Wednesday Bible Study: Ephesians revisited part one

 

When I was a young Christian, and was finally convinced that I should try to memorize something, I started (and ended) with the first couple of chapters of Ephesians.  If you try starting there, you might just find that it's a little more confusing than it looks.  Sure, everyone gets Ephesians 2:8-9, but getting there, well... the first chapter's punctuation includes 27 commas, 4 semicolons, and one full colon.  And ONE period.  Second chapter is much the same.  You have to be really good at dicing and slicing to get through them.

Or, if you have studied enough, and matured enough, just maybe God will gift you with the point that the first chapter's key is locked up in this verse:

Eph 1:3  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

This verse, and ones scattered throughout Paul's writings, tell us that, although we SEEM to be mired here on earth, we are simultaneously IN HEAVEN.  If God is eternal and beyond time, and every moment is now in His eyes, then we are already in Heaven in some part of the reality that is God.  And from that starting point, I have begun to unspool what Paul was talking about.  You see, we learn that Paul had a vision- or a trip- to heaven at one point, in 2 Corinthians 12.  In trying to translate what he saw in heaven, Paul is spinning together past, present and future into a handful of short passages.

The first cycle- and I'm going to try to do this without pasting a lot of Scripture (AKA the entire chapter), so bear with- contains past/present/future (henceforth 'PPF') this way:

Past: Choosing us before the foundation of the world (v4).  If you remember the 'single moment to Him' thing, what this means is NOT He chose you to be a good guy, me to be a bad guy.  What it means is, He knew how our lives and choices would go; and those who would choose Him, He smoothes that road for them.  Those who wouldn't choose Him, not so much.

Future: in vv 5-6, Paul talks about 'being predestined for adoption'. This is His purpose: that we accept this adoption, for which Paul lavishes praise. For Paul, this is a HUGE deal, for no man alive ever had so clear a picture of the divide between what he deserved and what he was promised.

Present: In vv 7-8, He describes how we get there- through the redemption in Christ's sacrifice. That is the now that we need- securing that redemption through faith. And, recognizing we needed to be taught that, Paul reminds us that Jesus revealed these things to us in v9.

Notice that this doesn't go p-p-f like time does, but as God views it- He set things up, designed the plan, gave us our part.  Then we go to the second cycle.

Past: And in v9 and more in v10, Paul tells us that God had a plan from the start- 'To unite all things in Him.'

Future: vv 11-12, He has set up for us an inheritance in heaven.

Present: vv13-14, we are sealed now by the Holy Spirit, which is our guarantee of that spot, " until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory." So this cycle, God made the plan, set it all up, and secured our place in it.

 

Hmm, that sequence was told past-future-present as well.  Is there a significance? Stay tuned.

Then we get another cycle.

Past: Here, Paul is praying for the equipping of the saints of Ephesus, that what has gone before might be made plain to their eyes. Because he wants them to see God as HE did.

Future: Here I want to actually post the passage, so we can see the Promise held out to us:

Eph 1:18  having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
Eph 1:19  and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might...

What we have here is what God promises to our future: the fulfillment of hope and all His promises; the riches of what's included in that promise, and His power to make it so.  Paul is praying for our transition from seeing things with human eyes to seeing with God's eyes.  Which is a hard task when we begin, consider:  God's view involves Him seeing Himself in His greatness, and by that greatness being bound to be good and faithful to His promises, but holy and not excepting the less. (I'm starting to sound like Paul, here!) His goodness is SO good, His love SO love.  It isn't easy to see through mortal eyes.  So, for the present...

Present: He has raised Christ from the dead- a physical reality. Christ has taken care of it all- the stuff we get and the stuff we don't.  This cycle, we have God allowing us to see what has been done, what will be done, and what is going on in us now.

Once we take out all the commas, straighten the timelines, and shift the perspective, we see that Paul is trying to describe to us the grandeur of the God, who is working in us, to bring us to an inheritance beyond our means to conceive.  And that explains why it went past-future-present: We had to understand what HAD been done, to set up what WILL come, to understand our part in the NOW.  And our part was/is to believe in the Christ who set it all up, and trust in the Spirit who seals us to it.