We now begin an important part of our journey through the book of Ephesians. In the first two chapters the apostle Paul sowed the seeds of a glorious and expansive vision of what Christians are called to be. For the rest of the epistle he lays out a practical plan for how this is achieved. We continue our study now with Ephesians 3:1-6:
if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you; that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.
And by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,
which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;
to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
Many think that the understanding of this mystery is elementary, but there is considerable evidence that very few in all of church history, or today, have really grasped this understanding.
When the Lord began the implementation of His redemptive plan by calling Abraham, He explained that Abraham’s seed would be like the sand of the seashore and the stars of heaven. This first century revelation that Paul addresses above was understood to mean that there was to be both a heavenly and earthly seed of Abraham. That is, there were those who were his seed in the natural, and those who would become heirs of his covenant of faith by becoming one with the covenant in spirit, thus making redemption available to all nations.
God has progressively expanded His plan of redemption from the making of a covenant with one man, Abraham, to the making of a covenant with a whole nation, the natural seed of Abraham, the Jews. Then, just as He had promised Abraham, He would use him to bless all of the families on the face of the earth by bringing forth through his family a Messiah who would open the door of salvation to all people.
It is elementary and well understood by believers that anyone from any nation may now partake of the covenant that leads to salvation. However, what still seems to be a mystery to both Jewish and Gentile believers is how we are "fellow members" and "fellow partakers" of the covenant. Many promote what is called "Replacement Theology," which has the church entirely replacing the Jewish people in God’s plan of redemption. Others promote what I call a "replacement, replacement theology," that replaces the church with the Jewish people. Both of these promote a basic misunderstanding of the "mystery of Christ."
The plan of redemption was an unquestionable march toward inclusiveness. His desire was for even more than all of the families on the face of the earth to be blessed, but He "...who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (I Timothy 2:4). We can immediately beware of any doctrine that promotes exclusiveness in regard to the covenant. Those who really understand the mystery that Paul was writing about will rather promote the fellowship that is required of "fellow partakers, both Jews and Gentiles."
However, unity does not mean conformity. The way I become one with my wife is not by making her into a man, but rather by learning to appreciate and relate to the complimentary differences that God gave to both men and women. The way this "mystery of Christ" is going to be fully understood, and then implemented, is not by making Jews into Gentiles, or Gentiles into Jews, but rather by each learning to appreciate and learn from the uniqueness of the other.
Even Peter, who God used to open the door of faith to the Gentiles, had trouble understanding how to relate to the Gentiles so that he had to be publicly rebuked by Paul in Antioch. It seems this is an issue that has yet to be fully resolved by either side. Certainly a book would be required to address it adequately, and in this format we can do little more than acknowledge this is one mystery that seems to remain to most, but it must be addressed and resoled for either Jews or Gentiles to come into their full purpose. We will address this in more depth later in this study of Ephesians, but for now, beware of those doctrines or people who promote exclusivity, or an identity that is according to the flesh rather than by the Spirit, but rather let us endeavor to fulfill the charge of II Corinthians 5:16-21:
Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,
namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
There is some merit and good that can come from helping people to reconcile to their heritage. This is one way we can honor our fathers and mothers. Even so, our goal is not to reconcile people just to their heritage, but to God. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted by those doctrines or people who promote replacing the central purpose of God with an overemphasis of the minor purposes. No one can be fully reconciled to the past, present, or future, if they are not first fully reconciled to God. When that has been accomplished the other issues will be easy.