Becoming What You Are

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Well, this evening we continue our Sunday evening series looking at the several of the epistles of the New Testament, and I have had the opportunity to be teaching through Ephesians, and we find ourselves in the third installment of six, God willing, as there are six chapters. So Ephesians chapter three will be our text for tonight, the entirety of it. And the whole of the Christian life as we probably are all aware is about becoming what we are. In Christ we are already sons of the King. We are set apart for Him positionally. Practically over time Christ transforms us into what we already are positionally. Earthly royals are characterized by privilege, prestige, and even entitlement. Spiritual royals, as we’ll learn tonight, are characterized by love. So Paul calling the Ephesian Christians to live royally is going to look different from the earthly princes that so quickly come to our minds.

We want to live like Christians, that is like many Christs. And Paul’s prayer in this chapter reflects his desire for his readers to look like that as well. So very roughly looking at this chapter from a high level, we see it broken down into roughly two halves. And they’re going to represent our two headings tonight, which I’ll give us in just a moment. But at the beginning, Paul is speaking about the mystery that he referenced in chapter 2 as a basis for a call to behave a certain way, which happens at the back end of the chapter. A lot of Paulian epistles are divided pretty neatly into a doctrinal portion at the front end, followed by an application or practical living portion at the back end.

We see it pretty neatly divided in a number of his letters, and this one is no different. And we’ll see that that transition actually does happen here in our chapter four tonight. As we examine the chapter, we’ll see that we’ll consider in verses one through thirteen what I’ve called the basis of the call. And then the substance of the call in verses fourteen through twenty-one. and my talk for tonight is entitled, Becoming What You Are, a Call to Live Like Royalty. And so we’ll drill down and we’ll look at individual verses but I wanna encourage you to keep in mind the big picture, the reality of what God has done for Gentiles in Christ has profound implications.

What God has done for Gentiles in Christ has profound implications. And God wants for us to live in a certain way and he calls his readers to that in this book. And it starts in this chapter. So I’m gonna start by reading verses one through 13, and this will be our first heading for tonight, namely the basis of the call.

Ephesians three, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church, The manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities and the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Paul starts out this chapter by pointing back to chapter two and what he had scratched at there. Of course, in the original letter, it’s a smooth transition. There’s no verse or chapter breaks and it goes right into verse one of chapter three. But here, we have the ground for Paul’s prayer, which comes later on at the back end of the chapter. For this reason, says Paul, and as I mentioned, here he is pointing back to the mystery of chapter two and the Gentile believers’ status in Christ. In chapter 2, Paul addresses the changes in individual believers that are brought on by salvation.

Last time I called this micro-salvation, the change brought about in individual believers. He addresses the much greater effect of salvation on Gentiles in general. I called that macro-salvation. So, drilled down to individual souls and then zoomed out and looking at the race of the Gentiles. Believing Jews and believing Gentiles represent separate walls of the same building as it were. The same, new same spiritual building. This is the church and Christ is the cornerstone of this structure. And we’ll return to that in a moment when Paul resumes this thought because that’s going to happen later on. But for the rest of verses 1 through 13, he’s speaking parenthetically.

So he says for this reason, then he gets sidetracked, as it were, and goes off on a little bit of a theological tirade, a good one. And he’ll be speaking parenthetically about the glories of this mystery which serves as the basis, the grounds for Paul’s calling the Ephesian Christians to live in a certain way that comes in verses 14 to 21. So let’s consider then this parenthetical thought. He says, I Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly.

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. When you’re doing a chapter, a talk, you have to take big chunks. So there’s a lot right there, but Paul quickly acknowledged himself to be a slave of Christ and a happy one, happily constrained to preach the gospel. And now he has news that he would like to bring to them, to his Gentile readers. You’ll recall that Ephesus was a Gentile city and the church at Ephesus was a good church. Paul was addressing them.

He was personally invested.

And he says, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. Paul wants to let them in on this mystery because it’s glorious. It’s a mystery that he doesn’t want to remain mysterious, but it is glorious and has profound implications and as I’ve already said, it serves as the basis for the prayer which will come at the back end of the chapter. This mystery that Paul speaks of is something that was only scratched at in the Old Testament, but its fullness was revealed to Paul by special revelation. Paul says that this mystery was not made known to the sons of men and other generations. The idea of God saving Gentiles was not new or novel. So get that. That itself is not news. It’s not revolutionary, although the full extent of it had not been revealed in the Old Testament. And so there were lots of faithful Jews who had studied the Scriptures, who did not understand the full implications of God’s redemptive worked for the Gentiles. Like even Peter was hung up on it. You may recall that and Paul had rebuked him. One of my favorite Old Testament passages, my very favorite,

is Isaiah 49.6 and I think I referenced it last time, where the Lord is saying, it’s too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. He’s speaking to his servant.

I will make you a light for the nations that my salvation may reach the end of the earth. Just saving Israel has never been the plan and it was always too small a thing for the full expression of God’s glory, for the expression of God’s manifold wisdom as we will see. Saving the Jews is great, it’s not enough. It’s never been the plan for that for that for it to stop there. God’s plan has always been to save Gentiles but how this harmonized with the Jews being God’s chosen race remained mysterious. God promised in Genesis to bless the nations through Abraham in Genesis 22 18 and Genesis 26 4 but again nobody knew what that would actually look like. Paul says in verse 6 this mystery is and here is kind of a thesis it’s a workable statement that the Gentiles are fellow heirs members of the same body and partakers of the promised in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Now the idea of their enjoying equal standing with the Jews in glory was new. I don’t understand exactly how Old Testament saints or even first century Christians would have understood the notion before.

Perhaps would have been a we’ll kind of just squeak in and we’ll be in the that’s, you know, better is a day in God’s courts than anywhere else, a thousand, anywhere else. But we won’t attain to the level of God’s chosen people in glory. Maybe it was some sort of hang-up like that, but Paul is shedding light on this mystery. It was not news that Gentiles could be saved or blessed through Abraham, but it was absolutely news that there would be an equal standing with the Jews as opposed to a lesser or inferior standing. And now, in Christ, Gentile believers enjoy the same legal status before God as the Jews. We’re all adopted sons on the basis of Christ’s work. And we have the same degree of inheritance. Now, Now, it goes, I think it’s worth noting that if Paul wanted to mention that the Gentiles had completely replaced the Jews altogether, or that they were going to enjoy the Jews’ inheritance instead of Israel, well, this would have been a great time to do it.

But he’s pretty emphatically clear that the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles would both receive their equal inheritance. Israel doesn’t just go away altogether, supplanted then by the Gentiles. The idea of such an inheritance has always been familiar to us. So we’ve, in the water that we’ve been navigating our lives, we’ve always understood that for Gentile Christians, there’s something great that awaits us in glory. We’ve never known any other reality than this. Modern Christians have always known that our inheritance will be equal in glory to that of Israel. Naturally then, we have a hard time wrapping our minds around exactly how revolutionary this notion was.

And in the previous chapter, Paul talks about believing Jews and believing Gentiles being one building and Christ himself being the cornerstone of the building. If you look back at chapter 2 verses 18 through 22, it reads, for through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and the Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

This is only possible if, as Paul said, the believing Jews and believing Gentiles alike are fellow citizens and saints, with the saints and members of the household of God.

in verse 19. Looking then back at chapter 3 verse 7 now, of this gospel Paul says, I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of His power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to life for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages and God who created all things. Paul counted his call to preach the gospel as a great stewardship that was supernaturally granted to him by the Father. And Paul thought that there was a lot riding on this. Of course, there’s no doubt that Paul was optimistic regarding God’s sovereign control and the rest, but he did not want to belittle his job. It was Paul’s job and I would say it is ours as well to preach the gospel in order that the dead may come to faith in Christ. It’s been likened to walking through a graveyard and calling those in the tombs to come forward. It only happens supernaturally and of course God alone can get the credit but our responsibility

is to make that call. That the dead then may come to faith in Christ, that they may be then subsequently purified by Christ as a part of the church and be a bride that is worthy of Christ to present to himself. And this would then all showcase the manifold wisdom of God. So Paul thought this was a big deal and the way that it happened was with the proclamation of the gospel. He calls himself a steward of the gospel. My job is to preach the gospel so that all these amazing things can happen and God’s wisdom could be showcased. So if you view God’s glory as significant, then the proclamation of the gospel is a big deal and is a noble stewardship. Paul took this stewardship seriously, and he could no longer keep quiet about it than he could fly to the moon. And what was he preaching? He was preaching, verse 8, the unsearchable riches of Christ. He wanted to communicate to these Gentile believers what was theirs in Jesus.

But beyond that, he wanted to proclaim the great mystery of the Gospel that he spoke of before. The church comprising Jews and Gentiles expresses the great wisdom of God. Verse 10, and again, we’re establishing a grounds, a theological grounds for the call that’s going to happen. Paul is telling the believers about their new status in Christ and what all has happened as a part of salvation, and then he’s establishing the ground for the call to behave in a certain way which he’ll ask God to do in them later on. So kind of keep that in the back of your mind. Verse 10, so that through, this is my favorite part, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

This is staggering, but apparently it’s the point of the church. Yes, the church is a bride of Christ, but here the purpose of the church, according to Paul, is to show off the wisdom of God to the angels. Rulers and authorities in the heavenly places is language that is used to refer to angels. And angels exist to serve and to glorify God, and they do it by worshiping and serving Him. But angels are creatures like we are, and whatever it is that they’re going to know about God, they have to be taught. They have to be instructed. They have to receive that information. You could argue that the angels may have a leg up on information acquisition on us because the holy angels are not fallen.

They have not sinned. We have. But angels have never experienced, they have no experiential knowledge of forgiveness. Everything they know about, well because the holy angels have never sinned, they also have never been redeemed. No angel has made a substitutionary death sufficient for the redemption of the fallen angels, for instance, as Jesus as man did for us. they know about the gospel, things like mercy and forgiveness, they have to learn by observing the redemption of men by God. Likewise, the church showcases then for these angels the manifold wisdom of God. The Apostle Peter, I know he’s not Paul, but I’m going to reference him anyway, the Apostle Peter alludes to this, just touches on it briefly in Chapter 1 of 1 Peter verses 10 to 12.

So 1 Peter 1, 10 to 12 read as follows, concerning the salvation, and salvation is relevant because what is the church but a body comprising saved souls? Concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, and in this Peter is talking to his first century readers of persecuted Christians about their glorious inheritance in Christ, this unspeakable inheritance that’s gonna be theirs as their salvation is being revealed. So they, hey, keep your chins up, bear up under persecution, you have a glorious inheritance yet before you. And he is talking about this and says, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, the prophets looked into their own writings.

Inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and then the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, and the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. And why are the angels so blasted, curious about this? They have no personal firsthand experience of it, but they’re starving to know more about the gracious nature of their creator and about the power of redemption. If the angels would have informed worship of God, which they are made for, they must learn.

And they have healthy appetites for knowledge of those things that they had never experienced. These things are on full display then in the church. The church, comprising, as I said, millions of saved souls is a great exhibition for the angels of the manifold wisdom of God. And the remarkable joining of believing Jews and believing Gentiles in one new building with Christ as the cornerstone, their shared status before God as the redeemed, and all the rest, the unspeakable wisdom of God is on display. In the church and in the co-inheritance of the believing Jews and Gentiles, God’s wisdom is showcased. Paul says in verse 11, this was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

So, I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. We can know without question that the wisdom of God on display in the church is not a response to the fall, but rather it’s God’s plan A. And how that all works together is in the secret councils of the Lord. God has instructed the angels via the church according to the eternal purposes that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is by his design to be the means through which he would instruct the angels and the cosmos.

Paul’s perspective is such that he then, and it makes sense, if Paul has a pretty big picture perspective about these things. Little things like his imprisonment. Eh, whatever. He has a pretty healthy perspective about troubling things like suffering. And he calls his readers to adopt the same attitude that they would not lose heart over Paul’s suffering. So there we have what I call the basis for the call, verses 1 through 13. And then he does the first two paragraphs of the chapter. And then he resumes his thought in what I’ve called the substance of the call. This is our second heading and verses 14 through 21. I’m going to read those to you, Ephesians 3, verses 14 through 21.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.” This passage is technically a prayer. I get that. But it’s also a charge to His readers, obviously. I mean, what do you do if a fellow believer comes up to you and says, I’m pleading to God for you to have victory over your anger and for you to take more responsibility for your family. Nobody just used to say, that’s nice, or do you receive that as, thank you for praying for me and that’s a good kick in the pants. It is clearly a charge, right? I think that’s evident. And this passage is the same sort of thing. So it is a plea with God to effect this in the believers and then of course when they, why would he tell them he’s praying this for them if he didn’t want them to go ahead and carry it out?

At this point, and it is in fact at this point that the tenor of the letter of Ephesians changes to one that’s more imperative than it is declarative, that it is more instructive for how they are to conduct themselves than it is about the theoretical as to what has happened and why they should be excited. The first two and a half chapters are more doctrinal and the last three and a half focus on the application of those doctrines and it starts here with this prayer and then he really gets down to the brass tacks of Christian interaction with one another in chapter four which we’ll look at next time. Verse 14, for this reason, so now here he just resumes his train of thought. If we were to skip verses the second half of verse 1 to now, then you would miss that parenthetical portion we just talked about moments ago, right? So the for this reason is the same thing as it was when I mentioned it in verse 1. He’s pointing back to verse 2. He’s resuming this train of thought. The reason that he speaks of is the whole package deal that he talked about in verse, in chapter

two, namely the Gentiles’ new status in Christ. They’re spiritually alive from chapter 2. They’re prepared for good works. They are no longer strangers and aliens. Their status as the dwelling place of God is good reason for this prayer. He says, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. There are two reasons that Paul or that we would bow our knees before the Father, one is just an abject submission and the other is to make a request to beseech the Lord, to pray. So Paul, likewise, bows in humility and in submission to God before the Father and to make a request on behalf of his readers. And for Paul in particular, well okay, the mystery that Paul’s been talking about is staggering and brings his knees, brings him to his and for Paul in particular it’s pretty easy to see how and why. Christ had commissioned him.

He referred himself moments ago as the least of all the saints. That’s not just a faux humility rhetorical device. He actually thought pretty lowly of himself when he examined what he actually deserved. And by the time he gets to his last epistle in the New Testament, 2 Timothy, he’s referring to himself as the chief of sinners. There’s like this sort of diabolical progression in Paul’s mind as to his worthiness. And so when he contemplates and meditates here the full weight of the stewardship that’s been given to him, that weight causes his knees to buckle. But also he gets it. He gets what it’s waiting, what it means.

Christ had commissioned him as a missionary to the Gentiles and presenting an alluring gospel to the Gentiles is even easier with this glorious mystery. Verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. This is pretty lofty stuff. These are some pretty lofty requests. In chapter one, Paul talked about God’s power exercised toward us as being commensurate with the power that he exercised and raising Christ from the dead and exalting him. And that’s in verses 19 to 21. Paul uses similar language here.

Our being strengthened by God according to the riches of his glory is to be strengthened and according, be strengthened according to an incomprehensibly great standard. And his prayer here is that Christ would then be at home in the hearts of these saints. What must your heart undergo in order to be a suitable home for Christ, for Him to be comfortable. He says that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So believers who are rooted and grounded in love behave in a certain way. And they cannot behave otherwise if they are rooted and grounded in love. They have strong, deep roots that are absorbing, that are sucking in these love nutrients from the spiritual soil in which they’re grounded. And if their roots are drawing in these nutrients of love, then the foliage and the fruit that they produce will be love as well. Not only is rooting and grounding and love necessary to bear the right kind of foliage and fruit, but being rooted and grounded in love is necessary to come close to being able to comprehend the incomprehensible.

To being able to comprehend the dimensions of God’s love for us in Christ. And that’s what Paul is asking. It’s breadth and length and height and depth. breadth, length, height, depth. All these dimensions of God’s love are what Paul would have for us to know. And when men understand the dimensions of God’s love, they can know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. They can know that which is unknowable. We’re not talking about Gnosticism here. We’re talking about a supernatural ability to know something that natural men cannot comprehend. Paul is praying for them to know that which surpasses knowledge. That’s normal for the believer as the supernatural is not naturally comprehensible.

Although in Christ we can absolutely know it. Paul would have us to know the love of Christ. On behalf of undeserving sinners, Christ took on flesh. Think about the love of Christ for just a moment. On behalf of undeserving sinners, he took on flesh, he lived a sinless life, he bore the full wrath of the Father against sin for us and he died for us. And the believer who is supernaturally unable to wrap his mind around all of this will live in a certain way, and that’s Paul’s request to the Lord for them. Christ’s love is a love with profound implications. The saint who is rooted and grounded in love then, loves, and he cannot but love.

Love for him is as natural as breathing. It’s a good illustration that John MacArthur uses in his commentary on this passage. He says, when a Christian does not love, when a Christian does not love, he has to do so intentionally and with effort, just as he must do to hold his breath. To become habitually unloving, he must habitually resist Christ as the Lord of his heart. To continue the analogy of breathing, when Christ has his proper place in our hearts, we do not have to be told to love, just as we do not have to be told to breathe. Eventually it must happen, because loving is as natural to the spiritual person as breathing is to the natural person.

Yeah, for the believer, love is literally natural as the natural man is given a new spiritual nature to love. And though this nature constantly conflicts with the old man, the believer’s love becomes normal, Not strange. This may seem simple enough, but it’s actually pretty indicting. I mean, if it’s so basic, then why do we fail to love?

Why do we fail so miserably to behave in a Christ-like way to those who are closest to us? In verse 20, he finishes it off. “‘Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly “‘than all we can ask or think, “‘according to the power at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Now I’ve just taken the last about 15-20 minutes talking about these lofty, impossible seeming requests that Paul will be making of God. He’s just petitioned God to enable the Ephesian Christians to be strengthened with His power, verse 16, that they would be rooted and grounded in love, verse 17, that they’d be able to comprehend the full dimensions of the love of Christ and to be filled with all the fullness of God, verse 18.

That is a big ask. Then Paul follows it in verse 20 by saying that God can do far more abundantly than all of this for these believers. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around just what Paul said and what that would look like, but of course God is capable of doing far more than this. According to the power that is at work within us, says Paul, and that he’s referencing here sounds again like chapter one when he’s talking about that power that God exercised in us and that he also exercised in raising Christ and the dead and exalting him. So it’s safe to say that that power that God, we suspect, will enact to answer this prayer is pretty great.

That’s good news for us. Why would God not answer this prayer of Paul’s? And as we will get to in a couple of chapters, we’ll see that as Christ is working out our salvation and sanctification, those things are going to be realized in us. So as we conclude, I would point you again to two big takeaways from this passage of Scripture. First, as I said at the start, we Christians are becoming what we are. We are becoming practically what we already are positionally. And in Christ, we are already set apart. We are recipients of a glorious inheritance that’s awaiting us in the heavenlies. In Christ. We are fellow spiritual citizens with all the saints, Jews and Gentiles alike.

We are members of God’s household, like you’re in his house. And we get to chapter 5, as I said, we’ll see that we comprise the various parts of the bride of Christ, and Jesus is personally invested in purifying his bride so as to present her to himself pure and spotless. So as we’ve seen, it’s fitting for Paul to instruct the Ephesian Christians about their status in Christ and then call them to live like the spiritual royalty that they are. And that charge is what we see in his prayer in verses 14 through 21. The second big takeaway is articulated well by Abraham Kuyper. And he says, creation is the theater for the mighty works of God.

Let’s pray together. Father, we are overwhelmed with what this means and of course that it is impossible apart from your spirit’s work in us. We thank you for your word and the hope that it gives and we plead with you to help us understand this. We struggle to understand just the plain words of scripture, let alone the full dimensions of your love for us in Christ. So help us. And then help us to live accordingly. And may we walk in light of our status in Christ. May we be rooted and grounded in love in our conversation, in our representing you in our workplaces, in our schools and homes. And may we live like we want to honor you. We pray this now in Christ’s name, Amen.

Let’s pray together. Father, we are overwhelmed with what this means and of course that it is impossible apart from your spirit’s work in us. We thank you for your word and the hope that it gives and we plead with you to help us understand this. We struggle to understand just the plain words of scripture, let alone the full dimensions of your love for us in Christ. So help us. And then help us to live accordingly. And may we walk in light of our status in Christ. May we be rooted and grounded in love in our conversation, in our representing you in our workplaces, in our schools and homes. And may we live like we want to honor you.