The Message Remix (352 page)

INTRODUCTION
EPHESIANS

 

What we know about God and what we do for God have a way of getting broken apart in our lives.
The moment the organic unity of belief and behavior is damaged in any way,
we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world. He begins with an exuberant exploration of what Christians believe about God, and then, like a surgeon skillfully setting a compound fracture, “sets” this belief in God into our behavior before God so that the bones—belief and behavior—knit together and heal.

Once our attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place. There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn’t out of joint or limping in pain. There is much work to be done.

And so Paul goes to work. He ranges widely, from heaven to earth and back again, showing how Jesus, the Messiah, is eternally and tirelessly bringing everything and everyone together. He also shows us that in addition to having this work done in and for us, we are participants in this most urgent work. Now that we know what is going on, that the energy of reconciliation is the dynamo at the heart of the universe, it is imperative that we join in vigorously and perseveringly, convinced that every detail in our lives contributes (or not) to what Paul describes as God’s plan worked out by Christ, “a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.”

 

 

From:
Paul spent several years in Ephesus, establishing a core of maturing Christians who could spread the Message of Jesus throughout their province (western Turkey). The strategy worked, and Paul moved on. But during a visit to Jerusalem, he was arrested and held for two years without trial. Eventually he appealed to Rome and was transferred there for trial as a Roman citizen. From a Roman jail he continued to guide fledgling churches through letters.

 

To:
In the five or so years after Paul left Ephesus, Ephesian believers took the Message to neighboring cities. New converts in these cities struggled with similar questions about both belief and behavior. Most of them were non-Jews, inclined to think their Jewish neighbors odd. They knew Paul only by rumor, but when he sent an open letter to Ephesus, they eagerly copied and passed it from city to city in the region.

 

Re:
The early 60s A.D. Ephesus was a glowing example of what Rome could do by enforcing peace. Silk from China and wheat from Egypt—anything shipped to Rome likely passed through the port of Ephesus. Trade and tourism boomed. The city’s theater held twenty-five thousand people. The temple of Artemis was four times the size of the Parthenon. But there was a dark side to Rome’s effort to bring together everything on earth under her rule. Masters got rich through slave labor. The army ruthlessly suppressed outbreaks of ethnic rivalry. People terrified of unseen powers sought protection through magic. Or they escaped into drinking, sex, mysticism, or money. The contrast between the peace of Christ and the peace of Rome was stark.