Lift Your Eyes Archives - Forget the Channel Lionel Windsor

One of the benefits

of history is that it makes us grateful for things we might otherwise take for

granted. My father-in-law has a collection of historical newspapers. At one

point I was looking through his collection, and a brief comment caught my eye.

It’s from the London Gazette, Monday August 26, 1768, Number 118, Twopence-Farthing,

just after an announcement of a soiree to be held by Mrs Grant-Forsdyke and

just before a description of a French pirate ship at large:







ABHORENT PRACTICE OF SLAVE TRADING: The hunting of Human Beings for the purpose of making slaves of them is a practice to be much abhored. It is therefore of great comfort to Englishmen of Christian Ideals to note that the group of Evangelicals continues to be active in condemning the trading of slaves… We are sure all thinking men will deem the work of the Evangelicals to be of ultimate necessity and will encourage them to continue in it.London Gazette, Monday August 26, 1768







(An “Evangelical” is a Christian motivated primarily by the gospel, i.e. the message about Jesus Christ. The word comes from the Greek word for gospel, euangelion)







Plaque in York Minster, England







The writer of this article is speaking about the early efforts of Evangelicals such as Granville Sharp (later joined by Hannah More, William Wilberforce and others) to end the slave trade in the British Empire. By God’s grace, the Evangelicals’ persistent efforts were ultimately successful. While modern slavery is still, sadly, a huge problem worldwide, at least it is now universally illegal. Today, we take this for granted. But it hasn’t always been so. Fundamental changes have occurred, and it’s important to remember how these changes came about. History helps us to be grateful for our current situation, to remember how we got here—in this case, through the work of people who took the gospel of Jesus seriously—and to be motivated to continue to act today.[1]







Ephesians is written by the Apostle Paul:







To the holy ones—those who are also believers in Christ Jesus.Ephesians 1:1b







There is some important history behind this phrase. If we learn and remember this history, it will increase our wonder at and gratitude for what God has done to make it true. And as believers in Christ Jesus, it will motivate us to live as God’s holy people today.







Being holy







First, we need to come to grips with what ‘holy’ means. First and foremost, ‘holiness’ is a characteristic of God. God’s ‘holiness’ refers to his supreme excellence—his distinction from everything that he has made. God’s holiness means that he is perfectly mighty and pure and wonderful, and more. The word ‘holy’ can also be used to describe things and people that are specially set apart for God and his service. In the Old Testament, we read about the nation of Israel (e.g. Exodus 19:6, Deuteronomy 7:6). Israel was ‘holy’ because God had loved them and chosen them to be his own people, to be set apart for his service, to live for him, to be pure and live right lives, to keep his law, and to be special in the world. A ‘holy person’ is sometimes called a ‘saint’: while these look like two different words in English, they actually mean the same thing. And this term ‘the holy ones’, or ‘the saints’ was applied, first and foremost, to the special nation of Israel (e.g. Daniel 7:18).







Believers in Christ Jesus







In Ephesians,

however, Paul is not writing to God’s Old Testament people Israel. Rather, he

is writing “to the holy ones—those who are also believers in Christ Jesus”.

I teach at a Sydney theological college that’s right in the middle of one of the most irreligious parts of the Western world. Our campus sits between a long-established, determinedly secular university, and a vibrant, socially progressive inner-city suburb. Quite often, I join in with a group of college students, heading out into our community with the aim of engaging people in conversations about Jesus Christ. The results are varied. We’ve had some great conversations and some not-so-great ones. Some people say “no” straight away, with various degrees of politeness. Others are happy to talk for hours. But one thing I’ve discovered, and been a little surprised by, is there’s a large number of people in our community who believe in God.







However, what people

actually mean when they say they believe in God (or god) is another

question. It’s highly varied. People believe in a supreme cosmic force, a

benevolent sovereign, an unknowable Other, and a great moral police officer,

among others. Even the various atheists we meet have very different ideas about

the kind of God (or god) they believe doesn’t exist.















What do you think of

when you hear the word, ‘God’?







The Bible is all about

God. But since the concept can mean so many things to different people, it’s

important for us to come to grips with who this God actually is, and what he’s

like. In Ephesians 1:2, in the introduction to his letter, Paul says some very

important things about God:







Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.Ephesians 1:2







In fact, he uses the

exact same formula in many of his other letters. But this isn’t just a clichéd

formula. It’s not just Paul’s version of ‘to whom it may concern’. Paul repeats

it because it’s such a good summary of certain amazing truths about God. It’s

not everything you can say about God—obviously there’s far more to say about

God than can be said in a single short verse. But still, in this verse there

are some profound things we can learn about God—things that are also important

for understanding the rest of the letter.







The God of grace







Firstly, God is a

God of grace. Paul begins “Grace to you”. The word ‘grace’ is a ‘gift’

word: God is a God who gives. What kind of things does God give, and how does

he give them? Lots of things, according to the rest of Ephesians! Firstly, and

most wonderfully, God gives people who believe in Jesus the gift of salvation:

forgiveness, life, and a relationship with him forever. This grace is

completely undeserved, because by rights we actually deserve God’s judgment. So

Jesus gave himself for us: he died for our sins and rose from the dead

so we could have that salvation. God’s grace is also lavish: God has made us

his children and showered his grace on us. And his grace, his gift, calls forth

a response in us: it makes us into people who want to love him and praise him

and live for him.







Salvation is central

to God’s grace, but God gives us even more! He has also given us the gift of

knowing him, and knowing his plans for the universe through Jesus. He gives us

strength: strength to know him and live for him and stand for him. Also, he

gives various kinds of other gifts to each one of us, to enable us to speak about

Jesus and serve and care for one another and to bring the message of Jesus to

the world. God has given Paul the gift of preaching the gospel to all the

nations. And to each one of us he has given us grace, so that we can speak

words of grace to others.

Have you heard of the

internet hashtag #blessed? On the surface, it’s a tag people use to show

their friends they’re happy and thankful to God (or some higher power) for some

aspect of their life. “My fiancé is the best. #blessed”. “Feeling #blessed to

have achieved so much in my sporting career.” But in online interactions, it’s never

as simple as that, is it? There are always complex motivations, real or

imagined, lurking beneath the surface. When we read this, we want to know: why

are they sharing this feeling of blessedness? We might start speculating. Are

they bragging about their life and their achievements? Or we might start to get

annoyed. Who cares anyway about their fiancé or their sporting career? Pride, boasting,

envy and scornfulness are never far away online. So the hashtag has become a

sarcastic meme—a way of poking fun at humblebraggers and narcissists. “I

dropped my pizza in the gutter and it landed right side up. #blessed”.







But it isn’t just an

internet meme. Many people, especially Christians, will talk about being ‘blessed’.

The blessings that we often choose to talk about involve our own feelings of

fulfilment. My ‘blessings’ are the kind of things that I have in life, or that

I have achieved in life, or that I am. They are things that define me as

a person with a good life. What’s more—and here’s the problem—they’re also the

kind of things that many other people don’t have or haven’t achieved or aren’t.

We can talk about the blessings of health, family, happiness, reputation, food,

comfort, love. These are things that some of us have, and others long for. They

are, of course, real blessings, and if we have them we should be thankful to

God and tell people that we’re thankful too! But the #blessed phenomenon shows

how easy it is to move from gratefulness to boastfulness on the one hand, and

envy and sarcasm on the other.







The apostle Paul

opens his letter of Ephesians with an explosion of praise and thankfulness for

the ‘blessings’ that God has given to us. What kind of blessings is he talking

about? We quickly see that they’re very different from the kind of blessings we

often talk about.







Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ!Ephesians 1:3







Blessed is God!







The first ‘blessing’

is actually not about our own personal fulfilment at all. It’s about God. Paul exclaims

that God is “blessed”—meaning that God himself is wonderful, amazing and worthy

of all our praise. Paul starts his talk about ‘blessing’ with God, not himself.

He describes God as the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. God’s own

blessedness comes from who he is: the fact that he is the Father of

Jesus Christ. While this really matters for us, it doesn’t start with us. It

starts with God. So whenever we think about blessing, it’s right to first dwell

on God himself—who he is, and especially who he is in relation to his Son Jesus

Christ.







Spiritual blessings in the heavenly places















This “blessed” God has also “blessed us”. Paul isn’t talking here about the kind of blessings we often dwell on: health, wealth, love, reputation, or happiness. Rather, he is talking here about “spiritual blessings in the heavenly places”. These are blessings that have to do with God’s Holy Spirit and the spiritual dimension of life. We don’t often dwell on the spiritual dimension of life because it’s not right in our faces, and sometimes it seems so distant and unreal. But in fact,

“You are special.

Trust yourself. Be true to yourself. …Follow your passion. Don’t accept limits.

Chart your own course. You have a responsibility to do great things because you

are so great.” I’m quoting from New York Times columnist David

Brooks’ book The Road to Character. Brooks is here listing

some of the messages that are becoming more and more common in our world—and he

thinks it’s a real problem. He calls it “the gospel of self-trust” (p. 7). Whether

it’s Disney princesses or graduation speeches, these messages, according to

Brooks and many other commentators, are indicative of the prevalence of ‘narcissism’

in Western society.







While narcissism is technically

a psychological diagnosis, the word is also used to talk about a more general

social attitude. Narcissism goes way beyond normal, healthy self-esteem. It’s

the focussing of everything, and everyone, on yourself and your own desires. And

apparently, narcissism as a social attitude is alarmingly on the rise. More and

more, we’re being conditioned to have an instinctive reaction that makes

everything about me: my own desires and feelings and rights. This is

having serious implications for the way we think about each other and our

families, and even for the way we run our nations. Political parties are

finding it harder and harder to reach consensus and to govern for the good of

all, because they’re driven by the need to satisfy all the desires of

individual special interest-groups who all vote along these individual lines.















The Bible gives us a

very different vision for living life. It is the exact opposite of the

narcissistic attitude. It points us away from ourselves and towards something

greater. A Christian is, fundamentally, a person who admits that it’s not all

about me, and who lives for someone else: Jesus Christ. This truth is often

highly confronting. But as we come to look at Ephesians 1:4–6, we see that it

is also incredibly comforting.







God has blessed us in Christ—for he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his presence; in love he predetermined that we should be adopted through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace.Ephesians 1:4–6a







God chose us: be confronted and

comforted







…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his presence;Ephesians 1:4







The first thing

we’re confronted by in these verses is the fact that God “chose us”. We’re used

to thinking of ourselves as the people who choose. In fact, we can often

think and act as if human choice is the most important thing in the world. After

all, we choose what to buy; we choose what to wear; we choose how to live; we

choose who we spend our lives with; indeed we choose who we are—so often we are

told that our very identity is up to us to decide. So surely, we should also

choose God? Yet here, we’re confronted by a God who chose us before we chose

him! And just in case there’s any confusion about whose choice comes first,

Paul speaks deliberately about God’s choice in terms of the time dimension. God

chose us before the foundation of the world. He predetermined (or

‘predestined’) us to be adopted as his children. God made decisions about us

long before we had any hope of making any decisions about him. This is

philosophically very deep and complex. It’s true that our decisions are still

real,

Are you trying to

redeem yourself? We talk about ‘redeeming ourselves’ when we get into trouble (normally

trouble of our own making) and need to extricate ourselves from it. When we say

something hurtful to a friend, for example—we might deeply regret what we’ve said

and sincerely want to make up for it. There’s a WikiHow article called ‘How to

Redeem Yourself’. It lists twenty-one steps, in three sections, that

will help you to redeem yourself. Each step has explanations, illustrations, and

worked examples. The steps include: “Acknowledge your wrongdoing before the

other person finds out”, “Take responsibility for your actions”, “Remedy the

situation”, and “Face the realities of your life”. There’s some wisdom in this

article, especially for people who want to try to make up for serious wrongdoing

in significant relationships (it mentions wrongdoings like cheating on a spouse

or breaking trust through lying). But unfortunately, it doesn’t work all of the

time. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we can’t fix the mess we’re in by

ourselves. There are some situations that we just can’t redeem ourselves from. And

facing that reality can be devastating.







The word ‘redemption’

means being delivered from some bad situation or danger that threatens us. It’s

about being rescued from the situation and brought to a place of freedom or

safety. Redemption applies to personal relationships, and it also applies to other

situations. In this short passage from Ephesians, Paul talks about redemption. The

redemption he’s talking about really matters, because it has to do with our

relationship with God. As we look more closely at these verses in Ephesians, we

see that when it comes to God, we can’t redeem ourselves. Instead, redemption

is something that God has to do—and has done—for us. This is why it’s such a

wonderful thing.







God has given us this grace in the one he dearly loves. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of his grace.Ephesians 1:6b–7







Redemption is a gift from God







Paul talks about

redemption as a gift from God. It’s not an action we do for ourselves. Paul

says that God has “given us this grace”, and that our redemption is “according

to the riches of his grace”. The word ‘grace’ is all about a gift to us from

God himself. God, from his overflowing riches, has given us a gift—redemption.

That’s why Paul uses the present tense to describe our redemption: “we have

redemption”. The redemption Paul is describing is not something that we have to

achieve in our lives, or something we need to wait for in the future. We have

it now, and we have it because God has given it to us.







But what is this

gift of redemption? How has he redeemed us? And what have we been redeemed from?







The one he dearly loves







Paul says that God

has redeemed us “in the one he dearly loves”. This phrase points us to the Old

Testament prophetic book of Isaiah, which describes a figure called the ‘Suffering

Servant’. This Suffering Servant is a person who is loved and chosen by God. He

identifies closely with the people of Israel; so closely that he suffers and

dies for the sake of Israel’s sins. Here is a famous passage from Isaiah:







But he was pierced for our transgressions;he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;we have turned—every one—to his own way;and ...

In almost every area of our lives, things work best when we know the plan. Whether it’s personal relationships, or study, or work, or holidays, or sport, or even going for a walk, it really helps to know what the point is and how we’re going to get there. In some areas of life, we can make our own plans. In other areas of life, we need other people to lead us by making good plans and sharing them with us. That’s why leadership gurus talk about ‘vision and ‘mission’ and ‘strategy’. Good leaders are people with good and clear plans. But more than that, good leaders are people who clearly communicate those plans to their team, so everyone knows what the plan is and can happily play their part. I once worked for a solar energy research company. I still remember our mission statement: “to have developed solar modules seen across the rooftops of the world”. I knew where I fitted in to that mission: I was an engineer who helped to develop and maintain the equipment for the research scientists. It was great to work on this team, because I knew the plan. On the other hand, you probably know how frustrating it can be to be in a team where the plan isn’t clear, or isn’t clearly communicated to you.







What about life itself? Is there a plan for our world, our universe, that we can know and get on board with? Douglas Adams, in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, famously described a computer which spent seven and a half million years working out “The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything” and came up with “Forty-two”.[1] It was a playful way of saying that the meaning of life and the universe is either absurd or unknowable. But what if we could know it? Well, that’s Paul’s claim in Ephesians 1:8–10:







God lavished his grace on us, in all wisdom and understanding, by disclosing to us the secret of his will. This was according to his good pleasure, which he displayed in Christ, leading to the administration of the fulfilment of time. It is to sum up all things in Christ: things in heaven and things on earth, in him.Ephesians 1:8–10







Paul talks here about

God’s plan—not just God’s plan for a specific area of our lives, but God’s plan

for the whole universe. Paul also says that God has graciously made this plan

known to us, in Jesus Christ. If that’s true, it changes everything, doesn’t

it? It will mean we know where the world is heading, and how we can play our

part.







The gift: disclosing the secret







God’s plan isn’t

something we can work out for ourselves. Instead, God has graciously communicated

his plan, as a gift, “disclosing to us the secret of his will.” This is truly

an act of grace from God. It means that God is not just some supreme power or

distant figure unknown to us. Rather, as his adopted children, we are let in to

the intimate secret of his will.







The goal: To sum up all things in

Christ















What is the goal of

this plan? It is “to sum up all things in Christ”. God’s plan is focused on the

person of Jesus Christ, his dearly-loved Son. His plan involves bringing

everything to a point where it is in proper order and harmony, under Jesus

Christ. Thus, it is a plan that involves reconciliation. There will be a

point where all things come under the lordship of Jesus Christ, whether

willingly or unwillingly (because God’s judgment against sin is part of the

plan—see Ephesians 5:6). That is where things are heading, and that is what God

is doing right now.







This plan is not

simple. As Paul goes on in Ephesians, he describes multiple dimensions to the