Ephesians 1:3-14 Commentary

On this Sunday on which most people stand just inside the doorway to a new year, many of us naturally look ahead to the future. 2024 is already to many of us “so last year.” We’re ready to seize the moment and plunge ahead. But Ephesians 1 invites Jesus’ friends to slow down enough to look not just forward, but also back. In fact, its apostle Paul summons us to look much farther back than any eye can or has ever been able to see.

That summons, however, may seem hopelessly counter-cultural. We are, after all, naturally caught up in the moment or look only forward. We sometimes think of people who think a lot about the past as hopelessly out of touch with reality. But preachers might argue that only in looking back with the apostle can we look ahead to all the days God graciously gives us. Christian hope, after all, is firmly anchored not just in what God is doing and will do, but also in what God has already done.

Under the Spirit’s leadership, preachers might consider beginning a message on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson by reflecting on what or whom we naturally think is in charge of things. At least some people assume that we control our own destiny. We believe that no matter what has happened in the past, we can and should make our own future. This tends to be the realm of those who enjoy some privilege.

Others seem to believe that what has happened in the past largely determines both our current options and what will happen in the future. Many people assume that for us to make our way forward, we must overcome the obstacles that our history has erected. Whether it’s our family, socio-economic or other difficult histories, at least some of us find it challenging to look and move ahead with much confidence.

This week the Spirit uses Ephesians 1 to cultivate a different mindset about both our past and our future. It begins, after all, not with an expression of human arrogance or despair, but with praise. Paul begins his theologically and ethically rich letter to Ephesus’ Christians with a note of praise to God: “Praise be to [eulogetos*] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He quite simply immediately makes God the focus on the reflections that follow.

This praiseworthy God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle sings in verse 1, has “blessed [eulogetos] us in the heavenly realms [epouraniois] with every spiritual [pneumatike] blessing [eulogia] in Christ.” Paul sees “blessing” as so crucial to what he’s about to write to the Ephesians that he repeats forms of it in verse 1.

He insists that God’s dearly beloved people “bless,” that is, literally speak well of God, in no small part because God has literally spoken so well of, in other words, has gifted us with so many good things that we don’t deserve. In fact, Paul implies, God has graced us with every good spiritual thing that we need. God has done this, says Paul, “in Christ,” in other words, because of and through Jesus Christ.

Verses 4-14’s admittedly partial list of those spiritual graces is nothing short of breathtaking. Before exploring it more carefully, however, Ephesians 1’s preachers might consider asking our hearers to note a couple of things about Paul’s description of those gifts. It is most notably completely theocentric. That sets this text in stark contrast to much modern preaching that sometimes seems more interested in telling Christians what we should do than in what God has done and is doing.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is, by contrast, all about the living God whom we worship in Jesus Christ. When the apostle mentions people, it’s always in connection with what we receive from God our Father. Jesus’ friends are the objects rather than the subjects of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s glorious hymn of praise.

What’s more, Paul’s song is thoroughly Trinitarian. While God the Father and Son, admittedly, get much of its “ink”, the apostle at least mentions all three Persons of the Trinity. While at least some modern Christian worship tends to focus on one or two persons of the Trinity, the apostles marvel at what all three Persons have been and are up to.

As an aside, preachers might let the Spirit use Ephesians 1 to challenge us during the coming year to be even more theocentric and Trinitarian in not just our preaching, but also our worship. Even when we feel the Spirit leading us to preach about how we can thankfully respond to the gift of God’s amazing grace, Ephesians 1 helps invite us to keep asking ourselves about how our ethics grow out of and reflect God’s character.

This praiseworthy God, sings the apostle in verse 4, “Chose [exelexato] us in him before the creation [kataboles] of the world [kosmou] to be holy [hagious] and blameless [amomous] in his sight.” In a sense, before Paul looks around at Ephesus’ Christians current circumstances, he looks back to Jesus’ friends’ past.

And what the Spirit shows him is a God who long before God created anything chose us to be God’s dearly beloved people. God didn’t, as it were, make up God’s mind about us on the spot. Somewhere in eternity’s grey mists, sings Paul in verse 4, God graciously selected us to be God’s own. God chose us, the apostle goes on to marvel, to be what The Message paraphrases as “whole and holy by his love.”

As if to underline this undeserved favor, Paul writes something similar in verses 4b-6. “In love [en agape] he predestined [proorisas] us,” he writes there, “for adoption to sonship [huiothesian] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with [kata] his pleasure [eudokian] and will [thelematos] – to the praise [eis epainon] of his glorious grace [doxes tes charitos], which he has freely given [echaritosen] in the One he loves [egapemeno].”

As if to further highlight this startling grace, the apostle also adds in verse 11 how in Christ “we were also chosen [eklerothomen], having been predestined [prooristhentes] according to the plan [prothesin] of him who works out [energountos] everything in conformity with the purpose [boulen] of his will [thelematos].”

These verses, of course, serve as part of the foundation of the “loaded” and sometimes theologically fraught theology of proorisas (“predestination”). Preachers will want to view and talk about this through the lens of their own theological traditions and understanding.

But all of us can at least note the huge role that God’s love plays in our predestining. Long before anyone or thing but God existed, God loved us enough to choose to make us members of God’s own dearly beloved family. In fact, it was part of God’s pleasure and will to make us God’s own.

It’s not easy to interpret to what the apostle refers when he speaks of how God graciously chose to adopt us “to the praise of his glorious grace,” or as he ends this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, “for the praise [epainon] of his glory [doxes]” (12). The New Testament scholar Tom Wright (Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, Westminster John Knox, 2004) suggests that the apostle simply means that God chose us so that we might respond by praising God for God’s glorious grace. The most appropriate response to that amazing, undeserved favor is to speak and sing well of God to both God and our neighbor.

After all, among other things, “in” Christ, as the apostle adds in verses 7-8a, “we have redemption [apolytrosin] through his blood, the forgiveness of sins [aphesin ton parpatomaton], in accordance with the riches [ploutos] of God’s grace that he lavished [eperisseusen] on us.”

“Redemption” is, of course, Exodus language. God, after all, graciously “redeemed” God’s Israelite people from Egyptian slavery and brought them into the land of promise. Now Paul evokes that act of amazing grace by referring to God’s rescue of Jesus’ friends from our slavery to Satan and his thugs, sin and death.

However, verses 7 and 8 also employ the language of abundance. The apostles, after all, refer to there to the “riches” or, literally “wealth” of God’s grace. God didn’t just give us a dollop of grace, but, in fact, “lavished” it, literally, “poured an excess of” it on God’s dearly beloved people. The God whom we worship in Jesus Christ is not skimpy with God’s goodness. God’s mercy is lavish and abundant.

So Jesus’ friends shouldn’t be surprised to read that this lavishly merciful God who both deserves and longs to hear our praise refuses to keep us ignorant about that abundance. In verses 8b-9 the apostles go on to write, “With all wisdom [sophia] and understanding [phronesei] he made known to us [gnorisas] the mystery [mysterion] of his will [thelematos autou] according to his good pleasure [eudokian], which he purposed [proetheto] in Christ.”

Preachers might point to a couple of nuggets in this extraordinary theological treasure chest. God revealed to God’s dearly beloved people God’s will because God was wise about and understanding of our natural ignorance of God’s good plans and purposes. Based on God’s understanding oof how things work for people, God acted in ways that worked well for us. What’s more, preachers might point out, God did this according to God’s eudokian (“good pleasure”). God didn’t, in other words, enlighten us grudgingly. God delighted in revealing to God’s adopted children God’s good and perfect ways.

God will put God’s perfect plan into “effect [oikonomian],” Paul goes on the marvel in verse 10, “when the times reach their fulfillment [pleromatos ton kairon] – to bring unity [anakephalaiosasthai] to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”

Into a world in which people are so deeply divided from each other, the Spirit prompts Paul to speak about a time when all things in heaven and on earth will be united. Into a world where the creation and people so often seem so alienated from each other, the apostle looks forward to a time when all things and people will be united under the loving lordship of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a vision that the Spirit can use to help God’s people move forward into the year of our Lord 2025 with good hope.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his book Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Frederick Buechner eloquently and lyrically writes about the praise with which Paul basically begins his letter to Ephesus’ Christians.  He notes how “We do a lot of measured praise: Good job! Big boy! Nice work! The way the 148th Psalm describes it, praising God is another kettle of fish altogether. It is about as measured as a volcanic eruption, and there is no implication that under any conceivable circumstances it could be anything other than what it is.

“The whole of creation is in on the act – the sun and moon, the sea, fire and snow, Holstein cows and white-throated sparrows, old men in walkers and children who still haven’t taken their first step. Their praise is not chiefly a matter of saying anything because most of creation doesn’t deal in words. Instead the snow whirls, the fire roars, the Holstein bellows, the old man watches the moon rise. Their praise is not something that at their most complimentary they say but something that at their truest they are.

“We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention. Watch how the trees exult when the wind is in them. Mark the utter stillness of the great blue heron in the swamp. Listen to the sound of the rain. Listen how to say Hallelujah from the ones who say it right.”