Category: Reflections

A Roman general, returning from a successful campaign, would hold a triumph, a massive parade, in which he would lead his legions through the city, displaying the captured plunder and slaves. Then a portion of the plunder would be distributed to those he favored. In Ephesians 4:7–13, Paul tells you of a greater triumph, with more wonderful gifts. It began, not with a parade through a city, but with the Savior appearing to women in a garden.

Your ascended Lord has triumphed. First he descended. Your Lord was exalted because he first descended. Included is his entire humiliation, especially his obedient suffering and death. But his death is not the end of his story. Rather, the time in the tomb marks the transition from humiliation to exaltation.

Continue reading “The Lord Is Risen Indeed!”

Ephesians 4:7–10 is part of a passage celebrating the triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ and explaining that as the resurrected, ascended, triumphant conqueror, he has given gifts to his church. Partly because Paul packs so much into Ephesians 4, and partly because we are focusing, first on the death, and then on the resurrection of our Lord, let’s slow down and look carefully at Christ’s descent.

Your Lord descended. Jesus Christ had to descend in order to ascend in triumph. We think, “What goes up, must come down.” That’s not only true of planes, people in the first century saw that in birds. But Paul reverses it — what has descended must ascend. Psalm 68, from which Paul quotes and which we will look at more closely next week, celebrates the triumph, not only of David, but of David’s God. The victory is preceded by the Lord coming down to do battle against his enemies. You have a clue as to how to look at the history recorded in the Old Testament. David may be thinking of his own victory over Goliath as well as his other triumphs. But the Psalm presents them as the Lord gaining the victory over his enemies. Goliath’s defeat is part of the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of serpent. For Christ to return to the heavens in triumphant glory, he first had to descend to the lower, earthly region. He entered Jerusalem in his triumphal entry — knowing that a cross awaited him before the week was up.

Continue reading “The Triumphal Descent”

In the Nicene Creed we confess that we believe in one church. Paul, in Ephesians 4:1–6 both assures you of the unity of the church and challenges you to display that unity. The unity of the church includes a lot of diversity. Sometimes the unity seems to vanish in diversity. Yet, if God’s Word tells you to pursue unity, and if Jesus prayed for unity in his high priestly prayer, you need to pay attention!

Be one because you serve one God. You belong to the one God and Father. You share in the great confession of the Shema. Without that confession there is no problem in many different cults and religions, each selecting its own god and worshiping him or her. We have our contemporary pluralistic religion. Instead, you belong to the one God and Father, Ephesians 4:6. He is transcendent over all—yet is also through all and in all. He condescends to connect with us. To divide needlessly flies in the face of the one God you confess. It insults the Father, who has formed you into his people, his temple.

“On the Day or Pentecost that new community became the sphere in which the eschatlogical reversal of the effects of sin began to appear in a reconciled people consisting of both Jew and Gentile, possessing one Lord, one faith and one baptism (Eph. 4:1ff.), united by the Spirit.”

Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 60

Continue reading “One Church”

We hope, pray, and work to help our church make an impact in our community. We ask God to use us to bring the good news to those who are outside of Christ, so that they can join us in worshiping him. Do you realize that in Ephesians 3:7–13 Paul writes about the impact that you, his church, make to angelic beings in the highest heavens?

Understand the unsearchable riches. The riches of Christ are beyond tracking out. An African tracker may see things you don’t see. In Ephesians 3:7–13, Paul points you to something that is beyond tracking out. You have experienced God’s love and grace in Christ Jesus. “Unsearchable” means beyond tracking out—you cannot fully understand how and why it reached you. However, rejoice that it has! These riches include the mystery, formerly hidden, but now revealed, that in Christ the Gentiles have been brought near. Keep those riches in mind as you prepare to come to the Lord’s Table.

“Now this secret has been revealed to us–to us whose salvation from sin and death and Satan required nothing less than the death of God the Son in our flesh. Neither Old Testament prophets nor wise men neither archangels nor seraphim, possessed the plumb line to sound the depths of such a plan of divine grace. But we know. We have been told. We have been enlightened…. There is no creature in heaven or earth more privileged than the humblest believer who has come to understand the depth of this great mystery.”

Sinclair Ferguson, Let’s Study Ephesians, p. 83)

Continue reading “This Church’s Impact in the Heavenly Realms”

What job is important enough that you would go to prison for it? In Ephesians 3:1–6, Paul writes about his role as one who administers God’s grace in the church, prefacing it with the reminder that he is a prisoner.

Look at how God’s grace has come to you. Paul’s calling was to administer God’s grace. Various peple work together to make a home, a household work. Paul has just spoken of the household of God. In a large household there was need for an administrator. And some of that function, especially as it concerned the Gentiles, fell to Paul. “For this reason” looks back to Ephesians 2:19–22. It is not enough that your salvation was planned from eternity (as Paul has mentioned in Ephesians 1), or that you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. It is not enough that Christ died and was raised for your salvation. That salvation needs to be applied to you. You need to stand, not outside Christ, but in Christ. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. But what tools, what means does the Spirit use? The ordinary means of grace, usually administered through the church.

Continue reading “The Administration of God’s Grace”