Stephen
Terry, Director
;
Paul
and the Ephesians
Commentary
for the July 1, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"In Damascus there was a disciple named
Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!"
"Yes,
Lord," he answered.
The
Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man
from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named
Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."
"Lord,"
Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he
has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority
from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."
But
the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my
name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show
him how much he must suffer for my name." Acts 9:10-16, NIV
When I study the story of Paul
and the Ephesians, I find it is an incredible story of destinies shaped by
providence. We often think we know what is best for ourselves and by attribution,
for the church as well. But God patiently works out his will over much more
than our short life spans for greater purposes than we can ever hope to see realized.
We can look back now over millennia and see the threads that have woven through
history and the revelations they have brought to pass. Those same threads are
being woven in our lifetimes, but we are often too blinded by our own will, our
own desire to be significant, that we lose the ability to have a detached
perspective. Instead of trusting the current to carry our little skiff to its
proper destination, we struggle against the current, exhausting ourselves at
the oars, convinced that the fatigue is evidence of the holiness of our
purpose. In fact, it only proves our intransigence in the face of God's will.
We know exactly how we want our lives to be, and we convince ourselves that the
knowledge of this comes from God and not from our own desire for a sense of
fulfillment and ease. Given a choice between a hard, wooden pew and a
generously padded one, most of us, including me, would prefer the padded one.
It is natural. We seek what is comfortable. Yet we profess to serve a savior
who chose wood, not comfort. The dissonance between what we profess and how we
choose to live is jarring. Over time, most have learned to live with that dissonance,
ironically convincing ourselves we are saints, but without the hardship of the
cross. We may delude ourselves, like Peter, that we would be willing to die for
Jesus, but in dozens of choices we make every day, we testify that we would
not. Despite that, miraculously, God still finds ways to use us and everyone
else according to his purposes.
God sends love into the world.
That love moves mountains of opposition, and his purpose moves forward. For
centuries, religion has used the sword to bring all under domination for salvation.
Millions have died in the process. While there is less of this type of "evangelism"
now, it has only been replaced by power politics financed by the wealthy. Today's
church is a political entity more than a spiritual one. Since we have elevated
our desires to be synonymous with God's will, it is not surprising that the
church should be nothing more than an aggregation of the same. But again, with
infinite patience, God works to infuse his love into hearts that are willing
even there. That is why he could bring forth Martin Luther, though he was closely
held by one of the most rigid of ecclesiastical institutions mankind could
build. The light that touched Martin Luther still illuminates the world today.
The similar story of Paul and
Ephesus is far too grand to adequately cover in this short commentary, so
please forgive the simplicity of this recounting. Paul was raised a Pharisee
which tells us that he strictly observed the law and believed in the resurrection.[i] Before
his conversion, we probably would have considered him a fundamentalist. He
studied under the Pharisee Gamaliel,[ii]
but even then, God was working to prepare him for his future work for Gamaliel
was a liberal among the Pharisees which can be seen in his tolerance toward the
nascent Christian movement.[iii] Although
it is apocryphal, some have felt that as a descendant of Hillel, Gamaliel would
have been open to Hellenism in his teaching. Paul may not have known why he would need Hellenistic
knowledge. Gamaliel may not have even known what it could mean in his student's
life, but God knew his apostle to the Gentiles would need the tools to be
effective. It is ironic in view of how his life later turned out that initially,
Paul did not share his teacher's liberal attitude toward Christians. Instead,
he consented to the murder of Stephen and was willing to travel to Damascus to
arrest any Christians he found there. They, in turn, feared Paul and avoided
him. But where others saw a persecutor, God saw the potential of the apostle he
had been training Paul to become.
In another irony, the Disciples
felt they needed to replace the fallen Judas with another and chose Matthias by
lot, but God had already been preparing Paul. Matthias was faithful, but Paul
was destined to turn the world upside down. At first, Paul had become one of
those who assume their desires echo God's will. On the road to Damascus, God
set him straight, and to Paul's credit, he recognized the author of that
incident and changed course. Even so, he did not immediately unite with the Christians
in Jerusalem. Instead, he studied Christianity for three years in Arabia and
Damascus before he felt able to approach Peter in Jerusalem. His work in Antioch
and throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome is epochal, establishing the foundation
with sermons and letters for Pauline Theology. That theology was antithetical
to Jewish legalism and still is resisted today by those Christians who teach
salvation by perfectionism. Paul was in the unique position of being able to
point to his fundamentalist, Pharisaical background that would qualify him to
out legal the legalists and say none of that matters, clearing the way for
Gentiles to develop a relationship with Jesus.
However, God had not only been
preparing Paul for this work among the Gentiles. He had been preparing the
Gentiles as well. Ephesus was a case in point. The Ephesus he entered was the
result of many centuries of syncretism. Rather than push one religion over
another, conquerors would often simply add the gods of conquered peoples to
their pantheon. Ephesus was known for the world wonder, the Temple of Artemis.
But the temple, destroyed and rebuilt more than once, harked back to an earlier
deity who evolved into the Greek Artemis. Artemis was appropriated by the
Romans by equating her with their Diana. She was also seen as the equivalent of
the Egyptian goddess Isis, and a small temple to Isis was built along the
Harbor Road in Ephesus. All of this meant that as part of who they were,
Ephesians were open to other religions. Despite some singular incidents, Paul
was able to work there for several years, teaching and preaching. Evidence that
Paul was aware of the advantage that syncretism offered for the spreading of
the gospel can be seen in his speech to the Areopagus in Athens.[iv]
While many in the Areopagus rejected what he was presenting, some decided to come
further in understanding what Jesus meant. His effort to insert Jesus into the
pantheon and then claim Christ's supremacy over that pantheon is not much
different than inserting Jesus into the messianic expectations of the Jews. As Jews
responded to that style of preaching, Gentiles did also.
Paul's lifestyle in Ephesus and elsewhere
is a rebuke to modern preaching. Too many today are fearful of putting their
livelihood at risk if they were to preach plainly to the people. This is an
aberration. Its evidence is often seen when pastors and other church leaders
are secure in retirement and speak more plainly than they ever did while still
in denominational employ. Paul set himself and his assistants free from that
yoke. He worked to support himself and his entourage, so he was not beholden to
any man for sustenance. Unfortunately, as pastoral ministry is constructed
today, sustentation is used to control the message and thereby what is deemed
to be from the Holy Spirit and what is not, defaulting often to the opinion of
one man able to tighten or loosen the purse strings. Paul's methods combining
an astute use of a tendency toward syncretism, and his independence from
denominational control made it possible for the gospel to spread without check,
once he realized that his message was not primarily to the synagogues, but to
the Gentiles. His freedom meant that the only way of stopping the spread was
through violence against the church and against Paul, ultimately bringing him
to Rome and to the end of his life.
The words written by a free man
are intoxicating and fill our hearts with the desire for similar freedom. Although
he did not begin life that way, Paul was free because of his encounter with
Jesus on the road to Damascus, and he set about showing the world how we could
have similar freedom. But it didn't begin with Paul. It began with Jesus, who
said, "...if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36)