Memory text: “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.” Eph. 3:8-9 KJV
Jews and Gentiles
Ephesians 3:1-13 is a continuation of the discussion in Ephesians 2:11-22 about Jews and gentiles being reconciled in Christ, and being melded into a new humanity, spiritual Israel.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Eph. 2:13-18.
Through his death on the cross, Christ fulfilled all the ceremonial laws, everything that pointed to his death, and it was these things that separated Jews and Gentiles. Paul is saying they are now gone, nailed to the cross, so there is nothing to prevent gentiles having access to God the Father through Christ, and henceforth the Jews also must seek access to God the Father through Jesus Christ, not through the law, and certainly not through the flesh.
Because the barrier raised by the Jews was not just the law, but the flesh itself. With all due respect to Sammy Davis, Jr., you cannot convert to Judaism. Judaism is a racial heritage; either your mother was Jewish or she was not. If she was, you are a Jew; if not, not.
One of my friends from law school was Jewish (or so I thought) and one day when I went to study with her for the Texas bar exam, I noticed she had been crying. I asked what was upsetting her, and she told me that although her father was Jewish and she considered herself Jewish, her mother was not a Jew by birth but only by practice. Hence, some people were excluding my friend from some Jewish organization (I don’t recall the details) because of her mother. I was at first baffled and then so indignant, not to say furious, at the idea of a “religion” that was racial rather than confessional, that I fear I was little comfort to my friend in her hour of distress. I think I said something like, “why would you even want be part of club run by those people,” which was not the thing to say just then.
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Eph. 2:19-21.
The new temple being built by and for spiritual Israel is not built on the flesh, nor on the law, but rather upon Christ Jesus Himself as the Chief Cornerstone. It is a spiritual structure, not a fleshly one, hence is not built on fleshly rites: “Take notice: I, Paul, tell you that If you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no use to you at all.” Gal. 5:2. Building upon your own flesh is not an option; rather it is a rejection of what Christ has accomplished for you in His flesh. Building on a foundation of law-keeping is likewise not an option: “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been severed from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” Gal. 5:4.
The Stewardship of God’s Grace
For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. Eph. 3:1-3 NIV
We all know how Paul was the apostle to the gentiles (Acts 9:15; Rom. 11:13; Gal. 1:15-16; 2:7), but what does Paul mean in saying that he was given, “The administration of God’s grace”?
The Greek word translated as “administration” in verse 2, and also in verse 9, is oikonomos, literally “home law.” It means:
A steward, manager, superintendent (who could be free-born, a freed-man or a slave) to whom the owner or head of the household has entrusted the management of his affairs, the care of receipts and expenditures, and the duty of disbursing the proper wage or allowance to every servant in the household, and even to the children not yet of age. (Strong’s G3623)
Oikonomos is translated as “steward” in Luke 12:42; 16:1, 3, 8. NKJV
A steward or manager is an agent with a fiduciary duty to his principal, which means he must manage the thing he has been entrusted with for the good of his principal, not himself. He must put his principal’s interests above his own. He has been entrusted with something important, and his fiduciary duty is to manage it according to the wishes of the principal who entrusted it to him.
Paul is saying that God has entrusted him, Paul, with the stewardship or management of bringing the gospel to the gentiles. He says this same thing again in First Corinthians, noting that stewards are fiduciaries who must be found faithful:
“Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. . . . but He who judges me is the Lord.” 1 Cor. 4:1-4. NKJV
Paul’s stewardship of the mysteries of the gospel for the gentiles will be judged ultimately by God, a much more fearful thing than any human court of law.
“In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 3:4-6 NIV
Does Paul have special insight into the mystery of Christ? Yes, indeed! Very few of us have had a Damascus Road experience where Jesus audibly speaks to us and confronts us for persecuting Him. Paul had the original Damascus Road experience; God got his attention, as only God can. Acts 9:1-31. Yes, Paul had special insight into what God was doing in the building of His church. God told Ananias, “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 9:15
“I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the stewardship of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” Eph. 3:7-9 NIV
Despite having been personally chosen, and waylaid, by Jesus Christ, personally, Paul is not puffed up with pride; to the contrary, he calls himself “the least of all the Lord’s people.”
One would think—or at least I might think it—that Paul would consider the fiduciary responsibility of stewardship over bringing the gospel to the gentiles to be a burden, a weighty, and even unwanted responsibility, especially given that Paul was no gentile, and called himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews.”
But please note that Paul calls it not a responsibility or a burden, but grace, unmerited favor. This grace given to Paul was a joy and a privilege! When God calls you to undertake a mission or a ministry on His behalf, it is grace given you. Never run the other way like Jonah did. It is a privilege and a blessing, this grace given us to be co-workers with Christ Jesus. (1 Cor. 3:9-10)
This Grace Given
Decades ago I purchased a book entitled, “This Grace Given,” probably because the author’s name was David Read. David H. C. Read, to be exact, so I share his first and last names and one of his middle initials. I read the book in 1990 and then gave it to my dad, and was delighted to find it still in his library.
David Haxton Carswell Read (1910 – 2001) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister. He did well in seminary, traveled in Europe including extensively touring Germany, and succeeded in his first pulpit in Coldstream, Scotland, on the Tweed River. He was about to take a posting to a larger church in Edinburgh when war broke out, and he felt called to serve as a chaplain to the 51st Highland Division of the British Army, which was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.
David Read was taken prisoner in June, 1940, and spent five long years in POW camps. As they were walking into captivity, “A wise old colonel came alongside me in the march. ‘Padre,’ he said, ‘your work is just beginning.’ He was right.”
Read improved the time, preaching and lecturing continually, studying the Greek New Testament he had with him. His experiences behind the wire turned out to be a great education in human nature, one that could never have been afforded him at a comfortable parish in Scotland:
I felt as though God had said to me, “You’ve had a very limited experience of my great human family. You don’t really know how many of them think, how they talk, and what you mean by the words you use when talking about me. So I’ve dropped you in at the deep end. Swim around and you’ll learn more about human nature than you ever did at seminary.”
While at a POW camp in Spangenberg, Germany, Read began a series of lectures on the Christian faith. This led eventually to deep conversations about faith by everyone in the camp, including two committed and erudite atheists. “We had to delve into every theological book we had ever digested. Never again have I been forced to examine so thoroughly everything I profess to believe in, or listen to such frank and sometimes devastating criticism.”
Shortly after this series concluded, one of the guards asked Read if he had been lecturing on Christianity, and he replied in the affirmative. The guard turned out to be a Lutheran pastor, and as the conversation progressed (Read was fluent in German and French) the man stated that he worked in the censorship office and could send those lectures back to England, provided they contained no coded messages. The lectures were duly sent back to Read’s wife, Patricia, in England, and were published as a book, “Prisoner’s Quest.”
After the war, Read returned to Spangenberg and looked up the Lutheran pastor, asking him what happened to him after he left the POW camp. The man said he had been sent to Rommel’s Afrika Corp in 1943, and taken prisoner by the British within a month of arriving in North Africa. After he and some other prisoners complained that they had nothing to read, the British guards gave them a crate of books from the YMCA. “And the first book I saw was the one I sent home for you—Prisoner’s Quest.”
“As I look back in gratitude on the postwar years, it is clear that there was more grace to be given. It was given to me when I needed it to endure the agonies of readjustment (all of us found it hard to communicate with the “normal” world), and to reassess my task as a preacher. It was also given to me in the unexpected twists in the direct of my life, the first one leading me, wide-eyed and surprised, to the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York” where he served as the senior pastor for 33 years, from 1956 to 1989.
This memoir, one of some 27 books David Read wrote during his long ministry, was of course named after our memory verse in Ephesians three. Read notes that Paul as a “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5) would not seem to be a natural “apostle to the gentiles,” yet he was God’s choice and God equipped him:
“When Paul wrote about grace being given to him ‘to preach among the gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,” these “gentiles” represented to him a people totally different from those with whom he had associated as a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.” For me the “gentiles” are the vast number of those for whom conventional Christianity has ceased to have a powerful appeal—perhaps has even become meaningless. The grace I seek is the ability to understand and then with compassion to interpret the gospel to all such people.”
God Reveals His Purpose
God has bigger plans than saving us sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. He has a universe to educate, including angels and the denizens of other planets, unfallen planets but populated with creatures who have free will just as we do, to vouchsafe that sin will never arise again. Christ died to save us, yes, but not only to save us, also to demonstrate God’s matchless love and beauty to the onlooking universe:
“His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.” Eph. 3:10-13 NIV
Christ put an end to all systems of priesthood and mediation between God and man other than Himself. Heb. 7:11-25. “There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Tim. 2:5. At this point, anyone trying to sell you on an earthbound system of priests and mediators is doing away with Jesus Christ. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Heb. 4:16.
A Prayer for the Ephesians
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Eph. 3:14-19.
Doxology
The word doxology is from the Greek doxa, which means “glory.”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory (doxa) in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Eph. 3:20-21
God is not limited by our pitiful faith and modest petitions, or even by our constrained imaginations. He is able to do more than all we ask or even imagine, according to the power of the Holy Spirit that is work within us! To Him be all glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever (eon of the eons) Amen.