[104방법론] S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s (영문)

1 Co uns e l Ephe s i a ns
Newcomers to biblical counseling often experience a sharp-edged
uncertainty reflected in questions like the following: “Where should
I begin? I am keenly aware of my inability and incompetence, but I
want to help people. I want to reflect and communicate Jesus Christ!
But I know the Bible is vast and deep. The particulars of God’s working
can be unclear. At the same time, the problems and burdens people
bring are perplexing and overwhelming. And I have my own sins
and struggles. My understanding and ability are limited and compromised.
I’ll never begin to help other people grow in wisdom if I need
to master the entire Bible and solve every variant of the human condition,
including my own! Where do I start?” Experienced counselors—
unless they’ve become dry and rote—also feel the sharp edge
of similar questions, not about how to begin, but about how to continue
on. When you step into the light of God and into the darkness
of mankind, you step into unfathomables. Who is sufficient for such
things? How will you master what exceeds your comprehension and
ability?
You will not go wrong if you plunge into Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
Master it. Be mastered by it. Work Ephesians into your thinking,
your living, your prayers, and your conversation. The Bible is vast
and deep, and human life is diverse and perplexing. But in a pinch
you could do all counseling from Ephesians. It’s all there: the big picture
that organizes a myriad details. And Ephesians is not only “counsel,”
but also “counseling.” It talks and walks method as well as
content. Paul himself is a changed man. He lives out and teaches wise
pastoral strategy. Ephesians aims to teach you how to live. That is a
synonym for counseling biblically, for doing face-to-face ministry.
17
This essay is not a “commentary” on Ephesians. It attempts a different
genre, being written for people involved in the face-to-face aspects
of ministry, as shepherds of individual souls. Ephesians itself was
written by a shepherd of souls. Yes, Paul was an exegete and a theologian,
but he was first a man in Christ, and then always a pastor, to all
of God’s people (in other words, a preacher) and to each one of God’s
people (in other words, a counselor). Someone once described
Jonathan Edwards this way: “His theology was all application, and his
application was all theology.” That’s the sort of theology and application
that Ephesians incarnates. It’s also what is attempted here: to
write practical theology from Ephesians.
Let me begin by addressing a crucial preliminary question. How
do we interpret Ephesians? What is it we are dealing with? I have neither
space nor wisdom to give a comprehensive hermeneutic philosophy
and exegetical methodology as these bear on counseling. But let
me make three points to orient us as we seek to think accurately about
this book.
Ephesians Is Practical Theology
Ephesians is not just about practical theology, it is practical theology.
The distinction between “biblical truth” and “practical application”
is artificial. In the Bible, truth arrives in action. Paul teaches
by applying biblical truth to himself and others. Ephesians is not a
treatise, manual, or commentary. It is a letter. Ephesians is application,
life lived out before our eyes. The very truth of God comes via
the author’s life in Christ, and via the contents of his letter. This truth
embodies the faith and faithfulness that are its intended results in
readers. “Practical theology” and “pastoral practice” speak and act
personally: a message, from me, to you.
Ephesians is a letter. It is not about various theological or ethical
“topics.” It is not a collection of aphorisms or a treatise about God and
human beings in general. It is not a story. Paul writes in the first and
second person. You hear him talking with you as if he were saying:
“God predestined us to adoption. I give thanks for you. You were dead
in sins. We have received an inheritance. Pray for me.” Ephesians expresses
a three-sided encounter between God, Paul, and his hearers.
1 8 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
Practical theology takes place in the first and second persons: you, I,
we. It only talks “about” something or someone when that best serves
talking “to” someone. In Ephesians, ministry, life, and relationships
are happening, so Paul’s words come packaged as prayer, worship,
self-disclosure, and direct address.
Let that grab you: Paul’s words come as prayer, worship, selfdisclosure,
and direct address. This is very different from most books.
It is different—sadly—from most sermons, teachings, and counseling
sessions. It is different from the distance and presumed objectivity of
most scholarly theological reflection, or the clinical mode of most
counseling writing. When Paul discusses the glory of God’s grace in
Christ, he audibly exults in that grace (Eph. 1:1–14). When he
teaches about the power of God in Christ and your deepest need, he
lets you hear how he prays for you (1:15–23). When he gives his doctrines
of sin and salvation, he directly addresses you: “You were dead.
We were dead. By grace you have been saved. We are his workmanship”
(see Eph. 2:1–22). When Paul expounds theology about how all
nations are welcome in Christ, he tells his own story and breaks forth
into another prayer: “Hear about the stewardship of God’s grace
which was given to me for you . . . I bow my knees before the Father
that he would grant you . . .” (see Eph. 3:1–21). When Paul goes on
to write extensively about ethics, relationships, and the dynamics of
change, he speaks directly to you: “I beseech you to walk worthy of
your calling . . .” (4:1–6:18). When he signs off, it is with a prayer request,
some personal information, and a warm goodbye (6:19–24).
Ephesians is practical, relational, and pastoral. Living faith itself happens
in the first and second persons. Since faith in Christ is caught as
well as taught, Paul pulls out the personal stops to make what he says
infectious. Ephesians is practical theology. It is living faith. It is ministry
in action. All this is tremendously significant for how you understand
and use Ephesians today.
By definition, most thoughtful writing about Ephesians has been
scholarly. As such, it runs the danger of misrepresenting Ephesians by
failing to come back full circle to practical life and ministry. Good
scholarship can serve ministry well, if we recognize what the Bible is,
and what it intends to accomplish. Failure to recognize this sends
scholarship over the cliff into either error or irrelevancy, and renders
ministry misguided and impotent. Ephesians, like life and ministry,
1 9
does not operate in the genres of most theological education. It is
practical theology and pastoral practice, and aims to produce the
same. It is neither exegesis, nor systematic theology, nor redemptive
story.
Ephesians Is Not Exegetical Theology
It is not in the form of a Bible study or commentary. Though Paul
quotes, paraphrases, or alludes to many Old Testament passages (and
New Testament realities), he steers his background study and understanding
toward a different present purpose. The Ten Commandments,
Psalms, Isaiah, and Proverbs appear, but they appear in action,
in the here and now, spoken and applied in new ways. His message is
always old, arising from Bible study, and coherent with other Scripture.
But his message is always new, reworked for ministry now. He
uses older Scripture. He does not just “exposit,” because he is not governed
by exegetical interests. He constructs a message, governed by
ministry-to-real-people interests. Likewise, our job is only begun, not
done, when we have studied Ephesians in itself. We, too, must be governed
by fresh ministry-to-real-people interests, or we will never really
understand Ephesians or be able to use it for the well-being of others.
Exegesis probes the original audience, author, and message. We
must exegete, but we must do more than exegete. We must move beyond
the original.
Ephesians Is Not Systematic Theology
Yes, it is a primary source of answers to questions central to the system
of biblical truth. For example, there is no clearer teaching anywhere
about God’s high sovereignty: his purpose, power, grace, and
glory in Christ are so exalted that he who has ears to hear what the
Spirit writes to the churches must become a heart-afire Calvinist.
Here, too, you find unique insight into union with Jesus Christ, the
nature of the church, the process of sanctification, our social relations,
and spiritual warfare. But Paul’s explicit purposes are not systematic.
Rather, he is pastoral and personal. His teaching that we are
in Christ comes in the course of worshiping, praying, and exhorting.
Why? You also must worship, pray, exhort—and listen to Paul—so
that you and others would know this Christ dwelling in your hearts
through faith, and would know the love of this Christ that surpasses
2 0 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
knowledge. Systematic theology organizes the whole of the Bible with
a philosophical logic, but we must do more than catechize people
with our doctrinal categories if we are to minister to them.
Ephesians Is Not Biblical Theology
It is not a recitation of the story of God’s redeeming work throughout
history. Yes, the Story is all here: God’s eternal purposes to be carried
out in Christ; predestining love; creation by the Maker of all
things; the fall into all-absorbing sin and just wrath; deliverance
through the Beloved’s blood; the raising up of Christ and of us in
Christ; his coronation upon the throne of all power; the present indwelling
of the Holy Spirit in both church and heart; the expansion
of the promise to include all peoples in promises originally for Jews
only; the anticipated day of his return when the kingdom will be revealed
in all its glory, perfection, and wrath. But the Story is scattered
through Ephesians in snippets. While the pieces are capable of reassembly
into a redemptive historical narrative, Paul is up to other
purposes. Yes, every story is embedded in this Story. Everyone lives
tucked between eternal purpose and eternal destiny, a story within the
Story. But, note well, Paul did not write a narrative. He did not write
a piece of biblical theology. He does not content himself with storytelling
when he intercedes for you, pleads with you, sings high
praises, promises, and commands. Biblical theology organizes the
whole of the Bible with a historical and narrative logic, but we must
do more than tell the Story if we are to minister to people.
Ephesians is fair game for the labors of exegetical, systematic, and
biblical theology.1 These auxiliary disciplines are crucial for understanding
the Bible in and of itself. But never forget, Ephesians is and
does practical theology, speaking from the Lord into people’s lives.
We only reach Paul’s intended goal when we also do practical theology,
speaking the truth in love to grow up together into Christ, our
head. You must close the loop. Paul’s walk and fresh message must
lead to your own walk and fresh message. We must apply its present
message to its present audience to truly understand it. Practical theology
is the end in view. Ephesians sings and dances; it is not just a
book containing lyrics, score, and choreographic diagrams. It is written
to change you and make you an instrument of change in the lives
of your brothers and sisters. Yes, bring the tools of Bible study and the-
2 1
ological reflection to bear. But never allow the support disciplines to
degenerate into ends in themselves. Explore the practical wisdom
that is Ephesians’s chief end, so that you, too, will live and do ministry
the way Paul does.
Ephesians Is a Door to the Rest of Scrip ture
A second key for understanding and using Ephesians well is to see
the “hot links” to the rest of Scripture and to see the particular way
Paul uses other Scripture. Ephesians communicates a sense of the entirety
of Scripture. It is dense with specific citations and allusions and
uses other Scripture for present purposes. Scripture bleeds Scripture,
and God’s new message is constructed out of God’s former messages.
The new message is consistent in general to older messages, but it innovates
in the specifics.
What is the hermeneutic principle by which Paul appropriates
the rest of Scripture? Paul’s method is quite striking, perhaps even disturbing
to common views of Bible study. To be sure, Paul is not fanciful
or arbitrary. He does not play fast and loose with Scripture, as if
anything goes. He does not bend Scripture to his own fancy by prooftexting,
by spinning fantastic allegories, by numerology, by word association,
or by arbitrary spiritualizing of texts. He never does
out-of-control things like taking Numbers 13:33 to mean “the spies in
the land suffered low self-esteem because they saw themselves like
grasshoppers.” His logic is not the sort that says, “Nehemiah first inspected
the damage to the walls of Jerusalem, therefore counselors
must first explore the woundedness of those they counsel.” But it is
also noteworthy that Paul does not use the rest of Scripture in a grammatico-
historical way either. In fact, he never exegetes and expounds
the original meaning of the many passages he cites or alludes to. He
comes close to proof-texting when he takes an old text in a different
direction from its original: e.g., his use of “be angry but do not sin”
(Ps. 4:4; Eph. 4:26). He comes close to allegory and spiritualizing
when he extends and reconfigures the meaning and application of old
texts: e.g., the victorious Lord’s “ascending on high” (Ps. 68:18; Eph.
4:8–11) and a husband’s “leaving and cleaving” (Gen. 2:24; Eph.
5:31f). In every case, Old Testament words and themes become big-
2 2 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
ger than they once were, showing spectacular new dimensions of
meaning. Paul is extremely creative! Grammatico-historical interpretation
of the originals does not lead to what Paul says and does.
We must ponder this carefully. What principles control Paul’s use
of older Scripture? A full answer lies well beyond the scope of this
chapter, but the kernel of the answer can be stated in two principles.
First, Jesus Christ super-fulfills the Old Testament. Second, there is a
general thematic coherence rather than either contradiction or exact
replication between new use and original meaning. Paul is creative,
but not fantastic, contradictory, or disconnected. Christ creates both
the difference and the coherence; the new purposes of ministry express
both the difference and the coherence. Imagine that in 1905
God had promised your great-grandparents that someday he would
give their descendants a Model T Ford, a radio communications system
using Morse code, and a biplane. When he decided to deliver in
2003, he gave you a Dodge Viper, a satellite-linked cell phone, and
an F–117A Stealth Fighter. The promise was fulfilled . . . in ways beyond
imagination. You travel, do business, and fight in ways that show
a thematic coherence with 1905—it is still recognizable as transportation,
communication, and war—but the details have changed.
Similarly, the prophecies, songs, commandments, and stories of the
Old Testament become supercharged with the power and glory of the
Holy Spirit by whom Jesus Christ indwells his people. They are tailored
to the needs of a different people living in a different time, facing
recognizable but different problems.
In opening doors to the entirety of Scripture, Ephesians “alters”
previous Scripture. When Christ becomes the sacrificial offering
(Eph. 5:2) and we become God’s temple (2:21), we are invited to read
Leviticus and 1 Kings differently—not with fanciful allegories, but as
metaphors in blood and stone of a Christological dimension. When
anger threatens the unity of Christ’s people in the midst of their sanctification
process (4:26), we are invited to read Psalm 4 differently,
with entirely new implications. There are far-reaching differences between
Paul’s citations and the cited originals. It is as though the original
were a solitary star seen by the naked eye. But seeing both Christ
and contemporary need, Paul gazes at that star through a powerful
telescope, and now he beholds the Andromeda Galaxy: billions upon
billions of stars, a disk of radiant beauty 100,000 light years across, a
2 3
vast spectacle of glory previously unimagined. The scope of application
and the depth of implication multiply as Paul rereads the Old
Testament and Gospels through the glory of the reigning Christ, and
through his task of writing a practical charter for the church. Ephesians
opens doors into other parts of the Bible, but it reworks the
things it opens before us. Consider a half-dozen examples.
1. When Paul says, “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another
with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving
thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to
God the Father” (Eph. 5:18–20), he opens a direct link to all
150 psalms. But Paul’s words also make all 150 psalms mean
something more than they first meant. In the first place,
David’s meditations, cries, shouts, and songs are recharged in
the light of the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father. In the
second place, the psalms are here presented not as merely objects
of Bible memory or liturgical reci tation. Rather,
“psalms” provide a paradigm for a living, speaking faith in
Christ.
To be “filled with the Spirit” is to have your language alive
to God, both your daily conversations with others and the inward
conversation within your heart. Your cognitive streamof-
consciousness and your social interactions are meant to be
psalm-like and psalm-informed. That includes the ability to
quote a psalm in a timely and relevant way, but it is something
much more. Paul calls you to a lifestyle of joyous dependence
on Christ, to live in faith like the Psalms.
A videotape of your outward speech and inward thoughts
would look like a continuously updated and personalized
psalm. The realities of a living relationship with Christ infuse
the way you process the specifics of your daily life. You speak
and think new-minted re-creations and applications of Scripture
into the exigencies of the moment, updated at every point
by Jesus Christ. Examples of the Spirit filling people for
psalm-like and psalm-informed words appear in Elizabeth,
Mary, and Zechariah (Luke 1); in the teachings and prayers of
Jesus (Luke 6; 11); in the speeches of Peter (Acts 2; 4); in the
2 4 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
praying of believers (Acts 4); in the praises, prayers, and exhortations
of Paul’s entire letter to the Ephesians; in the times
you speak the Word of God with boldness, clarity, and faith;
in the times you bless the Lord with all that is within you. Paul
has pointed you to Psalms with a radical new application: go
and live like the psalms do, seeing the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Not only does Paul point to the Psalter as a whole, but he
specifically quotes three psalms. Each case gives the Old Testament
a fresh application and a Christ-enriched focus. When
God “puts all things in subjection under his feet” (Ps. 8:6;
Eph. 1:22), a passage originally about the creation glory of
mankind comes to picture the redemption glory of the unique
Son of Man, in whom we also are raised and enthroned as the
new humanity. Psalm 8 is recognizable, and not contradicted.
But radio-transmitted Morse code has become a satellitelinked
cell phone.
In Ephesians 4:8–11 Paul amplifies, and even alters Psalm
68:18: “When he ascended on high, he led captive a host of
captives, and he gave gifts to men.” The original proclaimed
the Lord’s victorious ascendancy at Mount Sinai, in an undefined
future when all nations would bow. That future has now
been defined, in Christ, and everything changes. A psalm
about “ascending” is now taken to be pregnant with the prior
“descending” of the Lord (incarnation, suffering, death). The
place ascended is not Sinai, but the throne of the universe.
The victory parade is reworked to tell of the Lord’s “giving”
gifted people to lead his church, actually inverting the original
that had the Lord “receiving” gifts in homage.
When Paul writes, “Be angry, and yet do not sin” (Ps. 4:4;
Eph. 4:26), he again shifts the direction of application in addressing
a very different context. The original appeared as part
of an extended meditation on stilling your heart into peace
and trust, so that you would not sin when you are upset at the
wrongdoing of God’s enemies. The fresh restatement develops
the necessity of dealing quickly with anger, primarily in
the context of the remnant sins that can irritate and provoke
those in Christ. It develops the devilish dimension, how unresolved
anger plays into the divisive agenda of the accuser of
2 5
the brethren. It sets our dealing with anger in the larger context
of “learning Christ” (Eph. 4:20), one piece of the transformation
of our lives. Psalm 4:4 has been adapted to a larger
vision. The quotation sparkles with new meanings, not contradictions.
3. Ephesians opens a door into Proverbs. When Paul discusses
walking in wisdom instead of folly (Eph. 5:15–18a), he creates
a live connection to the whole book of Proverbs (and the
wider wisdom tradition) that details this theme. He caps
things off with a direct quote from the Greek translation of
Proverbs 23:31, itself a loose paraphrase and amplification of
the original Hebrew. This quotation does not function as an
exegesis of Solomon’s vivid discussion of drunkenness in
Proverbs 23. It serves as a “for instance” of foolish pleasure
that contrasts with the solid pleasures of being filled with the
Holy Spirit and knowing the Lord. Several clauses later, the
“fear of Christ” (5:21) makes a Christ-enriched allusion to the
first principle of all the wisdom literature, the fear of the Lord.
4. Paul’s radical Christifying of the Old Testament gets pushed
to the extreme when he cites the call to “leave and cleave”
(Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31–33). The principles of marriage—and
Paul is still teaching on marriage—get pressed to serve radical
Christ-and-church conclusions. Actual marriage becomes a
secondary application of a text explicitly about marriage! The
love of Christ for his wife and the submission of the church to
her husband are a wellspring of truth about marriage. Genesis
2:24 remains thoroughly true in itself, but relatively narrow
in meaning compared to what Paul now sees: the Andromeda
Galaxy. Such a metaphorical use—we could call it “allegorizing”
if that word retained any positive connotations—is not
arbitrary, however. It is thematically consistent with the exegesis
of Genesis 2.
5. Even the Ten Commandments are reworked and enriched in
Christ and by present purposes. For example, Paul directly
cites the fifth commandment (Ex. 20:12; Eph. 6:2–3), calling
children to be subject to parents. Here he comes closest to
replicating the original text, but, still, in at least three ways this
fresh application is more than simple citation. First, he does
2 6 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
not lead with the Scripture citation, but with his own Christloaded
words—“Children, obey your parents in the Lord.”
The Bible passage is then brought forward as a supporting
text, not the primary point. Second, he editorializes in the
middle of the quotation, inserting his comment about “the
first commandment with a promise,” before finishing off the
quote. Third, though the words are identical, “live long on the
earth” in Ephesians means something decidedly different
than “live long in the land” in Exodus. Israel has become all
nations; the Lord has been revealed as Jesus Christ; the
promise of real estate has been swallowed up in the promise
of Christ.2
6. The source of one quotation in Ephesians remains a mystery:
“For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, and arise from the
dead, and Christ will shine on you’ ” (5:14). Previously, when
Paul wrote, “Therefore, it says . . .” (4:8), he meant, “The
Bible says,” and anyone could go look up Psalm 68:18. But
here we do not know the “it” that says what follows. It is not
the Bible, at least not directly. The best guess is that Paul cited
the words of a well-known, first-century Christian hymn,
rather as if he had quoted from “Amazing Grace” or “When
Peace, Like a River.”
That analogy serves us well. Such hymns speak truth that is
quotable in ministry: new, Christified psalms. Just as John
Newton and Horatio Spafford had meditated on the Word of
God, and that Word mapped onto their personal stories (a fact
that both hymns vividly reflect), so Ephesians 5:14 was biblical
even before it became Bible.
One can easily imagine a brother or sister who had received
a wake-up call from God out of the dark torpors of sinfulness,
and who now lived with a keen, urgent sense of the
light of Christ. The language arises very naturally out of a conflation
of Isaiah 26:19, 51:17, 52:1, and 60:1, but Isaiah’s language
has been Christified and personalized to a somewhat
different purpose. Isaiah never quite said what some firstcentury
believer said in applying Isaiah’s words, which Paul
then quoted for all time. So a contemporary paraphrase and
adaptation of the Old Testament, reworked in the light of
2 7
Christ, became part of the Scriptures with which we now
work and live.
Does Paul’s way of using Scripture make you nervous? It will, if
you expect him to be doing exegetical theology, not practical theology.
Should his way of using Scripture unsettle us, who stake our faith
and practice on the authority, sufficiency, and clarity of God’s selfrevelation?
Not at all. Paul’s use of other Scripture does not contradict
the original sense—biplane and Stealth Fighter remain analogous—
though he never seeks to replicate the original sense. Exegetical theology
has been respected, though pastoral usage flexibly adapts in
order to make new points for new listeners in a new time.
Paul’s modus operandi is actually quite familiar to biblical theologians
and systematic theologians. They seek to answer our questions,
just like practical theology does. Good biblical theology is comfortable
with looking backwards at earlier things and seeing richer meanings:
types, foreshadowings, prophetic words, pregnant events that
only in retrospect reveal super-fulfillment as Christ enriches and alters
previous revelation. Similarly, Paul’s teachings are consistent with
how good systematic theology proceeds to use the Bible. It uses the
Bible to answer new questions of doctrine and ethics. And systematics
often takes biblical words and defines them with either a broader or a
narrower semantic field than they have in the Bible itself. Done faithfully,
this does not pervert Scripture or exegesis, but it answers questions
that need answering in a true and biblical manner.
Scripture itself uses language this same, normal, flexible way:
“faith” has a different scope in Hebrews than in Romans; “justification”
has a different slant in James than in Galatians. Paul’s pastoral
practice—like biblical theology, systematic theology, and wise living—
manages to remain coherent with the content of specific texts,
and yet it adapts texts to new purposes. Paul addresses new questions,
and crafts a fresh message to contemporary hearers in a way that looks
surprisingly freewheeling at first glance. What a remarkable, provocative,
and unusual door Ephesians opens into the rest of the Bible! The
light of the Lord Jesus Christ and current ministry needs lead Paul to
rework Scripture and put Scripture to work.
What does all this mean? We see Paul opening doors into the rest
of the Bible, yet we see him doing something quite different and more
2 8 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
complicated than just quoting or exegeting Bible texts. He is a man
transformed in Christ. He is doing ministry. He is living psalmically
and proverbially. His faith speaks afresh to God and man in the exigencies
of his particular life situation as apostle to the nations; he lives
new-minted wisdom in that situation.
Here is the million dollar question: May we do something like
what Paul did, even with Ephesians? Or was he exercising an apostolic
prerogative when he Christified, paraphrased, recontextualized, and
reworked Scripture? I will clarify what I mean and do not mean in the
next paragraphs, but let me first state the answer bluntly. Not only
may you do something like what Paul does, you must do so—and you
already do so, every day.
Life and ministry that are faithful to God’s Word and relevant to
the varied conditions of humankind use Scripture in creative and personalizing
ways. Honest, relevant, extemporaneous prayers pull together
snippets and paraphrases of Scripture, interweaving the Bible
with the current needs of people. Sermons quote and exegete Scripture,
but they also cite Scripture out of context, play with language in
fresh ways, tell new stories, and apply in creative ways. Heart to heart
conversations quote or allude to passages and phrases from the Bible,
all of it colored, reworked and personalized by the details of our lives.
Good hymns work off of one particular passage or a collage of passages,
elaborating them, pouring in Christ, weaving in human experience,
developing analogous metaphors: “Christ the Lord is Risen
Today,” “How Firm a Foundation,” “Amazing Grace,” “What a
Friend We have in Jesus.”
Make no mistake, you are not writing or receiving the inscripturated
Word of God. Your praying, preaching, counseling, singing,
and living the Word embody a derivative authority only. You are not
a mouthpiece of Scriptural revelation any more than John Newton or
Horatio Spafford was. But if you live your life and do your job faithfully,
you are praying the Word, preaching the Word, counseling the
Word, singing the Word, and living the Word. In a way analogous to
Paul, though not identical in authority, you will use Scripture with
that multitude of adaptations, personalizations, paraphrases, and
story-tellings that are part of the normal Christian life. We must do
something like what Paul did, as well as stay faithful and subordinate
to what Paul said. Faithful does not mean rote. Faithful does not
2 9
mean you keep your nose in a book, even The Book, because The
Book models something different.
I am not arguing for relativism. I am not arguing that revelation is
ongoing and progressive. I am not arguing that parts of the Bible are
passé and discardable. I am not arguing for “every man does what is
right in his own eyes” when it comes to Bible interpretation. I am not
arguing for departing from or modifying Scripture. I am not arguing
that all meaning is in the eye of the beholder, as in postmodern, deconstructionist
interpretation. I am not arguing for adding to the
Bible, supplanting the Bible, or going beyond the Bible. I am not arguing
for subjectivism. The Bible is absolute, eternal, infallible, authoritative,
sufficient, perspicuous, unchanging, reliable truth, the
Word of the living God. But I am arguing that good living, preaching,
praying, counseling, conversing, teaching, meditating, and singing all
do something with Scripture. Only in this way are we truly faithful to
Scripture. “Wisdom” and “living faith” necessarily embody creative
adaptations, applications, and personalizations.
The Bible models how truth is used, and such usage involves a
flexibility and adaptability that may seem shocking, dangerous, and
unfamiliar. But the alternatives to such an insightful and creative pastoral
practice would have seemed shocking, dangerous, and unfamiliar
to the apostle Paul. He was not wooden, “biblici s t i c ,” or
superstitious about Scripture. I will say again, you must do something
like what Paul did in the way he used Scripture. You already do something
like it every time you pray, ponder, preach, or counsel wisely.
Becoming more conscious of what you do and should do will help
you live and minister better.
Ephesians Is Hard to Understand Sometimes
Peter once commented that the letters of “our beloved brother
Paul” contain “some things hard to understand, which the untaught
and unstable distort, as they also do the rest of the Scriptures, to their
own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15–16). If even a fellow apostle could find
Paul hard to grasp, how much more will we find ourselves perplexed
on occasion! Did Peter have Ephesians specifically in mind when he
said Paul could be perplexing? We don’t know, but the shoe fits. And
3 0 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
our ignorance and instability can lead us to distort the obvious as well
as the difficult. We may not be those who utterly twist Paul’s words to
our destruction. But beware, the defining characteristics of evildoers
are always the remnant tendencies and temptations of those who believe.
In our ignorance, we tend to blunder into foolish interpretations.
In our instability, we tend to get sidetracked. The net effect is always
a headstrong, desire-driven life that evades the central thrust of God’s
message. Instead, let us be thoroughly and consistently taught to
know the Lord, to build stable lives of growing faith and growing love.
We do well to ask God, “Give us more wisdom. Enable us to listen
well.” Our ability to understand is greatly affected by the clarity or
confusion of our faith and by the obedience or disobedience of our
practice. Here are three ways Ephesians can be hard to understand.
Incomprehensible without the Spirit
First, Paul himself acknowledges that Ephesians discusses matters
that are incomprehensible unless the Holy Spirit opens our minds
and hearts. God must give us a “spirit of wisdom and of revelation . . .
that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened” to understand the very
things printed on the page in front of us! God must enable us to
“know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” or we remain in
a stupor. This difficulty does not arise because Ephesians is particularly
obscure. It is not full of dark sayings, odd imagery, and allusions
to long-lost cultures. The book of Judges has places that are obscure
to us, but Ephesians tends to be beyond us. Its meaning eludes us for
reasons akin to what the old hymn says, “Immortal, invisible, God
only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes . . . O help us to see
’tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee.” Ephesians expresses the
divine glory. We get bedazzled and blinded by the available light. The
easily understandable things in Ephesians are islands of light in a sea
of light brighter than the sun, not islands of light in a sea of darkness.
By definition, we need God’s help to understand Ephesians.
Divisive Debate vs. Unity
Second, a great deal of theological debate and ecclesiasticalinterpersonal
conflict has swirled around Ephesians, the book of
unity. Such debate can have two immediate negative effects. Some-
3 1
times our attitudes become discolored by controversy itself. Sometimes
our opinions are marked by particular errors. In either case (and
often both happen together), we will have a hard time hearing what
Ephesians really says. Controversy, even for good causes, tends to create
tunnel vision and to breed ungodly attitudes. We make one mountain
into the whole mountain range, or one molehill into a
mountain. What we see, or think we see, consumes our minds. We
lose sight of the mountain range, the context in which both mountain
and molehill can be seen and weighed for what they are. We may be
exactly right about our particular issue, but narrowed truth becomes
unbalanced truth. It loses the ability to listen and be corrected. Narrowed
truth becomes half-truth, and broadly false. Narrowed truth
loses love and the redemptive modus operandi. As it does so, it becomes
reactive error. It becomes increasingly distorted. It becomes a
vehicle for interpersonal conflict and self-righteousness.
But Ephesians speaks a truth that calls us to live “with all humility
and gentleness, with patience, forbearing one another in love . . .
speaking the truth in love.” That does not leave much room for the
sour and suspicious attitudes that fester in controversy. Controversy
tends to make us forget Christ, causing us to become angry, messianic,
despairing, or fearful. Ephesians presses us about such attitudes
and the words they produce. Whether our words are spoken or
written, they must never be rotten or harmful. They must always be
grace-filled and constructive. They must always be tailor-made to
time, place, person, and circumstance.
Particular false views will also markedly affect our ability to hear
Ephesians for ourselves and use it well for others. For example, every
professing Christian believes both in God’s grace and in human responsibility.
But when it comes to determining whether God’s grace
or human decision has priority in conversion, controversy often
reigns. Nevertheless, every point of view must reckon with Ephesians.
I find Ephesians 1:3–2:10 incontrovertible regarding the priority of
grace. Our standing in Jesus Christ comes about because “God chose
us in Christ before the foundation of the world” to fulfill “his purpose,
who works all things after the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:4, 11). Yes,
at every point, we choose: we believe or stray, we repent or harden, we
obey or rebel, we love or hate. But, the “glory of his grace” is so glorious,
and the “deadness in trespasses and sins” is so dead, that any no-
3 2 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s
Counsel Ephesians
tion of dead men initiating or sustaining life-giving faith toward God
without being made alive by God seems absurd to me.
In addition, God’s hand in my own conversion was so strikingly
invasive and intervening—so Ephesianic—that I have never doubted
the utter sovereignty of grace to rescue the utterly perverted. But
many Christians, of sincere faith and of more godly character than I,
some of whom I know as friends and brothers, teach a more sanguine
view of human ability and a less exalted view of God’s grace. We disagree
with each other. I think their view shallow regarding both God
and man, and liable to disconcert faith’s maturing and enduring joy.
They think my view dreary about God and man, and liable to demotivate
people. One of us is wrong about the logic of grace and responsibility.
Wherever the error lies, it will certainly hinder our
understanding of Paul, and will have a significant effect on how we
minister to others.
Controversies of many other sorts also fight out battles in the sentences
of Ephesians: church government, the nature of worship,
charismatic gifts, male-female roles, the mode of spiritual warfare, the
permissibility of anger, and so forth. Being wrong will make Ephesians
hard to understand, and will harm both the church and the individual.
3
Our Heart’s Agenda
Third, the biggest hindrance to understanding arises within our
own hearts. Both the intrinsic difficulty of Ephesians and specific theological
controversies intersect with us! Our ability to understand
Ephesians correlates with our ability to live Ephesians. Clearer faith
and obedience directly enables greater understanding. Greater understanding
directly fuels more energetic obedience and faith. Ephesians
makes clear that two kinds of hearts operate. One basic nature is
dark, hard, ignorant, self-serving, and blind: “you were formerly darkness.”
The other basic nature is light, tender, knowing, loving, and
seeing: “now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light”
(Eph. 5:8). Paul warns against the former. He prays for and exhorts us
unto the latter. And so we must warn, pray, and exhort. When you
read Ephesians, believe. Ask for help. Walk it out. Encourage others.
Your understanding and effectiveness will grow.
Let me make a final comment about the difficulties of under-
3 3
standing Ephesians and then writing about it. As an author, I am not
satisfied with what I have written here. Paul wrote only a short letter.
Did it take him even one day to dictate it to his secretary? From the
rough syntax of 3:1–2, it looks like he nailed it on the first take. Paul’s
mere 2,400 words would occupy only four pages in this book. Yet the
ink spilled here does not come close to doing justice to the glory of
God’s grace. This outline on Ephesians is rather like a park ranger’s
commentary at the foot of a majestic mountain. The summit stands
far, far above us still, in air too rare and light too bright. I hope that
you will profit from what you read, that you will think, live, and practice
for the better. And where you find missteps or gaps, take up the
burden, so that God’s people may together attain to the unity of the
faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.
3 4 S c r i p t u r e O p e n s B l i n d E y e s