We caught last week something of the wonder that we’re already seated with Christ `in the heavenly realms` (see Eph 2:6). But `heaven’ is also where we’re going. Paul has a lot on his heart about the glory and loving oneness that will fill the cosmos of the future. There’s a profound revelation awaiting us here, with practical implications in a hundred directions. If we’re to understand life and the world, we’ve got to grasp what God is doing, what is his cosmic plan. That’s what God is giving us here!
God’s showing us here that the world is a mess, but (hallelujah!) it won’t always be like this. God, says Eph 1:9-10, `made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ!` The world is a broken mess, but it’s going to be reshaped and saturated with the reality of God! In one sense Christ already `fills everything in every way’ (1:23), as the omnipresent One who `ascended higher than the heavens in order to fill the whole universe’ (4:10); but the day is coming when the world will finally reflect that in every way. The Father’s whole future purpose `when the times reach their fulfilment` is to `bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head, even Christ.’ Let’s absorb this with joy! – what we have here is a vision of relationships restored together throughout a transfigured, reunified cosmos…
That certainly isn’t what we have now. Universal alienation was the result of our snatching at our own autonomy in the Fall. At the start of human history in Genesis 3, we human beings insisted on `being like God`, attempting to decide for ourselves what was right and wrong in isolation from the revealed will of the Father, attempting to run our lives and our world in independence from God. `Repentance’ – recognizing we’re wrong, returning to God, bowing to the Lordship of Christ – reverses precisely that folly of self-isolation and independence. Because it didn’t work at all: we recall how Genesis 3 describes the spreading breakdown of relationships that resulted, once the central relationship with God was broken and we no longer had his power to make our other relationships work. The human/God rupture developed quickly into broken relationships between man and woman (3:16), and between humans and nature (3:17-19). There followed the first murder (4:8), and Cain’s alienation from his environment as a `restless wanderer on the earth’ (4:11-14); until eventually the whole earth became `corrupt and full of violence’ (6:11). And we have inherited the results. Generation after generation of individuals have repeated the self-rule and self-isolation of the Fall; we’ve inherited a divided world living by the survival of the fittest, one endlessly fractured by broken relationships, ethnic tensions, class struggles, gender battles, generational conflicts.
But now, says Paul, heaven is coming. That alienated, individualism-driven world is being subverted, and will finally be swept away, by a resurrected, reunited universe, a `new heavens and new earth`; one brought back together under Christ, and radiant with God. It will happen! Christ’s love will flow into every wound and every corner, bringing it all back together, and `the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea’! (Father, I worship you…) All the brokenness gone, all relationships restored; it’s a vision worth living for, and worth dying for…
Even now, therefore, God is reaching out (through us!), to bring Christ into everything and everything under the lordship of Christ, until ultimately in this unity `everything has been put under him’ (1 Cor 15:27). And we understand our own lives, and callings, by seeing how these fit into this massive cosmic plan of total restoration, with all relationships put back together, everything put back together, in Christ. This has radical implications for our spirituality. (Lord, please help me find my place…) First, for the imperative of personal involvement with global mission to every geographical corner; working with God, praying, and giving, and going, to ensure a presence in God’s triumphant final synthesis of `every nation, tribe, people, and language’ (Rev 7:9). Equally, too, for our commitment to the love of God at work in every corner of our global society. The Lord demands, and will one day bring, justice and truth and wholeness in every inch of his creation!
In short, then, the vision is one of the glorifying of Christ in every corner of human endeavour! `There is not an inch in the whole area of existence’, proclaimed Abraham Kuyper at the foundation of the Free University of Amsterdam, `of which Christ the Sovereign of all does not cry, “It is Mine”!’ And Paul’s telling us: God has been working on this since before the creation of the world, but also (Eph 1:11) he chose us, and predestined us, for our place in it, `to the praise of his glory`! (Thank you Lord!) Before creation God knew the name of each of us, and included, sculptured, a glorious destiny for each of us as part of his cosmic plan…
There could be no greater vision! Obviously this ultimate Unity must involve the total negation of all `dividing walls of hostility’ (Eph 2:14). `There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3:28). That’s the theme of the second half of chapter 2, to which we’ll soon turn.
But first we must grasp another vital idea, introduced for us in the closing verses of ch1. What unites us all, in God’s glorious purposes, is something else we often lose sight of, another vision for which we need the Spirit’s revelation through his Word: the glory of Christ’s Body — his loving Bride — the eternal, supernatural Church……
