Excellency in Ephesians
A.W. Tozer said this in his book titled Knowledge of the Holy: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him…this should have first place.”
Ephesians is a letter that can do just that for us as the Church. If, as Tozer suggests, the Church’s greatest problem is a low view of God, then Ephesians is a perfect place to go. The high altitudes where its content soars is able to elevate our thinking of God to a much more worthy thinking of Him.
It has been called the “Queen of the Epistles”, and “the highest reach of New Testament thought.” It is the “Alps of the NT”. It is the elevator that takes our thoughts to the penthouse of NT thought. In it is found some of –if not the- most excellent thoughts in all of Scripture.
So now, if the Church is going to be worthy of Christ, and if we are going to live worthy of our calling (Eph. 4:1), then it starts with worthy thoughts of Him.
I suppose we ought to start Ephesians with a quick glance at Genesis. It was a lofty concept of God that was lost in the garden when Eve was deceived. Satan succeeded in changing the way Eve thought about God in order to change how she acted towards God. He succeeded in getting her to think less of God than what He actually was. Once that happened it was a slam-dunk in getting her to act against God. A wrong view of God led to rebellion against Him.
This is what we must guard against. This is where the battle is constantly fought. This is where Satan wins or loses. It starts in our thoughts of God. Living life worthy of God starts with thinking thoughts worthy of Him. Think about this a minute. What is idolatry? Idolatry is nothing more than thinking less of God than what He actually is. Idolatry is alternative ideas about who God is that do not line up with what God Himself has said He is like in the Bible. If we imagine God to be something other than what He has revealed Himself to be we are imagining another God – and therefore we are committing idolatry. Idolatry can be thinking that God is in statues made from gold or wood or it can be our own ideas and concepts we hold to we hold to about God. Regardless, if what we think of God is not what God is like then who we are thinking of is a different God than the One of the Bible.
I would say that we need to feel the weight of revelation. We need to see into the revelation of the who God is as given us in His Word and feel the great weight of Him who is infinite pressing down on our finiteness of our own minds. The knees of our imagination need to wobble underneath the thoughts of who He is. Then we can begin to say with David in Psalm 139:6, “Aaah! This is knowledge too wonderful for me! It is far too lofty for me to attain!” Ephesians can do this to us.
One other comment here is in order. This is a letter that dwarfs the greatest theologians. You can drown in its depths. But, it is not written to any elite group of scholars. It is written to the most ordinary of people. We have been saying that this letter reaches the highest heights of NT thought, but, it’s reach is to even the lowest of men. You know how we know? Because the people he gives instructions to in the last half of the letter are ordinary people in their everyday lives (husbands, wives, fathers, children, workers, etc). The point is that every extraordinary thing Paul is saying in the 1st half of this book is not meant for extraordinary people. It is meant for ordinary people in their ordinary lives. Paul had in mind all Christians no matter what their status. His expectation as he wrote was that all Christians from the highest to the lowest learn the great truths he was teaching in his letter. These are certainly things that Philippians 4:8 tells us to think on when Paul said there, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” The greatest teachings of the Christian faith are to be thought-over and become the very ground from which every-day Christian life grows. Great Christian living springs from great Christian thinking which comes from great Christian doctrine.
So let none of us here adopt an attitude that doctrine is for seminary and that we just need “practical” teachings. Doctrine is always practical. Do not think that the practice of your faith is unrelated to the towering thoughts within your faith. The fact that Paul speaks to husbands, wives, children, fathers, and slaves proves that thinking wrong. We as ordinary people whom the extraordinary God came to should occupy our ordinary minds with the most extraordinary thoughts found within the few chapters of this little letter. Then we will be the husbands, wives, children, fathers, and slaves that will glorify Christ in an extraordinary way in our ordinary lives.
Paul writes with one long sentence from verse 1 all the way to verse 14. These verses are divided into several ways. The first way is to highlight the Trinity (The Father, 3-6; The Son, 7-12; Holy Spirit, 13-14). The second way is to highlight time (Past, 3-6; Present, 7-12; Future, 13-14).
First is the Declaration of Praise. Paul says, “Praise be..” which comes from the Greek word, “eulogeo”. It is where we get our word “eulogy”. It means “to speak well of”, or, “a message of praise or commendation”, or, “a message declaring someone’s goodness”. We might say in our vernacular, “to talk someone up” and “to speak highly of someone”. Other translations like the NAS may say “Blessed be”. Paul starts out this section with a declaration of praise to God. It’s as if in Paul’s mind the things he was about to say about God were so great that his heart couldn’t go on unless he praised God first for those things. Psalm 103:1-2 say, “Praise the Lord O my soul; all my inmost being praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not His benefits.” Do we know how God has benefited us? If we do than we will praise Him from our inmost being. And, if we praise the Lord like that – from our inmost being – the Lord will never accuse us of worshipping with our mouths but not our hearts. Praise to God is our first priority as the Church. It’s our right response to our God and Father who has truly blessed us. And if we follow along with Paul’s thoughts here praising God will become the priority of our own hearts as Christians.
Second is the Direction of our Praise. Paul says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Paul is saying that this praise, this blessing, this speaking well of is to be directed to the God and Father of Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us to give praise to our Triune God, but, there is this particular emphasis on God the Father. Jesus told His disciples to pray to the Father by saying, “Our Father, who is in heaven…” Paul says in Ephesians 1:17 and in 3:14 that he prays to the Father. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me”. This is restated in Ephesians 2:18 by Paul, “For through Him [Jesus] we both [Jew and Gentile] have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Here in our verse we see that the Father is the One who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In 3:15 the Father has a spiritual family that spans into both heaven and earth, and all of His family has His name. Paul wants us to see particularly who the Father is and what He has done for us through Jesus Christ because it is through Jesus Christ that all praise is to be given to the Father.
Why does Paul say this? Why does Paul often say “the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ”? It is to distinguish the God he’s talking about. The God and Father of Jesus Christ is not the God or the Father of Mohammed, or of Buddha, or Joseph Smith or anyone else. He is the God who so loved the world that He gave His One and His Only Son, Jesus Christ, so that anyone who believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Paul says this also for us to identify Him as our Father. According to John 20:17, after His resurrection, Jesus said that His God and Father had now become our God and Father. The One who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is our God and Father also because we are now included in Christ.
Third is the Demand for Praise. Paul says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ”. We praise God because of who He is and how He has blessed us. It is the same Greek word for “praise” in the verse but it is not the same meaning. When it is used to describe how we treat God it means we speak well of Him. But, when it is used of how God treats us it always means how He treats us. He treats us with great kindness and we therefore speak great things about Him. Several things to note here:
We have been blessed already, God “has blessed us..” This is already done. It’s past tense. As Christians we need to realize that God has already provided everything to us in Jesus Christ that we will need for godliness and for abundant life. This is the way the Bible talks. Second Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…” Colossians 2:10 says, “you have been given fullness in Christ…” As one commentator put it, “It is not what God will do for us, but, rather what He has already given us. Our resources in God are not simply promised; they are possessed. The believer’s need therefore is not to receive something more, but, to do something more with what he [already] has.” Let us do more with all that we already have in Christ. (Illustration of my UPS package coming on Friday. I was waiting for something to arrive. When it came it would have been silly for me to have taken it in my house and not opened it. It would have been even more silly for me to start contacting the company and asking them for it).
Notice secondly the Source of these blessings, He has “blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing…” In the heavenly realms means these blessings have their origin in heaven where God Himself is and where Christ is. The very place where Christ ascended to is the place where these blessing come from. Wuest says, “It is that we saints while still in the body on earth, are enjoying some of the blessing which we will enjoy in heaven.” But it is worth noting what else the Bible says here. Over in 2:6 Paul says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him [the Father] in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”. Past tense, already done. We are already raised up with Christ and seated in heaven because that is where He is and Colossians 3:1-4 tells us that our life is hidden in Christ who is seated at the right hand of God. Christ, who is our life, is there, and, we will finally be there too when this life is over.
Notice too that the blessings are Spiritual, “with every spiritual blessing..” The primary meaning here is not spiritual as opposed to physical, or immaterial as opposed to material. The word is pneumatikos, and everywhere in the NT it refers to the working of the Holy Spirit. Weust says, “the word ‘spiritual’ describes the blessings, not as spiritual as contrasted to physical, but to blessings produced and given us by the Holy Spirit.” Why is it important to make that distinction? Because These are blessings that are exclusive to believers because it is we who have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. These blessings are to make us spiritual people, or, mature in Christ. The Corinthians were people who were not applying their blessings in Christ and Paul called them unspiritual. In 1 Corinthians 3:1 he said, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ.”
Fourthly, these blessings are Sufficient. Paul says “every spiritual blessing..” We have everything we need in Christ to be mature in Him. Again, 2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…” We lack no resource to grow in Christ. John 1:16 says, “From the fullness of Christ’s grace we have received one blessing after another.” There’s more than we can keep up with. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” All things have been given to us. There is no deficiency in the provision God has given us through His Son Jesus Christ. We have received every spiritual blessing in Christ.
A.W. Tozer said this in his book titled Knowledge of the Holy: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him…this should have first place.”
Ephesians is a letter that can do just that for us as the Church. If, as Tozer suggests, the Church’s greatest problem is a low view of God, then Ephesians is a perfect place to go. The high altitudes where its content soars is able to elevate our thinking of God to a much more worthy thinking of Him.
It has been called the “Queen of the Epistles”, and “the highest reach of New Testament thought.” It is the “Alps of the NT”. It is the elevator that takes our thoughts to the penthouse of NT thought. In it is found some of –if not the- most excellent thoughts in all of Scripture.
So now, if the Church is going to be worthy of Christ, and if we are going to live worthy of our calling (Eph. 4:1), then it starts with worthy thoughts of Him.
I suppose we ought to start Ephesians with a quick glance at Genesis. It was a lofty concept of God that was lost in the garden when Eve was deceived. Satan succeeded in changing the way Eve thought about God in order to change how she acted towards God. He succeeded in getting her to think less of God than what He actually was. Once that happened it was a slam-dunk in getting her to act against God. A wrong view of God led to rebellion against Him.
This is what we must guard against. This is where the battle is constantly fought. This is where Satan wins or loses. It starts in our thoughts of God. Living life worthy of God starts with thinking thoughts worthy of Him. Think about this a minute. What is idolatry? Idolatry is nothing more than thinking less of God than what He actually is. Idolatry is alternative ideas about who God is that do not line up with what God Himself has said He is like in the Bible. If we imagine God to be something other than what He has revealed Himself to be we are imagining another God – and therefore we are committing idolatry. Idolatry can be thinking that God is in statues made from gold or wood or it can be our own ideas and concepts we hold to we hold to about God. Regardless, if what we think of God is not what God is like then who we are thinking of is a different God than the One of the Bible.
I would say that we need to feel the weight of revelation. We need to see into the revelation of the who God is as given us in His Word and feel the great weight of Him who is infinite pressing down on our finiteness of our own minds. The knees of our imagination need to wobble underneath the thoughts of who He is. Then we can begin to say with David in Psalm 139:6, “Aaah! This is knowledge too wonderful for me! It is far too lofty for me to attain!” Ephesians can do this to us.
One other comment here is in order. This is a letter that dwarfs the greatest theologians. You can drown in its depths. But, it is not written to any elite group of scholars. It is written to the most ordinary of people. We have been saying that this letter reaches the highest heights of NT thought, but, it’s reach is to even the lowest of men. You know how we know? Because the people he gives instructions to in the last half of the letter are ordinary people in their everyday lives (husbands, wives, fathers, children, workers, etc). The point is that every extraordinary thing Paul is saying in the 1st half of this book is not meant for extraordinary people. It is meant for ordinary people in their ordinary lives. Paul had in mind all Christians no matter what their status. His expectation as he wrote was that all Christians from the highest to the lowest learn the great truths he was teaching in his letter. These are certainly things that Philippians 4:8 tells us to think on when Paul said there, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” The greatest teachings of the Christian faith are to be thought-over and become the very ground from which every-day Christian life grows. Great Christian living springs from great Christian thinking which comes from great Christian doctrine.
So let none of us here adopt an attitude that doctrine is for seminary and that we just need “practical” teachings. Doctrine is always practical. Do not think that the practice of your faith is unrelated to the towering thoughts within your faith. The fact that Paul speaks to husbands, wives, children, fathers, and slaves proves that thinking wrong. We as ordinary people whom the extraordinary God came to should occupy our ordinary minds with the most extraordinary thoughts found within the few chapters of this little letter. Then we will be the husbands, wives, children, fathers, and slaves that will glorify Christ in an extraordinary way in our ordinary lives.
Paul writes with one long sentence from verse 1 all the way to verse 14. These verses are divided into several ways. The first way is to highlight the Trinity (The Father, 3-6; The Son, 7-12; Holy Spirit, 13-14). The second way is to highlight time (Past, 3-6; Present, 7-12; Future, 13-14).
First is the Declaration of Praise. Paul says, “Praise be..” which comes from the Greek word, “eulogeo”. It is where we get our word “eulogy”. It means “to speak well of”, or, “a message of praise or commendation”, or, “a message declaring someone’s goodness”. We might say in our vernacular, “to talk someone up” and “to speak highly of someone”. Other translations like the NAS may say “Blessed be”. Paul starts out this section with a declaration of praise to God. It’s as if in Paul’s mind the things he was about to say about God were so great that his heart couldn’t go on unless he praised God first for those things. Psalm 103:1-2 say, “Praise the Lord O my soul; all my inmost being praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not His benefits.” Do we know how God has benefited us? If we do than we will praise Him from our inmost being. And, if we praise the Lord like that – from our inmost being – the Lord will never accuse us of worshipping with our mouths but not our hearts. Praise to God is our first priority as the Church. It’s our right response to our God and Father who has truly blessed us. And if we follow along with Paul’s thoughts here praising God will become the priority of our own hearts as Christians.
Second is the Direction of our Praise. Paul says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Paul is saying that this praise, this blessing, this speaking well of is to be directed to the God and Father of Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us to give praise to our Triune God, but, there is this particular emphasis on God the Father. Jesus told His disciples to pray to the Father by saying, “Our Father, who is in heaven…” Paul says in Ephesians 1:17 and in 3:14 that he prays to the Father. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me”. This is restated in Ephesians 2:18 by Paul, “For through Him [Jesus] we both [Jew and Gentile] have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Here in our verse we see that the Father is the One who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. In 3:15 the Father has a spiritual family that spans into both heaven and earth, and all of His family has His name. Paul wants us to see particularly who the Father is and what He has done for us through Jesus Christ because it is through Jesus Christ that all praise is to be given to the Father.
Why does Paul say this? Why does Paul often say “the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ”? It is to distinguish the God he’s talking about. The God and Father of Jesus Christ is not the God or the Father of Mohammed, or of Buddha, or Joseph Smith or anyone else. He is the God who so loved the world that He gave His One and His Only Son, Jesus Christ, so that anyone who believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Paul says this also for us to identify Him as our Father. According to John 20:17, after His resurrection, Jesus said that His God and Father had now become our God and Father. The One who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is our God and Father also because we are now included in Christ.
Third is the Demand for Praise. Paul says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ”. We praise God because of who He is and how He has blessed us. It is the same Greek word for “praise” in the verse but it is not the same meaning. When it is used to describe how we treat God it means we speak well of Him. But, when it is used of how God treats us it always means how He treats us. He treats us with great kindness and we therefore speak great things about Him. Several things to note here:
We have been blessed already, God “has blessed us..” This is already done. It’s past tense. As Christians we need to realize that God has already provided everything to us in Jesus Christ that we will need for godliness and for abundant life. This is the way the Bible talks. Second Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…” Colossians 2:10 says, “you have been given fullness in Christ…” As one commentator put it, “It is not what God will do for us, but, rather what He has already given us. Our resources in God are not simply promised; they are possessed. The believer’s need therefore is not to receive something more, but, to do something more with what he [already] has.” Let us do more with all that we already have in Christ. (Illustration of my UPS package coming on Friday. I was waiting for something to arrive. When it came it would have been silly for me to have taken it in my house and not opened it. It would have been even more silly for me to start contacting the company and asking them for it).
Notice secondly the Source of these blessings, He has “blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing…” In the heavenly realms means these blessings have their origin in heaven where God Himself is and where Christ is. The very place where Christ ascended to is the place where these blessing come from. Wuest says, “It is that we saints while still in the body on earth, are enjoying some of the blessing which we will enjoy in heaven.” But it is worth noting what else the Bible says here. Over in 2:6 Paul says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him [the Father] in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”. Past tense, already done. We are already raised up with Christ and seated in heaven because that is where He is and Colossians 3:1-4 tells us that our life is hidden in Christ who is seated at the right hand of God. Christ, who is our life, is there, and, we will finally be there too when this life is over.
Notice too that the blessings are Spiritual, “with every spiritual blessing..” The primary meaning here is not spiritual as opposed to physical, or immaterial as opposed to material. The word is pneumatikos, and everywhere in the NT it refers to the working of the Holy Spirit. Weust says, “the word ‘spiritual’ describes the blessings, not as spiritual as contrasted to physical, but to blessings produced and given us by the Holy Spirit.” Why is it important to make that distinction? Because These are blessings that are exclusive to believers because it is we who have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. These blessings are to make us spiritual people, or, mature in Christ. The Corinthians were people who were not applying their blessings in Christ and Paul called them unspiritual. In 1 Corinthians 3:1 he said, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ.”
Fourthly, these blessings are Sufficient. Paul says “every spiritual blessing..” We have everything we need in Christ to be mature in Him. Again, 2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…” We lack no resource to grow in Christ. John 1:16 says, “From the fullness of Christ’s grace we have received one blessing after another.” There’s more than we can keep up with. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” All things have been given to us. There is no deficiency in the provision God has given us through His Son Jesus Christ. We have received every spiritual blessing in Christ.
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