For This Reason 5

[HKHaugan]

When I was about 10 or 11 I remember traveling with my dad and visiting a friend of his for dinner in Salisbury, NC. His friend was very proper and much to my dad’s embarrassment corrected me about some local dinner etiquette that was quite uncalled for I found out later. When you are in certain levels of class conscious people there are a number of unwritten rules that govern the group. You are just supposed to know what they are. This is true not only of small areas, social levels and ethnic groups it prevails in church denominations and other so-called religious settings as well. If you don’t know the rules you’re dead in the water of social acceptance. This is the way the world is structured, rule centered and judgmental. That is an atmosphere that has crept into many churches, influenced the choosing of leadership and determined policy. This system can be found in every human gathering from teen gangs, school groups, neighborhood in’s and outers and all the hidden agenda of legal systems that you just have to learn in order to fit in.

What is truly great about being a disciple of Jesus is the realization you are not under the gun of the world’s judgment. If you are a man you don’t have to play a macho game to be accepted. If you are a woman you don’t have to play the beauty game. If you are some ethnically conditioned person and think you have to look or act like that definition, forget it, there is more to being a real person than fitting in. Life is bigger, more expansive and fuller than earning acceptance by some judgmental group. The goal is to be like Christ wherever you are. It is like moving into another dimension where your mind, heart and spirit are functioning on a more mobile level. I think it is quite interesting that a number of denominational churches have decided to drop their denominational name so as to appear more open.

On the other hand in the secular world the group or tribe-like crowd you once belonged to can be reached through the exterior symbols that they use to identify themselves. This is the way Christian motorcyclists have chosen to share the Gospel. The real issue is how the Lord leads you to be a witness based on your personal experience, where you’ve been and what you have come out of. This is the freedom we’re talking about. You are free to be who you are in Christ and sort out the bad from the good wherever you are. Paul said “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant to all, that I might gain the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. (1Cor.9:19-21).”

What Paul is dealing with is attitude, the attitude we carry into every next moment. Here is where we can assess the condition of our heart. When we met Jesus and accepted Him did our attitude change? Do we still fear not fitting in? Do we still approach people with a wary concern about acceptance? Are we still spending more time trying to read the unwritten demands of the people we run into or groups we are trying to join?

Attitude is the condition of the heart. This is exactly where Paul is leading us. Am I willing to trust Jesus in every next moment? The way we know this is attitude is by checking Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 2:5-11, where he says, “Let this attitude be in you which was in Christ Jesus…” Having gotten Paul’s drift let’s do a quick review of chapter 3:

Eph.3:1 Here is Paul the Jew whose entire educated life was taught that Gentiles were dogs now reaching out as a Jew who brings the Messiah Jesus as the Savior of the Gentiles and includes them in the plan of salvation.

Vs.2 The administration of God’s grace is also translated the stewardship of His grace. Being an administrator, a steward, means managing that grace. Here is a spiritual gift, spiritual management. We will get into gifts in Chapter 4 but right now we want to continue the sequence of his thoughts. The whole issue of how he has been given the task of managing God’s grace is directed through another gift, being a missionary. The important point about gifts is this, when God calls someone to do something He provides the gift to accomplish the task.

Vs.3-5 This management was a mystery, the understanding of which was revealed to Paul, the apostles and prophets (spiritual gifts). It was this:

Vs.6-7 The good news, the Gospel, is this, the Gentiles are heirs, members and sharers together with Israel in the promise of Christ Jesus. Paul mentions another gift, the gift of service. He is a servant.

Vs.8 Here he reveals he is blessed with another gift, preaching.

Vs.9 Preaching enables him to manage the mystery that God had kept secret until Jesus came.

Vs.10-11 Why had God waited until Jesus came? His purpose was that His wisdom be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. These are the invisible dominions of darkness he will speak to in 6:12. The church is God’s personal spiritual family He initiated and prepared for the end times which began when Jesus came into the world.

Vs.12-13 Before Jesus came God was completely unapproachable, a God so pure and Holy that to even be near Him would cause total disintegration. Sin and evil could not exist next to God. The Gospel tells us this; the perfect sacrifice of Christ solved the separation. His perfect sacrifice enabled us to have direct access to the Father with freedom and confidence. That is the good news. But for Paul that was not all. His chains are a blessing to him because they are a continual reminder of the inclusion of the Gentiles. His chains are a sign of their glory. Every believer, both Jew and Gentile, is part of the glory of God manifested.

Vs.14-21 So ‘for this reason,’ a phrase he used at the beginning of this chapter to reveal the mystery, here it is used to offer a prayer for their continual experience of the riches Jesus brings them. Paul wants them to have the fullness of God that he has known. He closes this thought with an ecstatic doxology to lift up the glory of God for all that He has done.

So we have been through several themes that challenge where we are as disciples which by the way reveal Paul’s tack. We have an amazing identity established as a freely given gift to us by the blood of Jesus through faith. We are citizens of His Kingdom, aliens in the secular world and have been given the privilege to be witnesses to Him with meaning, significance, purpose and mission. We have been given a trust to trust, to be spontaneous in every next moment by the power of the Holy Spirit, discerning, evaluating through the Word and responding with the Lord as our focus. It is His attitude that becomes our attitude, an attitude of humility before God in the presence of others. It is this transforming quality that makes us true disciples. Simply stated it is backing off from self and just letting the Lord be the Lord through us in every next moment.

We are now going to make a transition. The first three chapters of Ephesians are about what God has done for us giving us a new eternal identity, a new attitude and something really new, spiritual spontaneity. The last three chapters are about how we respond. As we look forward to them be aware that they will present a real challenge to any world conditioned attitude, idea and conclusion we took for granted was right and maybe still hang on to.

One more thing, we have to drop one world conditioning phrase so seemingly correct and that is ‘common sense.’ Common sense is exactly what we want to rid ourselves of. The sense we want is spiritual sense. Common sense is what the world leads us to accept as the methodology of letting hidden agenda, unwritten social legalism and the spirit of fear dominate how we relate. Spiritual sense is spiritual freedom for every next moment. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Gal.5:1).”