Week 49 Ephesians 1
My goal in re-reading Ephesians was to see if Paul had one single idea (an Ephesians Focal-Point). Something he talked about through the whole letter. (I also wanted to see if he could talk about that thing without wandering too far off-track.)
Yesterday it looked to me like Paul’s Big Idea was The Lord’s Plan. I felt okay with it and left it at that. But today I’m seeing that The Plan has a lot of moving parts. For instance one element of The Plan was that at some future time the Lord would: bring everything together under the authority of Christ.
I wonder for a bit about what that meant. For one thing I think it’s saying that Before Christ everything was Not Together. That things in-heaven-&-earth were Not Unified. That things were in a state of dividedness or fragmentation or differentiation or friction. That things weren’t consolidated or homogeneous. That the world was a busted-to-pieces Humpty Dumpty place from Genesis to Malachi. Israel. Egypt. Asia. The states of Africa & India & the East. The Americas. All of them in a state of Fracturization.
It’s like there’s two temporal episodes: a) The State of Things Before Christ and b) the State of Things After Christ. In The State of Things Before Christ everything was disconnected. And in the State of Things After Christ? God has put all things under the authority of Christ. A reconsolidation.
Note: quotes from Ephesians 1:10 22 (NLT)