For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles — if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), (Ephesians 3:1-4, NKJV)
The further I get into the letter to the Ephesians, the more revealing it is to me. I find that, in Ephesians 3, Paul is writing about things I’ve never heard anybody preach on before!
Paul begins here in v1, ‘Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles’! From the beginning Paul’s calling and his ministry, as a Jew, is to us Gentiles! That’s what Christ took hold of him for! Acts 9:15. So then, this letter is a revelation – to you and me! And Paul begins, in v3, to talk about the ‘mysteries’ God has revealed to him, in order that he can reveal them to us! Paul is not speaking to the Jew here, the revelation that he has is to us as Gentiles! So that when we read the Scriptures, and when we read this letter, we may understand the mystery of Christ, which previously was not made known to us, the sons of men (that is, was not previously revealed either to Jew or Gentile), but is now revealed unto His Holy Apostles and Prophets by the Holy Spirit, vv4-5.
In our generation, we are familiar with this revelation of the mystery of Christ, but it was not so in Paul’s day – the revelation that Gentiles are fellow-heirs with Jews, part of the same Body, and partakers of the same Promises in Christ through the Gospel, was absolutely new, vv5-6. Gentiles – fellow-heirs with the Jews! The same Body as the Jews! Partakers with the Jews of the Promises in Christ which are revealed through the Gospel! Of which Paul was made a minister, by a gift of Grace, given him by the effectual working of God’s Power, v7! The gift that made Paul a minister of the Gospel to the Gentiles was a gift given from God through the working of the Holy Spirit.
Paul says in v8, this gift was given to me, ‘who am less than the least of all the saints’! Why does he say this? The reason he is ‘less than the least’, the very lowest, is because, as a very legalistic Pharisee, Paul was one of the greatest persecutors of the early Christians! Very Orthodox, very strict, a Pharisee above all Pharisees! A Jew above all Jews. So much so that he was party to the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. And not only Stephen, but his whole job was to search out the Christians, persecute, torture and imprison them. So now, after his conversion, he has to accept that, because of his background and his past, he is the very least of all, and the very lowest.
But he continues, this grace is given to me – through the Holy Spirit – that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ! The emphasis here in v6, is that God has made Jew and Gentile ONE, one Body, fellow-heirs together... The whole emphasis of the preaching that I hear on this verse is on the breaking down of the barrier between Jew and Gentile and making them one.
But, I suddenly realised, this revelation overshadows, as it were, the real revelation, the real Truth that the Holy Spirit is revealing to me as I read this verse right now: v9, ‘to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hidden in God, who created all things by Christ Jesus’, and v10 – here comes the even greater revelation, ‘to the intent that now, to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be made known, BY THE CHURCH, the manifold wisdom of God’!
Suddenly we have appearing something totally NEW on earth, a totally NEW Body. Paul is talking to Jew and Gentile – he’s talking to the CHURCH! But what is the Church? It is the ‘NEW dispensation’ Paul referred to in v3, the grace of God given to Paul to reveal what is the CHURCH! The Church is something totally different from anything that has ever existed before, it’s totally NEW. It is the Body of Christ, and secondly the unity of Jew and Gentile. The CHURCH has been created as a totally NEW entity. Until now you had the Jew, the Jewish people, who inherited from their forefathers all the grace and wisdom of God, the Jews who had the relationship with God, the priests and the Temple and the access to God. All the relationship of God with the peoples of the earth was through the Jewish people and through the priesthood! But now we have something totally different, totally NEW.
In the New Testament, in Christ, God has created a whole new entity – the CHURCH – Jew and Gentile united, the Body of Christ on earth! And v11 tells us that this is ‘according to the eternal purpose which God purposed in Christ Jesus’! This means that right from the beginning, God knew that the Jew alone could not fulfil the whole mission on earth, that there had to come a newly created Body, through the death of Christ – the CHURCH!
to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, (Ephesians 3:10, NKJV)
And Paul reveals, here in v10, that the CHURCH has the responsibility to reveal and demonstrate God, the wisdom of God, and as the Church, the Body of Christ on earth, we must reveal Christ to the world. Yes, we understand the ministry of the Church, and the five-fold ministry, a ministry which is to the unbelieving world…
But in v10, I see something I’ve never actually seen before, the purpose of the Church being that the manifold wisdom of God be made known to the ‘principalities and powers in the heavenly places’! In other words, that the great wisdom of God might not just be revealed to the unbeliever, but to the rulers and authorities in ‘heavenly places’. God, through the Holy Spirit, is revealing to Paul that the Church has a ministry, not just to the unbeliever, but has an obligation, a responsibility to reveal the Power and the Glory of God, even to the spiritual authorities and rulers in the ‘heavens’! The revelation here is that there are supernatural powers outside of God Himself to whom we must declare His Power.
When the Holy Spirit impressed this on me, I realised that, as an evangelist, I have a double ministry! As an evangelist, I preach to the unconverted, to the world, to the lost, to Jew and Gentile – that’s my calling. I’ve always seen that as my ministry. As evangelists, we see our ministry as bringing people to Christ. But it’s more than that. Paul is revealing here that we have a totally NEW ministry, which is to reveal the Wisdom, Power and Glory of God, not only on the earth, but to those ‘other powers’, those ‘heavenly powers’, those other spiritual powers. By ‘heavenly’, Paul is not meaning ‘Heaven’, but unearthly, ungodly. Paul writes later in this letter, ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ These are the powers that you and I must not only to wrestle with, but be witnesses to! We have to witness, through our faith in Christ, through our lives, through the way we live, the Power of God to the devil! To all the demons, the fallen angels. Our job in the Church, according to v10, is to reveal that God has more Power than the devil, more Power than any supernatural being, whoever they might be. We, as the CHURCH, have to make a powerful declaration in the heavenlies!
Now I understand! When I have seen some of the greatest miracles, such as calming storms, commanding storms to go, creative miracles of healing, this is not just a demonstration to the unbeliever, it’s a demonstration to the ‘other powers’! We have so many other religions that claim power, claim authority, claim the allegiance of the people – but we have to demonstrate to THEM, to all these ‘other religions’ and so-called powers, the SUPERIORITY OF GOD’S POWER! We do it simply by our faith being translated into action, showing these powers that, what we ourselves cannot do physically, we do spiritually by every act and demonstration of faith! That means we have to live by faith, demonstrate by faith. Come on! Demonstrate the Glory of God by your faith in Him! Demonstrate the Power that YOU have, and I have, over these ‘other powers and authorities’.
So I see two revelations in this chapter. The first, the creation of the one new man in Christ, the Church, breaking down the dividing wall that was between Jew and Gentile under the Old Covenant. But have we so concentrated on the revelation of this one new man, that it has blinded us to the second revelation – the revelation that the Church must demonstrate the Wisdom and Power and Glory of God in Christ – to the demonic powers and authorities that are opposed to God?!!!