Ephesians Series

by Athol Walter

Part 3 - Ephesians 1:2-14

The Church's One Foundation

We did not quite finish the introductory salutation in our last study, so there is a little more to say about it before we proceed.

Paul wraps up his opening greetings by wishing them grace and peace.

Grace is an extremely important word in the Christian's vocabulary, and also in Paul's epistles in general and Ephesians in particular. I think, however, that we should recognise that in these opening verses, Paul is following the custom of his time in addressing a letter. When we write to someone named Mr. Smith, we happily (and perhaps unthinkingly) start off by writing "Dear Mr. Smith." And in many cases, we may never have met Mr. Smith before. Yet, we don't hesitate to address this stranger as "Dear" simply because it is the custom.

So apart from a couple of comments, we will leave a more detailed examination of the word "grace" until we come to it in the context of the letter.

The Greeks' customary form of greeting in Paul's day was the word grace. The Jews, however, would greet you with the word shalom, that is, they would wish you peace. And in Paul's greeting, dealing as he must with both Jews and Greeks - and Greek speakers of other nationalities - he combines the two greetings into one.

The Greek word for grace is charis, from which we derive such words as "charisma" and "charismatic". The Greek word for peace is irene, which we sometimes use as a woman's name.

In the first study in this series, I presented an outline of the epistle which was designed to show the balance between the various sections. I realise that some of our readers may not be too familiar with the subject of structures in Scripture, so to give a little idea of what it is about, and how a search for the underlying structure can help, I will use the balancing points that there are between the opening and closing salutations of Ephesians.

The two sections are 1:1,2 and 6:21 -24. In the first section, we have the subject of Paul's appointment by, and service for the Lord. He talks about his apostleship. In the closing section, we have another servant of the Lord mentioned, Tychicus, and mention is made of his service (a faithful minister) and appointment (in the Lord).

Back in the opening verses, we have Paul's greetings to the saints and the faithful. In the closing verses, we have his greetings to those who love the Lord Christ Jesus in all sincerity. There is also the mention of Tychicus being a "faithful" minister echoing the "faithful" saints at the beginning.

And when he greets them in the opening verses, he prays for grace and peace for them. At the end, he prays for peace to the brethren, love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (see 1:2) and finally, in 6:24, that grace would be with all who love our Lord Christ Jesus in sincerity.

The question may arise in some reader's mind as to the significance of the foregoing. Two things come quickly to mind. Firstly, I find my memory being greatly helped by spending a little time considering both the similar and contrasting thoughts. And secondly, it seems to me that the Holy Spirit emphasises points by either their repetition or contrast in the parallel sections. Others undoubtedly have keener minds than I and may not need the help, but I find I need things hammered home a number of times before I start to get the message. 

While we may not refer to balancing points in the structures all the time in our studies, we will certainly do it from time to time.

We now come to the next section, which is from v. 3 to v. 14 of ch. 1. If you will refer to the outline (from my first study), you will see that the balancing section is 4:1-6. I will leave you to do the comparison for yourself.

I am faced with a dilemma as we come to these verses. 1 gave this study the title "The Charter of The Church", and my dilemma is whether to talk about which church I mean at this point, or wait until we get down to the end of the chapter where the Church in question is given its name. In view of the rather staggering things that are said of this company (church) in the verses under review, I think I must say something about it now.

The moment I wrote "which church I mean" in the preceding paragraph, I inferred that there is more than one church. I am not talking here of denominations. We will often ask someone which church they belong to, when we should have asked which denomination. Another misuse of language which is confusing, is when someone asks us what is our religion. While it could be used correctly now with our multicultural society, in the past the question usually referred to our denomination.

The correct answer to the question as to our religion is, "I am a Christian." The correct answer to the question as to our denomination is, "I am a Baptist or Anglican or Roman Catholic or whatever, as the case may be." But if you ask me what church I belong to, my answer will be, "I am a member of the Church which is His Body."

There is a strongly held belief amongst many believers that the New Testament speaks only of one church. And I have known some lovely folk to become very agitated when presented with the fact that the Bible speaks of a number of churches. I hope that you will keep an open mind about the matter until I have presented the Scriptural evidence.

The Winding Road To Church.

The quirks of language that twist and shape words as they move from one language to another is something I find very interesting. And the word "church" is a good example. Let's follow this winding road.

The word "church" comes from the Middle English word "chirche" or "cherche", which in turn was adapted or adopted from the Anglo-saxon "circe" or "cyrce". This was how the Anglo-Saxons brought the word into their tongue from Late Greek the word in that language being "kyriakon", which comes from "kyriake". There was another word used with it originally, that was dropped in usage over time but we need to supply that word in our minds. It is "doma" which means house, and the two words "kyriake doma" mean the Lord's House. "kyriake" in its turn is a form of the word "kyrios", which means Lord or Master, and that is a title often given to the Lord Christ Jesus.

So the original expression the Lord's house, "kyriake doma", after a rather meandering journey, becomes for us, the word "church". The Scottish word "kirk" is even closer to the original "kyriake". And we now use the word "church" to mean either a building, the people who meet in it, or even the organisation who owns the building. I hope you found that interesting. But here comes the harder part.

The Greek word that is translated "church" in our Bibles is not "kyriakon" at all. It is, as many of you know, the word "ekklesia", which is a familiar word, even though we change the double "kk" to double "cc". We speak of things ecclesiastical, and know that they relate to church matters. There is only one instance in the New Testament where the word church is not the translation of "ekklesia", and that is in Acts 19:37, where the Greek reads literally, "robbers of temples", not "churches" as in the AV. But what did the word mean when Paul and his fellow New Testament writers used it?

The word "ekklesia" occurs in the N.T. 115 times, and there are only three times where it is not translated "church". The word used in those three exceptions is the word "assembly". That word brings us very close to the real meaning of "ekklesia", but let us look at some examples. It is the way the Scripture uses a word that is the important thing.

The first time the word is used in the N.T. is in Matt. 16:18 where the Lord says: "And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church... "

This is a difficult verse for some, and at first glance it may appear to contradict what I am trying to say. But stay with me for a while.

The only other occurrence of "church" in the Gospels is two chapters further on, Matt. 18:17; "And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." Please read the context of this verse, before you decide whether it is speaking of the assembly of believers today. I will have to be selective now.

Acts 5:11; "And great fear came upon all the church and upon as many as heard these things."

Acts 18:22; "And when he had landed at Caesarea, and gone up, and saluted the church he went down to Antioch. "

Acts 19:32; "Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly (ekklesia) was confused; ..." Look also at verses 39 and 41 of this same chapter. These three verses are very important to our understanding of the word "church”.

Rom. 16:5; "Likewise greet the church that is in their house" 

1 Cor. 1: 1,2. Paul unto the church of God which is at Corinth... "

Eph.1:22-23; "And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. "

Well, we could go on multiplying references while not deepening our understanding much. But back to Acts for one last verse.

Acts 7:38; "This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:"

This quote comes from Stephen's defence before the Sanhedrin just prior to his death. The charge against him was very serious, and I doubt that Stephen would have been inclined to play with words. I think we can also take it as read that Stephen would have been given the words to say in this instance, in accordance with the Lord's promise in Matt, 10:16-20. So, when he speaks of the church in the wilderness, we can take it that both he and the Holy Spirit means what he said.

What is the church in the wilderness to which he refers? It is the nation of Israel, redeemed out of Egypt, and brought by the power and guidance of God to Mount Sinai where they were to be given the Law which would mark them out as separate from the other nations, and dedicated unto God.

Now think about those verses from Acts 19. In v. 32 we read "the assembly was confused". It is interesting that the translators have shied away from using the word church in the three verses in this chapter that refer to the assembly in the amphitheatre. As I mentioned above, in every other case in the NT, they translate ekklesia as church, But of course, these verses do not refer to the assembly of the Lord's people, so maybe they thought they could not use "church" here.

This raises another point. Believers throughout the centuries have taken over ordinary words, and imbued them with special significance because of their sacred associations. "Church" is one such word. As far as the meaning behind the word is concerned, and leaving aside the special atmosphere Christians have built around it, we could use the word church in these verses of Acts 19 perfectly legitimately. In one sense, it is a shame that the translators did not do so, because it tends to veil the truth from us somewhat.

I suggest that we should at least think the word "assembly" in our minds whenever we hear the word "church", for that is what the word means. A church is an assembly, a gathering together of a group of people for some common purpose, and the other important meaning behind the Greek word "ekklesia" is that the group of people so gathered were called out for that purpose.

So it was with Israel back in the days following the exodus. They were indeed the church in the wilderness. They had been called out of Egypt, away from the other people in Egypt, to be a special assembly for God.

The townspeople in Ephesus, stirred up by Demetrius the silversmith, came together in defence of their goddess Diana, and when they assembled in the theatre, they were a church.

But back to the New Testament "churches" or "assemblies". We would say that for someone to be a member of "the Church", i.e. a member of the company of believers, there must be first of all a recognition of the work of the Lord on the Cross, and a personal acceptance of that.

But what about Matt. 16:18, where the Lord says that on the confession of Himself as the Messiah, He was going to build His "church"? Peter had just made a great statement of faith that brought forth the Lord's response. Then just a few verses down, when the Lord starts to tell the disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and die, it is obvious that such an idea was totally foreign to them, as we can see from Peter's outspoken remonstration with the Lord. And in ch. 18 you will remember, the Lord speaks about them taking their disputes to the "church", as if it was a well known structure in their midst. It was indeed. It was the synagogue, where the Jewish people met for their psalm singing and the reading and exposition of their Scriptures.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for assembly or congregation as it is often translated is "qahal", and when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek that word was translated by "synagogue". When the various authors of the New Testament documents were inspired to write their works, however, they referred to the assembly of believers as the, or in some instances an " ecclesia".

So how many churches, or different assemblies are there in the New Testament? That is not easy to answer, but for our purposes we can recognise the following.

Firstly, the nation of Israel is recognised as an "assembly", distinct from the other nations around them. One of its titles is the Kingdom of God or Heaven. We must distinguish this company from our "church", and recognise that most of what is in the Gospels belongs to that company of the Lord's people.

Then there is the "assembly" of those who accepted Jesus of Nazareth as Israel's Messiah in the days of His earthly ministry, before the Cross and certainly before the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2.

Then there was a new "assembly" formed on the Day of Pentecost, which was still linked with Israel and Old Testament prophecies. This group, however, was called out from among the largely unbelieving nation of Israel, and is called amongst other things, "the Church of God and "the Bride of the Lamb".

And then there is the "Church which is His Body", which came into existence only after the divorcing of Israel at the end of the Book of Acts. This assembly is not connected with Abraham, Moses or Israel. It is a company in which Jews and Gentiles are in complete equality, unlike the "church" of the Acts period. Not only have the Jews lost all their national and dispensational privileges, but the Gentile has lost all of his dispensational disadvantages, which kept him on the outside, to some extent, back in the Acts assemblies. There are more differences and distinctions, but we hope to show these things from the Word as we go along.

So when we refer to the "Church" spoken of in Ephesians, we mean the "Church which is His Body", which is a completely separate company from any of the other assemblies mentioned earlier in the Bible. There will he much more on this later.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Let us examine then, verses 3-14 of Eph. 1.

As you read through these verses, I want you to notice a theme that is repeated three times. In v. 6, we have "To the praise of the glory of His grace... ". Then in v. 12, "that we should be to the praise of His Glory  And finally, at the end of v. 14 we read, "unto the praise of His glory."

Each of these statements belongs to its own section of the passage, and I want to refer you back to the headings given in the outline of the book, which summarise each section for us. They are:

1. The Will of the Father. vv.3-6

2. The Work. of the Son. vv.7-12

3. The Witness of the Spirit. vv. 13,14.

Verse 3 starts with the words "Blessed he the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us".

The word "blessed" here is not the same as the word used in Matt. 5 for instance. It is the Greek word "eulogia", and it is not hard to see the English word "eulogy" in it. "Eulogia" means "good speaking", and while this thought does not exhaust the meaning of the word by any means, it is a lovely thought to realise that we could translate the verse this way:

"Speak well of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has spoken well of us."

Paul tells us in Hebrews 1 that in the last days God spoke in "His Son". It is no accident that one of the most important titles of the Lord is "The Word". And in Romans 8 we are presented with the courtroom scene, where the advocate (I think the prosecutor is meant) is none other than the One who died for us. And rather than bring up the record of our sins, He speaks on our behalf. It is not possible for Him to bring up our past record, as once we have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of His love, our sins are no more. They have been forgotten, never to be remembered against us any more. Surely He has spoken very well of us. What do our lives and witness say of Him?

It may seem a little strange that Paul refers to God as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ". Some sects, who deny the Deity of Christ, use this verse to bolster their case. I don't think their use of it in that way is valid. It is interesting to look at the closing verses of the epistle again. In 6:23, we have: "Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ"

That is just a little different, isn't it? I am not suggesting that we should change the translation of 1:3, but I think the two statements go together.

One other thought on this. In the Old Testament, we read of "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob". But once the great day or atonement had come in reality and the true Lamb of God had paid the price for the sins of the world God is no longer called by the OT title, but He becomes "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ".

Blessed

Now the next point. We have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.

The Greek here actually says: "He has blessed us with every blessing that is spiritual." There may not be a great difference between the two statements, but to say every blessing that is spiritual, is just a little more precise and definite than all spiritual blessings. We can rest assured that even though we may know and understand only a fraction of the spiritual blessings available, every single spiritual blessing there is, is ours in Christ Jesus.

What is the point about these blessings being spiritual? Are not all blessings spiritual? The answer to that last question is no.

In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were told that if they would keep the Law and walk uprightly and faithfully according to its precepts, God would bless them. In what way would they be blessed?

Deuteronomy 28 gives us the answer. Let me summarise. If they were obedient to God they would be blessed in their cities and their fields. They would have lots of children; their livestock would be healthy and have lots of offspring; their crops would grow prolifically; their enemies would be powerless against them, and they would be held in high regard by the nations of the world. It is summed up in verse 5 by the sentence: "Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store".

Let me ask you a question. What was the sphere of blessing for the people of Israel? In other words, where will they enjoy their blessings? That's an easy one to answer. In the land that the Lord promised their ancestor Abraham. And if you don't believe that is to be literally fulfilled, then you will be extremely puzzled by all the dust being raised in the Middle East.

But how fitting it is. Their place of blessing is the land, and their blessings are physical blessings, to do with the land, and life on this earth.

We will find out, however, that the sphere of blessing for the Church which is His Body, is not a land on earth, but rather heavenly places, far above all principalities and powers. That is a spiritual realm, as opposed to the earthly realm of Israel. What good would blessings of basket and store be to those whose place of blessing is in that heavenly realm? None whatsoever. But each to his own. God suits the blessing to the place, and even though I cannot explain what every spiritual blessing is, I am confident that the Lord who loves me and who gave Himself for me, will provide not only everything I need, but every wonderful thing that is suited exactly to the place of blessing in which He puts me.

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