There Are No Insignificant Christians

Ordinary Means · An Ephesians Study · No. 6

Here is a sentence that should change how you walk into church on Sunday.

Paul says God's purpose for the Church is that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Read it slowly. The Church exists, in part, so that the angelic powers — the principalities, the rulers of the unseen world — might learn something about God they did not know before.

The word for "manifold" is polypoikilos — many-colored, like an intricate tapestry. God's wisdom is not a single thread; it is a weaving of countless colors, and the Church is where the whole pattern is on display. The powers of heaven look on as Jew and Gentile are reconciled into one body, as sinners are forgiven and brought into the household of God, as the Church of every nation is built together — and they learn, for the first time, what the wisdom of God actually looks like.

Now hold that next to your own congregation. The elderly widow in her usual pew. The young family wrestling a toddler three rows back. The convert two months into the faith. The lifelong member on the third stanza of the hymn. From the inside, it does not feel like a cosmic event. Paul says it is exactly that — the theater in which the many-colored wisdom of God is being shown to the watching hosts of heaven. There are no insignificant Christians. There are no overlooked congregations. The ordinary Sunday gathering is, by God's own design, the place where He is putting His wisdom on display before the universe.

How does Paul arrive at a claim like this? Through the mystery entrusted to him — that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise (three together words in the Greek). It is a secret hidden for ages and now revealed, and Paul has been made its steward. He is keenly aware of the honor: to me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given. He means it. This is the man who once hunted Christians; the longer he lives in grace, the smaller he sees himself and the larger he sees the gift. (The Lutheran tradition has a phrase for this — simul iustus et peccator, at once righteous and sinner. The mature Christian grows not more self-assured but more astonished.) And he names his chains for the first time, not in complaint but as a credential: a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. The shackles are not the interruption of his mission. They are part of it.

For this reason — because of all this — Paul kneels. Picture it: the chained apostle, a guard at his side, dropping to his knees in a rented room to pray for a church he will never see again. And the prayer he prays may be the highest in all his letters. Not for new gifts. Not for relief. He asks that they would be strengthened in the inner being by the Spirit; that Christ would dwell — not visit, but dwell, take up permanent residence — in their hearts through faith; that, rooted and grounded in love, they would begin to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of a love that finally surpasses knowledge; and then the highest note of all:

Not a portion. All the fullness. The very plenitude of God coming to dwell in ordinary believers. The Lutheran tradition has a name for this union of the believer with the indwelling Christ — the unio mystica — and insists it is no mere metaphor. The same Christ who sits at the Father's right hand makes His home, by the Spirit, in the heart of the simplest believer.

Then Paul lifts his voice and closes the first half of the letter the only way it can be closed — in praise: Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us — to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. Whatever you ask, He can outdo. Whatever you imagine, He can exceed. And the power He works by is not somewhere far off; it is at work within us. Amen, Paul writes — so be it — and the doctrine of three chapters comes to rest on that one word.

Here the letter turns. Everything so far has been what God has done. Next time we cross the hinge: chapter four opens with a single word — Therefore — and from there Paul tells us what, in light of all this, the Christian is to do. The first call is to walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Read Ephesians 4:1–16 before then, and watch for the seven ones — one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism…

Get the book here: [EPHESIANS]