For This Reason

[HKHaugan]

As we get into chapter 3 of Ephesians it is important to take in the verses that precede it and the verses that carry on the themes of chapter 1. The key to that transition is “For this reason.” Here Paul is appealing specifically to the minds of the Gentiles in Ephesus. Who knows what social and political pressure was being levied against Christians. It seems that the Gentile believers may have been questioning the validity of Jewish heritage as important since it was that of an obscure people with a socially questionable status in the Roman Empire and a politically incorrect belief in one God. They may have been trying to distance themselves from the Jewish part of the faith. I might add at this point that that Roman superiority is still carried forward today in the Roman Catholic mindset toward all the rest of the Body of Christ. It is institutionalized pride. And on the other side a Baptist mindset can shut out all those in between them and the Roman Catholics. And it is here too that the leadership in every denomination has a way of seeing itself as having a corner on the truth.

The bottom line is that we all have some tendency to rely on institutional form rather than direct relational contact with God in Christ. Even independent Bible churches claiming to be non-denominational are denominational which is why they exist in the first place. They have a platform that defines their separation from all the rest. But we have to see that the real threat is not our institutional differences but the secularized mindset that is consuming our own society. It is the spirit of the anti-Christ. Everyone needs to be able to stand up in the midst of the secular tidal wave and be a witness to Jesus. Everyone needs the relational faith with our Creator because we were created for it. It is only in Jesus that faith finds its home. It is only in Jesus that love happens. It is only in Jesus that hope is realized. How these qualities of God emerge in each of us depends on the willingness to be open in our spirit to hear His Word, be led by the Holy Spirit to accept the life He brings and to put every next moment at His disposal.

We are a trinitarian image of God in mind, heart and spirit but sin has thrown it out of balance so that we tend to operate in each area to satisfy ourselves. Apart from God we are inclined to lean toward our own understanding or the strong influences around us. But in Jesus we are in a process of restoration we call salvation and sanctification which is saving, nourishing and maturing. It is the balance of the mind’s need for the authority of rules and structure, the heart’s need in its emotions and attitudes and the spirit’s need for discerning its place in the unseen currents of good and evil, that Jesus has restored for us. Jesus is that balance and this is the reason and the insight and the mystery Paul has been blessed to see in Jesus. It is this awakening that becomes our awakening as well. For the Jews it was the imbalance of structure that outweighed the heart and spirit.

But what was the Gentile obsession? Paul nailed it on Mars Hill when he was discussing philosophy with Greek intellectuals (Acts 17). He says “I can see that you are very religious. You’ve got all these gods represented in statues here and even one to an unknown god.” They were spiritually aware, spiritually hungry and spiritually unsatisfied. Again it was religion not relationship. Consequently, it was easy to submit to emperor worship and all the other religions that had their systems of law and authority even though there was the constant compromise with the political supervision of Rome.

At the bottom of it all was the Gentile’s vulnerability to the spirit of fear always lurking behind worldly power. The spirit of fear always has as its handy henchman the spirit of compromise.
Imagine the impact of a religion that comes along and challenges every single system of thought and practice and offers no compromise nor does it care about its acceptance in the empire. What couldn’t be grasped by the average Gentile was the reality of the claims of a person who offers not a religion but a relationship transcending everything they theretofore had accepted. That compromise was a spiritual method based on fear, that love was more than flesh, friend and family and that spirituality would always be a mystery that could never be resolved and that truth would always be left in the hands of intellectuals and philosophers. Ultimately then, one was left to fear and appeasement, fear of the unknown and accepting some god, any god, to appease just in case it might work. Hail Caesar, Apollo, Diana, Zeus, or whoever, but keep Caesar up front.

So Paul is describing for them something available for anyone. It is a heavenly passport called faith that brings us into a heavenly citizenship we can experience in this world. It is citizenship in a Kingdom where there is no class or secondary status. It is an eternal citizenship which is relational with one God who is real for the heart and fulfilling for anyone, rich or poor, emperor or subject, citizen or non-citizen, man or woman, parent or child, wife or husband, master or slave. In fact could this be why Paul appealed to the emperor to hear his case and be led by the Spirit to find himself a prisoner for Christ? Is he appealing not so much to get the charge removed but that the emperor might be saved? He wants to witness to the head of the world’s most powerful entity. This says something to us right where we are. Everyone we meet is an opportunity. Meetings that are unexpected or planned offer us an opportunity. In our present spiritual environment it’s essential to see this is our call.