God’s purpose
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, 11 according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As Creator, God reserved the right to reveal this information to his creatures at precisely the best time. Paul gives us a glimpse of God’s rationale for revealing the mystery. From eternity God had a plan of salvation to rescue fallen mankind. Recall that in chapter 1 of this letter, Paul assured the Ephesians, “For he [God] chose us in him [Christ] before the creation of the world” (verse 4). God always intended to send his Son as the Savior, to be born as true man so he could be our substitute.
To put this plan into action God in his wisdom chose Abraham from among all the families of the earth and made him the father of the Jewish nation. He gave the people of this nation a special land, struck his covenant with them, kept them separate from the other nations, and gave them special rules and regulations. All this was to keep them a separate people until “the time had fully come” (Galatians 4:4) for the promised Savior to be born in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
After Jesus’ perfect life on earth and his innocent death on the cross, God raised his Son from death and received him back to heaven at the Ascension. Thus in Christ Jesus, God accomplished his eternal purpose of redeeming all people, Gentiles as well as Jews.
God’s intention was for the Christian church to embrace all the redeemed—people “from every tribe and language and people and nation,” as he inspired the apostle John to write in Revelation (5:9). But becoming such a world church involved a number of stages. The church born in Jerusalem on Pentecost was largely a Jewish Christian church. True, there were people in attendance from many lands (Acts 2:5-11), but they were predominantly people of Jewish background who had returned to Jerusalem for one of the annual pilgrim festivals.
The first influx into the Christian church of people other than Jews is recorded for us in Acts chapter 8, where we are told that Philip “went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there” (verse 5). Recall that Samaritans were the mixed race that developed in Palestine after the majority of Israelites were carried off into captivity. The very few Jews left in the Promised Land after the deportation intermarried with the displaced persons whom the conquerors brought in to inhabit the vacant land. Thus a mixed race resulted, which the Jews never acknowledged as kinsmen despite the fact that they had some Jewish genes. By a generous estimate, Samaritans might be called half-Jews.
At any rate, by a visible display of the Holy Spirit, comparable to what happened in Jerusalem on Pentecost, God indicated that by virtue of their faith in Christ these halfJewish Samaritans were welcome in the Christian church (Acts 8:14-17).
It remained for Cornelius, a Roman centurion and a full Gentile, to be the test case whereby the Holy Spirit indicated that God accepted into the church people who were not Jewish at all. It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn. Even after receiving the vision of the great sheet let down from heaven containing both clean and unclean animals that Peter was told to eat (Acts 10:9-16), the apostle had misgivings about entering the gentile home of Cornelius. But here too, when Cornelius and his household responded in faith to the message of Christ that Peter proclaimed, the Holy Spirit came upon these Gentiles (verses 44-48).
Still, doing mission work in earnest among the Gentiles lagged for a while. Luke reports: “Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:19-21).
It was in Antioch of Syria, however, that work among the Gentiles really took off, particularly after Paul arrived on the scene. Again Luke is very helpful: “Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:25,26).
All this was in preparation for when God would formally send out Paul as his missionary to the Gentiles. Luke records the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas for this work in the opening verses of Acts chapter 13. Paul has this commissioning as a missionary in mind when he writes to the Ephesians about the undeserved gift that was given him: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Although preparing the means for bringing in Gentiles took some time, Paul tells the Ephesians that God’s plan was perfectly on schedule. “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.”
God revealed the mystery of equality between Jewish and gentile believers to Paul so that now, by the apostle’s proclamation of the gospel, the Christian church might grow and flourish. Thus in the growth of the church, the good and gracious purpose of God to save sinners would become known to all people.
But not only people would come to know his plan. God would make it known even to “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.” In chapter 1 Paul listed four titles, or categories, of spiritual powers: rule, authority, power, and dominion (verse 21). There he was speaking of all spiritual powers, the bad as well as the good. Here Paul seems to have reduced his scope to just the good spiritual powers, that is, angels. They too are genuinely interested in the spread of the gospel and the growth of the church, as Peter indicated when he said, “Even angels long to look into these things” (1 Peter 1:12).
God’s plan for the church is perfectly on track, and it brings the greatest of blessings. Not the least of these blessings is free access to the Father.
The believer’s blessings
In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. 13 I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.
When Paul says “we,” he is including himself (a Jew) with the Ephesian Gentiles. For both groups the barriers have been taken away in Christ—barriers between each other, but even more important, barriers between the sinner and God. Hence, both groups now have free access to God. No preliminary sacrifices are required; there is no need for a priest or intercessor. Both Jew and Gentile may come directly to God. Not only do they have the freedom to come to God, but they have the joy and pleasure of coming confidently, without any reservation, “as dear children coming to their dear father.”
Not even Paul’s imprisonment can hamper their joyous confidence that God is in charge. Paul’s imprisonment is not a setback but part of God’s plan to further the growth of the church. It will bring into even sharper focus the “glory” the Gentiles now enjoy by virtue of their fortunate state in God’s overall plan. (For a later statement from Paul that this confidence regarding his current imprisonment was not misplaced, see Philippians 1:12-14.)