In Christ

Most people choke on Ephesians 1:3-14. It’s very dense, and frankly not good writing. People either gloss over it or get bogged down in the precise meaning of the grammar. One of the biggest issues for debate is trying to punctuate the phrases to discern how they flow. Because of this, and because of a general lack of Hebrew mythology, too many people miss the point Paul was making.

As noted in yesterday’s lesson on it, verses 3-6 are about the Father and His eternal perspective on things. His empire is all of Creation, and it includes a range of existence and realms we cannot even imagine. His ambit is the whole of everything He created, and when we talk about Him, the focus is primarily within the context of Eternity and all the things beyond our ken, though we do have tiny mentions of such things here and there.

Verses 7-12 are about His Son. Heiser tells us that in Hebrew mythology, the Son is an aspect of the Father, in the sense that He is His living will, the expression of His own heart. In Hebrew thinking, this is the meaning of “the Word of God” — it’s the expression of His character. Now, the Elohim Council is taken for granted in most Hebrew writing, along with the whole background of their dispute with God about His decision to create humans and to give them an exalted position above the rest of the natural world. At the Tower of Babel, God assigned a nation to each of His Council members, making them satraps, as it were, over realms.

He let them run things to suit themselves (with limitations we cannot comprehend), seizing all the glory they wished from the humans involved. As things turned out, they didn’t play this very well.

Then, He set out to build His own nation by snatching one man out of one of the Council realms: Abraham. He began implementing a covenant with Abraham that worked on a level above mere human activity. He opened for Abraham the faculty of faith that reaches into Eternity. His covenant with Abraham was a spiritual covenant. He promised to give Abraham’s descendants — a select group from just one of his sons — a national covenant.

We know from Galatians that his national covenant was merely a passage for something far greater. The whole point was to mask from the Elohim Council His intentions. Every time you see a reference to God keeping secrets or the mystery of His plan/will, this is what it refers to. God outsmarted and outplayed the opposition members of His Elohim Council. They got distracted attacking the nation of Israel, thinking they had this in the bag. But through that national covenant, He bought for His own will/word — more or less a separate entity in Hebrew mythology — as the ruler of a new empire that was not rooted in any national identity. Human governments, prompted by the elohim, could do nothing about this.

Instead, God had elected a bunch of individuals from every nation on earth. He had them all marked out before He even got into this game, and sprang this surprise on them when Jesus died on the Cross. In their efforts to mess with earthly Israel, they got themselves committed and could not back out when God suddenly snatched members of their various nations without even activating the human political procedures.

Thus, the folks now predestined “in Christ” had a dual identity. Their fleshly lives remained under the various political regimes, but their transcendent spiritual identity took over everything they did.

Then, in verses 13-14, He sealed those Elect by His own Spirit, so that the elohim could not really do anything to them. The elohim were restrained by the protections of a law covenant, but the people were not subject to any such law. Despite all the maneuvering and blinding lies, these humans were granted an eternal identity. The Fall had many effects, but this spiritual seal reversed the critical issue of access to the Tree of Life. We all have a promise to eat from it at the end of this life.

As far as the Elohim Council is concerned, the worst thing about this whole deal was that the human Elect could also claim God’s promises for this world. The Devil and his allies on the Elohim Council can only do their best to keep people from embracing the inheritance of Eternity while here in this world. They can do nothing about the eternal destiny of the Elect.

Thus, the whole battle for the individual humans is to overcome the flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, and start acting according to their spiritual identity as citizens of the empire “in Christ”.