The opening two verses of Ephesians are focused upon greeting, then verse three begins the incredible long and prepositional phrase filled sentence that continues all the way to verse fourteen. Three and four are instructive about who God is and who we are. Now we turn to verse five.
Remember the methodology, I am giving you first with each verse my ‘straight’ translation of the verse from the Greek New Testament, and right behind my ‘loose’ rendering designed to be a little more vernacular driven. Then I give brilliant insight!
Verse 5
he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Messiah, in him, according to his good pleasure
his plan was always adoption to him through Messiah Jesus, and it was something he really wanted, it made him happy
Predestination is another one of those loaded words, like election in verse 4, which causes no small amount of speculation and handwringing. I prefer here to think of it as I do in my ‘loose’ translation, as plan. God had a plan, and because he is God that plan cannot be thwarted — not by the devil, not by any king, and certainly not by me. I can ruin my own life, and I can do things which have disastrous consequences for others, but what I can’t do is thwart the plan of God.
I also think we stretch the idea of predestined and even plan too far into thinking about our lives as though for each decision, for each step, for everything there is the ‘perfect God-ordained plan’ and we have to find it or else we are out of God’s will. This kind of thinking leads to neurosis. God’s plan doesn’t work like that — read this text carefully and see his plan was to simply have us as his adopted children. That’s the plan! There is no perfect divine will for what to order for breakfast or even necessarily where to work or live. The plan is to be his child and delight in his parentage.
This plan makes him happy. The word is eudokia, which is often translated as pleased. Here Paul puts that word close to the word for will, God’s will. It is a mistake, I think, to combine these as ‘goodwill’. That is not what he means. It is goodwill that we are adopted children of God, but the point is that him being our parent and us being his children makes him happy and it was something he wanted. Throw in ‘predestined’ and it was something he always wanted.
He always wanted to be your abba, to be your dad. Always.
Before moving on, I want you to know this is, by my reading (and I can be wrong at times) the first of many times Paul employs the Greek preposition kata which is often rendered as ‘according to.’ So the verse ending phrase could be, ‘according to pleasing his will.’ I bring up kata because Paul will stretch this little four letter word to amazing heights throughout this chapter. Everything is seemingly ‘according to’ something. His use of the word functions as a bridge, connecting ideas. So in this verse the idea being connected is God made us children, and this was something he wanted (his will) and it made him happy (pleasing).
You will see kata again soon, in verse 7. And 9. And 11. You get the point.
Verse 6
in praise of the glory of his grace, which he graced us in the beloved
in celebration of his fantastic grace, graced in the beloved one
Yes, in this verse grace works like a verb and a noun. The first usage is as a noun, something that exists — Gods grace. Grace is always best defined as something we don’t deserve that we get. As such, it is a gift. An unmerited gift, an unearned favor. Paul teaches us to celebrate the grace of God, which here is the gift of being his child. What a wonderful thing!
Then he turns around and uses the same word as a verb, a simple past tense word. We could render it as ‘gifted’, but if I did that I would want to render the noun the same way, such that ‘in celebration of his fantastic gift, gifted in the beloved one.’ It is legitimate translate grace as gift, but grace is such a powerful word, I chose to go with that instead.
The point of this verse, though, is not the grace, that was in verse 5, the point here is that it is a gift made possible by ‘the beloved one’ who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus’ made the adoption possible. And this is a point of praise.
Verse 7
in whom we have deliverance through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according other riches of his grace
in him, through his blood, we have deliverance, the forgiveness of wrongdoing, and so the wealth of his grace
As I wrote in the introduction, this is the verse that brought me into this examination of the whole chapter. I made a pretty significant word change from most translations by opting for ‘deliverance’ rather than redemption. One possible option is the word ‘liberation’ — which I really like. Through Jesus we are liberated, as prisoners to sin or as people oppressed by evil. Freedom! Those who were in darkness have seen a great light!
The price of our freedom was Jesus blood. I have neither the expertise nor the imagination to ever understand what that actually means or why? Why did my liberation require the blood sacrifice of Jesus? Wasn’t there another way? What is the connection between blood, death, and deliverance? I can answer the biblical motifs, and I can give the definition of words like atonement and propitiation, but I don’t understand what has happened.
But I know something happened, and that it happened is proven by Jesus living yet he died, and I know that he has bestowed on me the wealth of his grace. I know I needed delivering, I needed saving, and no one else could do it because no one else understood how to do it or was perfect enough to get the job done. Only Jesus.
That I know.
Also, notice our old friend ‘according to’ kata.
Verse 8
which overflowed among us in all wisdom and insight
which flooded us with all wisdom and insight
Which word do you like better — overflowed or flooded? There really is no difference except for feel: overflow conjures David’s cup overflowing because it is not big enough to hold the blessing of God in Psalm 23. Flood feels more violent, like Noah’s boat being pounded by rain.
The best way to appropriate this is to think about your own way of walking spiritually. Does wisdom and insight ‘flood’ your thoughts or does your mind slowly ‘overflow’ with wisdom and insight? Does it seize you all at once and drown out everything else, or does it saturate you and soak you thoroughly?
What matters, then, is not how you got wet, but whether or not you are saturated with wisdom and insight. Wisdom here is sophia, a word not too unfamiliar to many of us. Sophia is personified in the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament it is a gift of God to those who follow Jesus. The second word, though, is a little more pointed in that it connects to the mind as an act of thought. Paul uses the verbal form of this word in Philippians 2:5 to teach us to ‘think like Jesus.’ This is the stuff of transformed minds.
Now flip it and learn that a fool with no sense is lacking spiritually.
Verse 9
making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his pleasure, set forth in him
showing us his mysterious will, and he was happy to show us — and all in him
Paul will get progressively more mysterious as this chapter goes on, but here, here we need not dwell on what we think it might be. We know what the mystery is, it is Jesus’ atoning blood. The mysterious will of God was to make us children through Jesus — and it was something, again Paul point out, he was happy to do. It was not a burden to him, but a love.
I feel like that this point, with the word ‘mystery’ that Paul didn’t understand what was happening with the blood of Jesus any more than I do. It is a mystery, the mystery of God in Christ that he delivered us and that price is his blood. We are privy to that mystery because we recognize that our sins have been forgiven and we live in grace.
That is the mystery; why he would give so much for us, why does he love us so deeply? That is unknown, but what is known is that he does!
Let’s save verse ten for next time, as it is a doozy!