NOTES for Eph 1:3-4

Beginning his letter to the Christians of Ephesus, Paul immediately turns to one of the central themes of Christian life - the theme of the Messiah and the people of God. Speaking of the Church and of Christians, the apostle, as we can see, proceeds from positions well known in the rabbinic tradition of that time, according to which the Messiah and the people of God were conceived by God before the creation of the world. Of course, this did not concern the fate of particular people, which God does not predetermine in advance, but the very fact of the existence of the people of God and the inevitability, with the coming of the Messiah, of the messianic Kingdom. For Paul, the history of the Church as the new people of God is inseparable from the person of the Savior Himself, and the apostle also considers this connection part of God's eternal plan (vv. 3-5).

But Paul understands something else as well: the new people of God is not simply a continuation of the former one, although historically it is connected with it just as the Church is connected with the Yahwist community and with the Synagogue. From the beginning, God conceived this new people as a community of the inhabitants of the Kingdom. But such life requires complete freedom from sin, impossible for fallen humanity. And so Jesus Himself frees those who will become part of His people. Paul speaks of this using the concept of redemption, the redemptive sacrifice, traditional in the Yahwist cultic tradition, which freed the one who had sinned from the consequences of a sin committed unintentionally, that is, under constraint or through ignorance. During the purification sacrifice, the "sin offering," the one who had sinned brought public repentance for the unintentional sin he had committed, being cleansed by the blood of the sacrifice he brought, with which the priest sprinkled him.

For Christians, however, Jesus Himself is the purifying sacrifice: by the price of His life, His "blood," He opens for His followers the path to freedom from the power of any sin, not only an unintentional one, but even one committed consciously (vv. 7-10). The analogy is obvious: in both cases God Himself cleanses the one who has sinned, joining the sinner to His life through the revelation of His presence in the world. But the measure of the fullness of this presence is different: earlier it was revealed to a person only in part; now, after Christ's coming into the world, it has been manifested in all fullness. Therefore the cleansing, previously incomplete and relative, now becomes complete and absolute, freeing the one being cleansed from sin and opening to him the path into the Kingdom.

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.