1. A Fresh World Blooms
Ephesians 1:1-2
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When John Mackay, the third president of Princeton Theological Seminary, first read the book of Ephesians, nothing less than a fresh world bloomed before his eyes. “Everything was new,” he later wrote, “I had a new outlook, new experiences, new attitudes to other people. I loved God. Jesus Christ became the centre of everything … I had been ‘quickened’; I was really alive.” He was made new. This is precisely Paul’s apostolic aim as he writes to a group of Christians in the first-century city of Ephesus.
The first Christians in Ephesus were “saints … faithful in Christ Jesus” (v.1). While this is a theological reality for all followers of Jesus, Paul is also telling us something unique about the Ephesians’ resilience. After all, these urban people are learning to navigate the pressures and complexities of life in a busy commercial port city steeped in the cultic worship of deities like Diana. A new life with Jesus meant resisting the metropolitan urge to build security and meaning through achievement, money, and work. But it also meant avoiding the trap of religion––finding significance and salvation through personal morality.
The book of Ephesians will encourage us to do the same at every turn. We’ll be compelled to interrogate the impulse to follow “the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air” and surrender to the “grace … and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Our effort––be it secular or sacred––is not the way to renewal. Only our Heavenly Father blooms a fresh world of lasting hope, meaning, and safety in us because only the Eternal Son has exposed the fraudulent powers of the world and put the old life to death.
What is grace? What is peace? How does God give us both?
What people or things do you trust to provide you with hope, meaning, and safety? Why are those damaging?
How does Christ bring new life through the cross and resurrection? What does it look like to believe this daily?
Heavenly Father …
It’s easy to trust in myself and the powers of this world to give me the life I’m looking for. Forgive me. Heal me. Please help me to find life in you alone.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
