Coromandel Baptist Church

Sunday 31 January 2010 Ephesians 2:11-22 and Ephesians 3:8-21

Access to God the Father

The Bible readings before us are set in the context of two great realities. The first is that God the Father has created this world with a great purpose in mind. This is clearly set out for us in the opening chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. From this chapter we can see that the Father has purposed that his family will be blessed with every spiritual blessing Christ; that they will be holy and blameless before him; that in love he has predestined us to be adopted as sons; that such would redound to the glory of his grace, freely bestowed on us in the Beloved; that this grace is manifest in the work of redemption by which we are forgiven all our sins; that all things would be summed up (or headed up) by Christ as Lord of all; that we would thus obtain our inheritance according to the divine will and counsel of God; that we should be sealed in Christ by the Spirit, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance; and that all this is known in and through Christ, the head of his body, who fills all in all. This, of course, means the defeat of all the powers of darkness, the removal of sin once and for all, and the universal establishment of the love of God over the whole of the creation. This purpose cannot be thwarted by any human or celestial power. God’s purpose will stand for all eternity as the one purpose that governs the entire cosmos.

The second great reality is that believers are now in a position that we were not in before the Son came to us. Then, we were ignorant of God as our Father, and completely cut off from knowing him. We were dead in our transgressions and sins, and by nature children of wrath, not children of the Father. But now, we are adopted in the Beloved Son, to be the beloved children of the Father. The whole reality of our new status is governed by the great phrases of Ephesians 2:4-6, ‘But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he has loved us…made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus’.

Left to ourselves, we would never have known the Father as the Father of mercy and love. Apart from grace, we would only have laboured on under the weight of judgement, being under the dominion of the world system and the prince of this world, who blinds the eyes of us all until Christ shines into the darkness. We are told that Gentiles were strangers even to the gracious dealings of God in covenant love and that we were ‘far off’ (Eph. 2:11-13). But we are also told that the Jews who were ‘near’ (in that they had the covenant promises, the worship and other blessings that Paul enumerates in Rom. 9:4-5, for example) needed also to be reconciled to God. Both Gentile and Jew were reconciled to God in the offering of the Son, and there is now one new humanity forged in the body of Jesus (Eph. 2:15).

This new humanity has no identity except it be the identity that the Father has granted to it in the Son himself. But then, everything that Jesus is, is ours in him! Everything we have, and are, and ever will be, is only so because we are one with the Son…for judgement and for life. Judged in him, raised in him, seated with him, we are ‘one new man’, established in the peace of God through God’s own gift of reconciliation. It is in this reconciled, aligned, relationship that we have ‘access’ in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18), because in God’s Son his eternal purpose has been carried out and thus we have ‘boldness and confident access through faith in him’ (Eph. 3:12). This access, then, is granted in fulfilment of the Father’s great plan, and it is rooted in the redeeming grace of the Father in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In Ephesians 3:14-15, we are told that the access we have is to the Father (before whom Paul bows in praise and humble adoration for the revealing of his plan and purpose in Christ), from whom all family-hood derives its name. The translation of Ephesians 3:15 is not easy, but it may be taken as ‘every family’, or ‘the whole family’, or ‘all fatherhood’. Whatever the case, it is clear that the true, eternal, everlasting Father has imprinted his Fatherhood on earthly relationships. In creating humanity in his image God made us both male and female. This must mean that the fullness of what we call ‘masculinity’ and the fullness of what we call ‘femininity’ must be needed to reflect what it means for God to be ‘Father’. So, though earthly human parents are filled with sin and all of our parenting is faulty, across the whole spectrum of the human race God has imprinted ‘family-hood’ on it. The eternal Father is strong to save, and by his grace he redeems all the faults and failures of earthly fathers and mothers in his Cross, so that in the end we will all be settled under the Father and that we are found to be at peace as his family under his perfect Fatherhood.

However, the pattern of earthly kith and kin families may not be the only thing that Paul has in view in this statement. Because of links with the language of citizenship (Eph. 2:19) and the present purpose of God to make his wisdom known to rulers and authorities in heavenly places (Eph. 3:10), as well as the socio-political and religious context in which the New Testament churches lived (the Roman Empire and the Emperor cult), some commentators direct our thinking to the contrast between the Caesar as the pater familias of the empire and head of its worship. The pater familias was the head of a Roman family/estate. He thus had direct responsibly not simply for his own children, but for the running of the whole property and the rulership over all of its slaves and workers. As the father of the household he was responsible for the welfare of the household as well as the priestly functions of family worship.

But beyond the local family, the Caesar was understood as the father of the whole Roman family. One of his titles was the pater patriae (i.e. father of the fatherland), and allegiance to him was the uniting factor across the diverse ethnic and cultural mix that was the Roman Empire. Paul thus indicates a complete shift in allegiance. Though not all believers were citizens of Rome, all were citizens of a greater family, with a greater Father. The Father is over all, even Caesar, and his Son is Lord of all, even the Lord of the masters of the slaves who lived under the rule of an earthly pater familias. Thus, believers were never to feel themselves cut off from the Father’s care and attention, even if their status in the society was denigrated because they belonged to Him and did not worship Caesar.

So what does access imply? It is a multifaceted concept. In part it is related to worship in the Temple. Whereas once Gentiles had no access at all, and the Jews only representative access through the priestly system, now ‘we all have access in one Spirit to the Father’. The Spirit of the Father unites all his children to bring them to his presence in the Son, our Great High Priest. On another level, access means that we have the full rights of citizens of heaven. The full protection and the great providential care of the Father is ours. We are no longer strangers and aliens, but members of God’s own household. He is ruling over all things for our welfare. Furthermore, access implies the privilege and rights of sonship. We are of the Father’s household, and have direct access to his presence because we are his children. This even has royal connotations, as we are his royal, priestly community. Not even all Roman citizens had access to Caesar, but we have direct access in Jesus to the the God and Father of us all! And again there is this, that access implies both availability and acceptance. We are never to fear that the Father will not want to receive us, or that his attention will be directed elsewhere. And, on the other side of the matter, this access is hotly contested by the powers of darkness, who would tell us constantly that we have no right of access to the Father, and to this Paul turns his attention later in Ephesians (e.g. Eph. 6:10ff.)