Beginning his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul in the very first phrase describes the meaning of Christianity as revelation and as a spiritual path. For the apostle, the Church as the new people of God...
Beginning his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul in the very first phrase describes the meaning of Christianity as revelation and as a spiritual path. For the apostle, the Church as the new people of God was intended by God even before the creation of the world. Jewish tradition looks at the Jewish people in this way: they, like the Messiah, were intended by God before the creation of the world. Paul, as can be seen, transfers this traditional view to the Church as the new people of God and as that messianic remnant of which the pre-exilic prophets had already spoken. This refers, of course, to the predestined existence of the Church as a whole, not to the fate of an individual person, who in every case remains free, just as, from the point of view of traditional Judaism, the predestined existence of the people of God as a whole does not predestine the fate of its specific representatives.
But if a person receives Christ and follows Him, he shares in a reality intended by God even before the creation of the world. This sharing happens through participation in the life of the Messiah Himself, who brought the Kingdom into the world and in whom the Father's will is revealed to the world as clearly and as fully as it can ever be revealed through a human being. It is hard to follow God's will, but when your life is united with the life of the One who received and fulfilled God's will in all its fullness, even the impossible becomes possible.
All the more so because in Christ the fullness of the Kingdom also entered the world, and He lets everyone who has entrusted himself to Him share in it. This means that everyone who follows Him also has the possibility of the full transformation of his own human nature and of deliverance from the power of sin. It is in this sense that the apostle speaks of the forgiveness of sins and redemption by blood. Of course, such a transformation of human nature is a divine-human process; a person participates in it together with God, and the wisdom and understanding Paul mentions are needed here. But the pledge of success is that sharing in the life of the Kingdom which the apostle calls the "promise of the Holy Spirit." This is the Christian path, about which Paul reminds the Ephesian Christians almost in passing, as something self-evident.
