Monday, October 21, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Ephesians
Raise your hand if your mind slips easily through the intricacies of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It’s tough for me. Each chapter has enough troubles of its own. Every time I read I’m entranced by the beautiful words, and perplexed by what I am expected to get out of them.
Although some of them are clearer than others. Let’s give it a try.
We are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus.
But there’s more …
… for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.
In advance? What does that mean? I wasn’t there but then, neither was Paul.
Earlier, Paul writes about our life before Christ.
You were dead in your transgressions, brothers and sisters.
But he continues with many specifics, and in the process I get confused.
… in which you once lived following the age of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient. All of us lived among them, we were by nature children of wrath.
I think the “power of the air” is Satan, who is our father, and we were the children of wrath. Not sure about Satan being dad, although I do recognize that my own “wrath” does not come from God, and when I lose my temper I also lose my way. My normal thoughts are overwhelmed by my anger/rage/wrath. But at least Paul does not leave us in the clutches of Satan for long.
Even though we were dead in our sin, God is rich in mercy, loves us with his great love, and brings us to life with Christ.
Paul’s vision includes life after earth. But I don’t know how to read this, as truth or vision or both.
God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Show who? Paul might be projecting his own need for acknowledgment and approval onto God. Or … God showed him this future and he wrote what he saw as best he could.
Regardless, Paul’s next words are some his most famous, hopeful, and beautiful, although once again they point different directions.
By grace you have been saved, through faith.
God’s grace is our source, but God’s grace requires our response.
… And this (faith) does not come from you; it is the gift of God.
If we are faithful, and able to be saved, it is only because God gave us that gift of faith. Paul makes sure we understand:
This is not from works, so that no man may boast.
Paul wants to ease our struggle between cause and effect. God is the cause, and our faith is the first effect. Our faith is then the cause of the second effect: namely the good, loving, generous lives we live. All of this begins with God and ends with God. Timing is everything.
Paul worked hard to be a giver of all good things to his churches, and he expected appreciation from his followers. He must be writing as much to himself as anyone else when he gives every speck of credit to God for all we do, all that he has done, all that he will do.
God is alive. God is more alive than Paul or me or you, for that matter. He created life, and he can take it away. That he does not remove our spiritual freedom in spite of our persistent failures to give him the glory (for OUR good works) is the miracle Paul writes about again and again; he just can’t quite get over it, and over and over he is overwhelmed with gratitude and joy.
Thanks for hanging in there with me while I struggle to understand Paul’s sentences. How beautiful they are, and I thank him for them, even though sometimes simple might be better.
God is good,
All the time.
And all the time,
God is good.
 (Ephesians 2, Psalm 100, Matthew 5, Luke 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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