Ephesians 3:1-13 sermon
Big
picture: God has made known through Paul the reality of the gentiles entering
into the kingdom as one people with Israel. This is for the sake of God's glory
in the heavenly realms.
What are
the big divides that are preventing unity in the church, that are
preventing the administration of God's grace? Are they racial divides? Are they
cultural divides? Are they gender divides? Are they wealth divides? Of course
in reality these divides don't exist; but it takes work to be unified - the
Jews and gentiles of the church were not simply unified, it took work.
Paul was
called to suffer in order to make known the mystery of this unity (Acts
21:17-34; 22:21-24; 26:12-23). What divides is God calling you to bridge, so
that the unity of the kingdom can be rightly glorifying to God in the heavenly
realms? What sacrifices are you being called to make to see this unity happen?
Good
morning, church! Also good afternoon and good evening to you whenever and
wherever you are watching. We are continuing in our series in Paul’s letter to
the Ephesians, and finding its answers to the question, “Why am I here?” Today
we’re looking at Ephesians 3:1-13. Go ahead and open it up with me.
Paul is
writing this letter to the church in Ephesus from his prison cell. And you
might think that Paul might be asking himself, “Why am I here - in prison?
After doing such great work furthering the gospel around the world, why has God
allowed me to be locked up in this cell awaiting trial, and a possible death by
beheading?” But interestingly, that is not how Paul sees his situation. He sees
his place in God’s plan as being exactly where he is meant to be, to the point
that he describes himself in our passage today as “I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ
Jesus.” Not prisoner of the Romans, not prisoner of the church’s enemies, but
prisoner of Christ Jesus. Paul adopts that as part of his job title.
It’s not
the job that he planned out his life for; but it’s the job that God called him
into. And Paul is obviously very excited about it! He’s so excited that when he
starts this passage, he’s about to go into prayer for the Ephesians, but when
he gets to his job title in verse 1 he suddenly has to put his prayer on pause
and go into a 12 verse digression about this perfect job God has given him. He
swerves off-course to say in verse 2, “Surely you have heard about the
administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you.” He doesn’t go into
detail about how he got this job: surely they’ve heard the story.
We know Paul’s
story from the book of Acts – the story of a man trained as a Pharisee, eager
to serve the God of Israel by persecuting this new heretical church that
worships some guy called Jesus as the Messiah; until one day Jesus appears to Paul
and tells him “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting… I am sending you to the
gentiles to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the
power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place
among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” Remember, “gentile” simply means
“any people who are not the people of Israel”. We are probably all gentiles
here. And so Paul, now a follower of Christ, moves around the ancient world
preaching the gospel and starting churches among the gentiles. This job gets so
much hate from Jews and gentiles that people start riots and create plots to
kill Paul, until he ends up in prison in Rome, writing this letter.
This is
what Paul means when he gives himself the job title “the prisoner of Christ
Jesus for the sake of you gentiles”. If that’s his job title, then his job
description is in verses 2 and 3: “the administration of God’s grace that was
given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I
have already written briefly.” Paul’s job description is to be the
administrator of God’s grace to the gentiles. The word he uses in Greek is the
same word we would use for the person who manages and directs a household for
its owner – a steward. These days we would talk about a managing director. Paul
is the managing director of the grace of God to the gentiles.
Paul then
defines this grace of God he is talking about administrating as the mystery God
revealed to him, which he has already written about briefly. He’s referring
back to what he wrote in Ephesians chapter 2. We could look back at chapter 2,
but we’ve already had a sermon on that, so instead we can just read the summary
that Paul gives us here in chapter 3 verse 6: “through the gospel the gentiles
are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in
Christ Jesus.” This is what Paul had already written briefly about to the Ephesians.
And he
says in verse 5 that by reading what he said in chapter 2, we are able to
understand the mystery that God only hinted at in the Old Testament, but has
revealed fully to his prophets and apostles – that is, Paul and the other
leaders of the early church. The inclusion of the gentiles into the people of
God as equal partners with Israel, forming one people together for God rather
than two separate people, is certainly hinted at in the Old Testament, but it’s
always much easier to see something in hindsight when it is pointed out to you
afterwards, and that is what happened here. Jesus made it clear to Paul, and to
Peter, and then once they looked back into the Old Testament, a lot of verses
suddenly made a lot more sense. Verses like Deuteronomy 32:43, which says
“Rejoice, you gentiles, with God’s people.” The Israelites knew that their God
is the one true god and certainly deserved the worship and praise of the
gentiles; but they probably figured that the only way that gentiles could ever
really worship God would be to become Israel’s slaves, or to do their best to
live the way Israelites live, and yet still remain as outsiders for all time;
second-class citizens of the people of God. Gentiles could never become true
Israelites.
But that
was not God’s plan! God’s plan is heirs
together, members together, sharers together. That was the plan God
revealed to Paul, and to Peter, and to the other apostles. And Paul wants to
make sure we know he didn’t just make it up; he didn’t discover this mystery himself
because he’s some sort of Bible genius. He says it was only through the working
of God’s power that he could have this understanding and that he could get this
job. He describes himself as less than the least of the Lord’s people – he was
so far away from what God wanted, he was truly an enemy of God and his church –
and yet God’s grace allowed Paul to play not just a part in the future of the
church, but to become the managing director of the grace of God to the
gentiles.
What does
it look like to be the managing director of the grace of God to the gentiles?
Obviously it involved preaching to the gentiles, as Paul says in verse 8. But
it’s actually a much more difficult job than that. It involves working out how
to make two very different cultural groups into one new kingdom of God’s people.
Now, Paul tells us that in reality - the spiritual reality, the real reality -
the hard work has already been done by Christ. In chapter 2 verse 14, he says
that Christ “has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the
dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its
commands and regulations.” Christ’s death not only unifies his people by saving
them all together, but it actually sets aside the law, which was a barrier and
a dividing wall between Jews and gentiles. The spiritual reality is that the
two are now one. The hard work has been done! Paul’s job was much more modest
by comparison: he had to help these newfound brothers and sisters to work out
how to live out that harmony together in their day-to-day lives.
What was
the purpose of this administration of God’s grace to the gentiles? Paul
explains in chapter 3 verse 10, 11 and 12: “[God’s] intent was that now,
through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the
rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal
purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. 12 In him and through
faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.”
What does
this all mean? It means that when the church lives as heirs together of God’s inheritance, exists as members together of one body, and shares together in the promise of salvation in Christ, then as a
church we show off God’s wisdom in sending Christ to save us all. In fact, the
church being unified in this way, being able to overcome the dividing wall that
existed between Jews and gentiles in the past, shows off Christ’s saving power
so strongly that it isn’t just a message to those around us in our lives; it
shows God’s wisdom to the spiritual powers that stand against God! This is God
saying, “I am so powerful, I am so in control, my ways are so wise and perfect,
that when I send my son to redeem humanity, even the most different cultures
can come to me together confidently through faith in him.” The church united is
a sermon from God to Satan and his demons saying, “I win.”
And that
is great. God helped unite two groups of people back in the beginning of the
church. But some people might think that this whole Jew/gentile problem is a
thing of the past, and ask why would I even bother preaching a sermon on it
today. The church these days is predominantly non-Jewish, and there aren’t that
many Jews around, and I’m guessing certainly very few in our church. Isn’t this
just a dead issue? Don’t we have more important things to worry about today,
things more relevant for our time?
But churches
being united is a continuing issue. Paul devoted so much of his letters to the
issue of how Jews and gentiles should relate to one another in church. Have you
ever noticed how much of the New Testament is dedicated to this message of Jews
and gentiles being united together in faith? We read about Paul’s dealing with
this issue in Acts, and Paul wrote about it in Romans, 1 Corinthians,
Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians.
It’s
actually a much broader problem than we might think, because this problem is
not just about Jews and gentiles. It’s about any time that someone feels like
they do not inherit the kingdom of God as an equal heir with the rest of us.
It’s about any time that someone feels that they can’t truly be as valuable a
member of the church body as someone else. It’s about any time where someone
feels that they cannot share in the promises of God along with us. There are
still people in the church today who think that Jews have a closer relationship
with God than Christians. There are still people who believe that Christianity
is a “white man’s religion” and that African people, Asian people, Latino
people or Pacific Islanders – or even Middle Easterners, ironically - cannot
know God and Jesus Christ, or don’t need to. There are people who think that
they aren’t smart enough to be a Christian, or not pure enough, or are too
young or too old or too disabled. And sometimes people think this because of
laws, commands and regulations that the church puts up as barriers to
admission. Not always written rules, but unwritten rules we sort of all just
follow by agreement.
Why are
we here, church? Paul told us: we are here to reflect God’s manifold wisdom so
strongly that not only do those around us get the message, but even demons and
Satan himself see it! Do we want to be a church which trumpets the truth that
we can all come to God confidently and freely through faith in Christ, with no
other baggage or requirements? Then we need to be a church unified.
How do we
do that? I think first it’s worth pausing for a moment here and praising God
for what he has already done for us. As I said earlier, I reckon probably pretty
much all of us are gentiles. If Christ had not come and set aside the law, we
would still be divided from being the true people of God. We would still be
second class, and the Jews would still be lording over us their extra special
relationship with God. We would still be the unclean people, fit for chopping
wood and carrying water. But we’re not: God sent Christ to die for us as much
as for anyone; and God hired Paul as the managing director of his grace to us,
to ensure that we are heirs together,
members together, and sharers together. The work is done! Praise
Jesus! That is great news. Let’s remember that, and humbly keep that in our
minds as we seek to welcome people into the kingdom of Christ.
Second,
we can look at what Paul did as part of his job as the administrator of God’s
grace to the gentiles, and make sure that we are continuing his legacy. I’m not
saying we need to become managing director of God’s grace like he was; but we
can at least follow the instructions he left us! So what did Paul do? As he
says in verse 8 of Ephesians 3, he preached the gospel to those who hadn’t
heard it. He didn’t let people live and die without hearing the gospel of Jesus
Christ, without hearing that Christ died for them. We should also make sure
that we are not discriminating in who hears the gospel. The gospel is for
everyone – let’s make sure we are committed to everyone hearing it.
But as I
said before, administrating God’s grace for all is much bigger than just
preaching the gospel. Paul wrote to the gentile believers over and over again
about how they can live out their day-to-day lives as members of the kingdom of
God in Christ together with Jews. He wrote telling them that there are a lot of
things that gentiles do that they should give up if they want to live the
righteous life God calls them to. For instance, later in Ephesians chapter 4
Paul will tell his readers that they “must no longer live as the Gentiles do,
in the futility of their thinking”. There were things that the gentiles were
doing and thinking as part of their cultural heritage which were totally
inappropriate for God’s people to be doing: indulging in impurity and being
full of greed.
We need
to continue telling new Christians that they need to change their lives – not
to become acceptable to God, but to reflect the reality of their new heavenly
citizenship. The truth is that most people in this world grow up without
Christian parents or role models, and without a Christian culture shaping how
they view the world. These people need to hear the gospel, and when they
respond they need to learn how God wants his people to live, what things from
their past are not acceptable and need to be changed or discarded - and it’s
the church’s job to teach them. Greed and impurity are still wrong, but in this
world they are the norm! There are changes that will happen in the life of a
Christian, and we need to be honest about those with each other, whilst not
holding up those changes as a bar preventing people from coming to know Christ
– “you must be this holy to enter”. Repentance and faith are all anyone needs,
but we have to be able to help those who do repent and have faith to live the
life for God they now want to live.
Paul also
wrote about other things that the gentiles were doing that were actually not a
problem, but that offended their Jewish brothers and sisters – things like
eating food sacrificed to idols, blood, and the meat of strangled animals.
There is nothing sinful or unrighteous about eating blood – under the new
covenant, all food is clean – but the Jews had been avoiding eating blood, in
accordance with the law, for over a thousand years! Now as Paul said, Christ
came to set aside the law, because it is a barrier between Jews and gentiles.
But for a time, the church had some rules to follow for the sake of its weaker
members, to ensure these practices did not make them stumble in their newfound
faith in Christ, while at the same time the church strove to strengthen its
members so that these activities became more normal.
And we
see this happen in the church today as well. Not with food so much, but
certainly with new things. New technologies, new music, new leadership
practices, new forms of entertainment or fashion, new moral questions –
churches and their members can be a pretty conservative bunch, and they can get
easily offended by things that new or young Christians see no problems with and
that, on reflection, are not actually spiritually problematic. We see cultural
practices of some groups that are disparaged in church not because they are
against God, but because people of other cultures don’t like them. If we as a
church are going to properly administer God’s grace to each other, we need to
follow Paul’s instructions: request those who are stronger in the faith and
able to accept these new, harmless things not to harm the weaker members of our
congregation by flaunting their freedom for a time; while at the same time working
with those weaker members of the church to realise that their issues are not
biblical but merely cultural, traditional or simply personal.
It is so
vital that we do both sides of this though! I have seen too many churches that
ban activities, objects or practices, saying that it is to protect their weaker
members, but never calling these people “weak” to their face, and never
encouraging the weak to become stronger in their faith, and able to accept
these differences. This eventually puts the weak in charge of the church, and
churches led by the weak in faith become weaker and weaker, until they shrivel
up and die.
Another
part of Paul’s job as administrator of God’s grace to the gentiles was his
fight against the circumcision group in the early church, the ones we read
about in Acts and Galatians: they wanted the gentiles to focus on following the
rules of circumcision and food and cleansing from the Old Testament. But one of
those rules of cleansing was that you couldn’t hang out with gentiles! The
gentile Christians might have been born again, but they weren’t born again
Jewish. The circumcision group wanted the gentile believers to be forever
second-class. We read in Galatians that even the apostle Peter fell for this
scam, and stopped eating and fellowshipping with his fellow Christians simply
because they were not Jews. That is how pervasive and destructive this teaching
was, and that is why Paul makes it clear how Christ has destroyed the dividing
wall: he did it by setting aside the law. The Old Testament law is fulfilled in
Christ, and part of that fulfilment is the destruction of the idea of God
having a special nation of people as his kingdom, and a special part of the
world as his promised land. The whole earth is the Lord’s, and all the people
in it can come to him freely and confidently through faith in his son, Jesus
Christ.
Who are
the first class citizens of the church today? Who are the ones who claim that
they have a special relationship with God, and that if you are not one of them,
you will never be as close to God or as useful to the church as they are? There
are numerous examples, I think: there are those who think that they are
spiritually better because they come from a long line of Christians, or even
pastors or church leaders – new converts from non-Christian backgrounds are
thought to be lesser. Maybe we think that only churches that can afford to pay
trained pastors deserve them – poor Christians are somehow second class and
don’t deserve good teaching and leadership.
There are
those who think that their sins are not as bad as the sins of others – who
think that a Christian who struggles with homosexuality, or witchcraft, or who
is divorced, is a worse Christian than one who struggles with pride, or greed,
or rage. These things are simply not true! All have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the
redemption that came by Christ Jesus. We often forget that.
We in the
church can create second-class Christians is through valuing intelligence and
education as a measure of someone’s spiritual life and their closeness to
Christ. Reading the Bible does not make you a first class Christian; and not
reading it does not make you a second class Christian!
None of
those things are obstacles to knowing God, having faith in Christ, being saved,
and being a first class Christian. None of those things are obstacles to being heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promises of
Christ.
If you
trust in the promises of Christ for your salvation and your future, then you
share in those promises just as much as I do. When a husband and wife have a
newborn baby, does that baby become a full part of the family immediately? Of
course it does! It doesn’t enter the family conditionally, until it gets a job
and starts contributing. That little baby is of incredible value to the family
immediately. It inherits fully alongside its other siblings. It becomes a full
member of the family instantly, without having to do anything. It shares in
everything that family has as soon as it’s born. Heirs together, members
together, sharers together. That
is the gospel of God’s grace, and administering that grace to everyone is how
we display God’s manifold wisdom even to his enemies.
Does it sound
hard? Does it sound difficult? Does it sound like it would take a lot of
sacrifices to make that happen? Good! Because that’s the truth. In Ephesians
3:13 Paul ends the way he begins: reflecting on his suffering in prison for the
sake of the gentiles. He says to the Ephesians, “I ask you, therefore, not to
be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.” The
truth is that if we as a church are serious about administering God’s grace to
those who don’t have it, but who God has called into his kingdom just as
strongly as he called you and me, then there is going to be suffering. It is
going to be costly. It is going to mean helping each other give up things that
our cultures tell us are normal. It’s going to mean giving up some freedoms we
have in Christ to help the weak in faith become stronger. And it’s going to
mean humbling ourselves in order to exalt those who we have looked down on.
We come
to the book of Ephesians asking the question “Why am I here?” The answer is: to
suffer for our brothers and sisters in Christ for their glory, so that we can
be heirs together, members together, and sharers together.
Let’s look
quickly at chapter 2 and remind ourselves what Paul is talking about. Paul
explains in verse 12 “remember that at that time you gentiles were separate
from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the
covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” See,
before God revealed his grace to the gentiles, the understanding was that they
could never become fully God’s people the way the people of Israel were. But in
verse 15 Paul says that Christ’s purpose “was to create in himself one new
humanity out of the two” – so now there are no longer Jews and gentiles as two
separate people of God, but one new people of God made up of everyone – verse
18 says “through Christ Jews and gentiles both have access to the Father by one
Spirit”. So in verse 19 Paul can conclude that, “Consequently, you gentiles are
no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and
also members of his household.”
As an
adult convert to Christianity, who comes from a family made up entirely of
non-Christians, one of my favourite parables of Jesus is the parable of the
workers: the farm owner goes out early in the morning and gets some workers for
his vineyard; at lunchtime he goes out again and gets more workers; in the
afternoon he goes out again and gets even more workers; and in the evening, an
hour before the work day is done, he goes out and hires yet more workers; and
yet whether they worked a whole day or just a single hour, the farm owner pays
all the workers for a full day’s wage. That picture of God really speaks to me,
because I never went to Sunday school, I didn’t grow up in a Christian house, I
spent years of my life as an enemy of God, and yet I am still an heir together,
a member together, and a sharer together, just like someone who could trace
their Christian heritage all the way back to the first century. I am not a
second-class Christian because I only responded to the gospel as an adult.
Praise God!
I come
from a non-Christian family. Neither my mother or my father nor any of my
brothers or sisters ever went to church; nor do any of my aunts or uncles, or
to my knowledge any of their children, my cousins. As a Christian, I am a black
sheep in my family. I didn't become a Christian until I was an adult, so I had
never been to church, or Sunday school, or youth group as a child.
When I
heard the gospel and became a follower of Christ, I was convicted that I had to
start attending church. And I hated it. What I hated was feeling like I didn't
belong. I didn't know what the Bible taught, I didn't know who David or Abraham
or Paul were. I didn't know how church worked - when to stand up, when to sit
down, when to pray, what to do with communion. I loved sermons, because I could
sit quietly and learn more about the God I had believed in. But what I hated
the most was Christmas carols.
Don't get
me wrong: all church singing was bad. I didn't know the tunes, I didn't know
the words, and I would always be that lonely person who would come in a bar too
early or didn't know when lines were repeated. But at least for most of the
year the words for songs would be up on the screen, or they would be in the
song book. And we would sing pretty similar songs the whole year round, and you
get to learn the band's favourites pretty quickly.
But at
Christmas time, the church would sing Christmas carols. And they wouldn't
bother to put up the words, because "everyone knows this song",
because they have been singing them since they were children themselves. But I
didn't know these songs! The only Christmas carols I knew were the
non-Christian ones that you were allowed to sing at school or public functions;
Jingle Bells and so on. It took me YEARS to learn Christmas carols because you
only sing them for a few Sundays each year, and then they go back in the box
till next Christmas!
For my
entire childhood, Christmas in my family had been about decorating a tree,
getting presents, eating food and getting drunk. Now it was about Christ's
birth, his incarnation, the story of the wise men and the shepherds and the
angels - all of this was new to me, and I hated feeling like an outsider.
Now,
you tell me: when I first became a Christian, when I first walked through the
door into that church that would become my church for the next seven years, was
I any less a child of God than all those others who had been attending church
since childhood? No, of course not. We all know the parable of the workers: the
landowner goes out in the morning and hires some workers; then he goes out at
midday and hires more workers. Then he goes out in the afternoon and hires more
workers. Then he goes out an hour before work time is over and hires yet more
workers. And when payment time comes, all the workers get paid the same,
whether they worked all day or only came in the last hour to work. God's grace
to all his people is amazing, but his grace to the latecomers is incredible.
And yet
for years, as an adult Christian convert, I felt like an outsider in church,
because I questioned Christian culture and practice. I wasn't satisfied with
the answer "We have always done it this way." There were certain
things that people in my church just didn't do, or felt they must always do
because of history, tradition, or even because of biases and prejudices. Their
way was the right way, and differences of opinion were frowned upon.
