Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Dr. Ken Boa: We’re moving into an entirely new area now. We’ve completed this eternal perspective trilogy, these three books that I did. The first one was Rewriting Your Broken Story: How Do You Fix a Broken Story? The second one was Life in the Presence of God, and then the third one is Shaped by Suffering. So one has to do with the past, the present, and the future.

Now I thought we’d go into a straight-up Bible teaching for a period of time, and I’m going to take you through the book of Ephesians. I’m just going to kind of walk you through and more of a Bible exposition and application approach to our time together, which is good to do. We do topics, we do the scriptures, and so they both have their strengths and their values.

I’m going to walk you through this material, and it’ll be a good way for me to introduce you to this book. Let’s take a look at the New Testament structure first of all. When we look at the New Testament books, there are three major types of books. The first ones are the historical books. Then there are the Pauline epistles, which include ones that are written to churches and those to individuals. Then the so-called general epistles.

In that general structure, chronologically, the storyline is carried on by the book of Acts largely. The gospels and Acts—half the epistles occur during the time of the book of Acts. You can see a whole bunch that occur during that timeframe in the book of Acts, so we have to have that backdrop story.

The other 11 epistles occur during Paul’s freedom from bondage. He had a first Roman imprisonment and then he had a period in between. He was able to go to other places besides the places that are mentioned in the book of Acts. Then he had a second imprisonment, and that was the one that he was executed. So the second Roman imprisonment took place, and he wrote 2 Timothy during that one. The book of Hebrews and Jude were written around that time as well.

Then we go to the general epistles. These include not just Hebrews and Jude but also 1 and 2 Peter, as well as 1, 2, and 3 John and Revelation. We’re going to be focusing on our epistle to the Ephesians here to give you just a general backdrop of where we are.

This is a beautiful picture. I’ve been there once. Ancient Ephesus is fascinating, and the acoustics were astonishing. This is the facade of the library that still remains. Imagine what it was like at that time, in the original time.

I want to look at the introduction and the title. It’s a book, if I were to summarize it, that’s written to a group of believers who were spiritually rich but they were living as paupers. That’s a whole theme in this book. The idea that you have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You have this great wealth, but you’re living as if you had nothing. There are stories about such people, like misers who have a great deal of wealth but they do not enjoy their wealth at all.

I think there’s a spiritual analogy in that context as well because they’re ignorant of their wealth. Some of them have yet to accept their wealth and to relegate themselves to the living as spiritual paupers. This is the mistake that they’re making.

Paul begins by describing in chapters 1 to 3 the contents of the spiritual heavenly bank account, what we actually possess. You’ve been adopted by the Father into his family, into his household. You’ve been accepted by Christ. In spite of any earth-bound rejection, you’ve been accepted by him. You’ve been redeemed; he purchased you with his own blood. You’ve been given forgiveness and you’ve been given wisdom as well.

Every spiritual blessing has been given to you. You’ve been given a rich inheritance, and you’ve been given the Holy Spirit who gives you the power to be people who are overcomers in this world. You couldn’t do it on your own. You couldn’t live this life unless the spirit of God were in you. So this is a very critical theme. He’s given us this wisdom and this spiritual life as well, this grace that we’ve received, and the citizenship that our citizenship is in the heavenly places. All of this is to the praise of the glory of his grace.

In chapters 4 to 6, by contrast, you have not only your wealth but now your walk. Here is the key of how we are to live our lives. A Christian learns a spiritual walk that’s rooted in their spiritual wealth. So you live out of your wealth in your walk. For we are his workmanship, and we’ve been created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. He gives us the capacity to accomplish the things that are pleasing to him. You can’t do it on your own, but he gives you all the resources that you need to make that so.

This is a brief overview, and we'll go into more detail. It’s one of the easier books to outline because it’s pretty obvious. Chapters 1 to 3 is your position and chapters 4 to 6 is your practice. Your wealth and your walk, your being and your doing. This is a very clear epistle the way it organizes itself, and there’s a reason why the wealth appears before the walk.

It’s written to the Ephesians, but there was an encyclical in chapter 1. He talks about the fact that that phrase is not always used in that and there was an encyclical theater. The traditional view though is that the encyclical theory proposes that it was a circular letter sent by Paul to the churches of Asia and that it’s really a Christian treatise designed for general use. It involves no controversy, doesn’t deal with specific problems in any particular church, which is unusual because a lot of Paul’s writings in his epistles are corrective in nature.

These things seem inconsistent with the relationship that he’s heard with their relationship here, that the absence of personal greetings is not a support for the encyclical theory, but he would’ve done this perhaps to avoid favoritism. There’s no way to be sure, but it was directed to the Asian churches, but I think Ephesians was particularly focused because he spent a lot of time there.

Paul’s involved in the writing of this, that’s the traditional view of this, and what we have here is all the internal and external evidence strongly support that. But there have been some internal grounds and people have come to claim there’s a different vocabulary and style; they’re different from other books. But this overlooks the fact that Paul was very flexible. You compare, for example, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians; they are very different in style because the content demanded a different kind of style. Some of his epistles are warm and some are just more like doctrinal, like Romans. So it depends on the context.

The theology of Ephesians really focuses on the understanding of a later grasp of the in-Christ relationships in his working with these people, and that’s what I’m particularly keen on. I want to focus on the second missionary journey. At the end of his second missionary journey, Paul visited Ephesus where he left Priscilla and Aquila. This strategic city was a commercial center of Asia Minor. Heavy silting required a special canal, however, to be maintained because it’s now way inland, but it was once opened up.

It was a city that was very popular with the worship of Diana, and this had this temple, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. This magnificent temple of Diana, or the Greek name Artemis, was considered to be a great structure. It was a practice of magic, a center of local economy, which was related to this temple and this worship that went on there.

During his third missionary journey, he remained this time in Ephesus for nearly three years on that journey. The word was spread throughout the province of Asia. They did a demonstration where you could light a match, you can hear the thing. It’s just astonishing the acoustics that you hear in these theaters. It was brilliantly designed. This is where they cried out for two hours, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." It was a strange experience for them.

After the third missionary journey, he left for Macedonia, but he afterwards met with the Ephesian elders on his way to Jerusalem. He had that closing time with them. As for the dates of these prison epistles—Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon—they were dated during Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, which would be the years 60 to 62. They all refer to his imprisonment in one way or another that is very clear against the background of Acts 28. The palace guard was mentioned there, the governor’s official residential guard, and Caesar’s household he mentions that as well.

The location, some people think that it took place outside of Rome, but I think it was actually more likely that it was in Rome. He wrote to the Ephesians, wrote to the Philippians, and to the Colossians and to Philemon as well. So they all go together and there’s very similar content in those books.

He wrote this to make Christians more aware of their position in Christ. And that’s a key theme there: what is your true position in Christ Jesus? To motivate them to draw upon this source in their daily living, to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, is the key theme to this book.

The first half of the epistle lists the believer’s heavenly position. Walk out of that and live out of that position. Your position is that you’ve been adopted, you’ve been redeemed, you have an inheritance, you’ve been given great power, you’ve been given life, you’ve been given grace, citizenship, and the love of Christ. I’ll be wanting to pull through all those things as we go through them together.

What we see in chapters 4 to 6 is very different than chapters 1 to 3. In chapters 1 to 3, there are no commandments because you can’t make any of those things happen. It’s something that only God can do. But in chapters 4 to 6, you have 35 commands. So it’s very clear now; that’s something you can be involved in as well, but it’s very significant the sequence, the order in which that takes place.

When I look at the first material here, Ephesians 1 to 3 is the believer’s wealth versus the walk in 4 to 6. It’s our position in 1 to 3 but then our practice in 4 to 6. We start with being, who we are, and that’s where it should start. Then it ends up with doing, how we live. One is not denigrated, one provides the power and the source for the other. Our calling and then our conduct. Here is who you are, now you are to live in this way.

You’re a new being in Christ. If anyone’s in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. And yet at the same time, he is a person who is a becomer. So in a very mysterious and real way, you’re becoming more and more in your practice who you already are in your position. You have these positional wealths, this wealth in the heavenly places. You are adopted into the family, you are seated with him in the right hand of the Father in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

There’s a very deep mystery in which we are spiritual beings with spiritual wealth. But we must now in this world, during this very short season of life where we have this brief sojourn in this world—because we are now here as pilgrims, we are aliens, we’re exiles, we’re sojourners, we’re wanderers, we’re tenants—think of all those images emphasizing the brevity of the earthbound sojourn.

You’re in a soul-forming world. You’re being trained so that your deepest self in Christ Jesus becomes more and more manifest in your daily living. So that you are becoming in your practice who you already are in your position. I think that’s an incredibly important understanding, so that it’s a now and not yet. There’s a dynamic in which we are becoming who and whose we really are in the heavenly places.

We are spiritual beings emphasized, but then we’re embodied. We have the divine sovereignty of God, human responsibility, the foundation and the superstructure. We are called to progressively become in our practice who we already are in our position. One way of seeing this is to see no commandments again. There are reasons for that because you can’t make any of those things happen. You cannot adopt yourself, you cannot redeem yourself, you cannot call yourself. All those things are the riches of divine grace.

But then you can do something about how you live it out. You cannot actually imitate Christ unless you have been identified with him. That’s a very critical concept. You’re called to become imitators because you’ve already been identified with him. He’s given you what you need. Once again, it’s not just that this is a radical concept of grace that we see so utterly unique, but it’s also another radically different thing is that he not only tells us how to live, but he gives us the power to do it. And that’s where the Holy Spirit comes. So all these foundational issues then make all the difference in the world.

Another way of looking at it is this way. I find that it’s helpful sometimes to see what you’re really dealing with in chapters 1 to 3 is the foundation. It’s like the root system of a tree, or it’s like the foundation of a house. It’s not visible outside, but that’s the most important thing about the tree or about the building. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. That’s the depths out of which you live, and then the external expression of that is to be born out of the internal life that we have in Christ. So there’s a foundation and a superstructure.

I see it as a reciprocal relationship in a very real way because they actually reinforce each other. Your beliefs, we know, will affect your behavior. At the same time, your behaviors will shape your beliefs. Your attitude will affect your actions, but your actions will reciprocally affect your attitude. So it’s a mutual reinforcement. Rather than an either one or the other, they’re both extremely important, but you live out of the first half.

Theme of the book is the believer’s walk, and it’s our responsibility to walk according to the calling, his heavenly calling in Christ Jesus. The purpose of the book is not to correct specific errors in a local church, but rather it seemed to be preventing problems in the church as a whole by encouraging the entire body of Christ to mature in him. To live out of the depths of who you are and whose you really are in this world, to treasure your spiritual wealth above material wealth because that’s what’s going to endure, that’s what’s going to last.

To make believers more aware of their position in Christ because this is the basis for their practice on every level of life. Some of the key themes in this book—building the body of Christ would be one way of seeing this. A key verse: "By grace you’ve been saved through faith; and that not of works lest anyone should boast, not of yourselves but rather it is the gift of God." So we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

This idea that we are God’s workmanship, that we’ve been saved so that we will produce something that will actually be honoring to him. He called us and empowered us and equipped us to walk lives that require an explanation. Another text that is important: "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk have a walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all humility and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the body of peace."

So this is this idea of unity and diversity. The more intimate we are in our relationship with Jesus, the greater that’s going to enhance the quality of our relationships with others. It is the vertical relationship we have with God that will enhance our horizontal relationships and dealings with other people.

Certainly this one: the fact that we’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus in 1:3. We’re talking about the warfare though that you’re going to encounter in this world and that we’re called to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. While we are in this world, it's going to be a daily experience of adversity, and we have to strengthen ourselves in the resources that God has given us.

Unlike Galatians, which is a very personal and controversial letter, Ephesians is more formal and more impersonal in style. It’s not as controversial in subject matter. He only says two things about himself, really: about his imprisonment and his reason for sending Tychicus. It’s a benediction as in the third person.

In this book we see some sublime thought, rich vocabulary, especially in chapters 1 to 3, it’s ethereal, where theology and worship are really intertwined together. Meditating on chapter 1, especially verses 3 through 14, it’s one huge sentence in the Greek, and it’s exquisite. It pulls things together in so many ways it’s almost impossible to really begin to mine its depths because of the richness that’s there, well worth rewarding a spiritual time of reflection in that.

Christ is seen in this book in many ways, but the in-Christ, *en Christo*, relationship appears 35 times, more than any other New Testament book. The believer is in Christ, you see. Then we also see he’s in the heavenly places in Christ. Then he is chosen in Christ. He is adopted through Christ. He is in the beloved. He is redeemed in him, given inheritance in Christ, given hope in Christ, sealed in him. These are tremendous richness of images that we have.

Consider your identity: you’ve been raised and seated with him in the heavenly places. You have been created in him. You’re a new creation. You’ve been brought near by his blood. You are now growing in him. You’re a partaker of the promise in Christ. We see that we’ve been given access to the Father through faith in him.

That’s a lot of different components that you can see that really work together in profound ways. I want to take you into a brief overview of the timing of this material in terms of the overview of Ephesians. Moving from being to doing, but it’s reciprocal again. You’re living out of the interior, but it’s the calling of the body and then the conduct.

In the calling of the body, we’re dealing with an overview of the book that’s praise for redemption. We have a salutation from Paul, then the emphasis of we’re chosen by the Father, we’re redeemed by the Son, and we’re sealed by the Holy Spirit. Those three powerful words: chosen, redeemed, and sealed.

Again, the more you grasp your dignity and identity in Christ, the more you allow him to define you, the more secure you will be. The more you will realize he’s already given you security. He’s given you significance, he’s given you satisfaction, he’s given what you what he knows you need. But we turn to the wrong places to get those needs met. Instead of turning to people for security, we actually have the in-Christ relationship where we’re secure in him in the relationship we have with the Father that he’s adopted us. He’s given us significance as being members of something that’s going to last forever, a community of faith, believers who are going to go on into the eternal places. Relationships will continue, endless relational vitality and life in a deathless and painless world.

The new age is yet to come. We await for his coming. In that context then, we will be resurrected and so the cosmos itself will be made glorious as well. In that context then, imagine what it’ll be like when you have a richer relationship with people that you haven’t met, millions of people that you haven’t yet to meet. The intimacy that we’re going to experience with one another, it’s a difficult thing for me to grasp. I’ve been doing a lot more chewing as I get older on these realities because it makes good sense for me to think what will the resurrected body be like? After all, you’re going to be in it forever. Might be a good idea to figure out what it’s like.

You’re sure not defined by this mortality. The morbidity of decrepitude gets painfully obvious as we get older and older. Some of us decay more nicely, but we’re all decaying, and it’s rather depressing that that’s who we are. I’d be really in bad shape by now. This would be a tragedy, not a comedy. It’s not a good way it’s ending. If there was not another act. But there’s another act to come, and it’s the fourth act.

When I consider the four acts of God’s work of what he has done, I think about this idea of creation, fall, redemption, we’re in that act. We’re near the end of that third act. Everything began well. He started well, it’s the greatest story ever told. In the first act, you have everything is just as he wishes it to be and it was very good, good, good, good, and then it was very good with the creation of humanity.

But the doctrine of the fall, which is unique in the scriptures, teaches that we are not as we were meant to be. We changed ourselves. God did not intend us for this condition, but ultimately a choice was made and there is the risk of love because it can be spurned and rejected.

In that turning away from doing his will and saying, "my will be done," basically, the fall that we see in Genesis chapter 3 is one that involves a four-fold alienation, not just one. First it was, "in the day you eat thereof," what did he say? What'll happen in the day you eat thereof? You will surely—it’s not a trick question. In the day you eat thereof you’re going to surely die. You were not meant to die.

Death in scripture is separation, not annihilation. Means that you’ve been separated from the source, the wellspring, of all that is beautiful and true and good. And so you have a spiritual death that’s involved in that. So you were in choosing yourself, you walked away from that wellspring of all beauty and goodness and truth, and so you died in that relationship.

But then that also produced the split within ourselves, and that split within ourselves is caused then as a result of our split with God. Then that leads third to an alienation with others. We’re not at peace with one another because we’re not at peace with ourselves. We’re not at peace with ourselves because we’re not at peace with God. It’s a great summary of our human condition. This internal problem, and then there’s a fourth level of alienation, and that’s even with the created order.

This whole dynamic is a devastating fall, but even in Genesis 3 we have the *protoevangelium*, which is the first promise of the coming of the seed of the woman who will defeat the serpent’s seed. We have this picture of the next act that’s going to come, and so we have this redemption where there’s substantial healing. First in our relationship with God, which then as we apply that and grasp it to be true, then it becomes more and more true of us and it affects our relationship with others.

The more we grasp who and whose we are, the more secure we are to serve. So we become secure to serve others when we grasp that we have nothing to prove and no one to impress. That our relationship with God allowing him to define us gives us security, so we can approach other relationships not out of deficiency trying to get my needs met through them anymore, but rather all that I need is now met by the one who made me.

Because of that, I can now approach relationships, the more I grasp this truth, out of the overflow of my relationship with Jesus. That becomes a pretty powerful way of seeing life indeed from God’s perspective. So I approach relationships out of the overflow of the relationship with Jesus.

If it’s not reciprocated, it doesn’t hurt. It would be painful, but it doesn’t destroy me because my identity is not based upon people’s opinions and expectations but rather it’s based upon what God has defined me to be. I have to choose to walk with that stability, that security, that hope. The more I walk in that way, I live in a way that demands an explanation. That’s what he wants for all of us, every one of us here.

He wants us to actually choose to believe that the things that he says about us are true, even in spite of our feelings and experiences to the contrary. The glorious truth is that there’s a new act to come, another act of resurrected life in the painless, deathless context of resurrected life and vitality. It is a glorious story that we anticipate in what is to come.

We have this praise for redemption and then we have this prayer for revelation. In verses 15 to 23 you have this prayer, very powerful picture of our position in Christ. Then there’s a prayer for realization in chapter 3 as well. These two prayers are actually part of what I use for Paul’s life-changing prayers.

When I consider the life-changing prayers, the first of those life-changing prayers is Ephesians 1:17 through 19: "I pray 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’s the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe."

This is powerful stuff because it’s inviting us, it’s really a prayer that we would have the grace of holy desire and apprehension. The very prayer that he’s offering here is something I would want my loved ones to have prayed over them. The best thing I can offer them is a prayer that they become more and more who he called them to be. That you know the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance.

One of those two life-changing prayers. Another prayer is the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you being rooted and grounded in love be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the depth and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

A powerful picture of an apprehension of this vast love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. He’s not talking about a kind of knowledge you can know by induction or intuition or anything of that nature, but rather it’s a knowledge of revelation, a revealed knowledge that he gives that we must choose to embrace and to receive. He’s praying then that we would have something, a knowledge that surpasses knowledge.

This is not intellectual knowledge; it’s personal, experiential, relational knowledge. That’s the prayer that we would want. You want to make it real, not just in my head but in my heart. We’re praying that the spirit of God would infuse us with that kind of knowledge. It’s been said that even the desire to be pleasing to him is itself pleasing in him to him. It doesn’t take much to please him. You can’t impress him, but you can please him.

There’s a simplicity of choosing to believe that what God says about us is true. And if he says these things, we can live them out. I find myself praying these two these prayers. Then there’s also a third prayer that’s found in the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter 1. The fourth prayer is Colossians chapter 1.

These four powerful prayers are indeed life-changing. They’re transformative prayers because they all pray for a spirit of wisdom and of revelation of something that God only can give to you because spiritual things are spiritually appraised. It cannot be known by just on our own, but ultimately it is revealed to us and then we pray for the grace and the Holy Spirit to reveal that more and more true in our lives and make it more manifest in our own journey.

When I see these prayers, we see our true position in chapter 2, a prayer for revelation. There’s a praise for redemption, then there’s the prayer of revelation. Third, there’s a position of the believer. You have your old condition in which you were dead to God in chapter 2, and your new condition in which you’ve been brought alive from the dead. You’ve been made alive from into him.

Your corporate position as well: you’ve been reconciled with Jews and Gentiles, the mystery of the church, something that was not had not been revealed until now. This prayer for power. Then the second half is the conduct. If the first half is the calling, the second half is the conduct, and it has to do with unity in the body and holiness in life. Unity and diversity, this is where the gifts come in. Putting off the old and putting on the new. Not grieving the spirit but walking as children of light and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

That’s my little outline of this epistle that gives you a little sense of the context of what this means. I want to talk next when we’re together next time about the role of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in our lives. We’re going to be focusing on this prayer in chapter 1, verses 4 through 14 in particular. How the Father has chosen you, that he’s adopted you, that he’s accepted you.

These are radical truths and they go contrary to the narratives that many people have picked up as they grew up. The lies, "you’ll never amount to anything," "how come you can’t be like your brother?" "you’re just stupid, you won’t amount to anything." Those false lies are there and we have to replace those lies with what God’s truth is.

We have to choose to believe it’s true, even though it’s in spite of our feelings and experiences to the contrary, choosing to believe that this is who we are in him. He’s chosen you, he’s adopted you, he’s accepted you. The Son has redeemed you, he’s forgiven you, he’s revealed God’s will, he chooses to reveal his will and makes you and me his inheritance.

Then the role with the Holy Spirit is that he has sealed us until the day of redemption; he’s given us his pledge. He’s given us his assurance: "I am with you, I will not forsake you." This is a wealth that we can walk in. The more secure you are in him, the more you’re able to be able to serve other people without need for reciprocity. To be an other-centered person, self-for-others rather than a self-for-self.

Lord Jesus, I pray that you would cause us to walk in your grace and give us the grace of holy aspiration and the realization that you have loved us, pursued us, wooed us, called us to yourself. That we are yours and your all, all things are now given to us because in Christ we have all possession. Give us the holy grace of holy desire to know you better and to walk out, live out all that you’ve called us to be in Christ’s name. Amen.