God's Secret Plan: File #6
That seems to be the meaning of his opening words of Chapter 3. “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles...” Paul seems to begin to say something building off his closing words of Chapter 2. But it appears he gets distracted and doesn't pick up his previous thought until verses 14 and following which is a prayer for the church, a prayer that the people of the church will live up to the privileges which God has obtained for them.
Verses 2-13, then, are a parenthesis, seemingly suggested to him by the phrase he used to identify himself in Verse 1: “The prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles.” That Paul was a prisoner of Jesus Christ--a prisoner for the sake of and on account of his witness to Christ--is obvious. But what exactly does Paul mean by saying he was a prisoner for the Gentiles? This thought leads Paul to speak of his ministry, specifically on behalf of the Gentiles.
At first, it would be tempting to skip over this section. At first look, Paul seems to be merely reviewing and summarizing what he already said in chapters one and two, and his main emphasis is personal, on his own ministry, and therefore would seem to have little relevance for us today. I started this series by saying that Ephesus is the most general of Paul's letters, but this is the most personal part of the letter. But, for that reason, it is actually a key section. In chapters one and two, Paul has been speaking mostly in generalities. They were true generalities. But here he speaks of himself, of something specific and concrete. Extremely concrete. Without this section, the whole thing might seem abstract and academic. But the gospel Paul preached, the secret plan of God, was not something abstract and academic, but something in which Paul had an extremely personal stake.
We can get a little context by going to another of Paul's letters. 2 Corinthians was written shortly after Paul left Ephesus, so what he says there would reflect the course of his ministry up to the time he was at Ephesus. In other words, the course of his ministry as he describes it to the Corinthians would assumably have been known to the Ephesians. When Paul was at Ephesus, he was the man who had had certain experiences, many of which were probably known to those to whom he preached in Ephesus. In 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 he speaks of his these of experiences--of labors, of beatings, of imprisonments. He mentions receiving a total of 195 lashes from the Jews and three beatings (of unspecified number) from the Gentiles, being stoned once, shipwrecked three times, in perils of various kinds, and “in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” But we can go farther than this, back to Galatians, probably the first letter of Paul, written a couple of years before Paul came to Ephesus. There, in Galatians 6:17 he comments that he bore in his body “the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Most commentators take this as meaning the scars that Paul had received from his various experienced. When Paul came to Ephesus, he came as a man literally scarred by his past. The man who preached the gospel to the Ephesians was a man who had been beaten, stoned, imprisoned, and persecuted because of his ministry.
The book of Ephesians was written another four or five years after Paul left Ephesus. During that intervening time, Paul had been mobbed, almost murdered, and then arrest in Jerusalem. (Acts 21:30-33) After this arrest, Paul would remain imprisoned in Jerusalem, then Caesarea, and finally Rome where he was when this letter was written. While being transported from Caesarea to Rome, he had had yet another shipwreck. And again, the people at Ephesus knew all this. When Paul was writing this letter, he was under house arrest in Rome and seems to have literally been in chains. In the conclusion of Ephesians, Paul refers to himself as an ambassador in bonds and then adds that Tychicus, who carried Paul's letters to Ephesus and Colosse, would update Paul's friends about his condition. (Ephesians 6:20-21) In other words, the Ephesians would know all that had happened to Paul up to this point.
The Ephesians knew about the things Paul had experienced. And they knew why. For the truth is that most (though not all) of the persecution Paul experienced was from the Jews and most of this was for one reason. Acts 22:21-22 gives the closing words of Paul's speech to the mob in Jerusalem and their reaction. In it, he tells of God's call to him: “And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.” The thing that really set the Jews into a frenzy was the fact that Paul preached to the Gentiles. There was in Paul's preaching and ministry (and that of the other Christians) something which was an offense to the Jews and this was responsible for a good portion of the persecution he experienced including (at least in part) his present imprisonment. And the people at Ephesus knew all this.
So, when in 3:1, Paul identifies himself as “I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles,” they knew what he meant. They knew that he wasn't just using fancy, overblown language. They knew what he had suffered and was suffering because of his ministry and, specifically, because of his ministry to the Gentiles. Some of them may have seen the scars that Paul bore in his body. As they read this letter, they could almost hear the clanking of his chains. This phrase: “I Paul, the prisoner” was something very real and concrete to them.
In fact, part of Paul's purpose in this section is to head off a danger which might have arisen from this knowledge. Verse 13 is the conclusion of this section and offers the practical application or final thrust: “Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.” Paul was concerned that a knowledge of everything he had endured and suffered might cause the Ephesians to 'faint'--that is, lose courage, lose hope, grow too weary and discouraged to go on. This could be for two reasons. (1) A feeling that Christianity couldn't be true or worthwhile if someone suffered so much for preaching it. (Imagine the awkward witnessing moments when you have to say that the preacher who led you to the truth is now in jail.) (2) A feeling of guilt, because Paul was suffering such terrible things because of his ministry to them. Fearing lest such thoughts should come to them and cause them to lose courage, Paul speaks from the heart in this passage. Verses 2-12 speak of Paul's personal stake in the gospel--what it was that made him willing to suffer everything he suffered, that made him willing to be a prisoner.
The first thing to see here is the gospel of which Paul was made a minister, the dispensation that was committed to him, the revelation which he proclaimed, the mystery which had been revealed to him (and not just to him but “unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit,” v. 5). It was “that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” (v. 6)
This was the snag; the reason why Paul experienced as much persecution as he did. We noted before the animosity which existed between the Jews and the Gentiles. But we shouldn't portray it as if all Jews hated all Gentiles. Cornelius was a Gentile who was well respected by the Jews. Luke 7 tells the story of a Roman Centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant and adds the note that several elders of the Jews interceded to Jesus on the centurion's behalf and said he was worthy of such an act of kindness. While no doubt there were some Jews who simply hated all Gentiles, by in large it wasn't that simple.
The Jews had a special relationship with God because He had chosen them, had entered into a covenant with them, had given them His law. The Jews believed that this covenant, this law was the basis of their relationship with God, the basis of their salvation. There were different ideas about how this worked. Some taught an idea that we now call “legalism”--that, by obeying the law, man could find acceptance with God. Rabbi Akiba pictured God like a bookkeeper with a great ledger in which He recorded the good deeds and the bad deeds of man, only accepting those whose good deeds outweighed the bad. Some Jews said that one could dispense with offering sacrifices at the Temple by doing good deeds instead; in other words, that our good works could make us acceptable to God.
Another view of the Jews in Paul's day is what some have called “Covenantal Nomism.” This view emphasized the importance of the Jewish covenant, of the Jews being the chosen people who were in a covenant with God--in modern words, we might say the Jews had a contract with God. Salvation was through the covenant, through being a Jew. A sincere desire to follow God's law was necessary in order truly to be a part of the covenant, but it was through the covenant that people could be saved.
In other words, among many of the Jews in the NT times, obedience to the Jewish law and membership in the Jewish covenant were the means to salvation. These were the things they strove for, the things they took pride in. Paul talks about this one passage, speaking that in all things he too took great stock once. In Philippians 3:4-7, Paul list's his spiritual pedigree, the things which, for a Jew, were points in his favor, things which in much Jewish thought would be the way to God's favor. But Paul ends his list by saying “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.”
That is the key part to notice--Paul had many good things to his account--he was a member in good standing of the Jewish community and a righteous man before the law. In the eyes of many Jews, that would have been equal to acceptance with God and with salvation. But all these things, good as they were in themselves, Paul counted as loss for Christ. These weren't the things that mattered. These things--in which the Jews prided themselves and sought after--they weren't the things that could save man.
And that meant that the Gentiles could be saved without coming into the Jewish covenant because the things that were so important to and exclusive to the Jews were not the means of salvation. Peter speaks of this in his speech at the Jerusalem Council. He said that, through his own experience, he saw that God “put no difference between us [the Jews] and them [the Gentiles], purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” (Acts 15:9-11)
This was the problem, that God “put no difference us and them”--the fact that all the things the Jews had treasured meant nothing in the matter of salvation, that “through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they.” There was no “Friends and Family Pricing” in the plan of salvation. Their special privilege before God was gone. And the worst part was that they had (some of them, at least) really tried. They had tried to bear the yoke of the law, but “neither our father nor we were able to bear” it. They had worked hard at being Jews, and it was a difficult thing to realize that was all lost and the Gentiles, with no such effort, were able to receive salvation in exactly the same way. (Of course, this all grew out of a misunderstanding of what the function of God's covenantal law was. See Galatians 3:24-28)
Their attitude was that of the elder brother in the Prodigal Son or the unhappy workmen in the Parable of the Pence. (Luke 15:29-30; Matthew 20:12) They had done so much and born so much because of their Jewish law, in hopes of attaining salvation. And then to see the Gentiles receiving the gift of salvation too, with no distinction being given to them, no special privilege--to see all being equally received by God--this is why they were angered by Paul's preaching to the Gentiles. The reason Paul experienced such persecution was that he was opening a door of the gospel equally to Jew and the Gentile so both could come to God on an equal footing. This, then, was the first reason why Paul desired that the Gentiles would not be discouraged by his sufferings. He suffered for preaching to the Gentiles--but preaching to the Gentiles wasn't an extra thing which happened to get stuck on to gospel. The concept of salvation by grace necessarily entailed preaching to the Jews and Gentiles and therefore some degree of animosity on the part of the Jews. It was an essential part of the gospel that it could be, would be preached to all people regardless of background or station, because those things which divide man before man do not divide man before God. Paul's persecution was only one part of the master plan of God, and so Paul was happy.
But why did Paul preach such a seemingly outlandish and countercultural idea? Because this ministry had been given to him. He didn't come with this idea on his own. Verse 2 refers to it as “the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward.” This was something that had been given to him, entrusted to him. The word dispensation in Greek comes from the word for house or household and the idea is that it is the plan by which a household would be governed and, by implication “a plan for the management of any sort of business.” (Clarke, Ephesians 1:10) The word picture here is something like this: imagine the owner of a business calling one of his managers into his office and telling him: “Here is the plan I've worked out for the business. This is how we're going to run things.” God had called Paul and given to him a plan, a dispensation, concerning the grace of God. Verse 3 continues this idea by saying that “by revelation [God] made known unto me the mystery.” The gospel which Paul preached wasn't something he came up with on his own. It was something God had made known to him by revelation. This is also implied in the word “mystery” which is used throughout the writings of Paul to refer to something that was previously unknown but is now revealed. As he goes on to say in verse 5, this mystery “in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed... by the Spirit.” Verse 9 makes the statement even stronger, saying that this mystery was “from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God who created all things.” God created the world and gave it to man. He created the stars and let man see them. But there was one thing which He created and kept hidden, kept hidden until the time had come to reveal it. Though this plan of God had been hinted at in the Old Testament, it was not until now that it had been revealed. So far from this being some Paul had come up with on his own, it was something that God himself had been keeping hidden.
In verse 7 Paul says that he “was made a minister.” The word translated minister comes from a root meaning to run errands and means “an attendant” or “a waiter.” (Strong, #1249) Paul saw himself as an attendant, serving people with the gospel which had been entrusted to him. The fact that he was such a minister was “according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.” (Note the redundancy: 'gift of the grace... given.') It was only the gift of God that allowed Paul to be a minister of the Gospel and it was only by God's power that it was possible. This grace was given to Paul, even though he was unworthy of it, even though he was “less than the least of all saints.” (v. 8) The construction is ungrammatical but it was used in Greek (as similar phrases are in English) for effect. Paul was very much aware of his own unworthiness, probably especially because he had formerly persecuted the church. (See 1 Corinthians 15:9-10)
This is the second thing, then, that we must see about Paul's relation to the gospel and the things he suffered for it, one reason why he didn't want anyone to be discouraged by his suffering--because he had been called to the life he lived. The sufferings he experienced were not merely “bad luck.” This opposition came because he was doing the will of God who had called him. Paul was very conscious of the fact that God had given him this gospel and the injunction to preach it, and that colored all his thinking. He was happy even in prison because he knew he had come there by following God.
The third thing to see here is the end of the gospel, the goal to which it was aimed. As already touched on, this plan of salvation--open to the Jew and Gentiles equally--was no fly-by-night scheme. It wasn't as if God originally planned to do something else and only changed His mind and made this plan of salvation at the last minute. Verse 11 says that this was an eternal purpose of God. And when God prepared this plan, He had certain things in mind which it would accomplish. In going over chapter 1, we already touched on some of the goals of God's plan, but here Paul mentions some new goals.
In verse 10 he pictures the church as an exhibition, a display piece which showcases, which models the wisdom of God unto “principalities and powers in heavenly places” (which most commentators take as meaning the angels). At first, we must wonder why Paul would speak specifically of the angels as the recipient of this revelation. Surely, we are more interested in the fact that the church shows God's wisdom and goodness to the world--which the Bible does teach elsewhere. But it is very interesting that this display, this lesson is given to the angels. Angels are spiritual beings who seemingly exist constantly and continually in the conscious presence of God. One would think that they would know everything there is to know about God. And yet, through the church, through God's secret plan of salvation, they see the wisdom of God. The implication is that here there is a deeper and fuller revelation of God's wisdom here than even the angels could have had previously.
The wisdom of God (which is revealed in the church) is described as manifold. Other translations give it as “multifaceted” (NET Bible) “Wide-shining” (BBE), “all-various” (DBE). We have probably all known people who were very good at or knowledgeable about one specific thing but were very ignorant an inept at other things. (In some ways, that would describe all humans.) But God is not like this. His wisdom is manifold, not limited to one thing or one area. Clarke comments: “That multifarious and greatly diversified wisdom of God; laying great and infinite plans, and accomplishing them by endless means, through the whole lapse of ages; making every occurrence subservient to the purposes of his infinite mercy and goodness... his infinite wisdom can never want ways or means to effect its gracious designs.” (Ephesians 3:1)
This is the third reason, then, why Paul did not want the Gentiles to faint at his tribulations--because Paul was working for a great cause, the fellowship of mystery by which would be made known the manifold wisdom of God, even unto principalities and powers. Paul did not faint in his tribulations because he saw the cause for which he worked--and therefore he desired that the Ephesians would also not faint.
But he also, in passing, gives the means as well as the cause--the source of strength by which he went on and by which the Ephesians too could go on. And that is verse 12 which says that in Jesus “we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.” We have free and secure access to God, and therefore God's help, because of Jesus. That is the only reason why Paul was able to go forward with his mission and why the Ephesians would be able to not lose heart. They could STAND for Christ because they were SITTING in heavenly places, with boldness and confidence because of “the faith of him.” The phrase can be translated as meaning our faith in Christ or as Christ's faithfulness towards us--we have this boldness and confidence because we know that Jesus is faithful to keep His promises.
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