Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Dr. Ken Boa: Lord, as we reflect upon your goodness and grace, we ask that you would draw us into intimacy with you, that we would again know you and love you and follow you, that we would trust the Father, abide in the Son, and walk in the Spirit, by the Spirit. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Well, we are looking at the Book of Ephesians. This is a glorious and grand epistle, one of the four prison epistles that Paul wrote. But it's not a question of a man writing as if he was just in prison, but he's actually liberated because he's free in Christ. So, he has a perspective and an understanding that even though he's in that experience, that's being used redemptively.

So, he wants these believers that he's writing to to understand their wealth and their walk. The outline of Ephesians is a pretty simple one because it does so easily and beautifully break down into those two basic sessions. You've got the being on the one hand, which is your calling of the body—that's your wealth. But also, you have a walk, and so the doing.

So, the being and the doing go hand-in-hand together. When we were together before, we noticed that it's important for us to see how these do relate, because the wealth and the walk, the position and the practice—you can see then who we are and how we live. Now, in a very real sense, we are new beings, but now we're becomers. So, we're becoming in our practice who we already have become in our position in the heavenly places. It's a both-and process; it's a now-and-not-yet concept.

That's why I called to your attention last time we were together that there's not one commandment in the first three chapters. Why is that? The answer is because you can't make any of those things happen. You see, you can't put yourself in the body of Christ, redeem yourself, call yourself, adopt yourself, and all of those things. That is all the grace of God. But there is something you can do about application.

So, the being is your wealth, but now because of that wealth, you can walk in a certain way. Or another way of looking at it is to simply see that your position in the heavenly places is to be manifested in your practices on Earth while you're here in this brief Earth-bound sojourn for a few decades at the most.

As a consequence, we are in a soul-forming world where we're becoming more and more in our practice who we already are in our position. So, it's an interesting idea that you are a new being on the one hand—if anyone is in Christ, what is he? A new creation. But on the other hand, you're a becomer. You're becoming who you already are.

It's a strange concept because being a spiritual being and an embodied being as well, you're amphibious—one foot in heaven, one on Earth. So, the realization is the pilgrim's perspective of knowing how brief, how transitory, how ephemeral our Earth-bound sojourn is. But it's for a good purpose, and the little time we have on this Earth is absolutely essential because it shapes our destiny in the time ahead.

So, we have life in the heavenly places, but we're called to live in this present age as spiritual and embodied beings. So, my summary at the bottom is we are called to progressively become in our practice who we already are in our position.

Then, the way I've tried to do this is I realize another way of doing this is to put it on its head. So, really the first three chapters could be envisioned as the foundation of a building or the root system of a tree, which is the most important part. It's always significant to note that the most important part of a building or of a tree is that it's not visible; it's below. The most important thing about you is your spirit, which is not seen, but what is visible becomes evident.

So, you want to send roots downwards and bear fruit upwards. The more you choose to embrace what God has said about you by faith—and we may not feel this way, but these are truths that He's given to us—the more it becomes real. Now, it's also significant to note that there's a reciprocal relationship between being and doing, between belief and behavior, or there at least there should be.

So, the more you put these things into practice, the more it enhances your capacity to go further up and further in. It's not a static thing at all. You're not going in cycles, but rather it should be a vortex that goes upwards rather than downwards. It should be a virtuous cycle rather than a diminishment. So, you go around that process.

Sometimes we go through a process in our own life journey where there's a lot of pain, but then you process the pain, and through the processing, you become a person who is actually further down the road than you were before. Remember how I've been saying when we went through the whole book by *Shaped by Suffering*, that you become shaped by that to which you pursue, but your adversity actually will be used by God to redeem the situation in your life.

In such a way that you are actually more defined by what you're becoming and where you're going than where you are right now. But you are living in light of that hopeful future. So, it's a reciprocal relationship between the two of them. We've been talking about this wonderful prayer in Ephesians chapter 1.

We talked about how the Father, according to chapter 1 verses 4 to 6, has chosen and adopted and accepted us. When we see this one statement beginning with verse 3: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." That is rich because He's already packed your bags; He's already given all you need to have.

Now, it's our task in this world to become more clear in our understanding, to grow in our understanding of the wealth God's already given to us. It's a matter of not being static, but continuing to go further up and further in. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. This is the work of the Father; He's the one who chose us, and it was before the foundation of the world. We're not accidents.

Moreover, that we would be holy and blameless. So, He chose us with a particular intention, that you have a destiny that God has granted for you. Nothing in heaven and earth will defeat that ultimately. So, God has a purpose for you, and your job and mine is to invite Him to be the one who's Lord and ruler of all, even in your times of pain.

Because as I've emphasized many times before, don't we learn more through our setbacks, our sorrows, and our sufferings than we do from our successes? Let's be honest about it. I wish it were otherwise, but we're in a fallen world. Thank God for this, that that fallenness was only temporary. Ultimately, we look for an unfallen world.

We look also for a body that will not be wearing down, but rather will be resurrected in Christ-like glory. So, you will be brought into perfect conformity with Him, not only in spirit as we are now. Because you right now are defined by Him in spirit as being perfectly conformed to the image of His Son.

But also in your soul, you're called to become more in your thinking and your choices and your desires, your aspirations, your will—all those things about your conscience and your heart. All those facets of your inner man need to be brought more and more into conformity with what He's already called you to become. So, you are a being and a becomer, and He's adopted you.

Now, one of the ways I love to see this is this idea of *en Christo*, in Christ, this expression that's so rich in the Pauline corpus. So, we see 35 times he uses this expression, "in Christ." The believer is in Christ. In this book, he's using it so many times in chapter 1. We are in Christ; we're in the heavenly places in Christ. We are chosen in Him, as we've seen. Chapter 1 goes on to say that we're adopted through Him. Then we are in Him—He's the beloved.

Furthermore, we're redeemed in Him. We are given an inheritance in Christ. We are given hope in Him—there's a hope of our calling. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Him. We are also made alive together with Him in chapter 2. Then it continues on in chapter 2 to tell us you and I are as good as raised up; we're already seated with Him in the heavenly places.

Though we haven't been resurrected yet, we are already seated with God in our deepest self, in our inner man as he calls it. You are called to actually live out of that wealth that God has already given to you. You're not a pauper; you're to use the wealth you've been given, and that's why it says "every spiritual blessing has been given to you in Christ Jesus." You are not a pauper; you are wealthy.

How many illustrations are there that we've seen of wealthy misers, people who had wealth and did not use it, did not invest it, did not put it into the life of others? As I understand it, for example, the first technically billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, for a number of years was constantly fearful of his wealth and loss of wealth and so forth. The more you have, it's amazing how that works. He was kind of terrified of that until a major change took place in his life when he had some kind of a paradigmatic breakthrough whereby he realized, "I've got to not hoard this stuff but start giving it away."

When he opened up and started his foundation and began to get involved with that, it actually changed his own health, his vitality, because he was at least now beginning to invest this in the lives of others. It has had a huge impact, as you can imagine. So, here he's now not just using his wealth for himself, but rather for the good of those around him. So, he's investing that wealth.

So, we are raised with Him and we are not to be misers but to be generous and glad and have a sense of joy of what God's given us. We've been created in Christ according to chapter 2:10 and brought near by His blood. Furthermore, we're called to grow in Him and to be a partaker of the promises in Christ Jesus in chapter 3. So, again, *en Christo*, in Christ, given access through faith in Him. Those are powerful images; so those are a number of images that we see about the glory of what God has given to us.

So, we saw then in that chapter that the Father has chosen, adopted us, and accepted us. That the Son has redeemed, forgiven, revealed God's will to us, and made us an inheritance, His inheritance. Furthermore, the Spirit has also sealed us and pledged us. So, it's very Trinitarian and it tells us exactly who and whose we really are in Christ Jesus.

Well, the text continues to go on then and beginning in chapter 1, Ephesians 1, and beginning in verse 15. After that one statement—remember I told you before that verses 3 going back up to verse 3, that is one long sentence in the Greek. It's a very beautiful construction, rich in so many ways, but it's rich in its depth.

Frankly, it's one of those things that you'll never unpack. I think that the great saints know how little they know as they grow in maturity and begin to realize, "I don't know much of anything." You begin to realize that you've only scratched the surface, but the summing up of all things in Christ—so all things are really meant for Him and through Him in this inheritance.

So, beginning then in verse 15, he says, "For this reason," in other words in light of what the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit has done for us, "I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, I do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers." This is the first of these four prison prayers that Paul makes, and it's so rich and beautiful that I have sought to do much with these four life-changing prayers, as I call them.

Because two of them are found in our book, Ephesians chapter 1 and Ephesians chapter 3. Two others are found in Philippians and in Colossians; those are in the first chapter. If we unpack what the meaning of these prayers are, the more I meditate on them and choose to think about them, the more profound they really become to me, these great life-changing prayers.

So, 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. So, if I go back to this text then as I'm seeing here, "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."

So, he's talking about the hope of His calling, the wealth of His glory, and the surpassing greatness of His power. Then he goes on to say that 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. Where is He? Far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but in the one to come.

I'll stop there for just a moment because I want to unpack just a few thoughts with you in our remaining time. But this idea of giving thanks, making mention of your prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ—so this great prayer that we have here is enlightenment, which comes through the Holy Spirit. These are things that are spiritually attained.

1 Corinthians 1 says that the things of the Spirit are spiritually apprehended. You cannot get this on your own. This needs to be illuminated, and that is why I love these prayers because it's a prayer that's moving us from intellectual or head knowledge. There's a Greek word for that called *Oida* (O-I-D-A), and it means what we would typically mean by knowledge, to know somebody, to know a thing, a proposition.

But there's a different word in the Greek for a personal, relational, intimate knowledge, and that's the word *Ginosko*. In fact, there's an emphatic version of *Ginosko* called *Epiginosko* that a real knowledge is sometimes described. But this is a kind of a knowledge that transcends our own grasp.

In fact, when Paul uses it in chapter 3, "to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge." So, to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. So, we're dealing then with truth that can only be apprehended by the Spirit of God. So, they are spiritually illuminated, but you need to invite the Spirit to do this.

One of the things that I've been experimenting with in the last maybe year, especially this year more than ever before, is to become more conscious of my need to invoke and invite the Spirit of God throughout the course of the day. Because remember, I talk a lot about *kairos* and *chronos*. Remember those two words?

I talk about how there's *chronos* occasions that we plan in our planner, but you and I cannot plan a *kairos* moment. That's an opportunity, as that word is used. That is something you do not put on your planner. It is something that God though puts in your life.

So, the hard part then is to discern whether if this is, in fact, a *kairos* moment, if this is something that the Spirit of God has put together. I had one I'll share it with you, it was just yesterday. When you know that, the more you tune yourself to it, the more you become open to it, and then, ah, you're open to see it not as an interruption, but an invitation. This interruption is not an interruption; it's actually an invitation to do something that you would not have actually ever planned to do.

In this instance, I encountered a person when I was with my friend at the Cafe Vendome on Roswell Road. I love the place, but I hadn't been there in a long time. We were planning to go instead to the Bangkok Thai because my friend's wife didn't like—he was visiting me yesterday—she doesn't like Thai food. So, we started, and we went there, didn't realize it was not open for Saturday lunch. So, then we walked down instead—we were there anyway—so we went down the hill to Cafe Vendome. So, that was on my side, not intentional.

And then, when I'm talking with my friend, a fellow whom I don't know from Adam's house cat, he comes up to me and he says to me how this counsel that I gave him a few years ago was radically transformational. I swear, if it was in a court of law, I'd never met the man. He gave me his name and so forth and he was raving about this, that, and the other and talking about that.

It was an amazing experience. He said, "You know, it's the oddest thing that I'm even here because I never go back this way. I took a turn wrong, and I found myself in this parking lot, and then there's the Cafe Vendome. Well, I'll stop in there." And then he sees me there. So, it's one of those clear moments that you know neither of us were planning to be there. And that's when the Holy Spirit is the invisible Master of Ceremonies, to use an expression that C.S. Lewis uses. Isn't that a lovely idea?

Let the Spirit of God be the one who orchestrates and animates. One of the applications of that is I don't try to meet anybody. If there's somebody I think it would be good for me to know, I let God take care of that. You see, because if He wants me to meet somebody, or if He wants to orchestrate a thing, He'll make it happen. So, some interesting things took place from that conversation that we're following up on, and it's quite intriguing. I have a suspicion he's supposed to be coming to my Wednesday morning group, so it'll go from there.

But my point is, be open to the work of the Spirit and invite and invoke the Spirit to illuminate your mind and to give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, so that you begin to apprehend in a way that words cannot describe, because it's beyond that. But it's a knowledge—the love of Christ which is beyond the knowledge that we would normally have. So, it's to know the love of Christ which transcends knowledge, that you be filled up to all the fullness of God.

So, this is a very important thing then. It comes from the Holy Spirit, and it's about the heart of the believer, that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. It's a rich image, the idea of the eyes of your heart. It's a concept that almost relates to a kind of a spiritual imagination as well, that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you would 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.

So, you have several little things we can pull out here, but it certainly deals with the idea of this inner relationship with Him. I think the more we invoke and invite, the more it becomes real to us. By the way, the way you will amplify the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit—it is quiet—is obedience. If you do what He calls you to do, if He gives a name to you, if He puts something into your mind, train yourself to note that that might be a *kairos* moment and respond to it accordingly.

He may put a person in your mind or in your encounter, in your path. Whatever it is, note that, and when you respond to it and follow through when you're getting a prompt, I believe that obedience will quietly enhance the volume of the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life. The phrase that I have used is this idea that obedience is the portal of divine disclosure.

I'll say that again: obedience is the portal, the gateway, of divine disclosure. You want to know Him better? Do what He calls you to do. Otherwise, you're not going to go any further than you are. Nor will He give you more light and illumination if you haven't applied the light you've already received. So, this spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him. So, His desire for them is it's in the heart of the believer and it's in the inner man, as he calls it.

So, that the hope of His glory and the inheritance in the saints, but this concept of a spirit of wisdom, of revelation, the eyes of your heart, the hope of His calling, riches of the glory, and what's the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. So, that we would know God, verse 17. And to know God is really not head knowledge, but as we're saying, personal, relational, experiential knowledge.

It's been said that to know God personally is salvation. To know God increasingly is sanctification, and to know God perfectly is glorification. His intention for you—we hardly know much at all—but it's going to go further up and further in. But even in this life, we can begin to know Him better and better. You want to know Him better? Do what He calls you to do. Take that risk and allow the Spirit of God to guide you through the course of your day.

Because you're going to discover the most important things you do this very day will not have been in your planner; it'll be in God's planner. You cannot plan *kairos*, but you can respond to it. When you do that, you become more aware of practicing His presence and inviting Him in and invoking Him into the course of the day.

Sometimes when you're driving, you may be prompted to pray for a certain person, or He may put a person in your mind. Ever have that happen where suddenly you can't get it out of your mind? Do something about that. I always want to follow through, and I never regret doing that.

So, it's very important for us to see this. So, that this is a concept of knowing God, but knowing also His calling as it says in verse 18, that the eyes of your heart would know what is the hope of His calling. There's a rich hope in this calling that has to do with a purity, encourages us to have a purity of thought and a purity of will—purity of will is to will one thing—to have a sense of obedience and fidelity.

So, this has to do with the hope of His calling, that you begin to live out that, and you're beginning to see that you are really in a soul-forming world in which you're being prepared for an eternal context in His life. And then, know His riches as well in verse 18: what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints?

The more you grasp what God's got planned for you, the more secure you'll become, significant you become, satisfied you become. That's a powerful word for us to realize that God has called us to walk in this world. Even though there's such darkness and such warfare in this world, we don't need to wring our hands because we recognize that Christ is the Lord of time and space and that He is bringing things about in His perfect timing and purposes as He has predicted, and as the Scriptures have predicted of Him.

We are living in those times where we are seeing more and more things taken together that are unprecedented. It's an exciting time to live. But I want to live each day in light of *that* day and again with two days in my calendar. And so, I pursue that because God deals with you and me, and here's the interesting thing: He's dealing with us on the basis of what we have become, and that's who you will be in the future, in a resurrected state, in a glorified cosmos as well.

So, already in your spirit you are united with Him. In your mind or your soul, your will, your imagination, your heart—all those things are being conformed. So, you're already there, and you're becoming this person. When you stand before Him, at the judgment seat, He'll purify that.

And then the third component is in your body. Even your body will be brought into conformity with the glory of the resurrected body of Christ. That's why I study the resurrected body, because you're going to spend a lot of time in it, and it's a whole lot better than the one you're in. But we are out of time. So, I just want to wish you a blessed Christmas coming up and that God would guide you in this season in which an advent, as you know, what are we also doing? We're anticipating His second coming, not just looking back on the first.

The last thing I'll share with you is this concept as a kind of reflection on this understanding that the birth of Christ is, as Tolkien coined the term, the eucatastrophe of man's history—catastrophic eruption for good. He uses the Greek word *euthos* and it makes it a prefix. The resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the incarnation. And this story you and I are embedded in begins and ends with joy. Lord, I thank You for the joy of our salvation. May we walk in it. In Christ's name, amen.