Administering Grace

Reading: Ephesians 3:1-13

Let me ask you a question – “What gets you really excited?”

Just imagine you’re with your friends for a meal

To begin with the conversation revolves around the results of the Britain’s got Talent show – you go along with it
then the conversations gets on to music – and you go along with it

and then there’s a digression when one of your friends starts talking about the weather – and how cloudy it was today

Now you happen to be a member of the cloud appreciation society (yes, it really exists!) and your heart misses a beat.
suddenly you feel yourself getting excited,

you bring to the table all sorts of fascinating stuff about cumulo nimbus, strato cirrus

Appreciating clouds is why God put you on the planet!

… and even the rarest of the rare clouds – the Kelvin Helmholtz formation!

And after a few minutes you get back on to music – the digression is over.

That’s what we have in Ephesians 3:1-13 –

an excited digression about why God put Paul on the planet

Look at v1

1 For this reason I, Paul, …

… it needs a particular verb to folow it “I Paul do something

that verb doesn’t appear until v14

1 For this reason I, Paul, v14 “Kneel before the father …

the intervening text is a digression – and it’s a digression where Paul pours out his heart about why God put him on the planet

and what that means for those young Ephesian Christians he was writing to –
and also for us today.

I Paul …

Just look at the way he describes himself here

Any other prisoner would have said “I Felix (say) am a prisoner of the emperor Nero because of a charge of sedition”

Paul says

1 … I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus [because] of you Gentiles—

Wait a minute – wasn’t he a prisoner of the Emperor Nero at this point? Wasn’t he attached to (probably) two soldiers who would lose their own lives if Paul escaped?

Of course, but there was a much more significant confinement in his life – his attachment to Christ!

He could have no other life’s purpose than to live and minister for Christ!

He was suffering in order that the gospel of Christ may impact the lives of the people he loved –

especially to the gentiles (=non Jews)

and this immediately begs the question …

What suffering, what privation, what cost are we willing to bear in order that the gospel of Christ will impact the people we love?

Paul gives us two reasons why God placed him on planet earth

to reveal God’s mystery (v2-6)

2 Surely you have heard about … God’s grace [or gift] that was given to me for you,

[so what is this gift God’s given Paul?

This gift is a mystery that’s been made known to me

The word Paul uses here has a different nuance from our English word ‘mystery‘

What happens to you when you watch a mystery drama on the TV?

you’re bombarded with all kinds of information and clues – some relevant and some to throw you off track
most of us are completely bamboozled until the end –
and even then a good mystery drama leaves us with questions unanswered!

it’s a mystery – an unknown – can’t be fathomed.

Some people think of mathematics as a mystery – “I just can’t get my head round it”

However, …

take a magic trick for example – this too is a mystery –

but suppose the magician takes you into his confidence and shows you how it’s done

at that point it’s not a mystery to you any more – the truth has been revealed to you –

That is the kind of mystery Paul is talking about here

something which can be revealed, at the right time and to the right person, and be easily understood.

So Paul, how did you get to know this mystery?

Did someone tell you, did you work it out from first principles? No

It was made known to Paul by revelation,

God got his message through to Paul – He revealed this mystery to him.

Now we sometimes use this word to mean something quite ethereal.

When we use the phrase “I’ve had a revelation” we usually mean “I’ve had a brainwave” “I’ve thought of something I didn’t think I realised before”

I’m sure that concept is bound up in Paul’s word here, but there’s a bit more to it.

His revelation comes from God and got to him through a whole variety of different means.

Through the scriptures, through his teachers, through his own thinking,
and through observing what God was doing in the churches he’d planted

and the sum total of this was a revelation of something he would never have worked out all by himself!

And God gave Paul and the church the task of spilling the beans to the rest of humanity

4 In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,

5 which was not made known to men in other generations [but] has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.

So what is this mystery he’s in chains for?

It is that by union with Christ, Jews and Gentiles have become a single people

They have been brought together.

This has enormous importance for us!

We are non-Jews (mostly)
therefore we have bee united with Christ!
God’s love and purpose now extend the the whole of humanity in Christ!

In v6 Paul uses three parallel expressions all with a word in common to unpack the togetherness of Jews and Gentiles – I.e. everyone

heirs together of the same blessing (forgiveness and oneness with God)
members together of the same body (the church of Jesus Christ)
sharers together of the same promise. (the holy spirit’s presence in our lives)

So it is this double union – with Christ and with one another – that is the mystery that had been revealed to Paul and apostles

The second reason Paul was on the planet

to administer God’s grace

V7 I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me thorough the working of his power.

E.g. administering medicine – you’re the one who gives life-giving concoction!

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apply to us >>>

on your front line what might administering

The third reason God put Paul on planet earth:

to fulfil God’s commission

Paul seemed rather surprised that God chose someone like him

even though I’m a nobody

Look at Eph 3:8

8 Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me:

He takes a superlative “least” and turns it into a comparative –

in English we might say “leaster than” (more accurate although clumsy)

This is not Paul being artificially self deprecating, or grovelling

he’s not running himself down in order that to appear extra-humble, he’s pointing us to the enormity of God’s grace in comparison with his own smallness
He is unworthy – yet God’s given him an immense privilege

8 … to preach [proclaim] to the Gentiles [=the rest of the world] the unsearchable [unimaginable] riches of Christ,

So his commission – and ours – was to make known to others what Christ had made known to him …

Does it ever amaze you that God shold choose you?

He took a risk!

[Bishop Alf Stanway to ordinands]

“If other people knew you like God knows you, all your faults, all your vain thought, all your sins, would they trust you with the kind of work God trusts you with? Here is the supreme confidence that God has in his own grace. He will take the life of you or me or Paul and give you the privilege of being his saints.

I have a union with God in Christ

my maker is my father and my friend
how can we possibly keep that to ourselves?

even though society is spiritually / ideologically chaotic

So how is this going to happen?

Imagine a building site.

It’s chaos!
It’s just bare land with a few foundations being dug.

But in the corner of the site is a show house, finished and fully kitted out – looks marvellous!

If you, as a potential buyer, want to know what this building site will one day turn into, you need to go to the show house and look around it!
it will reveal to you what will happen from all the chaos.

God’s great plan is that the church will display what He wants to do with the chaos of society

we are his show house
so mankind can look at the church and see what God wants to do for the world.

Eph 3:10 [God’s] intent was that now, through the church, [the show house] the manifold wisdom of God should be made known

God’s plan in the OT was that He would be made known through the people of Israel to the nations around them and to the world at large.

But now God’s plan has developed into a new phase – Jews and non-Jews brought together and He’s declaring this through the church!
and that we his eternal purpose (v11)

even though this is a spiritual battle

To whom does the church reveal God’s wisdom? bomb-shell

Eph 3:10 His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms,

Those are the same words used in Eph 6 – our battle is not against flesh and blood,

the real enemies are the forces in the heavenly realms

Why does Satan so often go for Christians? – e.g. when baptised?

Is he jealous? (perhaps)
is he devious? (yes)
but fundamentally it’s because now you’ve declared yourself to be on God’s side and therefore, you pose a threat to him!
He can see in you the one thing he hates – a symbol of his own eventual defeat!

Satan, the spiritual forces, look at us in Christ and they see God’s show house!

They tremble – when you act for Christ at work,
when you come to the small group and pray ,
when you read and absorb your Bible,
when you give financially
when you serve God with your time

and if ever the thought crosses your mind “I’d like to invite so-and-so to something at my home or at church – maybe God will ignite a few spiritual sparks in them”, what does Satan do?

Throws every conceivable excuse, diversion and barrier in your way! You’re a threat to him!
because in Christ we have hope in this life and eternally!

A month before he died Jean-Paul Sartre wrote “Life is ugly, bad and without hope”

but the Christian need never have to say that!

I’m also linked up together with other people in the church – to declare the transforming work of Christ to a lost and dying world.

That is the mystery we’ve had revealed to us

You are in Christ.
You are joined to others
You are God’s show-house to the world

Pray

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That’s wonderful

Listen to these words

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up to live out the meaning of its creed that all men are created equal that my four little children will one day be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”

Those were Martin Luther King’s prophetic words in 1963

Here is god’s new society – created with the power to live out ML’s dream how? Throught he blood of Christ! He’s destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall.