Reading: Ephesians 3:1-13
Context: Why does Paul refer to himself as a “prisoner for Christ Jesus”?
First, he is describing his current location. He’s in prison. The reason he’s in prison is because of Jesus. That is to say, in line with what it means to follow Jesus, he is facing opposition and resistance that has led to his being imprisoned. That’s the obvious and clear meaning. It’s not out of order, however, to also consider that what Paul is saying – and noting that he says that he’s a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of the Gentiles – is the sense in which he really is captivated by His call for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul knows perfectly well who has physically put him in chains — it’s the Roman authorities, not Jesus. But he refuses to call himself a prisoner of Rome. Instead, he insists he is a prisoner “of Christ Jesus,” which flips the whole situation on its head: Rome may hold the keys to his cell, but it doesn’t hold Paul’s allegiance, his identity, or his purpose. That belongs entirely to Jesus. So when he adds “for you Gentiles,” he’s not complaining about a cost he’s paying — he’s owning it as the very reason his imprisonment has meaning. His chains aren’t a setback to his mission to the Gentiles; they’re bound up with it. That’s a striking way to reframe suffering, and it sets the tone for how he’ll talk about grace, mystery, and purpose for the rest of the chapter.
Content: What is the “mystery” that Paul describes?
Paul describes the mystery very clearly. Something hidden in plain sight for the generations before is that Gentiles get in on all the promises of God in and through Jesus Christ. This is a profound revelation for both parties. The Jews may have been given hints throughout their journey with God in the way God worked with Gentiles and set up His covenant to allow for Gentiles to be Jews, but this is a step beyond that. It would shake their idea of what God had been doing all along. For the Gentiles, it would also be incredulous because they wouldn’t even be aware of most of what was going on with God’s covenant interactions with the Jews, and the universal implications of that would have a massively transformative effect on how they identified themselves.
They are “fellow heirs,” meaning they now have a legal share in what God promised to His people, not a lesser or borrowed one. They are “fellow members of the body,” meaning the exclusion isn’t just lifted at arm’s length — Gentiles are built into the same organism as Jewish believers, with no separate compartment for them. And they are “fellow partakers of the promise,” meaning whatever God pledged in Christ belongs to them just as fully as to anyone else. Three barriers, three reversals, and Paul piles them up almost as if one word wasn’t enough to capture how total the change is. He also tells us in verse 5 how this came out into the open in the first place – it wasn’t guessed at or pieced together by clever reasoning, but “revealed… by the Spirit” to the apostles and prophets. That matters, because it means the mystery wasn’t hiding due to a lack of effort to find it; it was sealed until God chose to open it up.
Concept: How does God’s plan include “manifold wisdom” being made known through the church?
What’s going on with God is that He gets glory through His creation, reflecting His image as He planned from the start. This reflection is made plain through all of His creation; the channel is not just through the covenant people of Israel. It’s now through the church. Thus, the church is the means through which God displays His wisdom in the heavens and on earth; it is multi-faceted, even as the bricks in the house He’s building vary in size and type. As they’re all brought together, it’s abundantly apparent that there’s no limiting or narrowing the wisdom of God. If we’re paying attention to His building plan, we see that as Jesus adds each person and develops around the other bricks, aspects and dimensions of the wondrous wisdom of God are on display. It’s crucial that we appreciate that, as we appreciate our heritage through the people of Israel in the covenants and journey God worked through them to make it available for us to see how Jesus is working all things in Himself. That attitude allows us to open our eyes to what God does through each part of His building plan – their fascinating and diverse stories, and how God intertwines these around the truth of how Jesus reveals Himself and the plan of God to establish each brick as a vital part of the family, all devoted to pointing to Jesus and expressing His rule and reign throughout the universe.
Paul names a very specific audience for this display, and it’s not us. He says this wisdom is being made known “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” — language that points to angelic beings, the unseen powers who occupy the spiritual realm above and around human affairs. That means the church’s diversity and unity aren’t just for the benefit of the watching world; they’re an exhibit staged in front of an audience we can’t see. Think about how much weight that puts on something as ordinary as believers from wildly different backgrounds being knit together in one body — angels who have watched God’s wisdom unfold across all of creation and throughout Israel’s history are now watching something new: a multi-ethnic, Spirit-joined family that no one could have engineered on their own. That’s part of why Paul can call this wisdom “manifold” — many-sided, many-coloured — because it’s not just complex to us; it’s a fresh display even to beings who’ve had a front-row seat to God’s work since long before we arrived on the scene.
Conclusions: How does Paul’s attitude toward suffering inform your approach to difficulties?
What is the attitude of Paul toward suffering? It’s a great question to ask in the context of what we’ve read. The section is topped and tailed by prison and suffering. The section operates on the sandwich basis of these two factors, and it’s the meat of the matter that gives us hope on how we can deal with difficulties, challenges, opposition, barriers and struggles internally and externally. Key parts of the sandwich that feed my approach to difficulties include:
Eternal perspective – Paul enjoys pitching everything in the context of eternity. God’s plan is being worked out. It’s worth understanding the plan and its eternal dimension so that I can hold onto faithfulness in the present. Being captured by that eternal plan can also help me see how the struggles, conflicts, and battles are nothing in comparison to what Jesus has done and what Jesus has prepared. Things in that light make it possible, as James would say, to count it as joy.
My calling – Paul can endure because He understands his assignment as part of that eternal perspective. He is called by this glorious Jesus to express this marvellous eternal purpose of God in Jesus Christ. That’s his purpose, that’s his call, and it’s sourced in God, so he has that ongoing reference point for strength, guidance, instruction and wisdom. How that applies to me is to reinforce my call and appreciate likewise what’s involved in it and how it contributes to the eternal purposes of God.
Next time:
WIWO – Ephesians – Episode Seven: Prayer for Inner Strength
Reading – Ephesians 3:14-21
God’s plan is glorious. As Paul outlines, it helps put things in perspective – an eternal perspective. This is why it’s a joy and a delight to take His Word In so we can live His Word Out.
For His Name’s Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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