Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
I wonder what your favourite bible passage is.
One of my long-time favourites is Ephesians 3: 14-21. It is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians that they would know how wide, long, deep, and high is God’s love and that they would be filled to the fullness of God. I would often use it as a prayer for myself or as an encouraging passage for others.
As we journey through Ephesians over these coming weeks, my prayer is that we will know God’s incredible love for us and be filled by him.
Firstly, a little background on the letter.
The author identifies himself as the apostle Paul writing to the faithful people in Ephesus. We read about Paul’s time there in Acts 19. He spent 3 months speaking in the synagogue, but some of the Jews were obstinate, refused to believe and maligned ‘the Way’ (this was the early name for the Christian church).
He then had daily discussions in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This went on for 2 years so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
Paul knew the Ephesians well and he was particularly keen to see the Jews and Gentiles united in Christ. A few scholars suggest that Paul is not the author of this letter as there are no personal greetings to particular people in the Church. However, it is also possible that while this letter was especially for the Ephesians it may also have been a circular letter for other Churches in nearby regions.
We will assume that Paul wrote it most likely from prison (as alluded to in chapters 3 and 4) in Rome around AD 60.
Michael and I were blessed to visit Ephesus several years ago on a Ridley College study tour of Turkey, Greece, and Rome, ‘In the footsteps of Paul’. Ephesus was one of the most impressive archeological sites. Here is a picture of the Arcadian Way, a long road that once led from the harbour to the amazing theatre, the library, and the houses of the rich.
One can easily imagine what it would have looked like as a bustling city in the 1st century CE. Ephesus was located near the mouth of the Cayster River, 3 miles from the Aegean Sea opposite the island of Samos. Silt was dredged to enable it to be a port city but today the alluvial deposits from the river have filled in the harbor and the site now lies 5 miles from the sea. Busy sea lanes and being situated at the entrance to fertile valleys meant that Ephesus was the most easily accessible city in Asia. Its strategic position gave it prominence as a commercial, religious, and political centre of unusual importance. Like Corinth, Ephesus was a very strategic centre for missionary labour.
Alongside this commercial wealth, one of the most distinctive sources of prestige and revenue in Ephesus was the cult of the goddess Artemis who was a fertility deity represented as a many breasted woman, known as Diana. (pic) The city boasted a magnificent temple to Artemis known in antiquity as one of the seven wonders of the world.
During Paul’s second visit to Ephesus, we read of the riot in Acts 19:23- 41 that occurred as Demetrius, who made silver shrines to Artemis, called other workmen together concerned that Paul’s preaching against man-made gods would impact their livelihood and discredit Artemis. This riot would have occurred in the vast theatre and certainly shows that Paul’s preaching was very successful!
It can’t have been an easy place to be a Christian. Paul’s letter is written to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus reminding them of God’s grace and peace and of the blessings they have received in Christ.
As we read this letter may we also be reminded, that we are blessed and chosen to live for God’s glory in a world where it can be difficult to live as Christians.
The first half of chapter 1 sings of praise to God who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Note the abundance of blessing, not just one or two blessings but every spiritual blessing in Christ!
Paul praises God, as we should, for all the blessings we have. Last week was Trinity Sunday and we praised God for the relationship we have with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul makes clear reference to the trinity in this opening chapter.
Our blessing comes from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also ‘our Father’, and it is in Christ that we have been blessed. Jesus died that we may be forgiven and reconciled to God. Paul refers to Jesus Christ repeatedly in this opening chapter. And these blessings that are bestowed upon us are spiritual blessings, we can interpret that as ‘every blessing of the Holy Spirit’, in whom we are marked with a seal.
These blessings are seen as both past, present, and future.
Paul says that God chose us before the creation of the world! David muses in psalm 139 that God knew us and knit us together in our mother’s womb, but Paul says that he chose us even before he created the world! Can you imagine God musing over what he was going to create, and he had you and me in mind – now that is mind boggling! But a wonderful past blessing indeed.
Our present blessing is that he chose us in love to be adopted into his family through Jesus. We are his sons and daughters. What an amazing honour to be adopted by God. In the Roman world adoptions were all about inheritance and carrying on the family name. The adopted person was given all the privileges and rights that would have been given to a natural born child. God does this when he calls us his children. We become co-heirs with Jesus as Paul explains in Romans 8. He chooses to adopt us and lavish his love on us.
It is our blessing in Jesus that make it possible to be adopted by God. His amazing grace is freely given to us in Jesus, we have redemption through his blood and forgiveness of sins. Paul outlines the simple gospel message in the beginning of his letter. The love, peace, and grace lavished on us by God. Paul praises God for this love that he pours out on us according to his pleasure and will. Grace is a gift, we are not adopted into God’s family according to anything we have done, it is through what God has achieved in Christ. God’s pleasure and will is that we should be restored to the place in God’s family that he created us to occupy.
This present blessing is an overwhelming gift, to be counted as God’s own, to live as his son or daughter. A gift we don’t deserve but he lavishes us with his grace anyway. Have you ever been given a gift you don’t think you should have? A gift you thought was too expensive or luxurious or that you just didn’t think you deserved. How did that make you feel? Humbled? Grateful? Special? Loved? And like you should value and make the most of that gift?
Is that how you feel about God’s gift to us in Jesus? God want us to receive his gift with love and gratefulness and humility, with joy and the knowledge that we are special to him. He also wants us to put our hope in him alone and live for his praise and glory. We were chosen to be holy and blameless in his sight. We are to live as loved members of his family. Loving him and loving others. Growing up to look more and more like him every day. In the coming chapters Paul will talk more about what life as God’s child should look like. Living in unity with one another, respecting one another, not living in the ways of the world in greed or immorality or following other small ‘g’ gods.
We are to treasure his gift of grace in Jesus and live our lives filled with the Holy Spirit who God has marked us with. Paul says the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory. There is a future blessing yet to come.
What does it mean to be marked with a ‘seal’, the promised Holy Spirit?
In Paul’s day seals were used in at least four ways. First, seals were sometimes put on a letter to guarantee that it was genuine and that it was written by who it claimed to be written by. Kings might seal their letters with a signet ring. We do something similar on special documents, I have a seal on my University Degrees.
A seal was also sometimes placed on goods or merchandise that were traveling from one place to another to indicate who they belonged to and where they were going. It indicated ownership. Again, we do this with our possessions today all the time. We write our names in our books, or on our kid’s clothes when they go to camp, or when our parents or spouses go into a Nursing Home. In 2 Corinthians Chapter 1, Paul says that God has set his seal of ownership on us.
The third way seals were used in Paul’s day was to show something was authentic and approved. Sometimes when we buy clothes or other goods, there might be a label or sticker to say it has been inspected and approved by someone. In John 6 Jesus says that God the Father had placed on him his “seal” of approval.
The fourth type of seal was for protection or warning. Remember when Jesus was put in the tomb, Pilate told the soldiers to put his personal seal upon the tomb (Matt 27:66). This was to protect the tomb and warn everyone to stay away and keep out!
So, what did Paul mean in Ephesians 1 when he says that God has placed a seal upon us? It is a seal to guarantee that we are genuine, it shows ownership, that we belong to God – part of his family, it shows that we are approved, and it provides us with protection or security.
Can we see this mark? No. We don’t have God’s signet ring impressed upon our foreheads! The sealing of the Spirit is invisible to us in the physical realm.
But the presence of the Spirit should be evidenced in us. According to Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The Holy Spirit living in us means we have Christ in us as comforter, counsellor, guide, and teacher.
This sealing of the Spirit is an invisible mark that happens when we believe and put our trust in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Redeemer.
This seal, says Paul is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.
As great as the gift of the Holy Spirit is, it is only a deposit, a foretaste, a small glimpse of the beauty, glory, greatness, and majesty that awaits us in eternity with the redemption of our bodies.
Paul finishes the opening in his letter with a reminder that this deposit of the Holy Spirit is all to the praise of God’s glory. It is all for God’s glory. Not ours. It is for God’s glory alone that He is lavishing us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
This first part of Ephesians chapter is all about praising or blessing God for blessing us and Paul reminds us of those blessings; being chosen, adopted, lavishly loved, redeemed, forgiven and marked with the Holy Spirit, a guarantee for a future inheritance as God’s children.
The second part of Ephesians chapter 1 is a prayer that our eyes may be open to see and receive that blessing. I will end with Paul’s prayer for us today, from verse 15…
15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit[f] of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Amen.