Reading: Ephesians 5-6, Psalm 10
Paul continues his tirade against behavior that is rooted in the human problem. Paul tells them to stop engaging in immoral behavior, instead being imitators of God, as his beloved children. What does that look like? Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. Paul looks at the life of Jesus as the prototype for Christian life, specifically his act of sacrifice on behalf of the broken human race. Everything Paul says in the last two chapters of this letter are framed around this the picture of Jesus as the sacrificial servant who is elevated to authority over all things.
He begins by making sure the Ephesians don’t fall into the Corinthian trap of believing they can do whatever they want. Paul rails against this lie, reminding them that this is why humans are constantly at each other’s throats and God’s righteous justice is constantly offended. He wants the Ephesians to make the best use of the time, for the days are evil. It is not good use of the time to live a licentious life of immoral behavior. It is good use of the time to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which leads to worship of God, encouragement of one another, gratitude to God in the name of Jesus, and mutual submission to one another as siblings in God’s family. Let’s remember back to the very start of the Story, to the root of the human problem, and the first story following it. Adam and Eve choose to follow their own definitions of good and bad rather than accept God’s. Their children become divided, leading to murder. The next generation is worse. And on and on until the whole world is defined by division, violence, and suffering. Paul sees the gospel as God’s answer. The behavior listed in when one is filled with the Spirit is the opposite to the divided, violent, suffering world. Submission to Christ is the remedy to the problem of defining good and bad ourselves, so it leads to unity, love, gratitude, and generosity.
Paul now sets out how this plays out. In marriages, it leads to an ordered relationship of submission, respect, love, and self-sacrifice. It is my belief that the church and culture through the ages has gotten far too caught up in who is to submit to who here. That is not the primary point. Paul is working from his image of Jesus as the sacrificial servant, and puts both husbands and wives into the same category in different ways. He even reminds his readers that he is referring to Christ and the church. Yet we, when we fall into behavior driven by our problem, turn it into a description of male-female hierarchy. This is a terrible mistake, and has caused no end of divisions, violence, and suffering over the last two thousand years.
Paul turns next to children and parents, and slaves and masters. Again, roles are described, but always in the context of imitating Jesus as the sacrificial servant. Obedience from children and from slaves is not a hierarchical obedience, but one arising from service. Discipline from parents and work from masters are to be given in the same light. Whatever state a person is it, a Christian is to act in imitation of Jesus as the sacrificial servant of the Lord. Paul drops another reminder at the end of this section that this is all under the eyes of the ultimate Master, Jesus Christ. While Paul is emphasizing Jesus the redeemer here, he says just enough to remind us that Jesus is also the righteous judge.
The last bit of this letter addresses another part of the human origin story and the human problem that easily gets forgotten. We are in a war zone. Back in Genesis 3, the humans chose to take their own knowledge of good and bad… but they did so after being tempted to it by a Serpent. Over the course of the story in Scripture, this Serpent character stays very much in the background, but never goes away. Paul occasionally pops up with phrases like the prince of the power of the air and the schemes of the devil. The particulars of the conflict between the Serpent and the children of God are not spelled out in Scripture, and I think that is intentional. We simply are not given the details of the conflict, because it does not belong to us. When it comes up, we get strange references to characters like the Prince of Persia who opposes Michael, the prince of Israel. Who these characters are and how their conflict works is not our purview, though we apparently have some sort of impact on it. We are to put ourselves under the authority of the King of the Kingdom of God, and obey his orders. In doing so, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Sound intimidating? Good. I’m quite sure it is supposed to.
To answer this battle cry, Paul says to put on the full armor of God. This has been allegorized to the point of exhaustion by the church through the ages, so I won’t go into all the armor bits and why Paul calls faith a shield and the Word a sword and so on. I’ll instead just say that I still believe Paul is working from the fundamental picture of the imitation of Jesus as the sacrificial servant. This will make complete sense to anyone who has served in the public service, whether in law enforcement, security, or the military. It is an assumption in such roles that one may be called upon to sacrifice their lives for the sake of another. Paul is instructing the Ephesians to put on the armor of God not just to protect themselves, but to defend the helpless. The point of the armor is to make supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Paul is not talking an armed rescue mission when he is in prison. He is talking about fighting against the spiritual forces that would prevent him from speaking the gospel, which is the only truly effective weapon in the war we know so little about.