Displayed – Chapter 3:10
“so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 3:10–ESV)
To this point, I have considered the heavenly places as the realm of God, but this verse interjects another group. This other population before which the church is on display is that darker, evil, more sinister community of Satan. When Paul uses the term “rulers and authorities” he implies unholy, ungodly spiritual forces. They exist in a different plane than the biological, the earthly, but they see what is going on in both sectors.
When people leave Satan’s kingdom and enter God’s they enter into God’s plan for their lives. They may still sin and trip, but they also will get up again and thrive. The thriving may be predominately spiritual, or delayed, and as such appear or feel cryptic to their lives or the lives of those on the earth. There is no such obscurity in the heavenly realms. The wisdom of God is very real, obvious even, to the rulers and authorities, the powers of darkness enthroned in high places.
The Christian is on display. God’s wisdom directs the play.
Engaged – Chapter 6:12
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12–ESV)
This brings into the equation something entirely different than the other categories. Here our lives are described as a wrestling. That is the first glimpse into the notion of our having a role in the heavenly realms. We understand wrestling with things in this life much more so than we do being seating in heavenly places. Maybe we are on display among God’s other, non-human created beings, but our own awareness of those things in the earthly realms is not immediately accessible. The other-worldly is just that. But, wrestling? struggling? tugging at the things of life?
Here Paul says that our struggles also have an unearthly element to them. There are rulers and powers above the level of flesh and blood which are in play and powerfully so. Our presence in the real heavenly realm along with our struggles in the earthly one are thoroughly woven with one another. In the spiritual realm, there is clarity of good and evil, light and dark. We understand with clarity the realities of struggle and a sense of good and of evil. Paul places these experiences into a higher framework, the framework of God, Satan and the wide place of the heavenly realm.
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