Colleen and Nikki continue a study of Ephesians. In this portion of Ephesians 1, they look at a passage that as Adventists, they would have seen it as a command—but now everything has changed. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Today we’ll be finishing up chapter 1 of Ephesians, but before we get started, I want to remind you that if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for topics to cover, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. We’re so thankful to those of you who’ve written and for the encouragement that many of you have offered us. Hearing from others who are in the trenches with us, sharing the gospel with other Adventists, or who are learning truth for the first time is such a blessing. And we thank you for reaching out. Also, if you haven’t already, please go to proclamationmagazine.com and sign up for our weekly email, with links to new online articles, current podcast episodes, questions and answers between Colleen Tinker, the editor of Proclamation!, and other listeners and readers, and you’ll find other ministry news there as well. Life Assurance Ministries is supported by the generous donations of those who’ve come alongside us in our work to reach back into Adventism with the truth of the gospel. If you’d like to join with us, you can find a donation tab at the proclamationmagazine.com address. And we just want to say a big thank you to those who have joined with us in this very important work. We thank God for you. And last, please don’t forget to like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. If you’re comfortable doing so, sharing and tagging us on those platforms will help extend our reach into both the Adventist and the Christian communities. As many of you know, there are entire segments of Christianity who don’t understand the dangers of Adventist doctrine, and it’s our prayer that as we reach the Adventists with the gospel message, we’re also able to reach the Christian community with the truth about the dangers of Adventism. Now, Colleen, I want to ask you, before we get started, as an Adventist, how would you have understood the passage that we’re looking at today?
Colleen: Ephesians 1:15-23, Paul’s prayer? That’s a really good question. I was talking with Richard about this before we recorded, and he kind of summed up what I think I would have felt. He said, “I would have seen this, even though it’s a prayer, even though it’s Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians,” he said, “I would have seen it as one giant command.” And I would have too, because I had no frame of reference to understand that his prayer is talking about things that are naturally the result of being born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit as we learn to trust God. We were talking, Nikki, about this and how to explain how we would have reacted to this section, and I realized that there was an underlying worldview that I had from Ellen White. Even though I didn’t read these quotes, I’d heard a couple of them, but it was the worldview of my Adventist milieu. I found a few. I’m going to read them because I think they help explain why this whole prayer would have felt like a giant command to me. This first one is a quotation taken from a book called Counsels to Teachers, and I’m sure many people who hear this will have heard at least a portion of this. “When Christ is formed within, the hope of glory, then the truth of God will so act upon the natural temperament that it’s transforming power will be seen in changed characters.” I just want to say, no wonder I felt hopeless, because she’s saying that God changes our natural temperaments when Christ is formed within. But the Bible never says Christ is formed within us. The Bible says Christ in you is the hope of glory. She says: “When Christ is formed within, the hope of glory, then the truth of God will so act upon the natural temperament that its transforming power will be seen in changed characters.” No. Well, now here’s another one that helps explain even a little more how she taught us all to think about ourselves in relationship to Jesus. She says, “A noble all-around character is not inherited. It does not come to us by accident.” Now, get this: “A noble character is earned by individual effort through the merits and grace and Christ. God gives the talents, the powers of the mind. We form the character. It is formed by hard, stern battles with self. Conflict after conflict must be waged against hereditary tendencies. We shall have to criticize ourselves closely and allow not one unfavorable trait to remain uncorrected.” Ironically, I bet you’ll never guess the title of the book this quote is taken from: Our Father Cares.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: It’s so unbiblical, it’s so crazymaking. Now, here’s another one, also from Our Father Cares: “The heavenly intelligences” – now, notice the plural there?
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: “The heavenly intelligences will work with the human agent who seeks with determined faith that perfection of character which will reach out to perfection in action. To everyone engaged in this work Christ says, ‘I am at your right hand to help you.’ As the will of man cooperates with the will of God, it becomes” – get this – “omnipotent. Whatever is to be done at His command may be accomplished in His strength. All His biddings are enablings.” So, Nikki, in answer to your question, everything Paul said, whether it was a prayer to God about the church or whether it was commands about how to live as the church, I never understood that these had to be preceded by the giant indicative, which we heard in the first part of this book –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – that we are born again and secure in Christ. I just heard it as a big command. How did you hear it?
Nikki: You know, I know that I read Ephesians as an Adventist. I know I did. I don’t remember reading this section. I must have kind of blazed over it. But certainly I would have seen something like this as the prerequisite for salvation. In this section, Paul is praying that believers would receive a spirit of wisdom and to know Christ. So I would have seen Paul’s prayer as instructive for my next steps. This is what Paul wants for us, and so this is what we need to live out and to manifest. I would not have connected it with an Ellen White quote, and as I’ve thought about this, you know, I think that my understanding of the Christian life was largely formed during Weeks of Prayer in high school, Monterey Bay Academy or even in middle school at South Lancaster Academy. In the Adventist school system, we would have these weeks of prayer, and they would get the most interesting, intriguing, and current speaker they could who would sort of repackage the Adventist message, and so I didn’t hear from the front that my character had to be perfected. That wasn’t taught to me. But it was assumed. So instead of focusing on the endgame, that we had to work to perfect our character, our attention was focused on the other end, and it was all about, “How can we tap into the blessings God has for us that are waiting for us? How can we get our sinful selves out of the way and receive these blessings so that we can become who He wants us to be.” It was kind of about life fulfillment and accessing God’s power so that we can become more and better. But I still had it in my head that that was necessary for salvation somehow, that that was what it looked like to be a good Christian, a good Adventist, and somehow I think I thought that that was grace, because there were gifts involved. I don’t really know how to explain this, but it was just sort of a repackaged Adventism –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – made for the teenagers, you know, in the late ’90s. I don’t know exactly how I got there, but the whole purpose, the whole goal, was to become better. If I read this and I gave any thought to it, I think that what would have been going through my head is, “How am I preventing myself from having this spirit of wisdom? How am I preventing my heart from being enlightened? How am I in the way?” I certainly would not have seen this passage as assuming I was already saved.
Colleen: That’s so interesting, Nikki. The kinds of things that you’re describing I began to hear in college, when Morrie Venden’s preaching became more popular and the focus on unconfessed sins kind of went into the background and more and more was talked about God’s grace, which was never fully explained, because as I’m hearing you talk, Nikki, I’m realizing that both of us believed these were things we had to achieve. We weren’t actually aware that these are things that God does in us. So either way you look at it, even if you didn’t know Ellen White, we still believed we were failing somehow if these experiences and realities that Paul is describing weren’t coming true in our own lives; right?
Nikki: Yeah. And you know what? They really couldn’t have, at least for me, because I had not yet been born again, and this is for the life after.
Colleen: That is the piece that Adventism completely misses. It still misses it. Because that is the heart of the gospel that Adventism does not teach. It doesn’t matter what brand of Adventism we look at, historic, evangelical, progressive. It does not matter the brand of Adventism, the worldview remains the same.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The worldview remains that we do not have spirits, so that there’s no understanding of original depravity, that we’re born dead in sin, but we inherit things that we have to overcome, and God is there, as Ellen White said, at our side to help us. Where Paul has just gotten through the first part of this chapter in Ephesians explaining God is not there, Jesus is not there beside us. He has brought us into Himself when we have believed, and we are born again, spiritually alive. That’s missing in every version of Adventism. Why don’t we go ahead and read this prayer so everyone listening to this will know what it is we’re really talking about and just read verses 15 through 23. This is Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus.
Nikki: “For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”
Colleen: It’s a wonderful prayer.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I mean, thinking of being in that church at Ephesus, of knowing Jesus, of being born again, and of knowing Paul as their apostle, what a wonderful prayer, to know he’s praying for you.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So in verses 15 to 17, where he’s talking about “For this reason, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, I don’t cease to give thanks for you.” So what is the reason – let’s just unpack and remember what came before. This prayer is stemming from something. “For this reason.” What was “this reason”?
Nikki: Well, everything that came before, and it all culminated in the new birth of those who believe and the sealing of the Holy Spirit and the guarantee of their inheritance.
Colleen: Isn’t that amazing? This is the indicative on which he is basing his prayer. These are people who are believers, who’ve been born again, sealed with the Spirit, eternally alive, brought from death to life, transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son. This is not a prayer saying, “I’m going to pray what I hope for you, so please listen up and get busy and make sure it happens,” which is kind of how I would have heard it. No. He’s saying, “You’re alive. You are saved. This isn’t about attaining salvation.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: So as he’s saying, “I’ve heard of the faith that you have in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints,” that’s an interesting thing he’s saying about these people with whom he has not been present for a few months. He’d spent three years with them, but what strikes you about that, Nikki, as he’s talking to them. How does he remember them? What has he heard?
Nikki: Well, it’s their faith. It’s their faith, and it’s their love for one another. And you know, I was talking to my husband, Carel, about this before we started the podcast, and I loved what he pointed out. If the church was supposed to be faithfully keeping the Ten Commandments, especially the fourth, to vindicate God, this would have been a great place for Paul to thank God for their obedience to that. He’s thanking God for their faith in the Lord Jesus, which is from God, and he’s thanking Him for the love that they have for one another, and it’s just interesting to me that this is a reputation – this isn’t just because Paul was with them for three years. This is a reputation that the church at Ephesus had. And we see that again in Revelation, when John writes about Ephesus. The Lord Jesus says he knows the faith they have and the ways that they contend against false teaching, and he commends them for that faith. But he does have to remind them that they, at that point, were not loving one another as they did at first, and he calls them to return to that. But they have this reputation of having had this great love for the saints. This is something they were marked by.
Colleen: That is so interesting. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have that said about you?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So as he’s remembering this, thanking God for their love, for their faithfulness, for their faith in Christ, he goes on and says, he makes mention of them “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.” That is such a packed phrase. How do you understand what he’s saying? What is the spirit of wisdom? What is the spirit of revelation in the knowledge of Christ?
Nikki: I believe that Paul is praying for them to have a spirit that responds to God, that God would give them wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that they would grow in their knowledge of God. We see that in other parts of Scripture, in other of Paul’s epistles, that the church would grow in the knowledge of God. This seems to me to be Paul’s prayer, that God would be at work in them, causing them to respond to the truth of who He is.
Colleen: I agree. It’s interesting to me that in 1 Corinthians 1:30, Paul identifies Jesus Himself as the one who becomes wisdom for us. He says, “But by His doing you are in Christ, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.” I believe that, for the believer, wisdom is the understanding that comes from being made alive in Christ. It’s learning to understand our lives and our world through the lens of God’s truth, and this is the normal course of a born-again believer’s life because Jesus Himself has become our wisdom. Our way of understanding life is changed when we’re born again because Christ gives us wisdom from God in Himself as He and His Spirit indwell us. He is our wisdom. And biblical truth becomes clear and applicable to our lives. We submit our minds to Scripture, to the Lord, and our minds are renewed, as Paul also says in Romans 12:2. He rewires us from our old worldview to a biblical worldview by reflecting eternal reality, which our Lord reveals to us, because now we have eternal life in Christ, and He teaches us this new reality in His word. So we become able to see reality and truth, not only theologically, but even in the world around us, as we submit to His word.
Nikki: Doesn’t this remind you of our walk through Colossians? These letters, they’re so similar, and it makes me think of Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1:9-12, where he says that he had not ceased praying for them, asking that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that they would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. As we grow in this knowledge, as we learn more and more the truth of our Father, of God, of Christ, of what the Spirit does for us, of our salvation, we grow and become more and more of who we’re meant to be in Christ as His people.
Colleen: And that is the key: Who we’re meant to be in Christ. Paul knows his readers won’t be able to understand any of the mystery or the miracle of Jesus and of what He’s done for us without the Holy Spirit’s illumination, and when we are in Christ, His Spirit teaches us truth, teaches us what His word means, teaches us to apply His word to our lives. The miracle of being born again through faith in the Lord Jesus means that we’re literally ushered into Christ, and as an Adventist I just thought of that as a metaphor for, you know, “Accept Jesus into your heart and whatever,” but this is real. This is absolutely real. We have new life, new power, new position, and God doesn’t take us out of the reality of our life on earth or of the horrible things that have even happened to us. But He gives us Himself, the understanding of wisdom and truth of who He is, no matter what we’re walking through, and He redeems the pains in our lives and the horrible things we can’t resolve. He gives us Himself and gives us the knowledge of Himself. Let’s look now at verses 18 and 19: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.” What are the eyes of our heart, and what does it mean that the eyes of our heart would be enlightened?
Nikki: This just seems like another way to talk about that revelation. He’s praying that we would know intimately these truths about God. I like how Carel put it. He said, “It’s an intimate knowing, it’s a deep knowledge that is as certain as seeing.” Paul is praying that we would understand these three things, this hope of the calling and the riches of the inheritance and the surpassing greatness of His power toward us. I thought, as an Adventist, that all of my effort to obey Scripture and to try to understand God and to get to the bottom of everything was ultimately about being saved.
Colleen: Good point! Me too!
Nikki: I didn’t understand that we were saved, that we could be saved by the Lord Jesus. He was going to get to work now in us to sanctify us and to cause us to grow in our understanding of what He’s done and that that’s a very important part of being in Christ and walking faithfully, understanding the things that He’s called us to. This hope is not the Adventist “we have a hope – I hope I make it.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: The hope of the calling, we read in Ephesians chapter 1 early on that He predestined us for this, that He called us for this. And we read in Romans chapter 8, in that golden chain, you know, that those who He foreknew He predestined to be conformed into the image of His Son. That chain takes us all the way through to glorification. It is done. It’s a done deal.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Once we’re in Christ, it’s done, and that hope is something that sustains us as we persevere through this side of everything. And so he’s praying that we would really grasp that. And let me tell you, it’s not just in Adventism. You know the Christian world and the world at large wants to take that hope away from us. The sense that – this ability to know that we’re saved, it’s under attack, even outside of Adventism, even in the Body of Christ. But Scripture tells us that we have this hope, we have this golden chain. This inheritance in the saints, this is Christ’s inheritance in the saints. We are His inheritance.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And we are co-heirs with Christ, which means that you are my inheritance!
Colleen: And you’re mine!
Nikki: [Laughter.] And Paul wants us to grasp this. He’s praying that we would grasp this, the glory, the riches, the abundance of what that means.
Colleen: That’s a great point. You know, when I was an Adventist, I read passages like this, like what we just read, that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened so that we’ll know what is the hope of His calling, and I read this without really knowing what it meant, just like you were explaining. I thought of it as a cognitive analysis, as a mental knowing whatever God wanted me to know. I felt like the more observant I was, the more I read my Bible, the more I listened to Ellen White’s interpretation of Scripture, I would have more enlightenment. I even felt superior to those who didn’t read as much and didn’t have the spiritual mindset I had. But this kind of enlightenment that Paul is talking about is not mental and decisional. This is the consequence of being alive in Christ through believing in Him. It grows and deepens as we submit more and more to the truth of His word. It grows as we pray for the Lord to teach us His word. It’s spiritual primarily, not mental. But, that being said, we process what we know spiritually through our minds. This is how God made humans to function. He made us body and spirit, and our physical minds can be renewed and grow in understanding as our spirits grow in knowing who God is. This is a spiritual reality that God works out in our understanding and cognitive knowing, but the cognition is not what leads. This is spiritual knowledge that changes our physical lives. It’s a gift from Him. It’s not something we do by deciding we’re going to be persistent and figure it out.
Nikki: It reminds me of 2 Corinthians 4:6 that says, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” It’s His work in us to open our eyes to know Him.
Colleen: You know, and it’s an amazing thing when I think about this now and I read this, and I realize once again this prayer of Paul’s is not a command to me. This is a prayer that God will do what is promised when we are in Him. This is His promise to us if we learn to trust Him, and I think the key for me in all of this is that these things happen as we trust God. It’s not that it’s up to us to figure Him out and find the magic formula or the magic prayer or access power. This is about learning to bring our lives before Him and to trust Him, to allow Him to show us what His word says, to teach us how to bring the circumstances of our lives under the authority of His word and to know He’ll keep His promises to us. It even makes me think of some of the people that I’ve talked to over the years and things that I’ve gone through over the years. You know, I’ve often said to people, “Jesus doesn’t just satisfy Himself by showing us who He is. Once He shows us who He is, He shows us the truth about our lives, and He works out our redemption in redeeming the things that have happened to us in our lives.” It might mean that after we are born again and come to know Jesus, we walk through some very dark times as we face the truth about what our life in Adventism looked like, as we face the truth about what it looked like to grow up in an Adventist family. It’s sometimes unbelievably painful and very depressing, but when we look at God’s word and allow His Spirit to show us that we’re His, and His word can’t fail, and His promises to us are certain, He walks us through those dark times and redeems the pain in our lives and gives us Himself and gives us His love in the most unexpected ways.
Nikki: And as we look at this prayer, we know that this is the inspired word of God, that this is God’s will for the church. This is inerrant Scripture. And so God’s will for us is that we would know the hope of our calling, of His calling on us, the riches of His inheritance and the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. The focus here is always on Him and what He’s done and what He’s brought us to, and as we comprehend that and as we turn that over in our minds and our hearts and we’re changed by it, all of those heartaches that we may be tempted to focus on, He turns them into something beautiful.
Colleen: He does.
Nikki: And He redeems all of that. And it’s not because we have found the magical steps –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – to take care of all of that. It’s because we have set our minds and our hearts, by the power of God, on the truth of God and what He’s done for us.
Colleen: Like he says in verses 19 and 20, these, the surpassing greatness and power toward us who believe, “These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” That was verse 21. And I just want to say, these promises that God makes to those who know Him, these things that he prays they will know, these are possible because our new birth is brought about by exactly the same power and life that raised Jesus from the dead. Our new birth, our spiritual birth from death to life, is no less a miracle than Jesus rising from that tomb. It is the same power of God. We have the resurrection life of Jesus in us, and because of that, all of these things that happened to us in the past are redeemed in Him, and He teaches us how to submit to Him, how to trust Him, how to know His promises can’t fail and how to hang onto Him instead of worrying about managing all the things that seem to be falling apart as we look at our lives. He brings order out of the chaos, He brings meaning out of the desolation, He brings justice and integrity to our lives, and we can trust Him. He will do that.
Nikki: And when we talk about the power of God and we look up further in Ephesians, the passages we’ve covered, we saw it all over the pages. It’s the creating and the calling, the election, the new birth, the new life, the sealing. And then, once we’re born again, it’s in the life after. He works in us. This power, it’s not something that is being offered for us to tap into so that we can access this strength and power and these giftings so that we can become better and better, like I was taught.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: The power of God toward us is – it’s how He applies His own power according to His will to our lives, and it makes me think of all of the passages in Scripture that talk about Him being at work in us. In Philippians 2:13 it says, “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” And in Jude 24 and 25, “Now to Him who is able to protect you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory.” In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and 24, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will do it.” In 1 Peter 1:3-5 we’re told that our inheritance is reserved in heaven for us and that it’s protected by the power of God. And in Jude 1, the church is those who are called, beloved by God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. The power of God keeps us.
Colleen: That’s so true!
Nikki: It’s that sealing that we read about in verses 13 and 14, that we are kept, we are preserved, we are protected, we are changed, all by the power of God.
Colleen: Yes. As it says in Colossians 1:12-14, “We give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” All this is ours when we trust Jesus. And whether we feel it, sense it, or see it or not, He literally transfers us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son when we believe. This is a permanent reality, an identity change, a new citizenship. This is what the Lord does for us when we trust Jesus, and our inheritance is eternity. Every good thing that God has for Jesus, He gives to us in Christ when we’ve been born again. Even the redemption of the failed relationships and the transgressions that have been done to us in our past, the things that have marked us, the things we can’t undo, the ways people misunderstand us, Jesus sees these things. These are all things that He redeems for His glory in our lives when we trust Him. Even if it doesn’t look like it today, we can know that we’re not forgotten, and He will complete what He begins. Then in 21, as we just read, Paul also says in his prayer that God has brought about the resurrection of Jesus and seated Him far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come, which I find interesting because it suggests this isn’t the end of everything. There is another age coming.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But it’s also interesting to me that he mentions that Jesus is seated above all rule and authority and power and dominion. This tells me there are authorities that He has established. There are rulers He has established, and we know from Ephesians 6, which we’ll look at later, that we are involved in a spiritual battle when we belong to Christ. There are spiritual forces in high places, but all of these are under God’s control, and Jesus defeated Satan and disarmed him on the cross, as we learned in Colossians 2:14 and 15. He defeated him. He disarmed him. Satan is still prowling. He’s still like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, as Peter says, but the fact is, he’s been disarmed. Jesus took away the tool of the law with which Satan accused the people of God. He is disarmed, although he is still prowling. And we can know that Jesus is already seated far above all of these, at the right hand of God, and when we trust Him, we are with Him in those heavenly places.
Nikki: There is no great controversy.
Colleen: No. Finally we come to verses 22 and 23. And this is such an interesting passage because it talks about Jesus’ relationship to the church, not only where’s He’s seated at the right hand of the Father, but His role with us. “And He [the Father] put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” It’s interesting that in Hebrews 2:8 and 9 the author says, “Now in putting everything in subjection to Him, He left nothing outside His control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him. But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.” So God also gave Jesus authority over all things in the church, everything outside the church, and He made Him in charge of everything that concerns us as the church. And it also assures us in verse 23 that we are His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Nikki, you were saying that Carel had a great summary for these last verses, and I’d like you to share that with us.
Nikki: He said that verses 19 to 23 give us a wonderful summary of why everything else in Ephesians 1 is so impacting and trustworthy. These details certify why He has the power and the authority and the ability to do everything that’s been mentioned above, and he said with a God like this, he goes to Romans 8 in his mind: “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect. God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” This powerful, omnipotent God, who is not at war with Satan, who is supreme as God the Son and as the man Christ Jesus now, ascended to the Father, He is superior and supreme over all things and has omnipotent power as God, has given us eternal life. It’s done when we believe. And He has promised us – we see it here in the prayer, it’s His will. He has promised us continued knowledge of Him as we walk with Him. He will not leave us. He will not leave us orphaned, and He has all the power and all the resources and all the ability to see this through. This is the hope of our calling.
Colleen: Absolutely. So as I look at this passage now, I see this is not a giant command to me. This is a prayer, a reminder that all of these things that Paul has mentioned in these verses, these are things the Lord is doing in me as His adopted, born-again daughter. I can know that whatever has happened to me, whatever I have experienced in my life, whatever shameful, embarrassing, horrifying thing I may have done or have had done to me, in Him all is redeemed, and in Him I’m given victory and freedom from the chains of the past that held me bound to my brokenness. I am alive in Christ. And if you don’t know that you are alive in Christ, if you still feel bound and shackled by the things that have broken you over your lifetime, just know this: You can bring these things to the foot of the cross and tell the Lord, “I am a sinner. I am stained with sin, both my own sin and the sin of others’ transgressions against me, and I need you to make me whole. I need you to forgive me.” And the blood that He shed on the cross that paid for all of our sin, that disarmed the power of Satan, He will forgive you by the power of His blood, which is the blood of the eternal covenant. And if you haven’t experienced this, if you haven’t trusted Jesus in this way, we ask that you do it now. And this prayer of Paul will apply to you as well, as to part of the Body of Christ. This is what’s promised to us in the Lord.
Nikki: If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for topics to cover, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Also, if you haven’t already, please go to proclamationmagazine.com and sign up for our weekly emails. Thank you to those who have come alongside us in support of Life Assurance Ministries. If you would like to donate to the ministry, you can also do that at proclamationmagazine.com. Don’t forget to like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for joining us again, and don’t forget to join us next week when we’ll examine the truth about the natural human condition and our great need for a Savior as we begin Ephesians chapter 2.
Colleen: We’ll see you then.
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