Reflection: "God's Great Plan" Last week, we started looking at the letter that the Apostle Paul wrote from his prison cell in Rome, to the young church in Ephesus. In this letter, Paul’s aim is to reassure the new Christians that God has a plan – a plan to bring all things in heaven and earth together under Jesus Christ.
Paul’s letter is one of joyous praise for God's eternal purpose – his great plan that serves as an antidote to counter the pagan mystery religions, which existed around the new Christian churches at the time. Paganism was rife amongst the local people at that time and the new Christian church Paul had established was not popular amongst the pagans, because it spoke out against their multitude of Gods, insisting that there was only one. In a city of some 250,000 people, there would only have been a small number of Christians, but they were making their voices heard and their message was spreading amongst the population. Maybe you’re wondering, why God permitted Judaism and the pagan mystery religions to exist so long before he revealed the gospel to them? Was the gospel simply an afterthought? Absolutely not! God was working out his eternal plan for the redemption of mankind through his son, Jesus. In fact, the leading thought of this letter is: “The church of Jesus Christ, in which Jew and Gentile are made one, is a creation of the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, decreed from eternity, and destined for eternity.” In the first chapter of his letter, which we read last week, Paul reassures his audience that they, as followers of Christ, are included in God’s grand plan and he uses exquisitely rich language to describe God’s grace and love. The use of words such as “lavishing”, give us the understanding that this is not just a simple gift from God – this is something really special! Paul now goes on in chapter 2 to say that the readers have come from “death” to “life” by God’s grace, all made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus. By the fact that they were sinners in their old lives, they were considered “dead” in God’s eyes, and it wasn’t possible for them to ever do anything good enough to redeem themselves. God was angry, but he was not grumpy with them, as we might be grumpy with someone who’s done something to hurt us. He was just totally against the sinful ways that they’d been living. It’s not much of a stretch for us, in the 21st Century, to change the word “they” to “we” in the preceding paragraph, because I’m sure that there are many times in our lives when we’ve done things that haven’t been pleasing to God. Paul says that the only way these “dead” can be raised up, is by grace - through faith - and that premise still holds true, some 2,000 years later. It’s not by works, ie. anything we do by ourselves, that we can be saved. We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus, made to do good, which God has prepared us in advance to do. Have you ever heard the phrase: “Blessed to be a blessing”? What that means is, by doing good works in the name of Jesus, ie. blessing others, we can receive God’s blessing. Whilst that may sound a bit confusing, as I’ve just said, we can’t earn God’s favour just by doing good works. We have to understand that it’s the “why” we’re doing things, not the “what” we’re doing, that’s important. If we’re only doing things to try and make ourselves look good in God’s eyes, then we’ll fail. God gave us the example of Jesus - someone for us to look to emulate, and we should try to live our lives like him. Because of God’s love for us and his grace and by us being selfless, instead of trying to earn brownie points for ourselves, then we WILL be saved. Paul then continues his letter by pointing out that we’re all members of the family (or household) of God. Christ has broken down the walls between us and God and between Jews and Gentiles. At that time, the Jews, some of whom were living in Ephesus, considered themselves superior to the gentiles, because they believed that they were God’s “chosen” people. Under the covenant that Abraham made with God, all male Jews were circumcised on the eighth day, as a symbol of their membership of the house of Israel. So, many of them considered these gentiles, or the “uncircumcised”, as they called them, to be unworthy of being called God’s people. So, in Ephesus, the Gentile Christians probably outnumbered the Jewish Christians, but the Jews still seemed to have a chip on their shoulder, concerning the issue of circumcision and its place in God’s Kingdom. Paul introduces a tone of reconciliation into the small churches in the region, saying that because of Christ’s death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection, ALL people were now welcomed by God, and it was irrelevant whether they were a Jew or a Gentile. An interesting sideline is that Paul often describes himself as a Jew’s Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen – so would probably have been considered a gentile, as well. Maybe that’s why he felt such a strong call to minister to the non-Jews around the region. I wonder how this issue Paul raises, relates to modern day times with Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine? They still don’t seem to be able get along or agree on anything – to the point of all-out war! Paul teaches that we are the representatives of God’s grace and we can show glimpses of that reconciling grace in our churches. Look around and you’ll see people of different races, different genders, different political parties. Yes, we’re all different, but we’re drawn together by the grace of God. We dream of reconciliation between all peoples, races and religions, but the reality of our world is one of fighting, and a non-acceptance of others. The fact that Jesus healed everyone who was brought to him, doesn’t seem to have influence in the current Middle East, with Jews, Christians and Arabs being intolerant of each other. Soldiers fight and kill their neighbours, so how can we hope to be reconciled as one people, in God’s world, when ideologies like these are rampant? God is ready with his grand plan – it’s just up to us sinners to get our act together, so that it can come to fruition But, it’s difficult for us as individuals to see what we can do to change all that. Paul was just one man and look at the changes he brought about, with God’s help. We may think that as individuals, we can’t achieve much on our own, however I believe that the church is an ideal vehicle for such a movement, as the bible gives us so many pure thoughts on which to base our beliefs. If enough of us get together and sing from the same hymn book, so to speak, then we may be able to make ourselves heard – even above all the noise of the world. Therefore, I encourage you to give some thought as to what you can do to bring the world to a point where everyone hears God’s message about his plan for the world. It might be as simple as talking to someone you know, asking them to consider your position and then they may start talking with everyone they know and, pretty soon, everyone on the planet will hear of God’s great plan and it will change their lives. Who knows where it might go then? One Kingdom, united by Christ, fed by the Holy Spirit, working in the name of God. Wouldn’t that be truly magnificent! Stay safe…………..Pastor Rick
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