Sermon Talkback—January 4, 2009
Ephesians 1:3-14
The Text
The passage is incredibly deep in its theological references and impossibly dense in its language. Older commentators observed that all of the verses 3-14 are a single sentence in Greek since the New Testament was originally written with no punctuation or even breaks in words. Consequently, such aids to reading as periods, commas, semicolons and the like have been supplied by later editors based on grammatical and syntactical features of the text to make the passage comprehensible. What we have is the valiant effort of modern English translations.
The critical issue in this passage is the prepositional phrase that is repeated at the beginning of verse 7, 11, and 13, literally translated in the English as, “in whom.” It is these initial prepositional phrases that also suggest that this passage is one single sentence. The question, as always with pronouns, is: “What is the antecedent of “in whom,” referring to? One possibility is that it refers back to “God” in verse 3 for why God is deserving of praise.
The problem with this proposal is that it does not appear to work for verse 7. Because the “in whom” in this verse most likely has the same antecedent as “his” in the next phrase, “through his blood,” it would seem to refer to Christ rather than the Father. If the “whom” in verse 7 refers to Christ, could it be that it refers to Christ in verses 11 and 13 as well? That identification certainly works grammatically in both instances, and indeed the NRSV has made this interpretation explicit in its translation of the phrase at the beginning of verse 11 as, “In Christ.”
The Message
The status of the Christian believer “in Christ” is the dominant theme in Ephesians. The author maintains that, in what remains somewhat paradoxical “revealed mystery” (God “has made known to us the mystery…set forth in Christ,” vs.9), that God has always (“before the foundation of the world,” vs. 4) and will ever (“a plan for the fullness of time,” vs. 10) deal with humanity “in” and “through Jesus Christ” (vs.5). God’s determination to deal with us in this way is both our greatest blessing (vs. 3) and our greatest reason for “the praise of [God’s] glory” (vs.14).
The reason God’s determination to deal with humanity “in Christ” is so important emerges from the gap between God’s plan for humanity and the reality of our condition. God had “destined us for adoption as [God’s] children” (vs. 5), but with the intention that we should “be holy and blameless before [God] in love” (vs. 4). Because of our “trespasses,” there was a need for our “redemption” and “forgiveness” if God’s plan was to be realized. It is “through [Christ’s] blood (vs. 7) that we have been once again gathered with “all things…in heaven and things on earth” (vs. 10) back to God. To assure that we are not again separated from God, we “were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” (vs. 13) to maintain us “in Christ.”
For Discussion
How are you planning to live a life “in Christ” in the 2009 New Year? Will you be making lemonade?
(Notes are drawn heavily from Homiletics, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp.10-12.)
DN, 12/4/2009