(While reading Ephesians this morning I remembered this impassioned essay I first published at the end of 2020. I offer it again with a few revisions because it still resonates.)
About forty years ago, a young musician living in New York City was drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ purely by the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
There was no one preaching to her, and she knew of no one who would have been praying for her to come to Christ. God just predestined it to happen, it seemed, and she responded.
That young, lost musician was me. He found me.
Shortly after this supernatural stirring to know the man called Jesus, the Word of God was opened to my understanding. I remember at a deep, visceral level the joy that enveloped me, body and soul, as I absorbed the words of ancient Scripture.
I was working for a Jewish diamond merchant on 47th St. at the time, commuting each morning and evening on the subway with my little green pocket-sized New Testament and Psalms. You know the kind I’m talking about.
I stood reading Ephesians while holding onto the pole. I was astonished by the revelation of God I read. I could feel it penetrating my soul, changing me from the inside out. Ephesians contains these shining truths:
- He has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
- He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
- He predestinated us to be his children according to his own good pleasure.
- He redeemed us through his blood, forgiving our sins because of the riches of his grace.
- He abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
- He has made known to us the mystery of his will.
- He has gathered together as one body all who are in Christ
- He has promised an inheritance and sealed his promise with the holy Spirit.
That’s only a small portion of the embarrassment of riches in just the first chapter proclaimed of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and to us! The great Apostle Paul—how grateful I am for this courageous, faithful, brilliant man of God!–went on from there, praying for all believers that:
The eyes of our understanding would be enlightened to know the hope of his calling and the riches of his glory; the exceeding greatness of his power toward us according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion and every name that is named.
Lest we forget, Paul reminds us that God the Father did all of this to glorify his Son. He put all things under the feet of the Son, and made him head to his church, his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all.
It’s so much to take in. Such theological treasure. Heady stuff to be learning for the first time at the age of 23. I call it an embarrassment of riches, because all of this is available and we access so little most of the time. I am embarrassed by God’s extravagance toward me when I am not deserving of it.
Why didn’t anyone tell me this stuff when I was growing up in suburbia, becoming a teenager, acting like a fool? Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner that heaven had come to earth, and that God had made available such extravagant gifts of grace!?!
I felt like I’d just stumbled on a goldmine no one had ever discovered. It had been there all along, hidden in plain sight. These words from a letter penned 2000 years ago haven’t diminished in their power. Paul’s language is so effulgent that scholars spend years parsing a single verse.
These words changed me then, and continue to impact me every time I meditate on them.
As we endure times of tediousness, mediocrity, hypocrisy, and broken dreams, there is still Ephesians. There is this source of supernatural, poetic, mind-awing truth.
Here is this embarrassment of God’s riches, poured out for all who will seek and find it.
