Ephesians 3 Part 1
Bible Study Time 8-7-05
Bible Study Time 8-7-05
Last week we studied Ephesians, Chapter 2, where the Apostle Paul said that today God is creating one new man, one body, from Jews and Gentiles alike. Any Jew, anywhere, can accept Christ and become a part of this one new man. Any Gentile, anywhere, can accept Christ and become part of the one new man whom God is creating in the heavens. In Ephesians, Chapter 1, Paul called this new man the Church which is the Body of Christ.
Jesus Christ went only to the Jews in His earthly ministry, but today He is preaching peace to the Jews and to the Gentiles. This was made possible by the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary because his work upon the cross abolished that aspect of the Mosaic Law which was contained in ordinances. The Mosaic Law required a person to be circumcised to participate in the temple worship. When Christ shed His blood on the cross, He did away with that requirement so that today Jews and Gentiles fellowship together with Christ in one body.
The Apostle Paul starts Ephesians, Chapter 3, by saying, “For this reason.” Obviously, something is going to happen because of the revelation which was given in Chapter 2, but rather than finishing the thought, Paul digresses to provide a few more details regarding the revelation of the new man. In fact, Paul does not return to this thought until verse 14 where he says:
Ephesians 3:14 (NKJ)
14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Paul was obviously overwhelmed by this revelation concerning the new man, and his response was to bow before the One who was wise enough to conceive this marvelous plan.
Now let’s go back to verse 1 to see what it was that diverted Paul’s attention. In verse 1, we read:
Ephesians 3:1-6 (NKJ)
1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles—
2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you,
3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
5 which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets:
6 that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel,
Paul first of all reminded the Ephesians that he was in prison because of his ministry among the Gentiles. Paul had ministered in Ephesus for three years, and just before Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, he had stopped in Miletus and called for the elders of Ephesus. When the elders arrived, Paul said:
Acts 20:25 (NKJ)
25 "And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more.
Paul went on to remind them of the fact that he had ministered among them for three years and that he had worked with his hands to provide for his own necessities. Then we read in verse 36 of Acts 20:
Acts 20:36-38 (NKJ)
36 And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all.
37 Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him,
38 sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship.
They knew the message that Paul had preached among the Gentiles. He had come to them preaching the kingdom of God and demonstrating through the power of the Holy Spirit that God was saving the Gentiles apart from the works of the Jewish law.
Obviously, as Paul set off for Rome, these gentlemen were fully aware of the fact that many of the Jews in Jerusalem were furious with Paul because of his ministry among the Gentiles. Their sorrow at Paul’s departure was justified for shortly after Paul got to Jerusalem, he was arrested and eventually sent to Rome.
Therefore, Paul said in Ephesians 3 that he was the prisoner of Jesus Christ for the Gentiles, and he went on to speak of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to him for the Gentiles. The word for dispensation in the original language is oikonomia. It means a stewardship. It is the same word used by the Lord when He told his disciples of the steward who was wasting the resources of his employer. The Lord said that the steward was called to give an account of his stewardship, and the word for stewardship is oikonomia.
It was the word used by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, where he said:
1 Corinthians 9:17 (NKJ)
17 . . . if I (preach the gospel) willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have been entrusted with a stewardship.
In this passage, Paul expressed the fact that he was pleased to go beyond the call of duty in his service for the Lord. He was not content to fulfill only the basic requirements of that which God had entrusted to him. When he said that he was entrusted with a stewardship, the original is again oikonomia.
Clearly, oikonomia simply means a stewardship, and if we use that definition in Ephesians it will help us clarify some of the complicated doctrines of that letter. In Ephesians 3, Paul said that God had given him the dispensation, or the stewardship, of the grace of God.
God has always saved people by His grace, but now Paul says that he has been given a special stewardship that relates specifically to the grace of God. He goes on to say that God had made known to him a mystery which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, namely that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body with the Jews. Then in verse 9, Paul says that God has called him to reveal to all people the fellowship of this mystery, and here again the word for fellowship is oikonomia which means stewardship.
At this point we have seen the stewardship of God’s grace and the stewardship of the mystery concerning the one body, but these two stewardships appear to be related to the stewardship of Chapter 1, where Paul said:
Ephesians 1:9-10 (NKJ)
9 (God has) made known to us the mystery of His will, . . .
10 that in the dispensation (or the stewardship) of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth . . .
Certainly, this stewardship in Chapter 1 relates to a future time, but it also relates to our present time for God is already in the process of gathering all things together in Christ. Colossians 1 confirms that God is already in the process of reconciling all things together in Christ.
Therefore it would appear that the two stewardships of Ephesians 3 and the stewardship of Ephesians 1 are really just one multifaceted stewardship which had been given to Paul. God gave to Paul the stewardship of His grace which relates to the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body known as the Church which is the Body of Christ, and which also relates to God’s larger purpose of gathering all things in heaven and earth together in Christ.
Now back in Chapter 3, Paul speaks of the mystery of the one body and says that he had written briefly about this mystery on a previous occasion. Specifically, he said:
Ephesians 3:3-4 (NKJ)
3 . . . by revelation (God) made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
Since Paul never revealed this great truth of the one body until after the Acts period, and since we know of no other letter which Paul wrote to the Ephesians after the Acts period, Paul must have been referring to his previous statements in this same letter.
As we have mentioned, in Chapter 1 Paul said that God is gathering all things together in one and that God has given Christ to be the Head over all things to the Church which is His Body. In Chapter 2, Paul said that God is now creating one new body from believing Jews and Gentiles and shows that this new body has no relationship to Israel’s covenants of promise. Now in Chapter 3, Paul says that his stewardship of God’s grace is a mystery concerning the one body in which Jews and Gentiles are fellow heirs.
Paul says in Chapter 3 that his stewardship concerning the one body was not made known to the sons of men in previous generations but that it has now been revealed by the Holy Spirit to the apostles and prophets. In Romans 16:25, Paul spoke of the mystery concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ and said that that mystery was even at that time being made manifest by the prophetic scriptures. But this mystery in Ephesians is a mystery which is now being revealed to the prophets, not by the prophets. In Romans, Paul was revealing truths which had been hidden in the prophetic scriptures, but in Ephesians Paul was revealing truths which had been hidden in God.
According to the mystery of Ephesians 3, believing Jews and Gentiles are saved by the same gospel as the believers of the Acts period because they too are partakers of God’s promise in Christ through the gospel. But unlike the believers of the Acts period, these believers have become fellow heirs and of the same body with the Jews.
Paul admitted that he viewed himself as being less than the least of all saints, but that God had called him by the gift of His grace to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Again we see that the truth concerning the Church, the Body of Christ, is nowhere hinted at in the Old Testament scriptures for the word for unsearchable literally means untraceable. There is no trace of these truths in the writings of the Old Testament or in any other historical document. These riches of Christ belong specifically to the members of the Church which is the Body of Christ. They are untraceable, and they were unknown to man until God revealed them through Paul.
In verse 9, Paul declared that this great truth of the Church which is the Body of Christ was hidden in God from the beginning of the ages so that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the Church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
When I first read this, I had to wonder, how does the Church of our present age reveal to the principalities in the heavens the wisdom of God? Then I thought about the fact that none of the prophets knew that the Messiah was going to come to the earth twice. The prophets taught that the Messiah would be born of a virgin and would grow up to establish an everlasting kingdom. Some of the prophets hinted at the fact that the Messiah would be rejected by the people and killed, but none of the prophets even came close to suggesting that the Messiah would be rejected again by the Jews after His death, burial and resurrection.
When God revealed to the Apostle Paul at the end of the Acts period that Christ was going to be rejected again by the Jews, Paul was astonished to learn that God had a whole new plan for mankind which God was going to implement and which Paul was going to reveal. God’s plan was to create the Church which is the Body of Christ.
The rulers of the darkness of this age had worked very effectively within the hearts Israel’s religious leaders to kill the Son of God, and they must have thought themselves victorious over the plan of God, that is until Christ was raised from the dead.
When Christ was raised from the dead, they were put to an open shame, but they quickly regrouped. They continued to work within the hearts of the Jewish people, blinding their eyes to the message of the Apostles and to the miracles which they did. Steadfastly, the Jewish people refused the grace of God, and rather than believe the truth of God, they chose to believe the lie of Satan.
The Jewish people rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah, and the rulers of darkness must have thought once again that they had won the day. But when they heard Paul’s revelation concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ, they knew that they were no match for the manifold wisdom of God.
Because of the existence of the Church which is the Body of Christ, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places now know that God is sovereign over all the universe. They now see that everything they do fits perfectly into the plan of God. Though they are full of rebellion and bitterness toward God, every step they take, every move they make, fits perfectly into the plan of God.
The truth concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ was a stewardship of God’s grace which was given to the Apostle Paul, and it proves once and for all the manifold wisdom of God. It is not because of anything that the Church does or does not do which proves the wisdom of God. It is the very existence of the Church which proves God ability to work all things together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose.
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Church links:
http://www.peacechurch-ok.org/
http://www.eleventhavenuechurch.com/
http://gracebiblechurch-fw.com/
Jesus Christ went only to the Jews in His earthly ministry, but today He is preaching peace to the Jews and to the Gentiles. This was made possible by the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary because his work upon the cross abolished that aspect of the Mosaic Law which was contained in ordinances. The Mosaic Law required a person to be circumcised to participate in the temple worship. When Christ shed His blood on the cross, He did away with that requirement so that today Jews and Gentiles fellowship together with Christ in one body.
The Apostle Paul starts Ephesians, Chapter 3, by saying, “For this reason.” Obviously, something is going to happen because of the revelation which was given in Chapter 2, but rather than finishing the thought, Paul digresses to provide a few more details regarding the revelation of the new man. In fact, Paul does not return to this thought until verse 14 where he says:
Ephesians 3:14 (NKJ)
14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Paul was obviously overwhelmed by this revelation concerning the new man, and his response was to bow before the One who was wise enough to conceive this marvelous plan.
Now let’s go back to verse 1 to see what it was that diverted Paul’s attention. In verse 1, we read:
Ephesians 3:1-6 (NKJ)
1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles—
2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you,
3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
5 which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets:
6 that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel,
Paul first of all reminded the Ephesians that he was in prison because of his ministry among the Gentiles. Paul had ministered in Ephesus for three years, and just before Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, he had stopped in Miletus and called for the elders of Ephesus. When the elders arrived, Paul said:
Acts 20:25 (NKJ)
25 "And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more.
Paul went on to remind them of the fact that he had ministered among them for three years and that he had worked with his hands to provide for his own necessities. Then we read in verse 36 of Acts 20:
Acts 20:36-38 (NKJ)
36 And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all.
37 Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him,
38 sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship.
They knew the message that Paul had preached among the Gentiles. He had come to them preaching the kingdom of God and demonstrating through the power of the Holy Spirit that God was saving the Gentiles apart from the works of the Jewish law.
Obviously, as Paul set off for Rome, these gentlemen were fully aware of the fact that many of the Jews in Jerusalem were furious with Paul because of his ministry among the Gentiles. Their sorrow at Paul’s departure was justified for shortly after Paul got to Jerusalem, he was arrested and eventually sent to Rome.
Therefore, Paul said in Ephesians 3 that he was the prisoner of Jesus Christ for the Gentiles, and he went on to speak of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to him for the Gentiles. The word for dispensation in the original language is oikonomia. It means a stewardship. It is the same word used by the Lord when He told his disciples of the steward who was wasting the resources of his employer. The Lord said that the steward was called to give an account of his stewardship, and the word for stewardship is oikonomia.
It was the word used by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, where he said:
1 Corinthians 9:17 (NKJ)
17 . . . if I (preach the gospel) willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have been entrusted with a stewardship.
In this passage, Paul expressed the fact that he was pleased to go beyond the call of duty in his service for the Lord. He was not content to fulfill only the basic requirements of that which God had entrusted to him. When he said that he was entrusted with a stewardship, the original is again oikonomia.
Clearly, oikonomia simply means a stewardship, and if we use that definition in Ephesians it will help us clarify some of the complicated doctrines of that letter. In Ephesians 3, Paul said that God had given him the dispensation, or the stewardship, of the grace of God.
God has always saved people by His grace, but now Paul says that he has been given a special stewardship that relates specifically to the grace of God. He goes on to say that God had made known to him a mystery which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, namely that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body with the Jews. Then in verse 9, Paul says that God has called him to reveal to all people the fellowship of this mystery, and here again the word for fellowship is oikonomia which means stewardship.
At this point we have seen the stewardship of God’s grace and the stewardship of the mystery concerning the one body, but these two stewardships appear to be related to the stewardship of Chapter 1, where Paul said:
Ephesians 1:9-10 (NKJ)
9 (God has) made known to us the mystery of His will, . . .
10 that in the dispensation (or the stewardship) of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth . . .
Certainly, this stewardship in Chapter 1 relates to a future time, but it also relates to our present time for God is already in the process of gathering all things together in Christ. Colossians 1 confirms that God is already in the process of reconciling all things together in Christ.
Therefore it would appear that the two stewardships of Ephesians 3 and the stewardship of Ephesians 1 are really just one multifaceted stewardship which had been given to Paul. God gave to Paul the stewardship of His grace which relates to the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body known as the Church which is the Body of Christ, and which also relates to God’s larger purpose of gathering all things in heaven and earth together in Christ.
Now back in Chapter 3, Paul speaks of the mystery of the one body and says that he had written briefly about this mystery on a previous occasion. Specifically, he said:
Ephesians 3:3-4 (NKJ)
3 . . . by revelation (God) made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
Since Paul never revealed this great truth of the one body until after the Acts period, and since we know of no other letter which Paul wrote to the Ephesians after the Acts period, Paul must have been referring to his previous statements in this same letter.
As we have mentioned, in Chapter 1 Paul said that God is gathering all things together in one and that God has given Christ to be the Head over all things to the Church which is His Body. In Chapter 2, Paul said that God is now creating one new body from believing Jews and Gentiles and shows that this new body has no relationship to Israel’s covenants of promise. Now in Chapter 3, Paul says that his stewardship of God’s grace is a mystery concerning the one body in which Jews and Gentiles are fellow heirs.
Paul says in Chapter 3 that his stewardship concerning the one body was not made known to the sons of men in previous generations but that it has now been revealed by the Holy Spirit to the apostles and prophets. In Romans 16:25, Paul spoke of the mystery concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ and said that that mystery was even at that time being made manifest by the prophetic scriptures. But this mystery in Ephesians is a mystery which is now being revealed to the prophets, not by the prophets. In Romans, Paul was revealing truths which had been hidden in the prophetic scriptures, but in Ephesians Paul was revealing truths which had been hidden in God.
According to the mystery of Ephesians 3, believing Jews and Gentiles are saved by the same gospel as the believers of the Acts period because they too are partakers of God’s promise in Christ through the gospel. But unlike the believers of the Acts period, these believers have become fellow heirs and of the same body with the Jews.
Paul admitted that he viewed himself as being less than the least of all saints, but that God had called him by the gift of His grace to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Again we see that the truth concerning the Church, the Body of Christ, is nowhere hinted at in the Old Testament scriptures for the word for unsearchable literally means untraceable. There is no trace of these truths in the writings of the Old Testament or in any other historical document. These riches of Christ belong specifically to the members of the Church which is the Body of Christ. They are untraceable, and they were unknown to man until God revealed them through Paul.
In verse 9, Paul declared that this great truth of the Church which is the Body of Christ was hidden in God from the beginning of the ages so that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the Church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
When I first read this, I had to wonder, how does the Church of our present age reveal to the principalities in the heavens the wisdom of God? Then I thought about the fact that none of the prophets knew that the Messiah was going to come to the earth twice. The prophets taught that the Messiah would be born of a virgin and would grow up to establish an everlasting kingdom. Some of the prophets hinted at the fact that the Messiah would be rejected by the people and killed, but none of the prophets even came close to suggesting that the Messiah would be rejected again by the Jews after His death, burial and resurrection.
When God revealed to the Apostle Paul at the end of the Acts period that Christ was going to be rejected again by the Jews, Paul was astonished to learn that God had a whole new plan for mankind which God was going to implement and which Paul was going to reveal. God’s plan was to create the Church which is the Body of Christ.
The rulers of the darkness of this age had worked very effectively within the hearts Israel’s religious leaders to kill the Son of God, and they must have thought themselves victorious over the plan of God, that is until Christ was raised from the dead.
When Christ was raised from the dead, they were put to an open shame, but they quickly regrouped. They continued to work within the hearts of the Jewish people, blinding their eyes to the message of the Apostles and to the miracles which they did. Steadfastly, the Jewish people refused the grace of God, and rather than believe the truth of God, they chose to believe the lie of Satan.
The Jewish people rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah, and the rulers of darkness must have thought once again that they had won the day. But when they heard Paul’s revelation concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ, they knew that they were no match for the manifold wisdom of God.
Because of the existence of the Church which is the Body of Christ, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places now know that God is sovereign over all the universe. They now see that everything they do fits perfectly into the plan of God. Though they are full of rebellion and bitterness toward God, every step they take, every move they make, fits perfectly into the plan of God.
The truth concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ was a stewardship of God’s grace which was given to the Apostle Paul, and it proves once and for all the manifold wisdom of God. It is not because of anything that the Church does or does not do which proves the wisdom of God. It is the very existence of the Church which proves God ability to work all things together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose.
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Church links:
http://www.peacechurch-ok.org/
http://www.eleventhavenuechurch.com/
http://gracebiblechurch-fw.com/
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