3. Introduction

Introduction

Twelve men, one from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, had been sent by Moses to reconnoitre the Land. Forty days later they returned, two of them staggering under the load of an enormous bunch of grapes, brought back as an earnest of the produce of Canaan. Then there ensued the most astonishing scene. This great host of people had migrated from Egypt (with overpowering evidences of God’s might on their side), for the clear purpose of entering into possession of the Land of Promise; but they now refused to proceed. Four men stood for going ahead; the rest clamoured to return. For the time being the majority prevailed against the four, and they all turned their backs on the land flowing with milk and honey and set their faces to the wilderness. The few saw that country as the land of true delight which was their possession by gift of God, and were all for courage and obedience. The many were blind to the delights of Canaan under divine gift and therefore were not urged forward by its appeal; but they did see the difficulties and thought it not worth while. So for many years (in the cases of the individuals concerned, for ever), they missed God’s best, which was life in the land of promise, and chose instead death in the desert.

"Now these things happened to them for ensamples, and they were written for our learning," and in order to learn our lesson, we, as Christians, have to turn to the Ephesian Epistle, for there we learn what is God’s best for us, and are warned of the danger of missing it.

Every Christian knows the story of our salvation from the point of view of our own experience. It all began with the awakening of a sense of need. There followed the confession of the need, and the acceptance of Christ by faith, and the realisation that the need was met in Him. This experience is epitomised in the words "repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." Thereafter, like Israel in the desert, we have experienced God’s daily care and guidance. All this is great and good, but can anyone really think that God is satisfied merely with meeting our need, or even that God’s activity in blessing toward us began with the object of meeting our need? In the Father’s home He has His own delights and concerns in which His own heart is satisfied and the object of this Epistle is to tell how God has acted, out from His own delight before the foundation of the world, to plan and create a world in perfect accord with His own good pleasure, then to allocate to us a place with Himself in that world. This is the bearing of the phrase "according to the good pleasure of His will" (1:5). From the opened heaven God spoke, "This is My Beloved Son, in whom is all My good pleasure."

It sometimes happens that a girl - perhaps engaged to be married befriends a little boy, to the great pleasure of the little boy. From time to time she presents him with a model Deltic Locomotive, or of Stirling Moss in an Aston Martin. This pleases him beyond measure, and he thinks of her as the best of all friends. But after all, when evening comes she returns into her own world of delights from which he is entirely excluded, and so it must be in the nature of things. What God has done is something quite different from this. He has not given us good gifts and then returned to His own world. The thought is staggering when once seized. It is that when God began the story, long before our need arose, and indeed before our existence, "before the foundation of the world," He reached out from His supreme delight in His Well-Beloved to create a world to be headed up and filled with the fulness of that wonderful Person, and to predestinate His elect to a place in that world as their everlasting home. The thought that God has His own centre of delight and action is further illustrated from the Gospels. Christ came to reveal the Father, and quite early in the gospel story He began to speak to the disciples about the Father. The contrast between the first and last words recorded concerning this revelation are highly instructive. According to Matthew 6:1-34 our Father in heaven stoops down to be concerned with His children’s needs in their homes. He knows that they say "What shall we eat?" and "Wherewith shall we be clothed?" He makes the concerns of their homes His concern, so that they do not need to be anxious about them. See the contrast in John 14:1-31; John 15:1-27; John 16:1-33; John 17:1-26. Their thoughts are taken away to the Father’s house in heaven. There is a home which has its own interests and joys, and His prayer is that their hearts might be there, as indeed, spirit, soul and body they will in the end be there. When the moment came for God to put into execution what He had purposed before the world’s foundation, His elect were spiritually dead and distant from God. This is the subject of the second chapter, which tells how God "who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us," has dealt with this death and distance, through the death and resurrection of Christ. When we were dead He has given us life in that we have been quickened, raised and seated with Christ. For our distance He has given nearness to Himself in that we are "made nigh by the blood of Christ."

It is, however, in the third chapter unquestionably that we come to the heart of what the Spirit of God is bringing before us in this epistle; and few would question that it is in verses 17 to 19 of this third chapter that we reach, in the apostle’s prayer, the heart of the matter: "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." Thus to know the love of Christ is the corn and the wine, the milk and honey, the wealth and plenty of the Christian’s Canaan. Itis the pure delight of a day which will know no evening shade.

Paul’s ministry was to preach "the unsearchable riches of Christ," and this prayer was for the possession by the saints of the true riches. It has been said that the world is like a shop window. We are to imagine a certain day on which the most extraordinary purchases were being attempted in a large store. It all started with what they saw in the windows. Someone had been round crossing the prices. Here was a mink coat marked at £5. Here was a camera with every conceivable refinement offered at 10p. There is a piece of tinsel decoration priced at £250, and a toy motor car at £800. Only in so far as people have an informed knowledge of the true values of things from a worldly point of view could they be preserved from making fools of themselves in a case like this. The world is like a shop window in which someone has reversed the prices. Things which have in themselves little or no power of lasting satisfaction are valued highly and sought diligently. No value is put upon the things which are the true wealth, the real riches. With one voice this as well as other epistles declares that the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord is the real treasure. "The exceeding riches of His grace:" "the unsearchable riches of Christ." And to the Colossians: "the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ we have this treasure in earthen vessels."

What can we do about this great matter? We can do as Paul did: we can pray: and the very words we need are here put into our mouths. We shall learn that just as Israel had to fight for the possession and enjoyment of Canaan, so we shall have to fight for our Canaan. The closing words of the epistle deal with the fight, and at the end of Paul’s enumeration of the weapons of our warfare comes the weapon of "all-prayer," as Bunyan called it.

One of the Christian’s first steps in light is to learn what God in Christ has done for us, and his first prayers will always include request for our daily bread and for all our ordinary needs. We soon learn also the need for prayer concerning what God can do through us and others. But how slow we are to learn that so much Bible prayer is about what God can do in us, and the prayer in Ephesians three is one of the greatest of these: "now unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." Let us purpose now to pray often this prayer for a knowledge which passes knowledge, to know the love of Christ, to be filled with all the fulness of God, to possess God’s best.

Since it is not the intention in these studies to go through the epistle chapter by chapter, a brief synopsis will provide a basis for tracing selected themes.

1:3. Title. God’s activity in blessing toward us.

1:4 to 3:21: TEACHING.

• 1:4 to 14. God’s acts according to His Purpose.

• 1:15 to 2:22. The Church. The organism in which we are united to Christ.

• 1:15 to 23. Prayer for knowledge leading to the Church, Christ’s body.

• 2:1 to 10. The consequences of union with Christ.

• 2:11 to 22. In the Church all saints are one with each other.

• 3:1-12 The Mystery. Finality in the unfolding of God’s plan.

• 3:13 to 21. The Fulness of God prayed for.

4:1 to 6:20:CONDUCT 4:1 to 6. The Unity of the Spirit.

4:7 to 16. The Growth of the Body.

4:17 to 5:21. The Old and the New Man.

5:22 to 6:9. Relationships.

6:10 to 20. The Fight. The third verse of the first chapter is a kind of inspired title for the epistle, indicating that the subject is God’s activity in blessing toward us. This verse also specifies the realm in which our blessings are located - "heavenly places" - and the Person in whom they are bestowed - Christ. All the dominant themes of the epistle gather naturally under this head. This activity is according to purpose. In this purpose, the

Church is the organism in which we are united to Christ. The Mystery, or Secret, signifies the distinct advance made when Christ was ascended and the Spirit given, so that the full plan, hitherto hid in God, could be revealed. The intention in the pages which follow is to trace some of these threads through the epistle, with the prayer that the Spirit Himself may guide us into all the truth, and that we may find ourselves, as we tread these paths, in the living experience of dwelling in Canaan.