Daily Liturgy and Scripture

In laying out the specifics of what it looks like to be God’s people, Paul brings together an idea that may be familiar: light. Not only does light expose things (which means we should conduct ourselves as citizens of the Kingdom), but it also wakes us in the morning. That same light which exposes also brings people to knowledge of itself. This is the work of the Spirit, raising us from our prior ignorance of God so we can see that he was there all along, even if we weren’t aware.

A supreme God, involved in our lives, come to earth: now something is asked of us. We are to BE that people that Christ showed us how to be. Behavior of a people like that should look different, but it’s not manufactured. It must be grounded in love, and love like that comes only from the Spirit.

If the people of Ephesus were still with Paul having been told that there was one supreme God, that his Son had died and resurrected, and that he called us into his work, this part ought to really drive the point home: the God who came here not only invites you to be included in his work, but he gives you gifts to do that work. This is much more than a God drifting somewhere far away. This God is involved, and concerned with equipping his children to be part of his Kingdom.

To a church that was immersed in a myriad of false gods, Paul’s claim that they could approach God must have been pretty mind-blowing. The stories of the false gods were of petty arguments between deities that used humans as pawns, occasionally stooping to include a human or two. To be included in the life of the Spirit, known by God, would have been quite a pill for those people to swallow.

As Paul continues his line of thought with the Ephesians, he now brings together the body of Christ as a whole. He has established that Christ reigns over all the gods that the Ephesians have known, he has talked of the sacrifice of Christ setting us right with God. Now he goes to the next step: Christ’s sacrifice brings us closer to God, and to each other. There are no insiders and outsiders when the blood of Jesus comes into play. Regardless of Jew or Gentile status, we all belong to him.

If you are going to claim Christ is greater than all the pagan gods, then the most powerful argument is the resurrection. Paul cuts straight to that point. That’s not his only stop, though, because the resurrection was not a cosmic magic trick to show that Jesus could whip all the false gods. It was certainly a showing of his power, but it was also meant to draw men to him. Without both these sides of the resurrection, we have an incomplete picture.

If Ephesus was a place of many gods, Paul didn’t waste his time disputing all of them. Instead, he cuts to the chase: Christ is the supreme, the one under whom all things are brought together. This saves a lot of debate. You can believe in lesser gods if you want, but why waste your time? Paul knew the true ruler of the universe, and wasn’t wasting time with any others.

Ephesus was a church in Asia that was very much Roman, situated in a large city that had lots of competition from pagan religions. Paul gets started by getting ahead of all of that: he establishes God’s plan from the beginning. Certainly Christ’s life and death was not just a cosmic tragedy, the unforeseen death of God’s Son. It had purpose, and in Christ’s becoming man, we become heirs with him. All our royalty is found in him because he humbled himself to become like us.

It was Roman law that an escaped slave be returned to their master, so Paul was definitely doing something exceptional by asking his friend Philemon to bypass that right. Especially because the escaped slave was now a Christian, this was an opportunity for these brothers in Christ to show how followers of Christ truly did follow a different way than that of their contemporaries.

As the letter to the Colossians wraps up, Paul once again makes us mindful of the bond in Christ carried by the early church. The names he mentions include traveling missionaries, local members, and people who had come to them. It’s kind of refreshing. In a time where churches in the same town often have some old feud that prevents them from speaking to one another, we can remember that the we are one in the body of Christ, life can look so much better.