Proclaimer Blog
Ephesians and the church on fire
I've just been doing the final editing for Teaching Ephesians, due out in a couple of months and ably written by Simon Austen. What I love about his book is that he relates everything in Ephesians (especially the well known passages) to the big ideas that are going on – especially the purposes of God in Christ and the power of the Spirit to make one new man – and that the church is the foretaste of the ultimate purposes of God – no wonder it attracts Satan's demonic activity. It is surprising how much difference this makes to well known passages ("be filled with the Spirit", "put on the full armour of God" even "wives, submit to your husbands"). I'm reminded once again that knowing how something fits into its context makes a big difference as we wrestle with both meaning and application.
The church, therefore, in all its wonder, is the present expression of eternity, a demonstration of where history is heading. She has been described as ‘God’s pilot scheme for the reconciled universe of the future.’[1] But as such, the church is under attack. If it is by our love one for another that the world might see we are disciples of Jesus (John 13:34, 35); if the church thereby becomes the most powerful apologetic for the gospel, then it will be the church which finds herself under attack. No wonder it is so difficult to ‘be church.’ Our battle to be what we are in Christ is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Satan does not want the church either to be formed (by gospel proclamation) or to live as it should (in gospel ethics). And he does not want the church to live as the church (what we might call ‘Gospel living’). And so we need the armour of God, the armour he gives to his Messiah in battle; the armour of Christ. As we put on his armour, as we understand who we are in Christ, so the battle can be won. For Christ has been exalted far above all rule and authority, power and dominion. It is in him that the battle to be the church is won. No wonder Paul is so keen to make it clear that we have every spiritual blessing in Christ and that we have been raised with him. We can be the church and we understand the significance of our identity being in him.
And so Ephesians does have a single theme, from which many implications flow; a theme of what it means to be the church, in Christ, reconciled and raised with him; and what that new community, created in the heavenly realms, should look like in the earthly realm. ‘A proper understanding of God’s intention in Christ has to do with each of these two spheres and what is represented by them, as well as the bond between the two.’[2]
It is wonderfully heartening to know that the churches of which we are a part and within which we minister are not the irrelevant rumps that society would have us believe, but a profound picture of where history is heading and a living apologetic for the gospel. When we unlock Ephesians we set the church on fire.