8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Eph. 3:8-10, ESV)
As a part of our church gathering a couple weeks ago, we went through the first part of Ephesians 3, and a lot of our conversation ended up settling on these verses. My own application step from that day was to think about it some more, and blog about it. So here I am, blogging.
Verse 10 in particular stood out that day, specifically the three-fold progression: (1) through the church (2) the manifold wisdom of God (3) might now be made known…in the heavenly places. The collective response to this idea was – huh? First off, a certain amazement was felt with the idea that the “unsearchable riches of Christ” would actually be somehow proclaimed “through the church.” That in itself was huge. But the larger question was how in the world that interacted with the idea of the manifold (multi-faceted, variegated, richly diversified) wisdom of God is made known to those in the heavenly realms. How does that work?
So I did some reading. The word for church, ekklesia, appears earlier in the letter, in Eph. 1:22. And as I got reading about 3:10 in the context of the letter, commentaries pointed back to that verse. And here’s the intriguing idea that emerges: “it is better to understand the term [ekklesia] metaphorically of a heavenly gathering around Christ in which believers already participate…It is a figurative manner of speaking about Christians being personally related to Christ as they are related to one another…” And what about the present, local church? “Local gatherings, whether in a congregation or a house-church, are earthly manifestations of that heavenly gathering around the risen Christ.” (O’Brien, Ephesians, 146-7, bold mine) And the word translated “Gentiles” in verse 8 is ethnos, i.e. peoples, as in ethnic people groups.
Here’s the beautiful implication:
God is sovereign. Yet, in His sovereignty, he has chosen to enact certain things through His people, the church. A significant part of what is being communicated in the book of Ephesians is that the gospel is not only for one particular people, but for all people, and that gospel bridges over every social, racial, economic, ________ (fill-in-the-blank) barrier you can think of. Jesus is the uniting presence (and the only such one) that can cross all those barriers. This impact is to the extent that God’s plan for all peoples to be reconciled to Himself through the cross is expressed through the church and the living out of the gospel. As O’Brien puts it, “Its [the church] presence is the means by which God himself discloses to the powers his own richly diverse wisdom.” (O’Brien, 246). And the present-day local church gets to participate in an earthly expression of what’s already been enacted in heaven, just as Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So even spiritual beings that are pitted against God see this expression of the church on earth, and realize that, indeed, the God of the Universe is in control and has triumphed over every manner of darkness and evil, to reconcile people to Himself and to one another.
Now that’s good news.
