Paul paints the big picture in Ephesians to remind people, specifically the basic message is that through Jesus, everybody has been welcomed into the covenant family of God’s people. What Paul is really talking about, he’s focusing in on, how is it that we who are not Jewish people, but in the Jewish Messiah, we have been included into the covenant family of God, how did that happen. The challenge is that Paul is really focusing in on something that most of us don’t really think is an issue. Ephesians actually speaks a really profound and important word to us, the Jesus movement, all these diverse and different expressions of people following Jesus, this is what Paul wants to get us in touch with. Paul’s driving passion was that Jesus, the Jewish Messiah was a savior and a figure who came to do something for all people, of all places and he was very much the Jewish Messiah for all the nations.
The issues that are at work here, are core to the basic human story, Ephesians 3:1, Paul calls himself a prisoner of King Jesus, Paul’s alluding to a story that we’re supposed to know, Acts 21:17-27, how is it for the sake of us Gentiles? The whole point of God redeeming his people out of slavery in Egypt, he brings them to the foot of Mount Sinai, he binds himself to Israel in a covenant relationship and he gives them the 613 commands of the Torah. Those commands were meant to do a number of things, they urge Israel to become a nation of extreme generosity and love for each other, love for their neighbors, a nation of justice, as a light and a witness to the nations around them. God also called Israel to become a holy and a distinct people, who were culturally different from their neighbors, but the Torah became kind of identity markers for the Jewish people, they’re the ones that have all these cultural markers, but Israel, because they’re just broken flawed human beings like the rest of us, they failed to become a nation of justice and extreme generosity, asserting their cultural identity over against non-Jewish people, it became matters of cultural pride. Israel came to isolate itself more and more, cutting themselves off from non-Jewish people.
Paul would come to town and would tell us non-Jewish people, the Jewish Messiah died for us, he was raised for us, place your faith in him, he’s present here with us, he wants to completely transform and heal us and forgive us, but then Paul would say, but they’re are going to be some Jewish Christians, who might come in and they’re going to say you gotta get circumcised, this was a tension in the early church. Do we have to become Jewish, if we really want to follow the Jewish Messiah? What does it say in Ephesians, believers in Jesus, who are now the temple of God and where God dwells. Paul’s in prison, because of this passionate conviction he has, that God is the God of all nations and wants to create a multi-ethnic family of his covenant people and Paul went to prison for this vision.
Ephesians 3:1-13, the word mystery is used three times, the mystery made known by revelation, insight into the mystery, the mystery through the gospel, when we hear the word mystery, we think of something that’s super obscure, incomprehensible and can’t really be understood. The Bible, mystery means something that was not known and now it’s been made known, nobody knew about it at all and now it’s publicly open, out there for everybody to see. Paul’s saying, this ideal that God’s plan, read the Old Testament and we could totally get the ideal that what God is doing, his heart is for all nations, he said to Abraham, I’ll make you a great nation, I’ll bless you and in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. The ideal that God’s covenant family would come, the circumcision, obeying the Torah, that actually was fulfilled and came to it’s end. Paul’s teaching was a completely radical ideal that ticked a lot of people off and Paul staked everything on this claim, what happened in Jesus was for everybody, it’s for tribes, every language and it’s only faith in Jesus that unites us as a covenant family together.
This is the story of Ephesians that Paul has in his mind, he describes what Jesus came to do, to unite all things back together. In Paul’s mind, sin fragmented and divided human beings in a million different self-centered direction. Paul’s basic vision is that he’s reading the story about God choosing one of these broken fragmented families out of all the nations, through whom he’s going to bring salvation and redemption and healing to human history. The family of Abraham and God gives them the Torah, but Israel does not fulfill the call to be just and generous and love for neighbor, but they failed, cultural pride. Paul’s basic point was that Israel as a nation forfeited its role to be a light to the nation’s and in fact, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah came to do and be for Israel, what it could never do and be for itself. In Jesus, in his life of complete obedience to the Torah, in utter self-giving love to every person he came into contact with, he was not just being the ultimate Jew, he was being the ultimate human. Jesus was being a human in the way God designed us to be, but because of our selfish, self-focus mess going on inside of us, caring about ourselves more than other people, but Jesus lives for us and he died for us, this is where Paul sees all the fragmented threads coming together.
In Paul’s visions, what happens in Jesus, is that the brokenness of every tribe, of every people group, of every family, all of the cultural pride, the corporate communal pride and arrogance, the individual selfishness and self-focus and apathy to the needs of others, all of that gets focused in on Jesus, the ultimate human on the cross and he bears into himself, the collective result of humanity, he shoulders the train wreck of human history and of human individual sin and human cultural pride and he bears it. What kind of cross is he hanging on and who put him up on the cross? The Romans, but by the accusations of the Jewish leaders, who were compelling and manipulating the Romans. The reason Jesus is on the cross is because of the hostility between the Jews and the Romans and wrangling the system, he’s up there precisely because of the conflict between all of these tribes and families.
Ephesians 2:14-16, Paul says, Jesus himself is our peace, he made the two groups one, in other words, he takes all the different tribes of humanity and the two groups, he reduces it all down to one thing, he destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the Torah, it’s commands and regulations, his purpose was to create in himself, one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. Jesus as the ultimate human, the one who lived as a human, the way all of us are called to be, but can never be, because we’re so compromised by sin. All of the mess of human history and of our sin and pride gets focused in on Jesus on the cross. When people grab onto Jesus and faith and trust, what happens is that Jesus’ life is now attributed to us, his death becomes our death, the stuff we release out into the world through our own selfishness, the horrible things that our cultural pride releases out into the world, he absorbs it into himself on the cross, but because God’s love and his mercy are so much stronger than even our own sin and the death that it causes, in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, his purpose was always to create one new humanity, a new human family of every nation on the earth.
The issues that are at work here, are core to the basic human story, Ephesians 3:1, Paul calls himself a prisoner of King Jesus, Paul’s alluding to a story that we’re supposed to know, Acts 21:17-27, how is it for the sake of us Gentiles? The whole point of God redeeming his people out of slavery in Egypt, he brings them to the foot of Mount Sinai, he binds himself to Israel in a covenant relationship and he gives them the 613 commands of the Torah. Those commands were meant to do a number of things, they urge Israel to become a nation of extreme generosity and love for each other, love for their neighbors, a nation of justice, as a light and a witness to the nations around them. God also called Israel to become a holy and a distinct people, who were culturally different from their neighbors, but the Torah became kind of identity markers for the Jewish people, they’re the ones that have all these cultural markers, but Israel, because they’re just broken flawed human beings like the rest of us, they failed to become a nation of justice and extreme generosity, asserting their cultural identity over against non-Jewish people, it became matters of cultural pride. Israel came to isolate itself more and more, cutting themselves off from non-Jewish people.
Paul would come to town and would tell us non-Jewish people, the Jewish Messiah died for us, he was raised for us, place your faith in him, he’s present here with us, he wants to completely transform and heal us and forgive us, but then Paul would say, but they’re are going to be some Jewish Christians, who might come in and they’re going to say you gotta get circumcised, this was a tension in the early church. Do we have to become Jewish, if we really want to follow the Jewish Messiah? What does it say in Ephesians, believers in Jesus, who are now the temple of God and where God dwells. Paul’s in prison, because of this passionate conviction he has, that God is the God of all nations and wants to create a multi-ethnic family of his covenant people and Paul went to prison for this vision.
Ephesians 3:1-13, the word mystery is used three times, the mystery made known by revelation, insight into the mystery, the mystery through the gospel, when we hear the word mystery, we think of something that’s super obscure, incomprehensible and can’t really be understood. The Bible, mystery means something that was not known and now it’s been made known, nobody knew about it at all and now it’s publicly open, out there for everybody to see. Paul’s saying, this ideal that God’s plan, read the Old Testament and we could totally get the ideal that what God is doing, his heart is for all nations, he said to Abraham, I’ll make you a great nation, I’ll bless you and in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed. The ideal that God’s covenant family would come, the circumcision, obeying the Torah, that actually was fulfilled and came to it’s end. Paul’s teaching was a completely radical ideal that ticked a lot of people off and Paul staked everything on this claim, what happened in Jesus was for everybody, it’s for tribes, every language and it’s only faith in Jesus that unites us as a covenant family together.
This is the story of Ephesians that Paul has in his mind, he describes what Jesus came to do, to unite all things back together. In Paul’s mind, sin fragmented and divided human beings in a million different self-centered direction. Paul’s basic vision is that he’s reading the story about God choosing one of these broken fragmented families out of all the nations, through whom he’s going to bring salvation and redemption and healing to human history. The family of Abraham and God gives them the Torah, but Israel does not fulfill the call to be just and generous and love for neighbor, but they failed, cultural pride. Paul’s basic point was that Israel as a nation forfeited its role to be a light to the nation’s and in fact, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah came to do and be for Israel, what it could never do and be for itself. In Jesus, in his life of complete obedience to the Torah, in utter self-giving love to every person he came into contact with, he was not just being the ultimate Jew, he was being the ultimate human. Jesus was being a human in the way God designed us to be, but because of our selfish, self-focus mess going on inside of us, caring about ourselves more than other people, but Jesus lives for us and he died for us, this is where Paul sees all the fragmented threads coming together.
In Paul’s visions, what happens in Jesus, is that the brokenness of every tribe, of every people group, of every family, all of the cultural pride, the corporate communal pride and arrogance, the individual selfishness and self-focus and apathy to the needs of others, all of that gets focused in on Jesus, the ultimate human on the cross and he bears into himself, the collective result of humanity, he shoulders the train wreck of human history and of human individual sin and human cultural pride and he bears it. What kind of cross is he hanging on and who put him up on the cross? The Romans, but by the accusations of the Jewish leaders, who were compelling and manipulating the Romans. The reason Jesus is on the cross is because of the hostility between the Jews and the Romans and wrangling the system, he’s up there precisely because of the conflict between all of these tribes and families.
Ephesians 2:14-16, Paul says, Jesus himself is our peace, he made the two groups one, in other words, he takes all the different tribes of humanity and the two groups, he reduces it all down to one thing, he destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the Torah, it’s commands and regulations, his purpose was to create in himself, one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. Jesus as the ultimate human, the one who lived as a human, the way all of us are called to be, but can never be, because we’re so compromised by sin. All of the mess of human history and of our sin and pride gets focused in on Jesus on the cross. When people grab onto Jesus and faith and trust, what happens is that Jesus’ life is now attributed to us, his death becomes our death, the stuff we release out into the world through our own selfishness, the horrible things that our cultural pride releases out into the world, he absorbs it into himself on the cross, but because God’s love and his mercy are so much stronger than even our own sin and the death that it causes, in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, his purpose was always to create one new humanity, a new human family of every nation on the earth.
