NOTES for Eph 1:22-2:3

The two half-sentences that make up today's apostolic reading are like a bright flash of light. Rather than helping us follow the logic of the apostle Paul's reflections, they illuminate several things of the utmost importance so that we may remember them. Like a brief outline, they sum up his teaching on salvation in Christ. It is in this passage that we find Paul's words that the Church is the Body of Christ.

This definition embraces a great deal. It implies that the center around which the Church gathers is the bread of the Last Supper, which becomes the Body of Christ in the Church's prayer. This mystery is accomplished by Christ Himself, “not because of our righteousness, for we have done nothing good upon the earth,” as St. Basil the Great says. Paul's definition also implies that the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation of the Son of God, who fills all things within her. This takes place by the will of the Father and the grace of the Holy Spirit, whose coming brings the Church into being not as a gathering of people, but as the mystery of God's Presence.

Then comes a sentence broken off in the middle, in which the apostle emphasizes that this gift of salvation in Christ is given to us while we were still sinners. He says that Christ fills us in the Church, dead as we are in our sins. The predicate of this sentence is not included in the passage being read. And us, who were dead... Yet it is not difficult to anticipate, to feel in our hearts, that He who fills all in all brings the dead to life. This is the conclusion from the words about the Body of Christ that we are invited to reach for ourselves today.

These words, like a bright flash of light, do not so much help us see the logic of the apostle Paul's reflections as illuminate several most important things so that we remember them. Like a brief outline, they summarize the apostle's teaching on salvation in Christ. It is in this passage that the apostle Paul's words are given that the Church is the Body of Christ.

This definition contains a great deal. It implies that the center around which the Church is gathered is the bread of the Mystical Supper, which in the prayer of the Church becomes the Body of Christ. This sacrament is celebrated by Christ Himself, "not because of our righteousness, for we have done no good upon the earth," as St. Basil the Great says. The apostle Paul's definition also implies that the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation of the Son of God, who fills all things in Her. This takes place by the will of the Father and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, whose coming gives birth to the Church not as an assembly of people, but as the sacrament of God's Presence.

Further, at the beginning of the next chapter, the apostle stresses that this gift of salvation in Christ is given to us while we were still sinners. He says that in the Church Christ fills us, who were dead in our sins, with life. This is the meaning of the Church's existence; this is her saving power.

When speaking of the Christian life, Paul also has in mind the path of righteousness followed by those who sought the fullness of God’s life even before Christ came. Even then, those who walked that path saw clearly that righteousness was impossible without a radical transformation of human nature itself, which had been stricken by sin. Yet it was impossible to transform it completely by human effort alone, even with God’s help. The very environment in which this spiritual work took place was destructive: the fallen world lies in evil, and much of what was accomplished was undone by the spiritual aggression of the fallen world’s environment.

A different environment was needed for a complete, qualitative change in human nature, for its transfiguration, and no one could create such an environment on earth. God’s presence alone proved insufficient: evil opposed the person from without, acting through a world that lived by the laws of sin, and from within the person, whose heart was likewise infected by sin.

Under such conditions, all changes proved partial and temporary. A person could not change in earnest; every change for the better was unstable, and when God’s immediate action ended, the person quickly slipped back into their former state. There was no spiritual momentum: the person marked time, and by doing so achieved only that evil and sin did not gain final and undivided power over them. Full spiritual work required a different environment, one that could be called an environment of love, if love is understood in the Gospel sense.

In the Bible, love means above all a corresponding attitude directed towards the spiritual well-being of its object. Love is an intention that helps a person’s spiritual formation and development and strengthens their relations with God and their neighbours—conscious relations, without which a full spiritual life is impossible. But in the fallen world, the environment in which all relations exist remains natural and psychic. To designate it, the apostle uses a Greek word usually translated as “air,” although it originally denoted a special natural realm in which, among other things, the Olympian gods dwelt.

Christ comes to create a new environment, an environment of love, where spiritual work will proceed much more simply and rapidly and can become progressive, so that a person ceases to mark time as usually happened before. The Kingdom itself exists as a relationship of love between the Father and the Son. In such an environment, the power of sin is possible only insofar as a person grants sin such power over themselves: the aggression of one’s surroundings is excluded in the Kingdom. Conditions for spiritual work become ideal, the impossible becomes possible, and even the consequences of sins already committed change if the person renounces sin itself.

Those consequences no longer weigh upon the person as they did before Christ came. Of course, changes do not happen by themselves; even in the Kingdom, active spiritual work is required of a person, but there it has a chance of being far more fruitful than in the untransformed world. The chances of salvation therefore increase sharply, although no one can, of course, give anyone any guarantees: a person is free, and God does not take that freedom away. Not even in the Kingdom.

Speaking of God's new people, Paul draws attention to what actually makes them a new people living in the Kingdom: salvation (vv. 8–9). For the apostle, however, salvation is not a momentary act but a process which begins at conversion and will be completed when the Kingdom is revealed to the world in all its fullness (vv. 4–7). Evidently, in Paul's view, salvation entails not only conversion but also the new life that begins for converts immediately afterward. Conversion itself means a transition from living by the laws of a world not yet transfigured, under the dominion of forces opposing God (vv. 1–3), to the life of the Kingdom, where different laws operate (vv. 4–6). But this transition is only the beginning. A new stage follows, involving not simply the converts' presence in the Kingdom, but also their participation in the process through which the Kingdom unfolds in all its fullness—a process whose completion is expected only at the end of time, with the Savior's return (v. 7).

Paul pays particular attention to the fact that human beings cannot influence this process by human effort alone. He specifically stresses that salvation in all its aspects is God's gift, possible only by grace, that is, through God's direct action (vv. 8–10). In speaking of “works,” the apostle evidently means what he sometimes calls “works of the Torah,” or “works of the Law,” in his other letters. In Paul's time, this was the name for what we would today call religious duties. For a religious person, fulfilling those duties is always a matter of primary importance. This is unsurprising, since such a person connects their destiny, in life or after death, with fulfilling them. Paul, however, explicitly emphasizes that salvation from sin and attainment of the Kingdom are impossible within the traditional religious paradigm, as philosophers sometimes call it.

Fulfilling religious duties brings no one closer to the Kingdom and takes no one farther from it. Religious duties do not obstruct salvation, but they are useless for attaining it. Thus anyone who decides to rely on religion, hoping it will help them attain the Kingdom and salvation, may ultimately find themselves empty-handed. The apostle therefore considers it necessary to warn religious people against an error that may cost them their salvation.

Continuing his discussion of God's new people, Paul defines them as the “body of Christ” (v. 23). In saying this, the apostle undoubtedly drew on the view traditional in his time that the Jewish people were a single spiritual body, united by God through the Temple sacrifices and the Torah. For Paul, it is clear that God's new people become a single spiritual body through their unity with the risen Christ, who bears within Himself the fullness of the Kingdom's life, made accessible through Him to each of His followers. The apostle understands very well that the very same power of God which restored to life the Messiah who died on the cross is truly at work in every Christian (vv. 19–20). It is the presence of this power that makes a Christian a Christian in the original sense of the word: an inhabitant of the Kingdom whose nearness the Savior proclaimed during His earthly ministry.

Evidently, for Paul the very nature of the Kingdom is bound up with this power. It is certainly no accident that he mentions the breath of God, through which the faithful gain wisdom and receive revelation (vv. 17–18). This is the same breath of God that pervades the Kingdom. It can evidently sometimes reveal itself to one seeking the Kingdom as a power that changes the person and transfigures human nature itself, making it fit, once transfigured, for life in the Kingdom. But power apparently remains power only as long as the seeker looks at the Kingdom from outside. To those still outside the Kingdom, Christ's resurrection must have appeared precisely as an act of God's power, of which it was the result. For those who have already entered the Kingdom and see the same events from within, power becomes God's breath. It not only envelops a person from outside but also penetrates within, becoming an inseparable part of that person's own human nature to the extent that it has already been transfigured. Thus the life of the Kingdom enters the human heart, and the person becomes an inhabitant of the Kingdom.

Paul calls the Church the body of Christ, defining it as "the fullness of the one who fills all in all." Here, as can be seen, he follows traditional Jewish ideas about the people of God as one spiritual whole, as though one body, which was sanctified as one whole through the worship services that regularly took place in the Jerusalem Temple until its destruction in AD 70.

It was precisely because of this sanctification of the people as one whole that even those believing Jews who could not get to Jerusalem for a feast, for example for Pesach or Shavuot, did not feel cut off from God or from their community. They gathered where they lived, in the synagogues of the diaspora, and celebrated together with those who were then in Jerusalem. Paul applies this view to the Church, with the difference that it is sanctified by the presence of the Messiah himself, risen from the dead and abiding at the throne of God.

Of course, the Church is the space of the Kingdom abiding in our world as it is being transformed, though it has not yet been transformed completely. But it is also the space of Christ himself, the space of his personal presence. Certainly, God's presence had been known to the Jewish people before. God revealed himself to them already when the Torah was given at Sinai, revealing himself so that he would no longer be hidden, and his presence accompanied the people throughout their history.

But now the space of those relationships that bind Christ with his heavenly Father has been added to the spiritual space of this presence. The Kingdom unfolds within these relationships; it is revealed in them and through them. Their fullness is what fills "all in all." And Christianity means being included in this fullness of relationship between the Father and the Son. This kind of inclusion can be called true incorporation into the Church in the proper sense of the word, while everything else in church life is only a means for solving this main task. That is, if we are speaking precisely about the Church with a capital C.

If we read the apostle Paul's words carefully, we discover something strange. Paul says that the Church is not simply Christ's Body—an image familiar to us—but His fullness! He who fills all in all, the source of every fullness, willed that the Church should become necessary to Him, that it should become His fullness. In other words, the Lord loved the Church so much that, without it, He Himself would, as it were, lose His fullness: out of love He made Himself dependent on human beings.

What does this dependence consist in? In the fact that, after the Ascension, Jesus' bodily presence on earth—that is, His fullness, since He is truly human and would be incomplete without a body—is realized only through the Church. This concerns, first and foremost, the sacrament of the Eucharist, in which He is bodily present. But the Church is also His body, and this means that every member of the Church embodies His presence in the world.