How far can you peace? The humbling inclusivity of God’s plan (Ephesians 2 and Isaiah)
“Barney, why are you such a nerd?” The bullies were closing in on me, but I wasn’t going to rise to it.
“Barney, why do you have such a bad fashion sense?”
A grain of truth in that one for sure, but I stayed cool and calm and didn’t react.
“Barney, why do you keep making tenuous connections
between Ephesians and obscure Old Testament passages?” The final straw. I had to
speak!
“The connections are not tenuous! And the Old Testament
passages are not obscure! Sure, the links to Genesis and Daniel are more allusions
rather than quotations, but they are massively significant parts of the Old Testament.
It’s not just me being a nerd here, I’m convinced that Paul expected the Ephesians
to know the Old Testament references. It’s not like he only makes allusions to concepts,
he also makes some pretty direct quotations to words. Take a look at the way he
uses passages from Isaiah:
Links between Isaiah and Ephesians
“In Isaiah 57:4b, it says: ‘Are you not the offspring
of transgression, the offspring of deceit[?]’, which seems pretty similar to Ephesians 2:2 ‘sons of disobedience’ and 2:3 ‘children of wrath’...
“In Isaiah 57:19, it says ‘“Peace, peace, to the
far and to the near,” says the LORD, “and I will heal him.”’, which must be what
Paul was thinking of in Ephesians 2:17 when he wrote ‘And he came and preached peace
to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.’
“Later on, in Isaiah 63:9-10, it says ‘in his love
and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days
of old. But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit’, which rings some pretty
strong bells when we read, in Ephesians 4:30, ‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit
of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.’
“And most translations agree that Isaiah 60:1-2,
which says, ‘Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has
risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the
peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you’
is what Paul is adapting in Ephesians 5:14’s ‘Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”’
“And even if you think those are a bit loose with
exact wording, ‘He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation
on his head’ from Isaiah 59:17 could not be closer to the ‘breastplate of righteousness’
in Ephesians 6:14 and the ‘helmet of salvation’ in 6:17...
“It’s not just that Paul has a good knowledge of
Old Testament ideas in general. He is using deliberate quotations of specific verses.
He seems to think that his readers will know at least some of these verses as well.
And if they know Isaiah, it makes perfect sense for Paul to point them right there.
Isaiah 56-66 specifically
“Isaiah, especially in the last few chapters (most
people who have studied Isaiah seem to think 56-66 is the final section of Isaiah),
is the perfect book for Paul to point the Ephesians to. As Old-Testament-loving
Gentiles, feeling a bit excluded from God’s people, where better to turn than Isaiah
56-66?
“For example, near the opening of the section, look
at Isaiah 56:3, which says ‘Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the
LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”’, and then 56:6-8:
‘“And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, and minister to him, to love
the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and
does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant - these I will bring to my holy
mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and
their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house
of prayer for all peoples.” The LORD GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
“I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.”’ How massively
encouraging this must be to a Gentile who is feeling excluded!
“And near the end of the section, God is really
clear that there will be many people saved on the final day who were from the ‘nations’
- i.e. not from Judah and Jerusalem. Isaiah 66:18-21 says, ‘For I know their works
and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And
they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. And from
them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul and Lud, who draw the
bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame
or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations. And they shall
bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the LORD, on horses
and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain
Jerusalem, says the LORD, just as the Israelites bring their rain offering in a
clean vessel to the house of the LORD. And some of them also I will take for priests
and for Levites, say the LORD.’ Of course Paul would point these Gentiles to the
end of Isaiah when it is this clear about the inclusion of the nations in God’s
blessings.
“The Old Testament shows us that being included
in God’s people is not about being ethnically Jewish. The Old Testament generally,
Isaiah specifically, and Isaiah 56-66 even more specifically shows us again and
again that God does not value the half-hearted, external religion of the people
of Judah, and is absolutely happy to cut off those who do not love Him and replace
them with others.
“Inclusion in God’s people, according to Isaiah,
is not ultimately through biological descent or through keeping the Mosaic Law.
The LORD says, in 66:2b, ‘But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble
and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.’ This is in direct contrast with
an alternative approach in 66:3: ‘He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills
a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog’s neck; he who presents
a grain offering, like one who offers pig’s blood; he who makes a memorial offering
of frankincense, like one who blesses an idol.’ It is Isaiah who states that the
nations will be included in God’s people, and it is Isaiah who says how the nations
can be included in God’s people: being in God’s people comes through having the
right heart attitude towards God (humility, contrition, trembling at His word) rather
than through keeping the Law (making sacrifices and offerings).
Ephesians 2 specifically
“At the very point in Ephesians where Paul starts
to quote Isaiah 56-66, he is addressing exactly the same issues. He has already
shown that God has blessed all believers - Jewish and Gentile alike - in Christ.
Now he is addressing the question of how this can be. Jewish and Gentile Christians
have exactly the same access to God’s people because the things that include them
in God’s people are exactly the same.
“How can ‘you Gentile believers’ have the same blessings
as ‘us Jewish believers’? Pronouns matter. In Ephesians 2:11 Paul is explicit that
‘you’ refers to ‘Gentiles in the flesh’. In the first half of Ephesians 2, Paul
is similarly careful about his use of pronouns. Like we did in chapter 1, we need
to tread carefully, because Ephesians 2 is a much-loved passage, but we should have
confidence that reading God’s word carefully will always bring more glory to Him
rather than less.
“So take a look at Ephesians 2:1ff, which says,
‘And you [Gentiles] were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked’
- it’s not encouraging at first, but 2:3 is! Paul continues ‘among whom we all [including
us Jewish believers] once lived in the passions of our flesh’. Paul first establishes
that Gentile believers and Jewish believers fundamentally had exactly the same problem
to begin with. They were excluded on the same basis. Both categories of people were
spiritually dead before Christ’s intervention.
“The state beforehand was the same, and the means
of inclusion is the same. Paul goes on to show, in 2:4-7, that it is purely because
of God’s mercy that Jewish people have the huge blessings in the heavenly places
that he’d described in 1:3-12. And it is similarly, as 2:8-9 says, purely because
of his grace, through faith, that Gentile believers have been saved.
“This is a wonderful passage about grace and faith.
I’m not trying to nerdily take that away from anyone, but it is a wonderful passage
with more of a purpose than we sometimes give it credit for. It is a deliberate
equaliser. Deliberately “inclusive” of anyone - whatever family they come from -
who God has included in Christ’s blessings through faith.
“No one may boast. (2:9) Whether Jewish or Gentile,
it is God who has initiated the ‘work’ and it is God who has prepared the good ‘works’
to be walked in (2:10). There is only one way into the true people of God, and that
is through faith. Through God’s grace and mercy. Through having a right attitude
towards him, and, as Isaiah 56:3 puts it, ‘trembling at his word’.
“True, there used to be a more exclusive means of
inclusion in the covenants of the promise, involving circumcision and citizenship
of Israel (2:11-12). The Gentiles were ‘strangers to the covenants’ (2:12), but
these inclusion criteria have been done away with!
Hard work pays off?
“This is where the hard work will start to cash
out. When we slow down and think about the Old Testament allusions and the pronouns,
Ephesians doesn’t just get a bit boring half way through chapter 2... That’s where
it starts to get to its most exciting.
“Ephesians 2:13-16 shows Jesus’ death on the cross
to be the long awaited reconciliation the world needed. Through His death, the near
(Jewish) and the far (Gentiles) could finally have peace with God. Through His death,
the Law has been abolished which was creating a wall of hostility between Gentiles
and Jewish people, and a wall between both categories of people and God. Through
His death, Babel has been reversed, and one nation is forged with wonderful access
to God.
“Now, the access for both groups is so much better
than before! For the Gentile Ephesians, they are no longer alienated from God’s
people. But that’s not where the blessings stop. Using other Old Testament categories,
Paul blows their expectations out of the water and shows them that they have far
more than they could possibly have hoped for. Although to understand all of that,
we should go beyond Isaiah, and think about other parts of the Old Testament, like
Chronicles.”
“Whatever, Barney... You still wear really ugly
clothes.” Ok, so we’re back to that sort of discourse then...
“And you are DEFINITELY a massive nerd.”
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