Trinity Church CDA

We all have our own personal stories of who we are, but we also have the story of our people—who

we as a people are. This collective story is not separate from our own personal story, but it is

distinct from it. The story of America, for instance, is distinct from the story of an American. Your

personal story is like a chapter in the biography of America. But America’s story is your story, even

if you don’t feature on every page. The same is true for the Church. The story of the Christian is

distinct from the story of the Church, but it is not separate from it. Your story is a few pages in

the biography of the Church. But, again, the Church’s story is your story, even if you don’t feature

on every page. What this means is that you cannot understand yourself and your life—your

biography—without reading it in the context of the story of God and His people.

Paul uses the mystery of God revealed in Christ to unlock Old Testament prophecies. The early

Christian theologians (e.g., Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen) would speak of Christ as the key. Christ

opens up the Law and Prophets. The Old Testament is all about Jesus, but now after Jesus has been

revealed, the riches of the Old Testament are opened for us so that we can understand them more

fully. In our passage this morning we hear an echo of the Old Testament; in particular, we hear

what David said in Psalm 8.

Our Lord was a Man of prayer. How often would He go away from the crowd to pray to His Father, sometimes even praying all night. Though very God of God, the very Son ofGod, yet He became Man, and He knew how to pray. He prayed and He was heard. As the Apostle says of Jesus, “He, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear” (Heb. 5:7). The disciples who were daily with Him knew this about Jesus. That’s why they asked Him to teach them how to pray, and this is why we have the Lord’s Prayer. Along the same line, our passage this morning is instructive for us. Throughout Paul’s letters we have

preserved for us several of his prayers. Paul’s prayers are instructive for us in how we ought to pray.

Through the course of three eulogies, or praises, Paul focuses on each Person of the Trinity in turn. The end result is an overwhelming proclamation that God is all in all; that our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is Alpha and Omega. He is the beginning of our salvation, the middle of our salvation, and the end of our salvation. It all originates from Him, it is all secured by Him, and it is all brought to its full consummation by Him.

In Ephesians, Paul unfolds in plain terms God’s great work of redemption: God’s great plan to sum up all things in Jesus Christ. In the first part of this letter, the apostle unpacks the mystery of God’s redemption, and then in the second half, he kneads this Gospel into the ordinary life of the everyday Christian. The first three chapters he soars in theological profundity, and then the next three chapters he shows how this heavenly Gospel transforms our ordinary lives. It is, as Moscow puts it: “All of Christ for all of life.”