The Ecclesiology of Ephesians, Part 3: Eph 3:1–21

Paul uses a number of metaphors in Ephesians to describe the inexhaustible riches of the profound relationship between Christ and his church:

Christ is the Head, and the church is his body.
Christ is the second Adam, and the church is the new man, the new humanity.
Christ is the Husband, and the church is his Bride.

The metaphor I want to draw you attention to at this point briefly, before we move on to examine chapter 3, is that in 2:17-22, Paul asserts that Christ is the foundation Stone, and the church is the spiritual temple.

The most important thing to know about the church is that it is built on the foundation Stone of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 2:4-10.

The metaphor of the cornerstone is a reference to the ancient construction practice of laying a massive cornerstone or guidestone first before anything else. This stone was crucial because it determined the shape and orientation of the entire building. The walls would be set in line with the cornerstone which established the basic setting to which all the other stones must conform. Christ is the vital cornerstone on whom the whole building is constructed. The position of all the other stones in the superstructure is determined by Christ. As new stones and walls and structures are gradually added the building grows out from him along the line and pattern which he has established once for all. The founding revelation given in Christ is merely being elaborated upon by the apostles and those who come after them to continue their work. All must be built on Christ, supported by Christ, conformed to Christ.

Jesus Christ is now building his church by means of the preaching of the gospel. As a result, the temple is being built, not of physical materials, but of the redeemed. As Peter says, the church is being built of “living stones” upon Christ who is the Stone. Through the fellowship of the body, mutual edification, and the means of grace, it grows into a holy temple to be the eternal dwelling place of God.

The temple of stone and gold that Solomon built and which was rebuilt by Zerubbabel and predicted by Ezekiel is only a type and shadow. Jesus Christ and the church which is being built upon him is the reality, the substance. The teaching of dispensationalism that expects the literal temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem is a backward movement in redemptive history. Once the substance has come, the shadows are done away.

Dispensationalists object: “That’s allegory! You’re spiritualizing the Bible away!” But this objection betrays a rather low view of the church. The church as temple is not a mere metaphor. It is as real as Jesus Christ himself and the individual believers that make up that temple. And the creation of this very real temple, made of Christ and his living stones, is the very thing that God has been aiming at all along in all that he has been doing from creation to the present time.

It is to this vast and glorious subject that we now turn. What was God’s eternal purpose?

Ephesians 3

We saw last week that the church relates to the old covenant people of God only through the cross of Christ, and that this means that there is both continuity and discontinuity between Israel and the church. Continuity, because Christ’s cross and resurrection constituted the climax of the covenant and the bringing to completion of God’s purposes for Israel. Discontinuity, because Christ did this by fulfilling the Torah and thus by rendering it inoperative as the community-shaping and community-defining reality. This is now found in Christ. And therefore the church’s identity is now shaped by its union with Christ.

In Ephesians 3, Paul takes this whole redemptive historical perspective on step further. He has located the church within the history of God’s purposes for Israel. Now Paul widens the field of vision and locates that whole history within the ultimate plan of God for creation. In so doing, he returns to a theme that he began in chapter 1, namely, the fact that God’s ultimate purpose, hidden in the divine counsel, has from the very beginning been to glorify himself through Jesus Christ.

The church is the way in which the manifold wisdom of God, the wonder of God’s eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ (v. 11), is displayed to the cosmic rulers. Paul seems to be teaching that from the very beginning, God intended the creation to be the vast theater in which to display the glory of his grace in Jesus Christ. The fall was no accident, in response to which God had to come up with a remedy in order to fix what appeared to be the total ruin of his original plan. The fall was intended by God in the mystery of his sovereign decree, in order to set the stage for the incarnation of Christ and the summation of all things, both the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in him (1:10). Christ is the one in whom all things have meaning: creation, fall, the progressive unfolding of God’s covenants with Abraham and Israel - all of it has now reached its climactic goal in Christ. God from the very beginning wished to exalt his great glory and wisdom in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Now this raises an important theological question. It is one of those big questions that has the ability to overwhelm our finite minds. But it is one that the text itself raises. The question is: Why did God create the world? The obvious answer is “for his own glory.” But can we go further and ask how this relates to his purpose of redemption in Christ?

This gets to the heart of the debate between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism. This is an intramural discussion among Reformed theologians that goes back to the days of the Reformation. The debate is over two different views of the order of the decrees.

Now we need to be careful here. God’s decree is ultimately the one eternal purpose of his sovereign will concerning all things that shall come to pass. This means that technically, it is incorrect to speak of “the order of the decrees” or even to speak of “decrees” in the plural. Nevertheless, we as finite creatures have no other way of speaking. In the past some Reformed theologians have forgotten that our language here is highly analogical and therefore inadequate to deal with such divine mysteries. Keeping this in mind should help us to remember that each side of the debate may be grasping some element of the truth, and so neither side is able to say with certainty that their view is absolutely correct.

Supra

To glorify his grace in the eternal salvation of the elect and to glorify his justice in the eternal destruction of the non-elect.

To create these two groups, elect and non-elect.

To permit the fall.

To accomplish the salvation of the elect and to condemn the non-elect to eternal punishment.

The supralapsarian view is attractive because it presents God as a rational and logical being, who determines what is his ultimate goal, and then works backward to implement each step in the accomplishment of that goal. God’s ultimate goal is to glorify his attributes, to glorify his grace by saving the elect and to glorify his justice by judging the reprobate.

The problem with this view is that it presents election and reprobation as if they were perfectly symmetrical. This seems to suggest, if not demand, that God wanted to have some of both, some elect people and some reprobate people. The decrees to create and to permit the fall are then seen as merely means to that end. The reprobate then were created solely for the purpose of being consigned to eternal hell in order to display God’s perfect justice.

But that does not seem to be the way the Scripture speaks. The infralapsarian position seems more faithful to the Biblical picture of election as God’s choosing certain sinners to be saved.

Infra

To create man in holiness and uprightness.

To permit the fall.

To choose out of the fallen mass of humanity those who will be saved and to pass by the rest.

To accomplish the salvation of the elect and to condemn the non-elect to the eternal punishment that they justly deserve on account of their sin.

Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31.

The Bible presents God as choosing the recipients of his grace from among the mass of fallen and sinful humanity.

The non-elect, contrary to supralapsarianism, were not created solely for the purpose of being condemned to hell. They are the fallen sons of Adam whom God passed by and determined to leave in their sin, in order that they might then be condemned to an eternal punishment that they rightly deserve because of their sinful rebellion against God. Election and reprobation are asymmetrical. Election is absolutely unconditional and depends solely on the undeserved good pleasure of God. Reprobation, however, is a determination to leave non-elect sinners to their justly deserved end.

This is why I favor the infralapsarian view. Nevertheless, there is something to the supralapsarian view. Although it is misguided in its attempt to achieve perfect symmetry and rational coherence, nevertheless, it has one thing in its favor. Whereas the infralapsarian view presents redemption as subordinate to creation, the supralapsarian view presents creation as subordinate to redemption. Infralapsarianism basically infers the order of the decrees by modeling them on the historical sequence of creation, fall, and redemption.

But no infralapsarian would want to be interpreted as saying that the fall caught God off-guard, as it were, thus requiring him to come up redemption as a stop-gap. The infralapsarian, if he is a good Calvinist, will agree that the fall was not an accident. It was decreed by God. God was not the author of Adam’s sin, but he nevertheless determined to permit it, and that not in a bare, hands-off manner, but in such a way as to ensure that Adam would disobey God of his own free will.

Note: We are dealing with a profound mystery here, but the Bible teaches that in some mysterious way his decree to permit the fall was infallibly executed by means of Adam’s own voluntary act of sin. Divine sovereignty over sin and human responsibility for sin are both true, even if our finite minds can’t grasp the apparent contradiction.

Well, if this is true, if it is true that God infallibly decreed to permit the fall, then he did so for a reason. And every child of God knows what that reason was. God permitted the fall in order to set the necessary backdrop for redemption. God wanted Adam to fall in order to magnify the glory of his grace in Jesus Christ. Recall the thrice repeated refrain in the opening benediction of Ephesians 1: “to the praise of the glory of his grace” (vv. 6, 12, 14).

If God decreed the fall to magnify the glory of his grace, and if God knew that Adam would fall from the very outset, then was not God’s decree to create also with this same Christocentric end in view?

This conclusion is not mere speculation. Paul comes pretty close to saying just that in Ephesians 3:8-11. Robert Reymond, a supralapsarian Reformed theologian, paraphrases this passage as follows: “God created all things in order that he might show forth through the redeemed community, his church, the glory of his wisdom and grace in accordance with his eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, p. 490).

Notice that this great manifestation of God’s glory in and through Jesus Christ is deeply connected with the church, which is his body. “Through the church” God is making known his manifold wisdom to the principalities and the powers. And it is not just the church on earth that constitutes this divine manifestation. Ultimately, the corporate existence and fellowship of Christ and the church for eternity in heaven will be the grand demonstration of God’s infinite wisdom, grace, and glory.

The closing doxology in verses 20-21 reiterates this point: “… to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.” Why both church and Christ mentioned? Because Paul is referring to the Head-body organism that is the product of the union of Christ and his church (1 Corinthians 12:12). The mystery of the one-flesh union of Christ and the church is what will bring glory to God as the eternal ages roll on and on stretching out over the infinite vista of eternity.

We saw earlier at the end of chatper 2 that the church is God’s spiritual temple, but it is also a living organism. It is “growing” into a holy temple in the Lord. This suggests a certain degree of overlap with the other metaphors of the church, specifically the metaphor of the Head and the Body, and the metaphor of the second Adam and the new man. What Paul is trying to show is that the foundation and the superstructure that is being built on the foundation are organically one. Just as the Head and the Body are organically one, thus producing a unified, organic whole which is not just Christ and not just the church, but Christ and his church, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Why is this important to point out? Because it means that the temple where God dwells and is eternally glorified, is not just the church, nor is it just Christ, but Christ-and-his-church. God has chosen to make this Christ-church his permanent dwelling place (that is the meaning of “dwelling” at the end of v. 22).

Christ and the church cannot be separated. They complement one another. Christ cannot exist without his church. The church cannot exist without Christ. What an amazing statement! The church is Christ’s spouse, his partner whom we cannot imagine Christ without. God’s glory is seen not merely in Christ alone. Nor is it seen merely in the salvation of the innumerable company of the elect as an aggregate. God’s glory is seen and made known specifically in the corporate entity called “the church which is Christ’s body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (1:23). The term “fullness” implies completeness. Christ is incomplete without his body. The body is the fullness, the completion, the full complement without which Christ would not be the cosmic Head in whom all of creation is summed up (1:10).

Application

Shorter Catechism question # 1 can be rephrased and applied to the church. “What is the chief end of the church? The church’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Both are essential: to glorify God and to enjoy him. Both of these activities are but different aspects of the same thing. You can see this by considering temple worship in the old covenant temple. Israel drew near to God to offer sacrifices in the temple, thus consecrating herself to the glory of God. And God drew to Israel to meet with and fellowship with his people, thus giving himself to them to be enjoyed.

Let us make sure that all that we do as a church is directed to this ultimate priority of being the place where we draw near to God to glorify him and God draws near to us to give himself to us for our enjoyment. The two things are inseparable. For the way in which we most enjoy God is when we know ourselves to be purchased by the blood of his Son and so constituted as his treasured possession, unto the praise of the glory of his grace.

If worship is so important, if it is the thing that we will be doing forever in heaven, then we ought to take it seriously now. Our worship services every Sunday are an infinitesimally small foretaste of what heaven will be like.

Furthermore, if the worship of heaven is going to be centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ, then so should the worship of the church on earth. If the four living creatures, and the 24 elders, and the myriads of angels in heaven are worshipping the Lamb who sits at the center of heaven on the throne of God (that’s what the book of Revelation tells us), then the focal point of our worship here below ought to reflect the same Christocentric focal point of the worship above.

This is not to say that the other two persons of the Godhead are obscured or unimportant. The Father and the Spirit in fact are mentioned in 2:22. The church, which is built on the foundation of Jesus Christ - in other words, the Christ-church that we mentioned - is the location where God wants to dwell forever by his Spirit. The triune Godhead has chosen to identify himself permanently with this spiritual temple. There is no other place where God will be found or where God will dwell. He will dwell forever in and with this glorious spiritual temple which is nothing less than the indissoluble, organic bond that arises out of the oneness of Christ and his church. Thus, there is not need to pit being Christocentric against being theocentric. We are most theocentric when we are most Christocentric. God the Father wants to dwell, by means of his Spirit, in this very place, this temple that is not only built upon Christ, but which is so organically united to Christ that is nothing less than the extension and fullness of Christ.

“So that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7).

“The inexhaustible riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8).

The reason that heaven will be so enjoyable is that we will never grow weary of singing the praises of Jesus Christ our redeemer, thus magnifying the inexhaustible riches of God’s infinite wisdom and grace.