Did you ever start to say something to someone and then realize that before you tell them what you are about to tell them they really should have some background information? This is what is taking place in these verses and what makes them so interesting. Here Paul begins to tell the Ephesians just what it is that he prays for them. But as he introduces his prayer in verse 1, “For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles,” he realizes that he needs to explain himself for the benefit of these people to whom he is writing. You can see that when he is done (in verse 13) he picks up right where left off in verse 14, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father.”
This section is called an excursus. An excursus is simply a planned rabbit trail. Why does Paul go into this rabbit trail? He starts by saying that He was imprisoned for their sake. As he writes this he doesn’t want them to become discouraged about his imprisonment as if they had caused it. There is a purpose in the excursus. Verse 13 describes why Paul wrote it. There he says, “I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf for they are your glory.” Paul used the rabbit trail to describe why he is doing what he is doing. Paul had a part in declaring to the Gentiles that they were included in God’s salvation. This was called the mystery of Christ. A mystery in Scripture was something that God had kept hidden from the Old Testament believers but revealed it in the New. And this was taking place now according to God’s plan that He had formed long ago. Paul was imprisoned for this very reason. His declaration of this Gospel before Caesar was for the benefit of the whole Gentile world which included the Ephesians. And this is the key idea of the passage. God has revealed a remarkable plan in which salvation has been made available to all who come to Christ by faith. There are three sections regarding this mystery of Christ that Paul describes for us.
1. The Content of the Mystery (v. 6)
First, we note the content of the mystery. Paul delineates the content of this mystery in verse 6. “To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Now we have looked at this extensively in the past few weeks and so we will merely touch on this.
The Gentiles have received the spiritual promises that were only for Israel, namely the fact that Israel could approach God through their worship while other nations could not. How is it that we can now? In a sense it is still through the nation of Israel. We are worshipping God through a Jew. We are worshipping Him through the ultimate Jew, Jesus the Messiah. And because He has access to God and we are in Him, we have become fellow partakers of the promise that is in Christ Jesus.
Simply, this is the content of the mystery, that it doesn’t matter what you were or who you were, you are now allowed to worship God in Christ. There are no longer any restrictions to worship as there were under the Old Testament law. This is what Paul describes in Galatians 3:26-28, “For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized (by the Spirit) into Christ Jesus have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul uses the imagery of being clothed with Christ or covered with Christ. And it is in this mystery, now revealed that we approach God, whether Jew or Gentile it does not matter because Christ IS what matters.
2. The Purpose in Revealing the Mystery (vv. 8-11)
Secondly, we come to the purpose in revealing the mystery in verses 8-11. Here Paul says that there are two purposes in God revealing this mystery to the world now.
A. To make known the unfathomable riches of Christ
The first purpose of revealing the mystery is to make known the unfathomable riches of Christ. Paul says this in verse 8. “To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches in Christ.” What are these unfathomable riches of Christ? They are the riches of eternal life in Him. I hope that we don’t think about this casually because I speak so often about it that eternal life in Christ sounds like a mere commodity sold in the marketplace of religion. For the riches of Christ are so deep that if we were to think about them and expound on them for the rest of our lives we still couldn’t do them justice. They are so profound, vast and immeasurably precious because they have been given to us at so great a price.
If we can but think about the terrors of hell and how we have been rescued from them we will get a greater glimpse of the riches of Christ. Can you imagine yourself for a moment cut off from the love of God, alone and in torment, painfully & constantly reminded of your sin against God. You continually cry out, “God why did I reject you!” as you realize that there is no escape from here for you forever. And you regret every single wrong thing you have ever done because your sin put you into that place of torment. Now realize that this was the truth for everyone of us. All of us, had fallen short of God’s standard of perfection and deserved the penalty of that way which is eternal punishment in hell.
The riches of Christ paid for your sins that you might not suffer but have eternal life. Jesus Christ, the sinless man, paid that eternal price for each one of us. This is part of the riches of Christ. It is only part of it. For Christ not only kept us from the terrors of hell but also purchased for us the wonders of heaven. Heaven will never be boring. The beauty of God will so astound us that we will be rapt in worship for the first billion years before our heads clear enough to realize that we have entered the beauty of that grand place. The second billion years will be the same only better. And we will see each succeeding moment of heaven as more wonderful than the one before. We will cry out with the angelic hosts surrounding the throne “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.” Our minds and hearts will be open to know and love God in a way that we have never experienced before
When we see that God has taken us from the mortuary to the mansion, from the grave to glory from the wasteland to wonderland we begin to see a glimpse of the unfathomable riches of Christ! It is in the extreme of one to the other that we see the riches of His grace.
But part of the riches is that He has given us a taste of heaven now. In that day we will be completely free from temptation and sin but now He has given us victory over sin that had kept us bound. He has given us the ability to overcome sin and the desire to do so. The riches of Christ are also found in the fact that we have freedom from enslaving sin. If we have the riches of Christ then we should be experiencing the power to set our minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. In this we have tasted of the powers of the world to come. But if there is no victory over sin, no desire for God’s presence then what you have, as Paul describes in 2 Timothy, is a mere form of godliness denying its power. The form of godliness without experiencing its power is deception. What we must be careful of is that we do not possess the form of godliness of those around us, our friends, our parents, but know no inward possession of the work of Christ in our lives to love Him and know His riches.
So the riches of Christ take us from the depths of hell to the wonders of heaven and yet don’t leave us stranded in between while we wait. They make us long more for heaven as God purges our hearts of that which remains of self.
B. To disclose the multifaceted wisdom of God.
The second purpose of revealing this mystery is to disclose the multifaceted wisdom of God. I use the word multifaceted to describe God’s wisdom because it is similar to a diamond that sparkles with its many facets. You cannot look into a diamond long without seeing how it shines in so many different ways in its beauty. God’s wisdom is like this. As you look into God’s wisdom through what He has done you can only marvel at its awesome complexity and beauty. In verses 10&11, Paul says, “so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God revealed the mystery of Christ, that He has put together all believers into one body, so that the wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. The terms “rulers and authorities”, by their usage in other places in Ephesians are most likely the evil angelic hosts opposed to God. He wanted to show to these cosmic haters of all that is good and pure that His wisdom outshines and outlasts anything their warped senses can devise. And He has shown His wisdom to these demonic principalities to declare His victory over them.
How has He shown the amazing character of His wisdom? He has shown His wisdom through the church. I think that there are at least three ways that God has done this through the church. I am sure that there are more but this is all that I have come up with. Perhaps you can see others from this and other passages of Scripture. First, God has shown His wisdom in that He has, in practice, brought together throughout the world a group of mismatched people that it must be said God has done such a work full of wonder. How many of us here would normally be brought together from so many different backgrounds and yet because of our relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ we have submitted ourselves one to another to love and serve each other. Or to say it in another way, “Who of us here would have anything to do with one another unless Christ had brought us together?” God is uniting a people for His own glory that transcends gender, race, language and culture.
Secondly, God has shown His wisdom in that all the powers of hell itself could not stop this seemingly insignificant group. In Matthew 16, Jesus says, “I will build my church . . . and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” No matter what Satan attempts to do he will never destroy the church. He has attempted throughout the centuries to turn the church from the Scripture but there have always been a remnant according to grace that has held firm to the teachings of the Word of God. He is still trying today to remove the authority of Scripture from the life of the church. He is attacking it in many ways through the advent of anti-God theories of evolution, psychology and even theology. He is also seeking to influence people to redefine what God has set the church to be. Instead of the church being the haven of Christians to be encouraged and protected as the pillar and ground of the truth, he is setting it out as the place of dialogue and debate by which various pernicious doctrines are being taught. These are doctrines of demons that seek to rob God of His glory. One notable doctrine today is called “Open-Theism.” It states that God doesn’t openly choose anything to take place because He doesn’t know the future. He brings to pass what He wants by outguessing people who try to thwart Him. God does not know the future? How did the God who knows the beginning from the end not know what will happen tomorrow? If this would be true what happened to the God who told us not to worry about tomorrow because He had all things under control? Should we put our trust in a being who is simply a good guesser and not the Sovereign of all the ages? Satan is still trying to destroy the church through false teaching but it cannot be destroyed. God will maintain His body throughout history in one continuous line.
A third way that God has shown His wisdom is that this body is an eternal one that can never be wiped out. Not only is this body going to continue through earth history it is also going to continue into eternity. It is an everlasting dwelling of God in the Spirit. When God does something He doesn’t do it half way. He does it completely and forever. This is our wonderful God.
3. The Relationship of This Mystery to Us (v. 12)
Finally this morning we see the relationship of this mystery to us. We find this in verse 12. Here Paul notes, “In whom (that is, in Christ) we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.” What is the relationship of this mystery to us? Because God has revealed this to us and we have come to place our faith, our trust, in Christ we have bold and confident access to God.
We can pray to God boldly and confidently expecting Him to hear us because of our relationship to Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews says, “Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Because God has cleansed us completely in Christ we need not fear that when we come to Him He will not hear us if we come to Him through Christ. “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is the amazing relationship that God has given us through entering into Christ by faith. There is no ritual to receiving Christ. We don’t receive Him physically. There is no ceremony we perform to get Christ. But He comes to us when in simple trust we ask Him to save us from our sin. He then lives in us and transforms our lives.
This is why trust in the Gospel is a life-changing event. And many of you can attest to the power of Christ in your own life. God has transformed you from the inside out. He has changed your hearts. And by changing your hearts He has changed your desires and by changing your desires has changed your habits. Therefore the saying is true in you, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!”
And because we can have boldness to enter God’s presence we can ask God to change us more into the image of Christ. And as we will learn in the following verses (14-21) God wants to change us in some pretty amazing ways concerning the way we think and live.