[Transcript represents full sermon's text]

       We're still in Ephesians chapter 3, and now we arrive at verse 7. Today we will be covering verses 7 through 13 in Ephesians chapter 3, and we've got quite a bit to talk about. Let's go ahead and get into the text, going to verse 7, Ephesians chapter 3, starting in verse 7, and we'll just do verse 7. This is Paul speaking. “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power” (ESV).

       Wow. Okay, so Paul starts us off today talking really about his current life condition versus what it was in the past. And two questions can be posed in this verse. The first question is, how is Paul's gifting by God's grace? What does that look like? And the second question is, what was the working of God's great power? So for the first area, we can remember that Paul's told us elsewhere, that he was a Pharisee, right? He was a leader in the Jewish religion, the Jews' understanding of the world without Jesus Christ. Even after Jesus had ascended back to heaven, Paul was part of the Pharisees. He was part of the Jewish leaders. If we go to Philippians chapter 3, he tells us a little bit about this. In Philippians 3, I'll read verses 4 through 6: “though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (ESV). So he tells us there, he tells us how high up he was, if you will. Now, my understanding about Paul is, though he was a Pharisee, he was not of the highest of the high people in the Jewish leader group. I believe that's the Sanhedrin.

       And that, as an aside, leads to the uncertain factor as to whether Paul was married, right? You hear that one, well, Paul had to be married because he was a Pharisee. Actually, that's not the case. Just a regular Pharisee did not have to be married. And if he had been part of the higher-ups, the Sanhedrin, he would have had to have been married. That's my understanding. We don't know for sure if Paul even ever got married. It's possible he did not. And this whole subjective, or what word am I looking for, this speculative discussion about Paul being divorced, married, and divorced, may not have as much credence as a lot of people think it does. So that's just a little free aside there.

       If we tie this in to what Paul is saying to the church in Ephesus, how does this tie in? Well, because Paul is saying that because he was a prominent Jewish leader, if you will, it's by God's grace that he's even saved because there's a very good chance that Paul would have never been saved, as has already been discussed. If Jesus had not appeared to him on the roadway to Damascus in that special way, that unusual way, that there's a good chance Paul would have never come to know God through Jesus. That’s very possible that Paul would have remained a Pharisee and remained in that lost state with the Jewish leaders who had rejected the Messiah. Why don't we continue the passage in Philippians chapter 3? We'll read verse 7 through 11.

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order 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 comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (ESV)

So that shows us God's grace towards Paul, that he saved him like he did on the roadway there to Damascus as spelled out in Acts chapter 9. And it shows the dramatic before and after, right? Because Paul before would have never even remotely come to saying anything like he just said in those verses, where he counts everything he had as a prominent Hebrew. He counts that as total loss. He doesn’t care about that anymore. It's what God has called him to do, really what's in his heart. And we're probably going to get into that a little bit later. It's what's in Paul's heart that really matters now. He's totally different than he was before.

       Let's go ahead and continue along in Ephesians chapter 3. We'll read verses 8 and 9 now. "To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things” (ESV).

       Again, and I think we talked about this last time, what is this idea of Paul being the least of all the saints? Well, one thing I brought up as a possibility to that was because in Acts chapter 9, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him on the roadway, and because he may not have been converted had it been for that dramatic scene, that dramatic act by Jesus, that puts Paul at a disadvantage, doesn't it? I mean, he had to see Jesus there in the flesh and talk to him in order to believe. Whereas most people that have believed in Jesus have not had that experience. Most have believed through faith. But Paul saw it. I mean, at that point, if he was going to deny it, I mean, it would have taken elaborate explanation to deny that, right? So that's one way to look at why Paul would call himself the least. And there's also the factor that he persecuted the church of God. Remember, as he himself says, as we see at the end of Acts chapter 7. Remember, he's at the stoning of Stephen, and the people lay their garments at his feet. We remember that. So Paul, on the roadway to Damascus, was going up to do further persecution. He says that somewhere in Acts. And that's another reason that Paul thinks slowly of himself, because after all, he was directly opposing Christ and persecuting and even killing people in the church indirectly.

       But Paul, in the verses we just read, talks about the plan. He talks about the plan again that was the mystery hidden for ages in God. And as we discussed last time at length, that plan is to bring all together, both Jews and Gentiles. So Jews are God's original chosen people. Gentiles are all people groups outside of the Jewish race. His plan is to bring everyone together in Jesus Christ. Everyone has the possibility to have access with God, to know God, to have God as their father, to be friends with God through Jesus Christ, no matter what their background is on the earth. No matter what their ancestry, what their relations are, whatever. And this is something that Paul wanted to do, because he says, and to bring to light for everyone. That’s what Paul wanted to do. It was in his heart. It was Paul's heart of hearts. And again, it shows the radical transformation that occurred for Paul going from this fierce persecutor of the church to this fierce trying to bring people into the church. I mean, it's kind of crazy when you think about it. And when Paul first went out and preached, in the book of Acts, we saw that people were surprised, were amazed, by that, by Paul's conversion, that the guy who once used to go against the church is now for the church, right? Who is against Jesus is now for him. And perhaps, we've known people in our own lives who have had a similar experience. They were against Christianity vehemently, and now they're a defender of it. That, I think, happens in all generations. Perhaps we've had the unique experience of knowing a person just like that.

       Why don't we look at Galatians 3, because there's another passage that seems to tie into this. Kind of a lengthy passage. Let's read Galatians 3 in verses 23 to 29. And this ties in to the Jewish persons and Gentile persons being one. And Paul gives us a background. He says, verse 23,

“Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law,”—that’s the Jewish law there—“imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” So that's the gospel. That's what he's talking about. Verse 24—“So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” And that's where some theologians think in the Old Testament, it was faith plus works, and not just faith. But setting that aside, verse 25, “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.” (ESV)

Wow. Two things there at the end. It says it doesn't matter your race. It doesn't matter your earthly condition, whether you're free or even if you find yourself enslaved. It says it doesn't matter if you're a male or a female. They're co-equal. Not one gender is better than the other. Males are not the better gender, if you will. And then he tells us that everyone that believes in Christ becomes Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. And that's amazing. That means that that which God promised Abraham has been fulfilled, that God's worked that out through Jesus Christ. And so God has relations with anyone that believes through Jesus Christ.

       Paul adds a little phrase at the end of our verse in Ephesians. Verse 9, he says, “God, who created all things." So the Gentile peoples, those outside of the Jewish faith of old, had all their different gods, right? Well, God is the one, the Jewish God, is the one who created everything. And John tells us at the beginning of the Gospel of John that that was through Jesus Christ. All the Gentiles’ gods were not real gods. They, even to this day, any god that has been made up, any god outside of the Jewish God, outside of Jesus, is not the real God. The Jewish God is the one who created all things. He's the one that spoke there in Genesis chapter 1, who created the heavens and the earth, the outer space, all the stars, all the planets, who created our solar system, our sun, the earth, the moon, all the vegetation, all the animals, and all the humans. God created the original first two humans, and they populated the earth, right? So that's the reality, the nature of the situation.

       And verse 10 of Ephesians 3, “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (ESV).

       First, Paul says it's through the church. Speaking of the stars and the planets, the outer space realm, that's the heavenly places. That appears to be, according to our text, where Satan and the fallen angels reside. They somehow have base headquarters out there in the heavenly places. We don't really know what that looks like. We don't know what that entails. It doesn't surprise me that that's where they are because it's pretty lifeless out there, right? But obviously they have inner workings here on the earth. There are fallen angels that are assigned certain areas, just like likely there are God's angels who are assigned certain areas. Satan has an organized system, just like God has an organized system.

       And what's interesting, though, is God does not use the angelic beings, his angelic beings, to combat that in the sense of making God's wisdom known. He uses the church. He says it's so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Now, I don't think that's to try to convert fallen angels to believe in Jesus, though that would be really great if that were possible. But it's that the church, through what the church does, all the church's activities that they do, their sharing of the gospel, their spreading of truth, their spreading of reality, works against Satan's kingdom. And it shows God's power. It shows, despite their power and all the destruction, all the lives they've hurt in many different ways, despite all that, God works through the church to bring light to the world, to bring goodness to the world, to bring hope, salvation, to bring everything good to the world. And what I believe is that we are in this battle, this war. There is a war going on, and it's in the spiritual realms of good versus evil. And it's not that God is the author of both. It's not that God wills even bad things to happen so that he can manifest his glory. That's not the answer.

       A good book while we're on this subject, let me reach back here and grab it. This book here, this is by Theologian Greg Boyd. It's called ‘Satan and the Problem of Evil, Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy.’ This is a really good book that breaks down one view of the current state of the world. And I think something along these lines is a better explanation of what's really going on than to say that God's the one causing everything. And so this is a good one to check out, to read. Of course, just like anything, you don't have to subscribe to everything that anyone says, but even if you found part of it to be helpful, that's still pretty good. So there's that resource.

       And it's good for us to be thinking correctly about God, about how God operates, about how Satan and his demons are operating because we don't want to have too simplistic of answers, too simplistic of an organization in our minds where we're blaming God for things that God did not do and that we're not understanding the inner workings the best we possibly can. Sometimes people can get a little superstitious, a little where they think things work a certain way, that, “Oh, God's punishing me for this,” or we try to label everything as some type of punishment from God or some type of whatever. That kind of thinking, that overly simplistic, archaic even thinking, we've got to be mindful of that. We've got to become aware of that if we're not aware of it. And understanding things like just diving deeper into theology, considering things like Boyd's warfare motif, can help try to gear our brains in the right direction.

       So Ephesians 3 verse 11, “This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (ESV).

       Wow, there's a lot going on there in verse 11. So God's plan. God had a plan in place. God's a smart guy. He didn't create the world and just hope that everything worked out for the best and was left caught off guard when Adam and Eve sinned. On the flip side of that, we would also say that God did not create the world and then by will caused Adam and Eve to sin. That's not right either. So God had a plan in place, it seems best to say, something along these lines. That if Adam and Eve did sin, he had a plan of what he was going to do about this. And that whole plan, as of right now, as of this current time, as of 2,000 years ago, has been realized in Jesus Christ. That was God's eternal purpose, Paul calls it. And that's probably just a way of saying a long time ago, God decided this. And he realized it in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, how is it realized? What are we talking about ? Well, just in what Christ accomplished on the cross by dying for all of our sins, but at the same time gaining victory over Satan.

       That is an important part of it that ties into what we're talking about there. There is another book that I'm going to bring up that I think it's good to consider and I don't have a physical copy of this one so I'm going to bring up the Amazon Kindle app and I've already mentioned this book. For anyone who didn't hear that message, here it is again. This is Christus Victor by Gustaf Aulen. And this talks about different atonement theories. I think three different atonement theories. Obviously, this was written almost 100 years ago in 1931, he argues for the Christus Victor view of atonement or a certain formation of that view. Since his book , it's gained further explanation, let's say more elaboration.

       But the idea of Christus Victor, which means Christ the victor—Christ the victor over Satan—we would say. The idea is that when Satan put Jesus to death, Satan thought that by putting Jesus to death, he was doing the right thing. He thought from his vantage point that he was destroying God's plan. He was taking away the Jewish Messiah. God had promised the Jews a Messiah. Well, Satan thought, I'm going to wreck that. I'm going to ruin that. Okay, well, he thought that let's have Christ put to death. Let's use the Pharisees. Let's do all this. All right, but really, that was God's plan, as Paul's telling us in Ephesians 3. And remember, Jesus said it was his own personal free will choice as well. That's another aspect of it. He said he laid down his life for the sheep, remember?

       But anyway, when this act of the cross was accomplished, when Satan did what he did in thinking of putting Christ to death, Satan lost the legal right to the earth, the dominion of the earth, and the people of the earth. When God accomplished what he did through Jesus, he died for the sins of the whole world, he was buried, he rose again. And then Satan lost. He lost that dominion of the earth. He lost that ownership, if you will, of the people of the earth. Really, what the Christus Victor Atonement theory argues for is liberation from Satan's power. That would be the summation of it. But that's a good book to read. Of course, you can look it up on Wikipedia. It's summarized on there pretty well. That's a good place to look. But that seems to be, that's in contrast to Penal Substitutionary Atonement, which is the predominant atonement theory in Evangelical Christianity. It's almost taken as if that's it. No questions asked. Okay, no debate to be had. All right, but Christus Victor, I think, gives us a view that does not make God out to be. Christus Victor, I think, paints God in a psychologically true light to how God's heart is, how God really should be interpreted, understood in light of what we know in the New Testament. So, it’s a great atonement theory. It's one that I would encourage everyone to check out if they are not familiar with it and to seriously consider it and to just try to get a hold of resources that can help you try to understand that and maybe in contrast to penal substitutionary atonement.

       Verse 12, “in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him” (ESV).

       Wow, that's the end result. That's the accomplishment, the success of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and through his resurrection. We, the church, this just totally obliterates what Satan wanted to accomplish. We ourselves, those of us who believe in Jesus' saving works, we have boldness before God. We don't have to be afraid, all right? We can say anything we want. The irony is it's not that we don't have to be afraid because God has changed. It's not that God went from being this Old Testament stoic, hard-to-deal-with God, to now he's easily accessible. It's not that God changed, but who changed? Well, we did, right? We're the ones who changed and are believing in Christ, right? We were indwelled by the Spirit. We've become a new creation, so on and so forth. Because God, really, in reality, he's always been the same. It's just people have misunderstood. But that would take days to try to explain.

       We can be real to God. We can share our hearts with God. We can tell God what we really think, even if it's something that we would consider sacrilegious or something we would be afraid to say out loud to others. We can tell that to God. Paul says we have boldness and access with confidence. Is he talking about confidence in the sense of boldness? Could be, but he's probably talking about we have confidence in knowing that God hears us. Either way, it fits because boldness would cover that confidence. The point is that because we're in our saved state, see, if we're not saved and we say a prayer, we don't know if God's going to hear that.

       Does God hear the prayers of unbelievers? If somebody prays for something along the lines of knowing him, sure he's going to hear that. If somebody prays something for help, is he going to hear that? Well, God in his compassion and his mercy, if he has an angel nearby, he might help that person. But if that person doesn't know him, that person isn't righteous. If that person isn't in relationship with him, he's not going to prioritize that, is he?

       We know, though, that when we talk to God, we have confidence that he hears us and we can say whatever we want. And there is no fear. Remember, John talked about that in John 1 John chapter 4. And he said that perfect love casts out fear, that fear has to do with punishment. Well, why don't we go ahead and go over to that passage and check that out. It really wasn't planning that, but it came to my mind. So let's see. 1 John 4, verse 18. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us” (ESV). Wow, that definitely supplements what we're talking about that parallels. Well, that's really our goal in our lives as we get to know God more, as we fellowship, as we pray, as we meditate, as we just spend time with God without asking for anything. Our goal is to love God more. “Perfect love casts out fear.” The more we are afraid of God, the more we have not been perfected in love. Oh man, this is kind of leading.

       I think a lot of that, unfortunately, I would have to say this is a little aside from psychology. A lot of that has to do, in my personal opinion, with attachment theory and what our attachment style is, which has a lot to do with how we were raised and our parental relations or even lack thereof. And there are four attachment styles, but those, which is about 50% of the population, those who have the secure attachment style would definitely find it easier, I think, to rid fear from their lives versus those with either avoidant or anxious attachment or a fearful avoidant attachment. And I really wasn't planning this either, but I pulled back out this book off the shelf. And this is the book called ‘Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love.’ This book is talking about attachment as far as romantic relationships go. But that's not our focus at all on this message. But the point is it talks about the attachment stops. And if you just picked it up to try to understand that, it's by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller. Okay, a secular book—remember that. But having that love of psychology that I have, I find that attachment theory to be very profitable.

       To tie back into what we're talking about , if we're at a disadvantage in our attachment style, I think it's going to take us longer, perhaps, to gain that security, at least feeling of security, I guess I'm trying to say, with God. The truth is there's no insecurity with God. That's what Paul is telling us. It's a beautiful thing. It’s a wonderful thing where he says back in Ephesians chapter 3 pull up the right thing here "in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” And if we look at confidence as security, it’s not with insecurity it's not even avoidance anything like that We have that confidence through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ with God the Father.

       And that's another reason why I bring up attachment theory is because I think it helps us understand ourselves. And because God himself knows our attachment style, because he knows where we're coming from due to our upbringing, environmental factors, maybe even due to some genetic components, because he knows that. He, by us understanding that knowledge we can from attachment theory, I think it helps us to be a little bit easier on ourselves, especially if we're not securely attached. It helps us to be easier on ourselves, and we know that God knows it, because God himself, Jesus himself, would be securely attached. That's the normal. That's the baseline. And because we know God's secure, even if we find ourselves in a form of insecurity, it helps us to give our little compassion to ourselves and to work to change how we can better ourselves. And it helps us to know that God knows that, yeah, we have this insecurity, and he knows that he's going to be compassionate and work with us on that. And that's a beautiful thing that he's going to help us with that. And just the fact of us knowing that he knows and all that, I think, gives us comfort.

       Anyway, let's get the final verse, verse 13. “So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory” (ESV).

       Wow, that is a good summarization of everything Paul has just said. He doesn't want the believers in Ephesus; he doesn't even want us reading this. To feel bad about everything that he's going through, which is a lot, right? He's under his first imprisonment . Notice the word first. Because of two things. Paul has said two things as to why that isn't the case in our text today. The first is he's making the plan of God known. He's making that beautiful mystery of everybody included of the whole world. He's making that known. We might even call that the Gospel. He's making God's truth known, making the concept of everyone included known. He's helping people come to know God. That's the beautiful thing. So number two, Paul's work is allowing the church to show God's power toward the evil forces. And that we touched upon, and that is why I brought up that book, ‘Satan and the Problem of Evil’ by Theologian Greg Boyd.

       We see this demonstrated in our world after evil things occur. A big evil thing happens. Even small evil things happen. But just to make it easy, a big evil thing happens. It's not that God willed that evil event to happen or wanted it to happen, as we might incorrectly assume or conclude. But it's that the evil event happened and God does what? He works good out of the evil that has occurred. Works tremendous good a lot of times. I mean, we can think of situations where that has happened. Sometimes it's just good after good after good after that one big evil event happened. And that's the beautiful thing of the church, the church working to accomplish that, God's people, God working through his people. Notice he uses his people to do that. He doesn't descend himself. He doesn't send lightning bolts from the sky. He doesn't make a bunch of miracles in general. They just happen. He can sometimes. He does it that way, but he uses the church to accomplish that good. He uses us, and that means we're team players in this masterful plan of God.

       That's what Paul's been talking about. That's what he's saying he is. Okay, and remember, he'll say elsewhere, be imitators of me. He wants us to be like him because he's doing the right thing as he's been talking about. That's how we are imitators of God. Paul says, whose sufferings are for the church's glory for their best. And we can certainly testify to that, because what Paul accomplished has definitely been used for tremendous good, even to this day with our Bibles, with all 13, 14 books that Paul wrote. Still widely read, widely followed, widely believed to this day. What Paul accomplished was for the Ephesians’ glory and even for our glory.

       And so that, when we're being obedient to God, when we're doing what Jesus told us to do in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, when he told us to let our light shine before others, to let our light shine before men, that’s why we're doing it, to bring glory to God, to bring them a chance to come to know God, as we imitate God, and to hopefully themselves come into relationship with God. And that's the case right now today, that anyone who does not know God, who's listening to this, I am here today to tell you that you can know God through Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of everything wrong you've ever done. And you can have that boldness and confidence with God through Jesus Christ through belief in his death and resurrection from the dead. And that you yourself one day having that relationship with God can experience the same thing of being raised to life and dwelling with God and with those who believe in him forever. It's an incredible thing. And anyone out there can have that today.

- Daniel Litton