Beeson podcast, Episode 326 https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2017/The-Christ-Letter Doug Webster February 7, 2017 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Each semester at Beeson Divinity School, we have a different theme for our chapel, a theme that draws us together around the Scriptures and our prayer life. And this semester the theme is the Book of Ephesians, which we are calling +IBw-In One Body Through the Cross.+IB0- That's actually a phrase from Ephesians, Ephesians 2:16, and we have produced a beautiful chapel guidebook. Kristen Padilla has been in charge of that, has gone out and introducing people to our approach to Ephesians in this semester. Today on the podcast we have a conversation about Ephesians with one of our own faculty members, Dr. Doug Webster. Doug joined our faculty ten years ago. He came to us from beautiful San Diego, where he was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. He's been a theologian, taught at seminaries, he's taught and preached in other churches and international venues all around the world. He's also a prolific writer, and has written a great book on Ephesians called +IBw-The Christ Letter: A Christological Approach to Preaching and Practicing Ephesians.+IB0- We want to talk about his book but, more importantly, about the book of Ephesians. So, Doug, welcome to the Beeson Podcast. Doug Webster: Thank you, Timothy. Great to be with you. Timothy George: Tell us a little bit about Ephesians, your approach to it, and particularly the Christological character of Ephesians as you describe it. Doug Webster: Since in coming to Beeson Divinity School, I've just been struck by the combination of style and substance in the book of Ephesians for teaching people how to preach. So not only is there the substance that I think is very Christ-centered from beginning to end in a wonderful way, but also the style of the Apostle Paul in presenting this theology of Christ. I think it's instructive for us. It's instructive for our students. Timothy George: Ephesians has these very long sentences. There's one in Chapter 1, there's several in the book of Ephesians where it almost never ends, and the grammar gets all jumbled up. It's just like almost a volcano exploding, you can't contain it. What's going on there? Doug Webster: There's two sentences in Chapter 1. The first sentence is what I call a eulogizing prayer, a eulogizing praise. We think of eulogy usually as good things said for a person who's gone to be with the Lord, but it is the first word, praise or bless that we translate, it's from eulogy. And Paul is pulling out all the stops to say how wonderful our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is. And embedded in that one sentence, that goes from verses 3-14, one continuous ... I like to see it not as a jumbled mess, but as a symphonic, rhythmic, powerful, almost musical expression of our theology. And there's a cadence to this. The prepositions of by, for, from, give a rhythm. Choose the type of music you like best, from classical to country western to jazz, and I think you can kind of see the rhythm in that first sentence. Timothy George: Even hip-hop? Doug Webster: Even hip-hop. Just listen for a moment. +ACI-Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance to his pleasure and good will.+ACI- You can just sense the rhythm of that. Timothy George: Theologically, that sentence, which is kind of an introduction to the whole book in a way, goes from eternity to eternity, beginning with God's purpose and plan in eternity in ages past, all the way to the final consummation of all things. Doug Webster: It would be a mistake for us to write off the first chapter of Ephesians, and say, +ACI-Let's skip this and get to the practical stuff.+ACI- I think it's very important that the theology of worship, both this eulogizing praise and this Eucharistic thanksgiving are very essential for everything that Paul says here. Now I don't think we should belabor it. You could get bogged down in dealing with every word, and I think, then miss the flow and the power of what the Apostle Paul is saying here. Not only we have this wonderful long sentence here, but it also contains one of the longest words in the New Testament, +IBw-anakephalaiosis+IB0- in Greek, which we translate into Latin, +IBw-recapitulatsio,+IB0- and in English it's summing up all things together in Christ who is the head. That's a deep, weighty concept that Jesus Christ is the center, he is the summation, he is the one in whom and through whom all things come to be and exist and subsist. Paul makes the same point, of course, in Colossians and elsewhere, but here it is in Ephesians. Timothy George: In a word- Doug Webster: In a word. Timothy George: ... as you say. Doug Webster: Yeah. And then I think, you can see the whole letter in the light of that word, that if you track with the Apostle Paul here, you go from worship, to a full description of salvation, to then a, I think, provocative description of mission, that Paul outlines, and then to the body life, and then to the work in the world that Christians are called to do. You track and you see in such a short space of time, in such a compelling fashion, sort of the total picture of what the Christian life is to look like. Nothing small-minded about this. Timothy George: No. Absolutely. Doug, you're a great preacher. You're a great thinker about preaching, and teacher of preaching. One of your concepts is tension. Tension in the text, tension in the theology behind the text. Talk about Ephesians and tension. Doug Webster: Let me just pick up with what we just left off with when we come to tension. In trying to communicate Ephesians in our 21st century, it would be interesting to compare the largeness of the apostle's scope of impact with Christ to, often times, the smallness of our mind set. Ian McEwan, in his book +IBw-Saturday Night,+IB0- compares an 18-year-old boy who's named Theo with a philosophy of life. And Theo's philosophy of life is to think small. He understands that this is in the light of 9/11, and if you begin to think big it becomes very depressing. But if you think small, you can handle it. If you think about, well, Saturday I get to do snowboarding, or you think about the girl that looked at him positively in class, as long as you think small you can handle life. But the moment you start thinking big, it's way too overwhelming. Paul gives us a picture that answers that question of how to think about life in a beautiful and power way of God's salvation scope that covers everything in life. So, the tension there would be between a contemporary perspective of living in the moment, and the theological perspective of living in the light of eternity. Timothy George: And Jesus Christ is the one who enables us to do that. We certainly can't do that on our own, and that's another theme in Ephesians, isn't it, that God's grace is overcoming. God's grace is, to use an old fashioned word, sovereign. It overrides, you might say, our efforts to save ourselves. Doug Webster: In the second chapter of Ephesians, you have a bifocal picture of salvation. Both personal salvation and social salvation. Paul took three chapters in Romans to describe our depravity. He takes three verses in Ephesians. So if you want the short version go to Ephesians chapter two, and 1-3 describes that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And then verse 4, +ACI-But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions.+ACI- And then I think, if someone were to ask me, +ACI-What's your key text for Ephesians?+ACI- I probably would say Ephesians 2:8, +ACI-For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves it is the gift of God. Not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.+ACI- That's the first 10 verses of chapter 2. But then 11, verses 11-18, describes the social salvation. +ACI-Therefore remember that formerly you were Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision.+ACI- And he describes this tension between what people outside of God's covenantal love, outside of the promise, now have been included in. And the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile has been broken down. And that wall of hostility, I think, counts for all the walls that separate us, because of the depravity of man. Again, you have this same, almost a very balanced description of personal salvation with social salvation. But just like in the first part, +ACI-But because of his great love, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ.+ACI- And then in verse 13, +ACI-But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.+ACI- That picture of personal ... I think as evangelicals we have tended to not place the kind of emphasis on the social impact of salvation that we ought to. And here the apostle gives it complete and perfect balance. Timothy George: Yes. I think you can be out of kilter either way, of course. You can be all social and no divine action or vice versa. Doug Webster: And you sure don't want to minimize personal salvation at the expense of social impact. Timothy George: I want to ask you about ... you pointed out this, +ACI-But God.+ACI- I know David Martin Lloyd Jones preached a very famous sermon from this text. Just those two words, +ACI-But God.+ACI- And then there's the, +ACI-But now.+ACI- There's this adversative that Paul introduces to show the enormous disruption that God makes in history and in our lives and in the life of faith. But God, who is rich in mercy. But now you were this, now you are that. Doug Webster: And it's such a redemptive +ACI-but.+ACI- Timothy George: Yeah. Doug Webster: The redemption speaks into our death because of our trespasses and sins. And that +ACI-but,+ACI- that redemptive +ACI-but,+ACI- socially speaks into the division between us on many levels, to bring about reconciliation. Timothy George: And that's really the theme that we're pursuing in our chapel series +IBw-In One Body Through the Cross.+IB0- Maybe say a little bit, if you want to, as a pastor, about how this applies in the life faith today, in the life of society today. We live in a time where there are all kinds of tensions. Racial tensions, political tensions. It's hard to get along with people, even people you like sometimes, because they pull in other ways. What does this verse, what does this book, +IBw-In One Body Through the Cross,+IB0- tell us about that kind of life in which we live? A life of conflict. Doug Webster: As a pastor and a Beeson prof, I think I'm increasingly more and more concerned that we not only live in a post-modern, post-Christian era, but I'm afraid that there's too much post-biblical Christianity. With our attention for anecdotal, spiritually-felt-needs sermons, that we're drawing away from the rigorous and yet very beneficial examination of the Bible itself. And so we ought to have something of the sense of the flow of the book of Ephesians. I don't think I really discovered that flow or the Christ-centeredness of this book until I preached through it in a number of different settings, from Bloomington, Indiana to Bahir in Ethiopia. And probably that Ethiopian experience was the most distinctive. We were in ... it was blazing hot. We were in a mainly dark room with two or three bare bulb light bulbs hanging down. Middle of the day, but it was all shuttered because of the heat. And we went through one through chapter six in Ephesians that day. Several times, I got so exhausted preaching that my son, Andrew, who was with me got up and filled in. I don't know if he was comic relief or what, but he did a good job. Talked about parenting in Christ, and the home life he had experienced. It's that that I desire for us as a school this semester in going through the book, and for the households of faith that would take the book of Ephesians seriously from cover to cover, as it were. Timothy George: When I have attempted to preach through Ephesians, not as often as you have but several times, the thing with the church is so prominent. It's one of the books of the New Testament where the church just stands out. You can't avoid it. And all of these wonderful metaphors Paul brings in, the church is the body, the church is the bride, the church is the building, can you talk about the ecclesiology of Ephesians? Doug Webster: He's talking about worship, talks about salvation, and then he moves into a description of the church. As you know, from Paul's standpoint, you think first of the community and then of the individual. We Westerners, we think first of the individual and then the community. So, after having discussed worship and salvation, he says we're no longer foreigners. We're no longer strangers, but we're fellow citizens. And then he uses, as you say, all of these relational words from citizenship, to household, to temple, to describe this congregation that's not defined by brick and mortar. By stained glass windows and high pulpits. It is a place that is defined by the bond that we have in Christ. The real presence of Christ. Now, from there, he goes on to talk about mission, but then he picks up this theme of the body life of the church, in chapter 4 and following. It really creates this desire. He talks about one body, one spirit, one Lord, one hope, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who's over all and through all and in all. Again, that theme of the totality of what God has given to us in Christ. Timothy George: Another theme in Ephesians, and maybe somewhat neglected in preaching and teaching, is the devil. The devil is here. In chapter 4 you were just referring to that. Paul says, +ACI-Give no opportunity to the devil.+ACI- Don't let him get a toe hold anywhere in your life. And chapter 6 is, +ACI-Put on the whole armor of God that you may withstand against the wiles of the devil,+ACI- as the King James version says it, the strategies of Satan to overcome you. The schemes of the devil. What role should the devil, and this sense of satanic opposition, play in our spirituality? Doug Webster: I think we have to be careful there, because the Bible doesn't give us a lot of background on the devil. It doesn't feed our curiosity about the devil. It simply declares the presence of a very personal, directive, supernatural force of evil. But that devil is never incarnate. The devil is limited. The Apostle Paul is very convinced that we are waging war with this devil. The war within ourselves, the war without, in society. And yet we have the resources in Christ, the capacity and movement of the Holy Spirit, to resist that devil. The devil never becomes an excuse for a failure to be obedient and to be faithful. As he says, +ACI-Put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground after you've done everything to stand.+ACI- Timothy George: And then of course another great theme on the other side of the ledger from the devil is the Holy Spirit. We're sealed by the Holy Spirit. We're kept by the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption. We're to be filled with the Holy Spirit. All this language of the Holy Spirit is powerful throughout Ephesians. What does that mean, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God? Doug Webster: The lack of faithfulness and obedience, a cold-hearted concern with respect to worship, a disengagement from the mission of the church. I think these are the things that Paul had in mind would grieve the Holy Spirit. When you believed you were marked in him with the seal, the promised Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory. Everything that Paul talks about in the rest of the book of Ephesians is what it means to really walk in the Spirit and life in the Spirit. Timothy George: I think one of the ways we grieve the Holy Spirit, in Ephesians 4, is in our attitude toward one another, where Paul is giving an admonition. He says, +ACI-Be kind to one another. Tenderhearted.+ACI- That great word, tenderhearted. +ACI-Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.+ACI- And so that means ... as he says just before that, +ACI-Do away with bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander and malice.+ACI- All of these things that work against our own flourishing as believers in Christ, and certainly do grieve the Holy Spirit. So there's a lot of practical Christianity here. Doug Webster: Very much so. And wouldn't it be good for us to really concentrate on those aspects that you've just cited rather than maybe programs and buildings. Those are important, but of far less importance to actually the quality of character that Christians manifest. Timothy George: Yeah. So far, Doug, I've just asked you easy questions. You've just hit them out of the ball park. I'm going to ask you a hard question, and I'm going to see what you do with that. Ephesians is one of those books that is used often to say Christianity is really a backward looking religion, because it justifies slavery. I'm thinking, of course, of what we call the household codes in chapter 5 where Paul says husbands you should be obeyed by your wife... you love your wife, but wives obey your husbands. And then he goes on to talk about children and parents, and then he goes on to talk about slaves and masters. Is Ephesians really a kind of retrogressive justification for these institutions, whether we call them chauvinism, slavery, arrogant domination of parents over children? How do you respond to that ethical challenge that's often put up by people, about the book of Ephesians? Doug Webster: Let's take the hardest first. +ACI-Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, with sincerity in your heart, just as you would obey Christ.+ACI- Paul, I think, definitely believed in a social revolution, because of Christ. But it was going to be a quiet revolution in the Jesus way. It was going to be a revolution from within to without. So when he speaks of husbands and wives, and I believe this passage in Ephesians 5 really speaks of mutual submission in Christ, that as we submit to Christ we submit to one another, and in so doing, honor Christ. And when he speaks to slaves, one, he's speaking to slaves. They are worthy to be addressed. They are part of the household of faith. They are respected by Paul. He gives them spiritual direction. And in that spiritual direction, he is underscoring the fact of how people's minds are going to be changed. This is consistent throughout the New Testament, 1 Peter picks this up as well, that it's out of the Christ life in the individual that is going to bring about the kind of necessary change in society that is required. It's not by violence. It's not meeting evil with evil. Timothy George: Doug, Ephesians begins with these great climactic words, in a way. Grace and peace from God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. It ends with those same words. Peace and grace. But it adds a word at the end that has, I think, been prepared for by everything else that's been said in Ephesians and that's love. +ACI-Peace be to the brothers. Love with faith from God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, grace be to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.+ACI- Those last two words, +ACI-love incorruptible.+ACI- What is that? Doug Webster: In the NIV they translate that +ACI-undying love.+ACI- +ACI-Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.+ACI- And there's ambiguity in the Greek. Is this God's undying love for us? And/or our undying love for him? I think the Apostle Paul may have kept that ambiguity on purpose. The love goes both ways. I think that that's a very significant conclusion, the undying love that Paul honors here. Timothy George: Certainly the love begins with God. We know that, and you said that in chapter 1, but it is a reciprocated love. We are to both bask in the love of God, receive it, and then show it to others. +ACI-Love one another as I have loved you,+ACI- Jesus said. Well, this has been a good conversation with my friend and colleague, Dr. Douglas Webster. He teaches preaching and pastoral theology here at Beeson Divinity School. A wonderful preacher, a wonderful teacher, and scholar of God's Word. Thank you so much, Doug, for this conversation. Doug Webster is also the author of a brand new book, +IBw-The God Who Prays,+IB0- from Cascade. That's an imprint of Wipf and Stock, one of many books he's written. You'll be blessed to get a copy of it. It's available on amazon.com. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.