one priority for the church is to submit itself under the authority of their Christ.

And notice he says in verse 23, as he wraps up this section, he says that the church is his body. So he's using this metaphor of body, even with the word head back up in verse 22. Now verse 23, he's going to explain the church a bit and identifies it as the body of Christ.

He doesn't say body of Christ, but that's what he means when he says his body. And now he's going to define, I think, body here with this next phrase. The church is the body of Christ, namely the fullness, and this is my translation, of the one who is filling up all things continually.

Now I'll read the ESV translation here. The ESV says, which is his body, the fullness of him who feels all in all. So again, this is one of those verses in the first part of Ephesians that it's tricky.

It's tricky to figure out what it is exactly Paul is saying, but it seems to me he's saying at least these things. Number one, that the body of Christ is the fullness of Christ. That Christ is filling up, filling up the church is how I seem to read the verse.

I think there's support to this when you look at some of the ways in which he talks about fullness in Ephesians. Let me give you one example in chapter four, in chapter four, verse 10. He's talking about, this is a hard passage, which we'll get to in subsequent lectures, but he makes the point that Jesus descended and he ascended above all the heavenly, all things in the heavenlies, and that he descended, 410, he descended and he ascended, here's why, so that he would fill up all things.

So now the difference with this verse and chapter one, verse 23 is the word fullness, here the noun here, pleroma, pleroma, fullness, there's a noun. And then in verse 10, plerose, that's the verb. So instead of saying fullness in verse 10, he's saying, Jesus is filling up all things.

And then in chapter one, verse 23, he says that his body that is the church is the fullness of the one who is filling up all things. Now I must admit here that I'm reading this, this verbal idea to be filled up in a certain way. So this, this was a Greek participle and it's the Greek participle, pleromenu here in chapter one, verse 23, it's from the word plerao, which pops up in chapter four, verse 10.

And I'm reading the particular form of the verb in what we would call an active voice sense, even though the term is in a, is in a middle or passive form. And so I'm reading it to say that the fullness of the body of Christ is, is fullness of the body of, of, of the one who is doing the filling up in all things. So my reading suggests that Christ is filling up.

He is filling up the church, that he's the fullness of the one who is filling up all things in a similar way that he talks about in chapter four, verse 10, that Christ is filling up all things. He's doing that by means of filling up the church with his fullness. What would be the fullness? Well, at least the power that's displayed in him, in them, that is the, his body is the fullness of, of the, of the Christ who is filling up all things continually.

Who's reigning over all things that the church is filled with the fullness of Christ, namely his sovereign power. That's reigning over all, all things reigning over all things for, for the church later in Ephesians chapter five, verse 18, Paul gives the command that the Ephesians should not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit. So that verb plerao pops up again in the context of the Ephesians being filled with the spirit.

So, so in summary, my reading is suggesting that the body of Christ is the fullness of Christ who is filling up, who is filling up all things continually with his sovereign power as he's reigning over all things in heaven and upon the earth. So let's think about this practically for a few moments. What does this mean for the practical Christian life? I think one thing it means is, is that we can be confident that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

I think that statement is a euphemism for death, not even death, not even the threat of martyrdom. I try, I'm not always faithful, but I try to pray for the persecuted church. I have students all over the world, some of whom are in hard places for the gospel.

And I see images of pain and suffering that come to some of these places because of faithfulness to Jesus, Christians who are martyred, churches that are burned down by those who oppose the gospel. When I see these things or I hear these stories, one might be tempted to think that Christ is not reigning with sovereign power over the church. One might be tempted to think that the church has no power, that our power resides in the mercy of the state.

But a verse like this and verses like this remind us that Christ is reigning over the church, who is the fullness of Christ, who is filling up the body of Christ with his power as he reigns triumphantly over all things. So while we do not as Christians have the promise that we will escape suffering in this life, we do have the promise that our sovereign king, Jesus, can give us the supernatural power to endure suffering for our faith in Christ. God knows there's no wisdom in pursuing suffering for Christ.

I'm not one of those preachers who's obsessed with suffering for Christ. Go suffer for Christ. That's not my jam, as the young people say today.

But Paul also reminds us, however, that every person who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. And other parts of the New Testament remind us that we ought not to be surprised when we suffer for our faith in Christ as followers of him. The point that I'm making is not go pursue suffering for Christ.

The point is is that when suffering inevitably comes because we follow Jesus, we can lean into this supernatural power to help us supernaturally persevere and endure the suffering. Yes, ask people to help us get out of it. Yes, if we're having a difficult time at our jobs because we're Christians, tell human resources that people are mistreating us.

Yes, we use the God-given authorities if we're in spaces where we can trust those authorities to help us. And we tell people who can help us to alleviate our suffering that we experience unjustly because we follow Jesus Christ. But my point is, when that relief does not come, we must continue to hope in Christ.

And we need the supernatural power of Christ to help us persevere even as we suffer. So again, I think this is related to prayer. So sometimes when we suffer, we know from the New Testament, we don't know what to pray, but we know how to pray, but not what to pray.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I think of my own life that suffering has been so hard that I did not know what God was doing and I did not know how to pray. My wife and I lost two babies and one of those babies died and almost took my wife's life. She was bleeding to death.

I had no answers to those hard questions. I had no sense of discernment as to why she had to suffer that way, why we lost two babies. One would be a teenager, the other will be around five years old right now.

And my prayer life basically during that season worked like this. Father, don't let me fall away from the gospel. Help me.

Give me the power to trust you even when life is hard. And the kind of power that we have because of our union with Christ and his resurrection from the dead, that kind of power enables those kinds of prayers to take root in our heart. And God uses those prayers to move us toward persevering through our pain so that, oh yes, even when the birth of a new baby brings you joy and sorrow because you're reminded of the sorrow that you have when you celebrate the joy of another brother or sister in Jesus because of their newborn, you can tap in to that power.

It's the kind of power that enables us once again to pursue the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Jesus prays for it in John 17. Jesus died for it.

And Paul reminds us that it can be pursued. And so if we find ourselves in relationships in our churches or with other believers or in the workplace or in our family where there's friction and there's a means by which to perhaps reconcile that friction, that's the Spirit. That's the Spirit to give us the supernatural power to be open to what the Lord might want to do, not unwise, not without any boundaries, but open to what God wants us to do.

And when God opens up, if He opens up a clear path toward pursuing this unity and love and the power of the Spirit, ask the Spirit to help us step into that with gospel-saturated power. And then finally, this is the kind of hope that we have as believers when we're coming to the end of our lives. I'm 47 years old.

I always joke about how old I am, but when I talk to people who are older than 47, they still tell me that I'm young, but I feel in my body that I'm coming to the end or getting closer to the end. When you're in your 40s, it's not your 30s. I can't play basketball anymore because I have bad knees.

I can't eat the same kinds of things that I used to eat because my gut is not as strong. And as I'm getting older, as I'm aging, I'm reminded that I can do many things, but at least one of two things. I can be really mad that I'm getting old and complain all the time that I'm getting old, which I tend to do from time to time, or I can say, God, help me by the power of the Spirit age well and embrace the beauty of aging and help me to endure the brokenness of aging by the power of the Spirit.

This kind of power also is something for which we should pray as we are walking with loved ones who are dying. In my own life as a minister, I'm one of few preachers in my family, and I often have the privilege and the honor of preaching the funerals of people who changed my diapers, or people who watched me grow up when I was a kid. And there's great joy in that, but there's also pain in that.

The joy is I have an opportunity to bring comfort and hope as I'm walking with family as they're dying. And then as I preach the funerals of them when they die, and I can look family members in the eye who know my story, who know my life, I can point them to the hope of the gospel. But there's also this pain because in the moment of being the minister, I have to hold in my grief and provide stability for them in a way that can point them to Christ and not distract away from the beauty of Christ because of my own pain and grief in that moment.

And when I feel that tension, I must tap in to this power as we walk with family members who are dying. We want to help them die well. And one way we do that is, is remind them and ourselves that this kind of power that God displayed in Christ when He raised them from the dead is the kind of power that can carry us as we're facing the prospect of death into the age to come.

So we conclude chapter one. Paul prays, praises God for the Ephesians, and he prays or praises God for the spiritual blessings that God has given to them in Christ. And he prays for the Ephesians.

And in our subsequent letter, we'll get into other sections of his argument.