Ryan Hale

Did we receive a new law, a new set of rules from God when we followed Jesus? Or do we continue to look back to the Ten Commandments, to the laws that God has given us and follow those? Should we follow all of the Jewish laws? Or maybe, instead, none of them? This is a little confusing…

Paul explains to Timothy that there will be people who will come and teach others to abandon the freedom that we have been given in Christ. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus opened the door for us to live for him, to live freely without being burdened by the written law, yet there will be those who will come to tell us and teach that we have received rules and laws that we must follow:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

1 Timothy 4:1-5

But wait, do we not have to follow the rules that God has made for his people? Or, maybe instead, did Jesus give us a new law that we have to follow?

What are the rules???!!!???

To answer this, let’s spend a moment to think about what Jesus has done for us. Through his death and resurrection, he opened the way for us to be reconciled back to God. He is the perfect sacrifice for our sins and he is the life in which we can place our faith so that we also may live, live forever with him, an eternal life.

But as we stand before God, the way that we are identified by God as having been reconciled back to him is that we have been given the Holy Spirit. As we believe and place our faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, saving us from God’s wrath and punishment, he gives us his Holy Spirit and we become the “temple”, the dwelling place for the Spirit of God. As God looks at each of us, he either sees his Spirit within us, or he does not. He either sees that we have been sealed in him by the Spirit for eternal life, or he does not.

It is this life by the Holy Spirit that makes all of the difference. As the Spirit comes within me, he changes me. Both in that singular moment of salvation where my fundamental priorities are changed as well as over the rest of my life where I learn to live out that change that God has made in me. The Spirit changes me so that I can learn to live this new life that God has given to me.

Jeremiah described this work that God has done within us as he talked about a new covenant that God would make with his people. He specifically refers to the people of Israel in this passage, but this can also be understood to describe God’s relationship with the rest of us Gentiles – non-Jews – as well:

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the LORD.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

Jeremiah 31:31-33

The people of Israel had broken the Lord’s covenant. The covenant that God had made with his people was that if they, his people, would obey his commandments, God would be their God and they would be his people.

But that didn’t happen. The Israelites did not keep God’s covenant. They didn’t obey God’s commandments.

So God makes a new declaration. He declares that the Israelites had broken his covenant and that covenant is no longer in force. Instead, God will make a new covenant with his people. It will be a type of “new” Israel. Not in the ethnic sense, nor in the national sense of the Israel. But in a spiritual sense.

This new covenant won’t be a covenant based on the laws that God will have written down and given to his people. No, instead, it will be a covenant based on the laws that God will write onto their minds and their hearts.

No, not on pen on paper. Not words etched into stone tablets. This law willl be placed in their minds and on their hearts.

How is that possible?

This is the nature of the work that God does within us by his Spirit. The Spirit of God makes us come spiritually alive before God and God identifies us as his own. By his Spirit, we are identified as God’s people. Not by his laws and keeping the laws that have been written down, but instead by keeping the “laws” of the Spirit that have been written on our hearts and minds.

This seems nearly impossible to understand. If God hasn’t written down his laws for me to follow, how can I know what to do? This is where we need to understand the difference that it makes that we produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

What do we mean when we talk about the fruit of the Holy Spirit? Since we have the Spirit of God within us, we should be guided and act throughout our lives, living by the Spirit. So therefore, these characteristics should be consistently evident in our lives:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

If I claim to be a believer in Christ, and I believe I should, therefore, have the Holy Spirit living within me, I should be regularly asking myself: Am I showing love in this situation, with this person, right now? Do have an attitude of joy? Or peace? Am I demonstrating self-control? These are questions that I can easily ask myself to understand whether or not I am listening to, and living by, the Holy Spirit living within me.

But let’s also notice that last sentence: Against such things there is no law.

If we are living by the work of the Holy Spirit within our lives, we are, for example, loving other people. If I am loving other people, what does that look like?

I’m not jealous of them or trying to take advantage of them.

I’m not stealing from them.

I’m not lying to them.

I’m not trying to hurt or kill them.

Those are all basic commandments from the law. Just by truly loving another person, I am therefore, naturally, fulfilling the law. I don’t need the law because I am already doing what the law says to do. And that is just in talking about the fruit of love. We haven’t even yet started to talk yet about how our lives would change if we were to demonstrate joy, peace, patience, kindness, or any of the other fruits of the Spirit.

Let’s return, then, back to Paul’s original statement to Timothy, urging him to understand, and subsequently tells him to keep teaching, that people should remain within the freedom that they were given in Christ. By remaining in Christ, they remain free. The law no longer rules over them because they have, in Christ, died to it. They are no longer subject to the law. They have a new life, under the new covenant, with the law written on their minds and their hearts, the “law” of the Spirit that produces the fruit of the Spirit, thus needing no law.

Paul says, though, that those that will come and teach about the things that they shouldn’t eat, or shouldn’t touch, or shouldn’t do, are demonic. Wow! Why such a strong statement?

Paul is so direct and so strong about this because these teachings attempt to neuter or nullify the work of God through Christ on the cross. Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice, the most precious gift imaginable. He is himself God and yet he gave his life, taking the sins of all men upon himself. He is life and yet, without deserving death, died in our place.

And so now, therefore, Paul is now declaring that it is demonic to deny the power of Christ’s death and resurrection by teaching and claiming that the way to be redeemed back to God is by following some rules. That is what it means that we must obey the law: We must follow the rules so that God will be pleased with us and let us into heaven.

Paul is urging Timothy to continue to encourage each person to remain in their faith in Christ and not fall back into these old patterns of being subject, in fact of being slaves, to the rules. He is urging Timothy to encourage the church to continue to follow Christ, having been set free from the law, having been set free from sin and death, and most importantly, having been given the Holy Spirit through which they would produce the fruit of the Spirit, thus not only fulfilling the requirements of the law as they go forward, but so much more.

Over the last several days as we have worked through our daily reading, there have been a few statements from Paul’s letters to the churches or to his leaders that have been a little bit confusing. They have caused me to go back to do some digging, some research, some work to understand what is being said.

This one is one of those.

Paul is writing to Timothy, talking about some of the practical outworking of living for Christ. He speaks first of the men, that they should be men of prayer and worship. Paul says that they should lift up holy hands, meaning that they should be praying to and worshiping God, looking to the Lord and depending on him for their provision, their protection, and for all that they need.

Paul then speaks of women saying that they should dress with modesty and decency, focusing instead on their inner character instead of upon superficial beauty. He also goes on to speak of the need for the woman to submit to her husband and remain in quiet humility.

But then, at the end of the discussion about women, Paul says something strange about salvation for women:

But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

1 Timothy 2:15

In context, Paul says that Eve was the one that was deceived in the Garden of Eden, but he says that Eve will be saved through childbearing. In trying to understand this better, I learned that this could probably best be translated more literally from Greek as…

“saved in the childbirth”

…instead of “saved through childbearing”. That may seem like a small difference, but I think it helps bring some more clarity and context to what is being discussed here.

First, the scene that Paul is referring to is that of the Garden of Eden. He says that Eve was deceived and became a sinner, but that women, the descendents of Eve, will be saved in the childbirth.

Which childbirth? Does Paul mean that women will be saved by having children?

No, this isn’t speaking of having children, and therefore by having children women can be saved from the wrath of God. All men and women, as the rest of the word of God proclaims, must come to God through Jesus in faith and receive forgiveness in through him. Only through him.

So what is this discussion, then, of childbirth? It is referring to the very first proclamation of the Gospel.

Where do we find that? We have to go back to the Garden of Eden:

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me —she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

Genesis 3:8-15

As God comes into the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he first calls for Adam, then Eve, and finally the serpent. God pronounces his punishment for their rebellion and disobedience upon each one of them, but within this first pronouncement for the serpent, we see a foreshadowing of the coming Messiah:

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.

Genesis 3:15

So the woman and the serpent will be enemies, but even more importantly, we see that the woman’s offspring and that of the serpent will also be enemies.

But then the pronoun related to the “offspring” of the woman changes. It says he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.

This is a prophecy of that which will come to pass approximately 4000 years later as Jesus, the Son of God and the prophecied Messiah, takes the punishment for sin upon himself on the cross, then subsequently defeats death by resurrecting from the grave three days after his death. Jesus crushes the head of the serpent in the sense that he has stripped Satan of his ultimate power to destroy by luring people into sin and death. And even further, Jesus seals Satan’s ultimate fate to be banished to hell forever.

Even though the serpent will strike and bruise the heel of the offspring of the woman, Jesus himself, Jesus will crush the head of the serpent.

If you have ever seen the opening scene of the Passion of the Christ, the destruction of Satan, the crushing of the head of the serpent, is what the scene is dramatically attempting to show:

Jesus is the offspring of the woman. She is a human being, so her offspring, referred to as a “he”, is a man, so Jesus must be a man. Yes, in essence he is God, but he is also a human being, a man. He must be a man to fulfill this prophecy.

So as we look back to what Paul tells Timothy, that the woman will be saved in the childbirth, we see that he is referring to the man that would come from the woman. The Holy Spirit would come upon, or “overshadow” Mary, and she would give birth, despite being a virgin, to the one who would come to save all people. He would be called the Son of God and would be both God and a man.

So women will be saved by the childbirth. By the child that was born, Jesus himself, women and men and all who call upon him will be saved.

If we are truly believers and followers of Christ, we have a new life. We have already died to our former life and we have now been raised with Christ, as Paul tells the Colossians:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 3:1-3

What does it mean to set our hearts on the things above?

Paul starts with the sinfulness of our world. He tells the Colossians to look beyond our fleshly desires: sexual immortality, impurity, lust, and greed. We look beyond the desires that the world puts in front of us because we want something better. We should no longer want those things that are temporal because there is something that is much more valuable: that which is eternal.

He then goes on to talk about the fact that, in Christ, we have been made to be one. We are one people. We have been united. No longer are there Jews and Gentiles, nor any of the other classifications that we give ourselves that bring divisions amongst us. Yes, we still live in the world where those classifications exist, but as we live, we live instead as one people. One family, one brotherhood in Christ.

This is, in fact, one of the greatest ways in which we give glory to God. We have diversity that seeks to divide us in our world, but in Christ, we have been made to be one – we worship him as one people. The diversity still exists, but in Christ, there is unity.

This is all because we have died to our former lives and have been raised to a new life in Christ. We have left behind that which we thought was important in our world and instead found what is truly important in Christ. We continue to live in the physical world, but our eternal life in Christ has started now and will continue forever.

Therefore, both our perspective and each of our priorities must change. We should no longer be worried about that which is temporal, but instead we concern ourselves with that which is eternal. How do I spend my time? How do I invest or use the money that I have received? For whom am I living? When we have been resurrected with Christ into this new life, these are the new questions that we should begin to ask ourselves. This is not just a religion that we go to church to participate in for a couple of hours each week. This is a whole new life.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to sit and talk with Jesus? We believe that Jesus was God made flesh. In other words, Jesus is God.

So if you were sitting and having a conversation with Jesus, you were sitting and having a conversation directly with God. Wow.

I’m not sure which is more difficult for me to wrap my mind around: the humanity of Christ or the Deity of Christ. Both are equally challenging, but as Paul writes to the church in Colossae, he seems to be focused on the Deity of Christ. In Colossians 1, for example, he says that Christ is the image of God:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Colossians 1:15

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is the physical representation of God, who is spirit. He truly represents God in the way that God was intended to be represented. In a similar way that man and woman, Adam and Eve, were created and formed so as to represent – to image – God, Jesus was the true image. The things that he did. The things that he said. The way that he lived. The holiness of God in human form. The way that he gave himself for each of us. The way that he reigns over his kingdom. Even today, even now, Jesus represents God in a human form.

But there is a very important difference between Jesus and what God intended for Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were created. Jesus was the firstborn over all of creation, meaning he himself was the creator. Paul goes on to say that Jesus created all things. Everything. Everything was created for him.

And then, even further, Jesus is both the ruler and the redeemer over all things. The creation is his. All of it was made for him, yet at the same time, he both cares for the creation and redeems it all back to God through his blood.

So Christ isn’t just given authority. He also has authority because he is the creator. He is the one for whom all things were made.

And yet he is also the one who walked here on the earth in human form!

Paul punctuates this discussion again in the second chapter in saying that Christ is the fullness of the Deity in and of himself:

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.

Colossians 2:9-10

Paul is saying that Jesus isn’t just a created person, like one of us. Yes, he is the image of the invisible God, so he is a human like us, but he is also the fullness of the Deity. In other words, he is fully God. Even though he lived, and still lives even today in bodily form, he also is fully God. He did not lose any part of being God because he took on human form, but instead he is still fully God and he continues to rule and reign as God even today.

It would have been amazing to have known Jesus as he walked the earth. It would have been illuminating. We would have known what to do. We would have been able to understand everything that God wants from us.

Right?

Well, except the disciples messed it up. The disciples abandoned Jesus. Despite Jesus having explained to them his plan, they didn’t understand.

But we do still have the words that Jesus spoke. We can hear directly from him. We can understand what God wants from us even today. We can hear directly from God by reading the words that Jesus spoke.

In fact, we probably have an even greater advantage because we can listen to him with hindsight. We can see the plan in the context of the rest of history. We can see what God is doing from creation to the life of Christ and then understand where we fit, what God wants from us, and the life that he wants us to take even today.

If we will listen to him.

If we will trust him.

There are incredible implications to the fact that Jesus is the fullness of the Deity. It means that we can listen to the words of the Deity. As we read the word of God, we can “hear” the words of God coming from Christ. Yes, the Holy Spirit lives within us and we can hear from him as well. In fact, we must! Yet, if there is any doubt, we can directly read the words of God. We can directly understand his plan. And we can directly move forward based on what he has told us to do.

The fullness of the Deity in a human form should create within us the fullness of Christ living within us, if we will fully place our faith in him and do what he has called us to do. May that be the reality within which we live today and ongoing!

It might have been a surprise to the church in Colossae to hear that something was lacking in Christ’s afflictions. Wasn’t Jesus the perfect sacrifice? Isn’t Christ’s sacrifice that in which I am placing my faith so that my sins could be forgiven?

In what way, exactly, are Christ’s afflictions lacking?

Let’s try to understand what Paul is saying. Here is the passage that I’m referring to:

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Colossians 1:24-27

You can see how this could quickly become confusing quickly. If Paul is saying that Christ’s afflictions are lacking in some way, then we have an imperfect sacrifice. And if we have an imperfect sacrifice, then we have nothing in which we can place our faith and we cannot be forgiven. And finally, if we cannot be forgiven, we are lost. We are destined to receives God’s wrath and punishment. We cannot be saved. We cannot be part of God’s kingdom. We are not his people.

But of course, many, many other places in the scriptures have already told us that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice – one sacrifice for all time, for all people, for all sin. Jesus is the one who takes our sins upon himself so that we can be healed. Here is just one example from the book of Hebrews:

And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

“This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”
Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”

And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

Hebrews 10:10-18

We can see here that no other sacrifices are necessary. Jesus’s sacrifice was sufficient for all people, for all time. Jesus was, in fact, given as one sacrifice for sins by God himself, through Christ our high priest, and no further sacrifices are necessary. In fact, to offer further sacrifice would be to say that God’s sacrifice was not sufficient. To continue to strive in an effort to please God would be tantamount to saying that the blood of Christ was not enough. Instead, we would be acting as if we believe that we need more.

No, we have received the perfect sacrifice in Jesus Christ. He was bruised and beaten. He was hung on the cross and died, and then he rose again three days later, defeating death and taking away the sin of anyone who would place their faith in him.

If that is true, then, what is Paul talking about? How can he say that there is something lacking in the afflictions of Christ?

Even further, how can Paul, although truly a great man, but just a man like any one of us, make up for anything that is related to Christ’s sacrifice? That certainly isn’t possible, is it?

We need to be sure to read what Paul is saying in context. Paul is referring to the presentation of the message of the Gospel. He is talking about the message that has been hidden from people throughout the centuries but that has now been made known to the Gentiles. He is talking about the fact that the message now must be spread to the rest of the world.

The sacrifice of Christ hasn’t been magically or automatically communicated to everyone. It hasn’t been, in some way, electronically transmitted to everyone’s heart and mind. No, instead, God has decided that people, each of us, would be the way that the message would be communicated and taken to everyone everywhere. We are his ambassadors, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians. In this way, Paul is saying that he is taking on what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.

Christ’s afflictions have taken on the wrath of God in our place. He died so that we can live, but he did not go to everyone throughout the world to take this incredible message to all people. That is the role that God has given us to carry out. That is the job that he has given us to do.

Let’s take this discussion one step further, however. Paul actually doesn’t just say that he is the bearer of the message. Instead, he says that he fills up in his flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. Paul takes this message within him, within his flesh, and carries it to the whole world.

Paul had taken the beatings. He had been jailed. Like Christ, his flesh bore the marks, the wounds of the Gospel, as he took the message to the whole world. When you heard the message from Paul, you also saw the wounds on his flesh. You saw the marks of Christ upon him. He was full of the message of Christ, even within his flesh. Paul did not just preach the words of the Gospel, but he bore upon himself the true marks of Christ.

In this important way, Paul fills up within himself that which is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. He isn’t sacrificing himself for the people. He is giving himself to Christ, for the cause of Christ and to Christ’s glory, so that the mystery of Christ would be revealed to all people and the whole world may hear of the salvation that comes from God.

It is quite a statement to say that you consider to be garbage all of the things that you had done before. All of your accomplishments. All of the things that even others would say about you to describe what you have done in this world. That, though, is the lens through which Paul sees his life, at least in comparison to the value and the worth of knowing Jesus.

Paul is making a comparison. He is holding up the value of the things that he has done, that which people would normally evaluate one another, alongside the value of knowing Christ. And as he sees the one in comparison with the other – his heritage, his religious position, his personal attributes, and his own righteousness as compared to knowing Christ – he sees his own experiences as nothing but garbage.

These are all of the things by which we typically evaluate one another. If you intend to hire someone, one of the first things that you look at is their resume. What has this person done? What is their education? What is their experience?

And Paul’s education, experience, and practice is, from a Jewish perspective, flawless.

This should, within his society, lift him up. This should give him a promotion. This should, if God were to think as human beings think, immediately allow Paul to come directly into a good and right relationship with God.

But God does not think that way. He isn’t too interested in all of our trophies, nor our accolades. There is only one way that we can know God, and that is through Jesus Christ. So because of this, because we can know God through Christ, Paul places that relationship above all things.

Paul understands that all he had done previously to gain his accomplishments, to impress others and more, was simply garbage. There is one thing, and one thing only, in which he is interested: knowing Christ.

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

Philippians 3:7-9

Paul sees the world through this lens: How can I know Christ? How can I know him even more? How can other people know Christ, and know him more? That is the one single thing that matters to him and everything else is garbage.

And what about me? What about each of us? Do I see the world through that same lens? Do I place the highest value on knowing Christ, following him, and glorifying him? This is certainly my desire, although I feel that I have a long way to go. My prayer is that I will be able to live for Christ, understanding the value of knowing him, and live for him, now and into eternity.

Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom of God and said that it would be proclaimed among all nations, and then the end would come.

Paul spoke of a gospel that offered forgiveness for sins by faith in his death and resurrection.

Are these two gospels? Two different plans?

Of course not, but let’s take a moment to understand how they actually work together.

First, let’s start with the spiritual reality that surrounds us. Jesus spoke of two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.

And these kingdoms, of course, stand in stark opposition to one another because of the kings that rule over each of those kingdoms. Jesus is the king in the kingdom of God. Satan is the king in the kingdom of darkness.

When Jesus came to earth to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sins, what was he doing? What was it that changed as he did that?

Jesus was offering his blood as payment for the sins that had been committed by each of us. It was a type of ransom payment, a redemption, to allow us to leave the kingdom of darkness to come to the kingdom of God.

So as we place our faith in Christ’s sacrifice, we are moving from one kingdom to the other, because of Christ’s blood. Because of the payment that he made for us.

So, as Paul reiterated to the Ephesian church, Christ allowed us to pass from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light (the kingdom of God):

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

Ephesians 5:8

Paul proclaimed a gospel of Christ that offered forgiveness for sins, but he was not proclaiming a different gospel. No, instead, he was primarily talking about the payment that Christ made for each of us with his blood.

Jesus, on the other hand, spoke of the fact that he himself is the king. He is the one who rules over the kingdom of God. He is ruling today, and he will continue to rule forever while the kingdom of darkness will one day, finally, be destroyed forever.

So Paul is actually explaining the reality to the Ephesians that, yes, there is light and there is darkness, but he is referring to the same kingdoms of which Jesus had spoken. He is encouraging the Ephesians to live for the king. It is not enough to simply be saved from the kingdom of darkness. Instead, we must give ourselves and live for the king in the light.

This must be what we offer as we respond to Christ’s precious gift. He gave his blood to pay for us to be ransomed from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. We give him our gratitude, our love, our entire lives.

I love how the elders, the creatures in heaven, and all of the people that had been saved from every tribe, tongue, and nation sing about this reality in heaven, as recorded in Revelation 5:

And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

Revelation 5:8-10

They all sing of the fact that the Lamb, Christ himself, purchased people from all over the world to make them a kingdom, his kingdom, the kingdom of God. Those people will be the priests and serve the Lord in that kingdom. They are, in fact, singing about what Christ has done for each of us who believe!

That is the kingdom that we live in, even today. Yes, we also are a part of our earthly kingdoms, the nations where we live. However, there is a true and larger reality that we are living within even today…and within which we will live forever. Jesus purchased us to come out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light. Let us live completely and wholly for him, in this greater reality, starting today.

Christ is the head of the church. And we are each members of his body.

First and foremost, it is important to clarify who is who and the nature of the relationship between Christ and his church. We don’t always understand or practice that relationship very well.

I would contend, in fact, that there has been confusion regarding this issue recently within the Catholic church. We recently, of course, saw the death and selection of a new Pope who is considered to be the head of the Catholic church. Instead of Christ at the head, we have a person in the headship role that will, in short, step into the place of Christ as the head over the church.

And while I point the finger at the Catholic church, I think it would also be right to say that we frequently, both positionally and authoritatively, see people in protestant and various evangelical churches do the same thing. While they would not, of course, say that they are the head of the church, we see an assumption of the headship role, a person through whom all final decisions will go, an executive of executives, if you will.

Paul spends a lot of time in chapter 4 in his letter to the Ephesians to emphasize these points, that Christ is the head and we are each members of his body. The members of the body work together to build one another up. Yes, each member performs its function. It must so that the body can function properly. However those members of the body also have the other parts of the body in mind. As each part works, it works for the good of the rest of the body, spurring each part within the rest of the body on to good works for the purpose of glorying Christ.

Paul says that, while we are one body, we are not necessarily all the same. Christ gave gifts to each of the people within the body. In this chapter, he lists five different gifts that were given by Christ to us who are part of his body, the universal church, here on earth:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Ephesians 4:11-13

The five are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

And each of these five have a purpose. The purpose of these five gifts is to equip the people, the rest of the body, for works of service. Christ gives the gifts to the church so that the church will be built up. Not only that each of us would use our gifts individually so that we are individually glorified. Instead, it is so that the body will be built up.

But why build up the body? The head of the body is concerned about the health and growth of the body. The head of the body wants to see that the body comes to full maturity. Christ does not want to we remain infants. Instead, he wants that we become mature.

How would these gifts make us mature? Let’s think about the gifts themselves for a moment:

Apostles are the people that see where the kingdom of God has not yet arrived and helps to lead and organize the rest of us to reach out to those who do not yet know Christ. This brings the body to greater maturity by teaching the rest of us to see those around us who need to know Christ and do what is necessary to reach out to them.

Prophets call us to greater clarity and truth in alignment to the word of God. Prophets help us to know when we are out of alignment and are straying away from the calling of Christ on our lives. Instead, they point us back to the way of God and keep us pointed in the direction that Christ has called each of us to go, calling us to repentance and the truth of who God has made us to be.

Evangelists teach us and lead us to tell others. We need to know how to share the Gospel. We need to know when to share the Gospel. We need to know the best ways to share the Gospel given the diversity of the people all around us. Evangelists build us up by showing and leading the rest of us to do these things.

Pastors, or sometimes translated Shepherds, care for the flock. Jesus said that he is the Good Shepherd, but he has also placed shepherds amongst us. They take care of the people within body of Christ and teach each us to do the same with those who are around us.

Teachers continue to take us deeper into the word of God, helping us to understand its meaning and applying it to our lives. They help us to see what it is that the word is saying and teaching us also how we can teach others. They can multiply their gift by teaching others the meaning of certain sections of scripture, but they can also multiply their gift by teaching others to teach.

In these ways, we can see that the body of Christ will be built up. It will continue to grow until it reaches maturity, attaining to the full measure of Christ, glorifying him by using the gifts that he himself has provided to his body so as to bring the body to the fullness of maturity.

As we have short-term teams and interns come to work with us here, one of the things that we like to do is to go through a series of lessons that outline the bigger story that we are living within. We call this series of lessons Finding Your Purpose in God’s Plan. It primarily comes from the struggle that I and others have experienced as we asked ourselves for many years, decades in fact, what it was that God wanted us to do. What was our calling? How did God desire to use us? I think that these are fundamental questions for almost every person: Who am I? What is my purpose?

So as individuals and teams come to work alongside of us, we like to walk through a series of lessons that help to highlight the bigger story that we are living within, that God has placed us within.

The first lesson is called The Mission of God, looking at and considering God’s bigger-picture plan. What is it that he is doing? What is going on in the world that all of the rest of what we see around us, and that which is written in the scripture, fits within?

So, just to intentionally spoil the surprise, I believe that God’s mission is that his image would be spread all over the face of the earth. I believe that we can see that mission initially stated in Genesis 1, and then this same mission is restated in the Great Commission, and its conclusion shown within the discussion of the end times in Revelation. You can read through the details of what I mean by following the link above.

But having this same understanding helps me a lot as well as I read the rest of the Bible. For example, I would say that without that understanding of what God is doing, it becomes difficult to understand what Paul is saying as he talks about the “mystery” that is being revealed, that the Gentiles are being invited into the kingdom of God so that they also will be part of God’s people:

Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.

Ephesians 3:8-9

So the mystery is that the Gentiles would know God… But why is that a mystery?

It is a mystery because it wasn’t always like that. In fact, it was the exact opposite. The Israelites thought – no, instead, it is better to say that they knew – that they were God’s chosen people. And in fact, they were the only chosen people. The Gentiles, according to everything that the Jews had understood up to that point, were not God’s chosen people.

Except the mystery is that, actually, in Christ, the Gentiles would also be God’s chosen people if they were redeemed and reconciled back to God in Christ, and at that time, that which seemed to be a mystery was being revealed to both the Jews and the Gentiles for the first time.

So what does Paul mean when he talks about the administration of the mystery? He is saying that he is taking this very message to both the Jews and to the Gentiles.

God has opened the way for the Gentiles too!

So, looking back and reading this here in our day, we could say: That’s nice. Good theological point… Nice idea. Let’s move on with our day.

Except, if we are a believer in Christ, this makes a significant difference. No, instead, it is a massive difference. It turns everything upside-down.

Why?

Because God has a plan and if you know God’s plan, that should be a determining factor, a direction for your life.

God’s plan is to spread his image all over the face of the earth. And he has called each person who believes Christ into service to be part of bringing that plan to completion. Why? Because it brings glory to him. It brings all of the glory to him.

My life and your life are not about me, nor is it about you. No, instead, our lives are about carrying out God’s plan. As believers, living for ourselves, for what we want, for what pleases us, is antithetical to God’s plan.

No, there is something even greater. Much greater. In fact, if you want to know what will truly please you, in that which you will find the greatest amount of joy, go and learn about God’s plan and understand how God has called you to join it.

Then start. Move. Do it. You can move somewhere else to be part his plan, or you can stay right where you are. You can stay in your job or you can do something new. Your circumstances are not the point. God will use you right where you are, if you will allow him to do so.

Becoming part of the administration of the mystery, that God’s image is being spread all across the earth, that he has called all people, from every tribe, tongue, and nation to come into his kingdom, and you have a role to play so that they can be reconciled back to God through Christ, is the most important part. That is where you will find true joy because that is the story that God has been telling from the beginning, and it is the same story that God will continue to tell all of the way to the end of time. And this is the same story into which he is inviting us even today.

In 2016, my family and I moved to Italy to work with immigrants and refugees arriving from Africa, from the Middle East, from South Asia, and beyond. We arrived in Sicily and have lived here now for nearly nine years, sharing the Gospel and making disciples of Christ amongst these people throughout this time while also encouraging and helping to mobilize our Sicilian Christian brothers and sisters to do the same.

Moving into a new country brings a number of new experiences and new understandings of your relationship to other people. One word, one idea in particular that we have learned, especially moving to the southern part of Italy in Sicily with its strong culture is this:

We are “stranieri”.

Stranieri translates in English to “foreigners”, or maybe you could translate it to “strangers”. While we have learned a lot over the years, we are foreigners to the Sicilian land, the Sicilian culture, the language, and much more. We are foreigners… always have been and I’m pretty sure that, in the eyes of the Sicilian people, regardless of how well we might speak the language or the extent to which we learn the various parts of the culture, we always will be stranieri.

As Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, he noted this same division that had previously been found between the Jewish people, who had been called God’s people through the covenant that God had made with them, and the Gentiles who were not under this same covenant. God had given the Jews a sign of their covenant. The men would be circumcised and this would show that they are under the covenant, a group of people for whom Yahweh would be their God and they would be his people.

The Gentiles did not have Yahweh as their God. They were not under this same covenant. They did not have the sign of circumcision to show that Yahweh was their God and they were his people. The Jews and the Gentiles, in that time, were two separate people. Not only did they come from different places… Not only did they have a different language… Not only did they have different cultures… They were different peoples as they stood before God.

So the Gentiles were foreigners to God. And what was more, they were foreigners to the people of God. They were outsiders. They did not belong. They had no part in a relationship with God as they Jews did. In fact, Paul says that the Gentiles had no hope. They were excluded. They were walking through this world without God.

And yet Paul says that God, in Christ, removed this barrier. God made these two groups of people one nation, one people. He unified them in Christ. He brought together the Gentiles and the Jews through the blood of Christ. He made peace. He removed the wall of hostility that existed between the Jews and Gentiles, not to mention the wall between God and the Gentiles. God offered the gift of grace and mercy to both the Jews and Gentiles through Jesus, making the two to instead be one.

So the Gentiles are now offered citizenship in the kingdom of God. They were made to no longer be foreigners, but instead, citizens with the full rights and privileges as the people of God:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20

The Gentiles are no longer on the outside, but instead are on the inside. They are part of God’s kingdom. They are, even better, part of his household. They belong because of Jesus. Jesus opened the door to all peoples to come in and he himself is the foundation, the chief cornerstone, of the people of God, of whom now both the Jews and all of the Gentiles belong, if they will come to him through Christ.

This continues to have implications for us even today! Christ died for Muslims. Christ died for atheists. Christ died for Buddhists, Hindus, and more. He did that so that they would be welcomed into the kingdom of God, into his household. And he has sent us to tell them that great news: They are no longers foreigners. They are citizens. They are no longer just servants. They are his children. They are now, if they will come in Christ, the people of God.