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.

It got me thinking about major shifts like Gutenberg to Google in areas that I’m passionate about – photography and biblical studies.  When I got more seriously into photography about eight years ago, pro digital was in its infancy.  I started with 35mm film, shooting negatives, moving on to slide film, even stepping into the arena of medium format with a sweet 6×6 rangefinder.  I distinctly remember while taking photos for some gigs the anxiety associated with the very fact that I really had no guarantee that what I thought I was capturing on film was actually going to be there.  Instead, I had to wait a whole day or so to see the results come back.  Digital photography changed all of that.  Now, seemingly everyone has a digital camera.  Instant feedback is the norm.  Blogs with tutorials abounded.  Photo blogs, photo sharing sites, home print shops, all of that has become the norm.  Expert information now accessible to the masses.

Let’s shift the discussion to the arena of biblical studies.  Among my favorite classes in seminary have been Hebrew and Greek.  Something about it just connects with how my brain is wired – I love seeing patterns, dissecting paragraphs and sentences, diving deep into the study of a Bible passage, and asking lots of questions.  It’s actually quite invigorating for me.  Along the way, a huge help for me in this area has been a piece of technology, software to be precise, called Logos Bible Software.  Whereas in the days before, one had to painstakingly parse verbs or count by hand the number of occurrences of a text, or look up manually in a real book a reference, Logos does all of this for you.  You can hover your mouse over a word in Greek, double-click, pull up a commentary, link all the books together so they scroll simultaneously, do intensive searches on all sorts of topics with all sorts of parameters – all without even leaving your chair.  Some would look at this as the end of an era, much like the end of analog film.  Much of this resulted from an instant gratification, a “microwave” generation expectation, so to speak.  Expert information now accessible to the masses.

In so many ways, this shift is good.  It opens up things that were once only available to a select few to a much larger audience.  Technologies like Wikipedia have made a significant contribution to the dissemination of information.   Yet Sweet brought up a very interesting point toward the end of his talk – “These are the first generations of kids that do not need authority figures to access information.”  It’s all there.  But then he went on to say, “But where the generation needs us more than ever (you used to have kids to work the fields, not to work the remotes), they need help in process – what do I do with all this information? How do I turn it from information to knowledge to wisdom?”  And there you have it.  Information does not equal wisdom.  And that’s where I think training of various sorts comes in.  (Which, by the way, won’t be the same type for everyone, since God wired us all differently.)  The information alone will only get us to a point.  It has to be processed and put into practice.  Applied wisdom, ahh, obedience, information activated – now you’re on to something.  I think that’s one of the primary areas where the church is meant to come alongside each other in community and cultivate that kind of a relationship with Jesus.  And ultimately, it’s not what you know, but who you know.  Christianity is about a relationship with the living God.

Digital photography is great.  So is Logos.  But here’s where I think the dots between mentors and training and tools can connect.  We can’t focus on just the tools alone, but how to use the tools.  I’ve been in seminary for more than four years now, and I’ve been hugely blessed by the experience.  Having something like Logos to my toolbox has been a huge boon for me – I’m able to take ideas that I’ve got in my head – either from class or preparing a Bible study or a sermon – and process those ideas through some real data available at my fingertips.  And I’m constantly reminded not to seek just the information, but real wisdom – applied knowledge.  Moreover, I’m reminded that gifts like teaching and knowledge are meant to bless others, not to be kept inside one individual.  When that starts happening, when one member of the body blesses another, who in turn blesses another (2 Tim. 2:2), then you start to see movements happen.  Even though I look at this era that we live in with some trepidation and uncertainty, I rest assured in the God who stands above all of history and has the whole trajectory in view.

Those of you who know me know that I can get really excited about certain things.  Logos is one of them.  And for those of you who are in seminary at the moment, they’re making a $1,000 scholarship available, and whoever gets it also gets a really nice copy of Logos.  Tuition can be expensive, and anything can help.  Check it out here: seminary scholarship.  All you’ve got to do is watch a video and fill out some forms.  For those of you who aren’t looking for a scholarship at the moment, you can still check it out at http://www.logos.com.  And for all of these things – be it seminary, a computer, a piece of software – they’re tools – among many different types – that are out there that can help us in our journey of following Jesus.

Oh, and Sweet’s answer to the question above is this – Jesus was all about pointing people toward what it means to be truly human, that is, the way we were meant to be.