We have been stepping carefully through Ephesians 1, and this is the 15th lesson so far. In the preceding verses, we see a pattern of Paul’s personal, spiritual life along with how he extended those personal things to the Ephesian Christians. Here is the gist of that pattern: Paul prayed, God answered, and Paul learned. Paul then turned what he learned into building blocks to bolster the faith of the Ephesian Christians. Check out Ephesians 1:15-19a to see this in the scriptures. The last of the three building blocks1 was the immeasurable power of God for the Christian. What we see in the verses of this lesson is Paul’s seamless move to the manner of God’s power in the life of Christ.2
19b…according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:19b-23–ESV)
According
God called the Ephesians to his version of hope, set them on the path toward his version of riches3, and imbued them with the necessary power to achieve these God-assigned ends. These things for the Ephesians were not done in isolation but were part of the widest realm, God’s realm and his biggest aim. That this is so can be seen in a word which comes in the middle of the 19th verse and ties together God’s plan for humanity with his plan for Jesus Christ: according.
That which God did for the Ephesians was according to, an extension of, the type of power he exercised in raising Christ from the dead and the rest of verses 20 and 21.
The power example that Paul picked: Resurrection
God’s unsealing of the grave of Jesus forever sealed Christ’s uniqueness. The barrier of death is an unavoidable crossing faced by all living things. Christianity4 teaches that the soul does not end when its molecular life does. While the Christian easily assimilates this vantage point, no ordinary circumstances confirm it. Our dogs stay dead. Our guinea pigs stay dead, and so do our loved ones. That was the expectation the disciples had of Jesus. Mary, too. Passover lambs never came back to life either.
Then Easter happened.
Seeing was believing, but it remained hard to accept. Think of Thomas who figured that Jesus had fooled him once. He was not about to fall into that ditch of optimism. Then Jesus appeared to him presenting the opportunity to experience the very thing he demanded5. So that palpable thing in the life of Jesus, done before Roman and Jewish lives, was the working of a power that was both so different and so very great that no one could call anything other than the power of God. Jesus appended to his self-revelation to Thomas the words, “Blessed are those who did not need to see [the holes in my hand and side] and yet believed.”
The power for the Ephesians (verse 19a) was according to the previously displayed power of God in the resurrection.
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