One New Family, and the Wall Pulled Down

Ephesus belonged to Artemis. Her temple stood outside the walls, and people came from across the sea to look at it; the men who made little silver models of it lived well off the visitors. Then Paul spent three years in that city, and people stopped buying the models. Demetrius the silversmith called the trade together, and the city went up like dry grass. They filled the great theater and shouted the same words for two hours. “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” The town clerk got them quiet at last and sent everybody home. Paul left soon after, and never came back.

Years later he wrote them a letter. He was a prisoner, and calls himself an ambassador in a chain, which is a strange thing to be. Tychicus put it in his bag with the others and started walking.

It opens the way his letters open: Paul, to the holy ones; favor to you, and peace. Then, before anything else, he says what God has done, in one long breath. God picked them out before the world was made, to be his own children through Jesus. He forgave what they had done. And he let them in on the secret of what he means to do in the end: to gather up everything there is, in the heavens and on the earth, under Christ. They were marked with the Holy Spirit he promised, like money put down to show he is coming back.

Then he tells them what he prays for. “I have not stopped thanking God for you, ever since I heard about your trust in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the holy ones. I ask that he would give you a spirit of wisdom, and that the eyes of your heart would be lit up, so that you can see what he called you to, and how rich the share is that he is keeping for you, and how enormous his strength is toward us who trust him.” “It is the same strength he used on Christ, when he raised him out of the dead and sat him down at his own right hand, higher than every rule and authority and power and lordship, higher than every name that is named — not only in this age but in the one that is coming. He put everything under his feet. And he gave him to be the head over all of it, for the gathering, which is his body.”

Then he turns to the people reading it. “You were dead. You walked the way this world walks, and so did we, all of us, doing whatever our own bodies and our own thoughts told us. But God is rich in mercy, and because of the great love he loved us with, he made us alive together with Christ while we were still dead. He raised us up with him. It is his favor that has rescued you.” “You have been rescued by favor, through trusting him — and that did not come out of you. It is God’s gift. It did not come out of anything you did, so nobody has anything to boast about. We are his work. He made us in Christ Jesus for good things, and he had the good things ready and waiting for us to walk in.”

Now he comes to something that had not gone wrong in the town but had gone right. There had always been two kinds of people: the Jews, who had the promises and the law, and everybody else — the nations, Greeks and Romans and Ephesians and the rest of the world. The two kinds did not eat at the same table. Now they sat in one room in Ephesus, singing the same songs.

“Remember what you were. You were outside Christ, shut out of the citizenship of Israel, strangers to the promises, with no hope, and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once a long way off have been brought near, by the blood of Christ.” “He himself is our peace. He made the two into one. He pulled down the wall that stood in the middle and kept them apart — the hatred — he pulled it down in his own flesh, so that he could make the two of them into one new person inside himself, making peace, and bring them both back to God in one body through the cross, killing the hatred in it. Then he came and told the good news of peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near. Through him, both of us get in to the Father, in one Spirit.”

“So you are not strangers now, and you are not foreigners living where you do not belong. You are citizens along with all God’s holy ones. You are people of his household. You are built on the foundation the apostles and the prophets laid down, and Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone. The whole building is fitted together in him and grows into a holy place, and you are being built into it too — a house for God to live in.”

This was the secret, he says: the nations get the same inheritance, belong to the same body, share the same promise. Nobody in the older generations had been told it. He was given the job of saying it out loud, and calls himself the least of all the holy ones. Then he asks something odd: not to lose heart about what is happening to him.

“For this reason I bend my knees to the Father, from whom every family in the heavens and on earth gets its name. I ask him to give you, out of his rich glory, strength in the inner person, by his Spirit, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith. And I ask that you, with your roots down and your foundation laid in love, may have the strength to take in, along with all the holy ones, how wide and how long and how high and how deep it is — to know the love of Christ, which is bigger than knowing.” “Now to the one who can do beyond everything, far more than we ask or even think, by the power that is at work in us: glory to him.”

Then the letter changes. The high things stop, and the rest is how to live together. “Walk in a way that matches what you were called to. Be humble. Be gentle. Be patient. Put up with one another in love, and work hard at keeping the peace that holds you together.” “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope. One Lord. One faith. One immersion. One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

God handed out different jobs — some sent out, some speaking for God, some carrying the good news, some shepherds and teachers — all to get God’s people ready for the work. “So that we are not babies any longer, thrown about by waves, blown around by every wind of teaching, by men who play with the truth like men playing dice. Instead we tell the truth in love and grow up into him, into Christ, who is the head. He is the one the whole body is joined to. Every single part does its bit, and the body grows, and builds itself up in love.”

“So I say this, and I say it in the Lord: do not go on walking the way the nations walk, with nothing in their minds. Their thinking has gone dark. They are shut out of the life of God, because they do not know him and because their hearts have gone hard; and once a person has stopped feeling anything, he hands himself over to do whatever he wants.” “That is not how you learned Christ — if you really heard him, and were taught in him, the way the truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put off the old person, the one you used to be, who is going rotten with the wants that fool him; and to be made new in the spirit of your mind; and to put on the new person, the one made like God, in what is right and holy and true.”

And then the instructions. They are short. “Put the lie away. Every one of you, tell the truth to the person next to you, because we are parts of one another.” “Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Do not give the Accuser a place to stand.” “Let the one who steals steal no more. Let him work instead, and make something good with his own hands, so that he has something to give away to whoever needs it.” “Do not let one rotten word come out of your mouth. Say only what builds somebody up where they need building, so that it does some good to the people who hear it.” “Do not make the Holy Spirit of God sad. You were sealed with him.” “Get rid of all bitterness and rage and temper and shouting and bad-mouthing, and every kind of badness with them. Be kind to one another. Be tenderhearted. Forgive each other, the way God forgave you in Christ.”

“Copy God, like children who are loved. Walk in love, the way Christ loved us and handed himself over for us.” “The wrongs people do with their bodies, and dirtiness, and always wanting more — do not even let those be named among you. No shameful talk. No stupid talk. No filthy jokes. Say thank you instead.” “Do not let anybody fool you with empty words. And do not go shares with those people.” “You used to be darkness. Now you are light in the Lord. So walk as children of light — because light grows goodness and honesty and truth — and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the things done in the dark. Bring them out where they can be seen.” “Wake up, sleeper. Get up out of the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

“Watch how you walk. Not like fools. Like wise people, buying up the time, because these days are bad ones.” “Do not get drunk on wine — nothing good comes of it. Be filled with the Spirit instead. Talk to each other in psalms and hymns and songs. Sing, and make music in your heart to the Lord. Thank God the Father for everything, always, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And put yourselves under one another.”

Then he goes through a house, one person at a time, the way houses stood then. “Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord, because a husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the gathering — he is the one who rescues the body. As the gathering is under Christ, so the wives to their husbands, in everything.” “Husbands, love your wives, the way Christ loved the gathering and handed himself over for her. A husband ought to love his own wife the way he loves his own body. Nobody ever hated his own flesh. He feeds it and looks after it. Every one of you is to love his own wife as himself. And the wife is to respect her husband.”

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right. Honor your father and mother — that is the first command with a promise tied on to it — so that it may go well with you and you may live a long time on the earth.” “And fathers, do not keep provoking your children until they are angry. Bring them up in the teaching and the warning of the Lord.”

“Slaves, obey the masters you have here, with fear and trembling, honestly, as you would obey Christ. Not only while they are watching. Not to please men. Do what God wants from your soul, and serve with good will, as though you were serving the Lord and not men. Whatever good anybody does, he gets it back from the Lord, slave or free.” “And masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them. Their Master is in the heavens and so is yours, and he does not take sides.”

“Finally: be made strong in the Lord, and in the might of his strength. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you can stand up to the schemes of the Accuser. Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh. It is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual things of wickedness in the heavenly places. So take up the whole armor of God, so that you can hold your ground on the bad day, and, when you have worked it all through, still be standing.”

He gives it piece by piece, the way a soldier puts it on — and a soldier was chained to him while he said it. “Stand, then. Belt your waist with truth. Put on the breastplate of doing right. Tie the readiness of the good news of peace on your feet. Take up the shield of faith over all of it — you can put out every flaming arrow the evil one shoots, with that. Take the helmet of rescue. And take the sword the Spirit gives you, which is God’s word.” “Pray. Every kind of prayer and asking, at every season, in the Spirit. Stay awake at it. Keep on, and keep on, for all the holy ones — and for me. Pray that when I open my mouth a word will be given me, and that I will say the secret of the good news boldly. I am an ambassador in a chain. Boldly is how I ought to be saying it.”

“Tychicus will tell you all about me, how I am and what I am doing. He is a dear brother and a faithful servant in the Lord, and I sent him for exactly this, so that you would know about us and he could comfort your hearts.” “Peace to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Favor be with everybody who loves our Lord Jesus Christ, and does not leave off loving him.”

They read it out loud in a room in that city, from the greeting to the end. And there were more letters in Tychicus’s bag.