Founding the Christian Regime

Paul the Apostle: The Epistle to the Ephesians.

John Stott: Ephesians: Building a Community in Christ. Notthingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998.

 

Throughout the Bible, God founds regimes for His people—beginning with the simple regime of the Garden of Eden, which Adam rules as His vicegerent. The Bible also looks forward to a final regime for human beings, to be founded after the coming of the Messiah. Between the regime of Eden and the final regime, there have been several regimes, including both a republican and a monarchic regime for the ancient Israelites. There have also been several forms of ‘states,’ that is, communities vastly differing in size and centralization of authority—again ranging from tiny Eden to the Israelite empire at its peak.

The universal character of the Christian ‘state’ also required a new kind of regime. If God no longer legislated primarily for a particular people, giving them a fully articulated regime while leaving the other nations, the ‘Gentiles,’ to their own political devices, what would this new regime look like? And if God did not intend to rule the world’s nations directly until the advent of the Messiah—if there was to be no legitimate ‘world government’ until then—how could the new regime advance throughout the nations? Would rulers and peoples of existing nations not regard the new founding with considerable suspicion?

Saul of Tarsus’ spiritedness, his zeal in persecuting Christians, found itself redirected toward the founding and perpetuation of this new regime after his now-famous conversion on the road to Damascus. The Christian ecclesia or assembly, the Christian church, would be the institutional or formal element of the Christian regime, a regime ruled by God according to the purposes revealed in the Old and New Testaments. The Jewish community would continue to find authoritative guidance in the substantial body of law delivered through Moses in the Pentateuch. Paul addressed that community in his Epistle to the Hebrews. His main efforts concerned the Gentiles, peoples living under the rule of human laws and worshipping a variety of ‘gods,’ many of them declared enemies of the God of the Bible since the earliest days of Israel and indeed before that, when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt.

Located on the coast of Ionia, now a province in Turkey, Ephesus had been a Greek colony, its patron goddess Artemis. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was one of the ‘Seven Wonders’ of the ancient world. The empires of Lydia, Persia, Macedonia, and the Seleucids ruled Ephesus before the Romans seized it in 129 BC. The emperor Augustus made it the capital of the Roman colony in Asia Minor. As a cosmopolitan and commercial city, a port city, it proved fairly open to Christian evangelism; Paul had lived there between 52 and 54 AD. However, its still-vigorous cultic societies were well-known for their practice of sorcery, so while Ephesus afforded Christian founders a degree of tolerance, they would also find determined enemies there. 

By 62 AD, Paul was imprisoned in Rome. The salutation of his letter to the Ephesian Christians identifies who he is, what he is, and the source of the authority which entitles him to address them as their ruler: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (1:1) He also identifies his addressees: “the saints which are at Ephesus” and “the faithful in Jesus Christ.” Some interpreters claim that “saints” refers to Jewish converts, “the faithful” to Gentile converts; others claim that the distinction suggests that Paul addresses both the Christians at Ephesus immediately and Christians everywhere, wherever the letter may eventually circulate. Paul might also be suggesting the following nuance: “saints” emphasizes the fact that they are Christians in a place, a place with a regime foreign to the Christian regime, a place also limited in territory in a way the Christian state is not; “the faithful” emphasizes their own regime and state, ruled as they are by the universal God.

Paul offers a triple blessing. “Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual [pneumatikos] blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (1:2-3). This reciprocal blessing proceeds from God and His Son through Paul to the Ephesians, then from Paul back to God the Father and to Lord Jesus Christ—that is, from one who is ruled to his Ruler(s)—and finally to the blessing from Christ to both Paul and the Ephesians. These blessings have the effect of showing the bonds that unite Christians to Christ and to His Father, while simultaneously showing that these bonds are invisible, spiritual, in Heaven not on earth, even as both Paul and the Ephesians now live on earth, one of them literally imprisoned on it. For Christians, members of a new kind of regime and a new kind of empire, physical bonds matter less than spiritual bonds.

What is the character of these spiritual bonds? Christ has “chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy”—separate from other regimes—”and without blame”—innocent of wrongdoing—and “before him in love [agape]” (1:4). The Ruler of the regime chose His subjects, not the other way around, from the other peoples ruling themselves in other regimes, to be law-abiding or blameless not only out of fear—the binding sentiment of most regimes, and one them in this—but out of the specific kind of love Christianity brings to prominence. Agapic love seeks not the possession of the beloved but his good, his perfection. As Paul elsewhere is never shy to remark, the radical defects of human beings make them impossible to perfect without divine power, manifested in the divine graciousness animated by that love.

At the same time, Christians also seek to serve their Ruler’s good. God has “predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (1.5-6). Here the image of the ruling body shifts from the regime of a political community to the regime of a family—far more intimate. Jesus is God’s Son; we Christians are Jesus’ adopted children. This puts His children under an obligation of gratitude; God deserves the praise of His glory precisely because He has adopted us, done something indispensable for the achievement of our good. 

Through the centuries, most Christians have taken the strong language of God’s choosing of His people “from the foundation of the world,” His predestination of them, to mean that He has predetermined who will become a Christian, a ‘saved’ human being, even before human beings were created. Supplementing this is the argument that if God foreknows all events they are ‘as good as’ predestined. The question turns on the weight the interpretation gives to the word ‘predestinated.’ If Christians were predestined by God to become Christians, regardless of their own will, agency, intention, then God’s intention is mysterious. Why did He select these people and not those—especially since His grace demonstrably has no correlation with the discernible virtues of the individuals chosen, as distinguished from those not chosen? If, however, ‘predestination’ means instead that God wants all of his human creatures to join Him in His regime but leaves them free to choose whether they do join—if He leaves room for human consent—then their praise for the glory of His grace becomes a moral obligation, a matter of consent, and also more of a genuine good God’s creatures can bestow upon God.

What is clear is the foundation of human gratitude to Christ. He redeemed them “through his blood,” through the sacrifice of His life, obtaining forgiveness for otherwise-indelible sins against the Father from the Father. In Christ “we have redemption”; that is, we are ransomed from slavery to the harsh non-Christian regimes, all of them condemned by God the Father as contradictory to His laws, His way of life. This is more than liberation alone. “The riches of his grace” preeminently amount to “wisdom and prudence,” sophia and phronēsis (1:8).The knowledge of Being, which philosophers seek, theoretical knowledge, and the knowledge all men, but especially political men, seek, the knowledge of practical affairs, of ‘what to do’ in the shifting circumstances of life in this world, both require divine assistance. But, as in the case of ‘free will’ or consent to God’s rule, interpreters have varied regarding the part human ‘agency’ plays. Does God simply lead men to their theoretical and practical discoveries? Or does he grant a certain ‘space’ for their own efforts? However this may be, obedience to God’s regime in His empire evidently heightens both theoretical and practical intelligence. As the Word of God, the Bible makes you smarter.

In what way has God added to, or simply provided, the discoveries of these two kinds of wisdom? He has “made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed to himself” (1:9). That is, He has revealed to us certain matters that we could never discover on our own, and has done so for His own purposes, dependent as He is on no one. The good God seeks from us—indeed commands from us—is our just gratitude for the gifts of life, liberation, and wisdom. Our gratitude pleases Him without making Him in any way dependent upon us. His regime is not ‘political’ in Aristotle’s sense of politics as reciprocity of ruling and being-ruled. God rules but is not ruled in turn. His regime is what Aristotle calls kingship: the rule of one over the many, for the sake of the good of the many, as distinguished from tyranny, the rule of the one over the many for the sake of the one. The good rule of the one over the many may also serve the good of the one, and the bad rule of the one over the many may surely be bad for the one, even if he supposes it good. In that sense there is reciprocity of goods if not of rule. But in the case of divine as distinguished from human rule, the good of the One entails a humble, just duty of the many to the One; the One doesn’t need that offering, being capable of ‘happiness’ without any such homage, any such subjects, at all.

God’s founding of His regime has yet to be completed. In “the fullness of times” he will “gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ” (1:10-12). The regime of God in its future perfection will encompass all of His creation; the adopted children within His family will receive membership in this regime even as children of a human father receive their inheritance of property from him. The twelfth verse, central to the first ‘chapter’ of Paul’s epistle, repeats the purpose of this regime insofar as human beings contribute to it—the praise of God’s glory—and the terms in which it is permissible to offer it—as beings who have trusted in, have had faith in, Christ as their sacrificial redeemer. Underlining the dependence of human beings on God, and the independence of God on human beings, the subjects are to praise God’s glory; God’s glory exists whether or not they praise it, God having been glorious whether human beings existed or not.

To enter God’s regime, one must first trust Christ—consent to His rule—then hear “the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation” (1:13). After believing it, you then receive the royal seal, the “Holy Spirit of promise,” which is the “earnest” or guarantee of the family inheritance “until the redemption of the purchased possession” (1:14). Having acknowledged the Ephesians’ membership in the regime, Paul thanks them and tells them that he prays that the Father will “give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” in three ways: knowledge of “the hope of his calling”; what “the riches of the glory of his inheritance” are; and “what is the exceeding greatness of his power” toward all those under His regime (1:17-19). These powers were manifested in His raising of Christ “from the dead” and His setting of Christ “at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (1:20). That is, God’s power is so great that it can not only reverse death but it can raise His Son beyond the reach of the regime that killed Him, and indeed “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come” (1:21). The spiritual, Christian regime is indeed enforced, not by human rulers but by God.

The Father has set His Son at His right hand—that is, the hand of strength—so as to give him authority over “all things in the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (1:22-23). Although the Roman regime had broken Christ’s body on the Cross, the Church is His new ‘body,’ of which He is the “head” (1:22). Political communities or states, families, and bodies all have regimes—the latter still suggested by our term ‘regimen,’ a plan of diet and exercise.

The first ‘chapter’ of the epistle thus describes a regime with a ruling body compared initially to a family, then to a physical body. The regime consists of a father and a son ruling their subjects, children, or members. The unique character of these rulers is their holiness, their separation from and superiority to all ordinary families, all ordinary bodies now alive on earth. The purpose of the regime is wisdom and prudence, knowledge of both ‘being’ and of practice. Since a fully-articulated regime also consists of forms of rule—the ruling structures or institutions—and a way of life, readers may expect or at least hope for an account of those things.

Just as the rulers of the Christian regime are holy, so the subjects are also set apart. Christ has “quickened,” made living, his subjects; you “who were dead in trespasses and sins,” walking “according to the course of this world”—its way of life, its regime— according to “the prince of the powers of the air,” who rules “the children of disobedience” in all other regimes, has in effect done for you what His Father did for Him: raised you to life out of a spiritual death (2:1-2). The way of life of the prince of the powers of the air leads to death; that way is disobedience to the way of life of God. Since the subjects of God’s regime within the city of Ephesus manifestly remain physically alive, this new life must be spiritual. Paul emphasizes this by calling the non-Christian regime one guided by “the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind”; to live in that way is to live the way of beings who “were by nature the children of wrath” (2:3). This is why he compares the Church to a body; the natural body and the natural mind love ‘erotically,’ aiming at possessing those things that the body and the mind crave by their nature. Lives lived according to erotic love consist of ways of life that resist God’s way of life. 

“But God, who is rich in mercy,” loves not erotically (there is nothing he needs, nothing he yearns to possess) but agapically (2:4); in justice, He could leave us in the way of life we have chosen, but by his grace He has chosen to save us from our own way of life, inviting us back into His regime. He has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (2:5). His purpose in raising us above the natural regime of the human body and mind is to show us “the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (2:7). Beyond the riches He has already bestowed upon His people in ‘this’ life, He will give them still more after their bodies die. Among these gifts will be companionship with his Son, rather as family members keep company with one another.

Paul makes it clear that Christians’ newfound, elevated status was strictly “the gift of God,” having nothing to do with our own efforts (2:8)—which are ruled by the prince of the powers of the air, through natural eros. Human nature has been misdirected, but as “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in,” that nature has now been redirected, placed into a new regime entailing a new way of life, this one marked out by God and involving works that are good, no longer misdirected.

Gentiles are uncircumcised, unmarked by the physical practice that symbolizes membership in God’s regime, Israel. Without Christ, you were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (2:11). But thanks to a different shedding of blood—not of your own blood, by circumcision, but of Christ’s blood, by crucifixion—you have become members of His body, His family, under His regime. Christ shed physical blood, sacrificing the life which blood supports and symbolizes, in the world He created. When His Father raised Him to life at His right hand in Heaven, both Father and Son revealed a life beyond physical life in this world. But that better life can only come through obedience to God’s regime, as His Son demonstrated in the Garden of Gethsemane by determining to obey His Father’s command to submit to crucifixion for the sake of the human beings He had created.

In this way God is “our peace,” having made Jew and Gentile “both one,” breaking down “the wall of partition between us, “abolish[ing] in his flesh,” on the Cross, “the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; or to make in himself of twain one new man,” like Saul himself, a man at peace with himself (2:14-15). This new man, neither Jew nor Gentile, has also reconciled with God, being now “in one body by the cross” (2:16). By allowing His human body to be destroyed, Christ showed the way toward rejecting the erotic love of misdirected human nature by replacing that love with self-sacrificing and humble agapic love. Erotic love is the way of “wrath” in the sense that it aims at possession, aiming at what I want to be mine and not thine, which must lead to conflict, to war over who gets what he wants and who is left empty-handed. But if through Christ “we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father,” then we have no more cause for conflict (2:18). This is how Jesus “preached peace” (2:17), how His regime brings the union all regimes aim at but none other can deliver, misdirected as all of them are.

“Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners; but fellow citizens with the saints; and of the household of God” (2:19). Here the metaphor shifts. Not only are we members of one body, children of one family, but also citizens of one house, the “foundation” of which is “the apostles and prophets” (again, both Jews and Gentiles) and the “chief cornerstone” of which is Jesus Christ (2:20). The cornerstone ensures that the foundation is square; a square foundation is a stable foundation for the house. The house upon which the foundation is being built, consisting of the citizens God has chosen is “a holy temple” (2:21)—a new temple to replace the one in Jerusalem. You are “builded together” as a “habitation of God through the Spirit” (2:22); you, the Church or assembly of God’s people, are the new house of God, the new ‘body politic’ not insofar as you are of flesh, whether living flesh marked by circumcision or the solid and stolid ‘flesh’ of a stone temple, but a meta-physical, beyond-physical, house designed by God according to his architectural plan. Like a body or a family, a building has a ‘regime’: a ruler or owner; a structure designed by the architect; a ‘way of life’ determined by the owner but also partly determined by the structure; and a purpose or set of purposes such as shelter and comfort for its ‘citizens’ or residents.

Paul’s body now lives not in a physical temple but in a Roman prison. Although an outlaw in the eyes of the Roman regime, I am not, he writes, so much the Romans’ prisoner as “the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles”; the “cause” or reason I am so imprisoned is to be a sacrifice, a sacrifice parallel to if not equal to that of Jesus, a sacrifice of the body in the service of the Spirit (3:1). In prison I can write this letter disclosing the “revelation [Jesus Christ] made known unto me” regarding the “mystery of Christ” (3:4). In previous times this mystery “was not made known unto the sons of men” (3:5). The revelation to Paul, a Jew, was that the Gentiles he had been persecuted “should be fellow heirs” to God’s inheritance (3:6). “I was made minister,” thanks to God’s grace, grace given “by the effectual working of his power” (3:7). Paul was given a ruling office in God’s regime. Just as ‘ministers’ in an ordinary political regime on earth execute the intentions of the ruler, the sovereign, so Paul has been selected to execute the intentions of God. To the question, ‘Who died and left you in charge?’ Paul answers, ‘Jesus died and left me, among others, in charge as His designated ‘representatives’ as executors of his Word. Paul’s physical weakness, his incarceration, serves to highlight his spiritual authority.

In addition to his office as God’s minister, Paul is also a preacher of that Word, God’s spokesman. “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (3:8). Why “the least”? Perhaps because he had been a persecutor of Christians: Paul does not say. What he does say is the purpose of his ministry and of his preaching: “To make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ” (3:9)—the last a fact not made known in God the Father’s revelations to Moses and his earlier prophets. The intent of Paul’s activities as minister and preacher in God’s regime is to “make known” the “manifold wisdom of God”—wisdom being the virtue most needed in a ruler (3:10). This newly revealed matter, centering on the existence, words, and actions of the Son, must be promulgated, as all legitimate commands are. Paul is a messenger ordained for that purpose, the human promulgator of God’s promulgation to him. This means that the ‘new’ regime is really the original regime; what is new is the revelation that the Son was there all along, that the Father created the world through Him, and that this authorizes him to unite Jew and Gentile in one regime, by this promulgation “unto the principalities and powers” (3:10).

Any subject, and any citizen, will want access to his ruler or rulers. The Father has set down his “eternal purpose,” for which end He made “Christ Jesus our Lord” (3:11). Christians “have boldness and access with confidence” to Jesus through their “faith of him” (3:12). For this reason, Paul’s physical imprisonment, the effect of the power of the Roman regime over him, should not cause the Ephesians to “faint,” to ask ‘Where is God?’—to suppose that the foundations of God’s regime are unsteady, not worthy of confidence and courage (3:13). On the contrary, Paul’s “tribulations” will serve “your glory” (3:13), again in imitation of Christ’s greater sacrifice. Paul prays for them, “bow[ing] my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (3:14). The image of bowing is the image of the bow; the ‘goddess’ of Ephesus was Artemis/Diana, the huntress whose weapon was the bow. She is to be replaced by Christian ‘hunters’ and ‘fishermen,’ spiritual huntsmen and huntswomen. Paul prays that the Father “would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (3:16)—inner strength or power is spiritual not physical, agapic not erotic, the presence of the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit and of His Son in the human soul. Paul further prays that Christian souls, “rooted and grounded in love” (3:17), will comprehend the vast dimensions of God’s regime, no longer restricted to the Israelites but to the nations, the Gentiles, as well; that they will know Christ’s love for them; that they will be “filled with the fullness of God” (3:19). As His new body, family, temple, city, you are His dwelling place, inwardly, in your hearts—that is, in your minds, newly repurposed for the purposes of God’s regime. 

Paul expresses this in a paradox, praying that the Ephesians will know the love of God, “which passeth knowledge” (3:19). This means that they will know that God’s love exists by perceiving it inside themselves, without knowing why God offers it to them. To be filled with the fullness of God is a form of personal knowledge, not ‘abstract’ knowledge, just as one might say he knows a human person without being able to say what his chemical composition or other impersonal characteristics are. 

Not only does God’s knowledge surpass man’s knowledge, His power far exceeds human power, in part because what He can do far exceeds “all that we ask or think” (3:20). Human power is limited in part because human knowledge is limited. The new knowledge available in the ‘new’ regime will enhance the power of human beings in the way Paul shows, by praying to God in the knowledge that He is the Father of our Lord, our ruler. Prayerful appeals to God as Father of our Lord, our Ruler, remain within the bounds of God’s just and gracious regime because they honor the right Person: “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end” (3:21). In all regimes citizens and subjects are expected honor the rulers of their regime; when the rulers are no longer honored, revolution, regime change, may follow. That attitude of honor, along with the criteria for defining what is honorable, limits the uses of the powers they request from their rulers, and also limits the powers the rulers may use in attempting to meet those petitions.

Having established the major premises of his argument in the first half of the epistle, Paul reaches his first conclusion, his first ‘therefore’ clause. “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called” (4:1). Since I am less the prisoner of Rome than the willing “prisoner” of Jesus Christ, having prayed to Him to ask that the Ephesians know Him, he now ‘prays’ to the Ephesians, requesting that they follow the way of life God has established for them in His regime. A prisoner is confined; to walk is to be free; to walk along a given path is to consent to follow the restrictions and draw nearer to the end of that path. The first half of the epistle consists of teaching first principles and praying for their fulfillment among the members of the Church, although to describe Paul’s teaching as the enunciation of principles alone is incomplete and somewhat misleading, as the ‘principles’ include the filling-up, the animation, of human souls with the Holy Spirit, a Person not an abstraction. The second half of the epistle consists of Paul’s exhortation to actions in accordance with those principles.

To follow the way of life of the Christian regime requires four virtues: “lowliness” or humility; “meekness” or gentleness; “longsuffering” or patience; and forbearance “in love” (4:2). Forbearance was originally a legal term meaning abstaining from collecting a debt; here, the forbearance derives not from self-restraint but agape. All of these virtues aim “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:3). If the Church, God’s regime in its this-worldly manifestation, is to survive and prosper, like all bodies, families, buildings, and cities it must have some bond, some ligament, some structural tie to hold it together. Since the Church is first of all a spiritual unity, this bond cannot be sustained ‘automatically,’ like the bonds that sustain bodies and buildings do. A spiritual union requires moral and spiritual bonds—that is, those moral virtues most consistent with the rule of the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father. While the classical virtues of courage, moderation, wisdom, and justice are all esteemed by God and His people, these less natural virtues are the ones that put obedience to God above self-sufficiency or self-rule. They are the virtues that ‘shine’ less, giving glory to the Ruler and conducing to a willingness to abjure self-assertion and work toward the good of the regime as a whole.

There is not one bond of unity but seven. They are: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and “one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (4:6). This follows from the premises of the argument Paul has already cited. The Church body differs from natural bodies, animated by agapic instead of erotic love, by Spirit not ‘flesh,’ aiming at, hoping for, full citizenship in God’s regime. Central to the list is the Ruler of the regime, its “one Lord” (4:5), Jesus Christ—as indeed the matter of ‘who rules’ must be of central importance in any regime. God the Father is at once universal (“Father of all”), superior to (above all members of the regime), pervasive (“through all”), and present within each member (“in you all”). 

But how can God the Father be universal, superior or “above,” pervasive, and present “in” each member of His regime, all at the same time? Universal and superior are manifestly consistent attributes; there is no contradiction in saying that a Being rules everywhere. It is the seeming contradiction between God’s ‘aboveness’ and His pervasiveness and ‘in-ness’ that can cause confusion. God’s pervasiveness evidently refers to the Church as a whole, whereas His ‘in-ness’ refers to each individual member of the Church. How so?

Paul explains that “unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ” (4:7). The Father acts through His Son, who ‘measures out’ God’s grace, giving different gifts or abilities to different persons. The Son is the link or bond between the universal and infinitely superior Father and both human individuals and human organizations. When the Son “ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men” (4:8). Picking up his theme of imprisonment, Paul compares Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb to a liberation from jail, a liberation from the debtors’ prison in which all human beings are confined because they have violated God’s laws, and from which Jesus freely gives those prisoners their own freedom in God’s regime. He even liberated dead men from Hades, having also “descended first into the lower parts of the earth” (4:9). “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things” (4:10). Earth, Hell, the heavens, and Heaven: all the parts of God’s creation have now been ‘filled’ by Christ, used for His purposes. 

What were the gifts Christ gave to human persons? They are the distinct but coordinate gifts needed to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. A prophet of God receives direct revelation from God; a pastor or a teacher doesn’t receive such revelation, and does not need to receive it, having the revelations entrusted to the prophets available to him in the Bible. The purpose of actions in accordance with these various gifts is “the perfecting of the saints,” the “work of the ministry,” and “the edifying of the body of Christ” (4:12). Whereas the perfection of the natural person by natural means is ethics, as seen in the four ‘classical’ virtues, the perfection of the Christian as a citizen of God’s regime requires the four Christian virtues as revealed to those gifted by God in these enumerated ways, and then taught by those ‘gifted’ persons to the Church members both as individuals and as citizens and subjects of the regime.

This teaching will continue “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:13). Just as citizens of earthly regimes emulate the heroes held up by that regime, so the imitatio Christi will remain the task of each Christian. Paul exemplifies this in seeking to free the Ephesians from their earthly ‘prison’ while in Rome’s prison. In imitating the Ruler of the Christian regime, Christians intend to “henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine”—every breeze and every storm directed at them from the prince of the air—”by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (4:14). Philosophy, and especially Socratic philosophy, is the human cure for sophistry and rhetoric; philosophic dialectic is the means by which the philosopher can question sophists and rhetoricians, expose the contradictions in their arguments. Socratic philosophy does not, however, provide definitive answers to the questions, it raises, or at least to all of them. God’s revelation does provide answers to many of those questions, although the revelation is always partial, with God reserving some mysteries for Himself.

“Speaking the truth in love,” Christians “may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ”—from whom “the whole body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in that measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (4:15-16). The Christian regime, like all regimes, seeks to educate its citizens. It does so, however, not only for the sake of the rulers, for the sake of their glory, but in agapic love—for the sake of the ruled. Paul here has recourse to his metaphor of the Church as a body, the most tightly organized of the several entities to which he compares the Church. Agape edifies or strengthens the body, builds it up, and at the same time does so justly, in right measure, as the head of a natural body animates and directs the inferior members. 

This leads Paul to his second conclusion, his second “therefore” clause. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind” (4:17). Through His apostle, the head of the Church ‘body’ directs its members onto the way of life of the regime of God, and away from the regimes of other nations insofar as they depart from God’s regime. In its vanity or futility, the natural human mind (in fact unnatural, not in accordance with God’s original intention for it) leads all other regimes to some extent into wrong ways of life. Under those regimes, their “understanding [is] darkened,” “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (4:18). They are blind, alienated, and ignorant because they are animated by the wrong love, erotic or possessive love.

This leaves room for acknowledging that some regimes lead citizens and subjects in worse ways than others do, depending upon how much their ways intersect with Christian ways. Paul’s teaching also explains why he, and many other Christians, wind up in prison, or on other forms of the Cross. Christians live in the regimes of man, ‘the City of Man,’ while reserving their final allegiance to the regime, the City, of God. This may provoke the wrath of the regimes of men in which they live, which quite often dislike competition over the question of who rules and who does not rule. Christians live in the City of Man, but the City of God lives in them. That conflict will remain as long as the earth is not yet the new earth, under the rule of Jesus Christ.

As Christians, human beings who now acknowledge that “the truth is in Jesus,” men have “put off” the “old man,” who is “corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” of erotic love, and are “renewed in the spirit of your mind,” “put[ting] on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (4:21-24). Without feeling the need for the competition, the wars, resulting from erotic or possessive love, Christians no longer feel the impulse to lie. A Christian can “speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (4:25).

Paul is no utopian. He does not claim that Christians will no longer become angry. Indeed, Jesus Himself became angry on occasion, expelling money changers from the Temple at Jerusalem in one notable instance. There is righteous anger, and there is sinful anger; righteous anger is for the defense of God’s regime, whereas sinful anger serves the ‘lusts’ or erotic love of the one angered. “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” giving no “place to the devil,” the prince of anger. Similarly, given our existing physical nature, we must eat. We must still acquire things, possess things, satisfy bodily eros to some extent. Therefore, “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (4:28). As for the natural mind, “let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers” (4:29). In each case, anger, greed, and the power of speech and reason are not only moderated—let not the sun go down on the first, let one work for bodily things, not steal them, let the mind use speech for truth-telling, not lying—but redirected agapically toward the good of others—indignation at offenses to God, charitable giving of the fruits of labor, Christian witness to partners in conversation.

With the right kind of love, Christians can begin to “put away” bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking, along with “all malice” (4:31). With the right kind of love, Christians can instead “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (4:31). The grace-beyond-justice of God should be reciprocated not toward God, who doesn’t need our grace, but toward one another as citizens of God’s regime. Christian love of God is just gratitude; Christian love of men, whether fellow-Christians or even enemies, is graceful, more than just.

This brings Paul to his third “therefore” clause: “Be you therefore followers of God, as dear as children” (5:1)—children of God, not vacillating children of men. Children of God imitate God, “walk[ing] in agape, as Christ also has loved us” (5:2). Erotic love must not be perverted to fornication, uncleanness, or covetousness, for the sake of the ‘name’ or reputation of the Church, the honor God’s regime ought to merit. The speech of Christians should be centered on their gratitude to God, not “filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting” (5:4). Persons who speak and act in that way, who walk in that way of life, have no “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (5:5). As with speaking, so with listening: “let no man deceive you with vain words” (5:6), words empty as the wind that carries them to your ears. 

If there are citizen-subjects of God’s regime, and also those alien to it, foreigners, how to tell the difference? There are no physical markers; there aren’t even political borders to cross or town walls to protect. This too is a problem of knowledge, a difficulty in discerning truth, separating it from falsehood. The best human beings can do to distinguish “the children of light” from the children of darkness is to observe “the fruit of the Spirit” (5:8-9). The observable actions of men are the most reliable windows into their souls. “The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth”; this is the proof or test of Christian citizenship. Typically, the “unfruitful works of darkness” are hidden from men because they are shameful, but there can be no shame in exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit—and no pride, either, inasmuch as they are the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of our own natural virtues. Evil things are “made manifest by the light”; ‘shining a light on them’ makes them visible. The Spirit is the light, and that light shines forth from its fruits, with neither shame nor pride.

For this reason, Jesus commanded the dead to awaken and arise, “and Christ gave them the light” (5:14). If you awaken you need the light to see the way, and not to stumble over things you otherwise would not see. “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools; but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil,” “understanding what the will of the Lord is” (5:15-17). Unlike the will of a human being, the will of God is by definition wise, inasmuch as God is the ultimate reality; insofar as human beings are given to know the will of the Lord they are wise, enlightened, “filled with the Spirit” (5:18).

In this, Christian unity means both sameness and differentiation: sameness in the sense that all understand the will of the Lord, as given by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, itself delivered to them by God through His prophets; differentiated in that members of God’s regime should speak to themselves “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” in gratitude” (5:19). Each singer brings his own voice. In this Paul sees what Aristotle saw about unity in a sound political regime. Some would-be regime founders, Aristotle writes, attempt to homogenize the many elements of the polis. But this is to reduce “a theme to a single beat.”

Closely related to anger, but in appearance opposite to it, is fear. Just as there is good anger and bad anger, so there is good fear and bad fear. Bad fear is the fear of men. Good fear is fear of the Lord, which the prophets of Israel called the beginning of wisdom. Although Paul emphasizes the obligation of love of God and neighbor over the obligation of fear of God, he never forgets the necessity of fearing God. “Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God” (5:21); “wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord,” because “the husband is the head of the wife”—giving direction to the household—even “as Christ is the head of the church” (5:22-23). Further, as Christ is the savior of the Church, so the husband protects the household. This leads to Paul’s next “therefore,” which is really an argument from analogy: “as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing” (5:24). Those who assume that this spells tyrannical rule of husbands over wives should guess again. Paul writes “as the church is subject unto Christ.” The Church is rightly subject unto Christ because Christ loves the Church not erotically but agapically, and husbands are to follow His standard. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it,” sacrificing his life under torture (5:25). His purpose in so doing was to “sanctify and cleanse” the Church, “washing [it] with the water of the word,” so that “he might present it to himself a glorious church,” a church “holy and without blemish” (5:25-27). “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.” (5:28) This is why a man shall “leave his father and mother,” his flesh and blood, “and shall be joined with unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh” (5:31).

If Paul and Aristotle concur in understanding a sound regime as analogous to a musical harmony, blending many into one, they diverge somewhat in their understanding of marriage. Aristotle regards the family as the foundation of the polis. The husband is the head of the household, but rule over the children and slaves within the household is shared by husband and wife, who rule reciprocally, “ruling and being ruled in turn.” This is the political relationship, strictly speaking. In Paul, the husband rules absolutely, as Christ does His Church, but with the agapic love that seeks the good of the beloved. The closest thing to absolute rule with agapic love in the Aristotelian family is the rule of the parents over their children, a rule that aims at the good of the children. 

Christ’s love of the Church, the Church’s status as “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones,” is “a great mystery” (5:30, 32). Paul doesn’t say why it is mysterious. It may be because the head of the body would usually sacrifice the other members of the body to preserve itself, but Christ is the head of the body of the Church, yet He sacrificed Himself for the sake of His members. The mystery, however, dissolves with His resurrection, his placement at the Father’s right hand; His sacrifice was real, but it issued in His return to rule over His church on earth, from a seat above the heavens. As to husbands still on earth, “let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” (5:33). Do husbands not sometimes go so far as to sacrifice themselves for their wives and children? When they do, they imitate Christ.

This brings Paul to consider the children in the family. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (6:1). This isn’t blind obedience, but obedience in the Lord, who gives light. Honoring your father and mother brings the benefit of living well and long. Just as fathers should be reverenced by their wives, they should be honored by their children, but again with indispensable condition that they do so lovingly, not provoking their “children to wrath”—that is, to the natural, unrighteous anger Paul has already criticized. “Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (6:4). The Lord’s nurture and admonition, opposites in one sense, equally bespeak His agapic love. That love frames and pervades the Christian family, even as it frames and pervades the Christian Church or assembly. 

Regarding the third element of the household, the slaves, they too shall obey their masters “according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ” (6:5). They should obey their masters “not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (6:6). In Aristotle’s household, the husband and wife rule the slaves absolutely, aiming at the good not of the slaves but of themselves. (This is why Aristotle may be said to subtly question the moral foundation of slaveholding.) In Paul, slaves obey masters not insofar as the masters are human—human nature as it exists now is no badge of honor, and no measure of justice—but because in doing service “in good will” they serve Christ, indeed imitate Him (6:7). And they do so “knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free” (6:8). This is the equality of master and slave. In ordinary life under the nations’ regimes, slaves are not citizens. But they are citizen-subjects under God’s regime, a kingdom not a tyranny because the Ruler rules for the good of His people.

What kind of military protection does this regime need? Being a spiritual regime, without physical power on earth, the Church may seem weak. On the contrary, Paul insists. It is strong in the way that it needs to be strong in order to fight the war it must fight. “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” (6:10-11). This strength, this armor, consists first of wisdom, ‘theoretical’ and practical, second of the moral strength to resist temptation. Both wisdom and moral strength are crucially informed by the Holy Spirit, with whose wisdom and strength Christians can “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (6:12), a struggle they must lose, and were losing, without the Holy Spirit. “Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (6:13). As Stott remarks, “A thorough knowledge of the enemy and a healthy respect for his powers are necessary for victory in war” (58). 

Paul’s final set of metaphors consists of the armor and weaponry for the spiritual warrior who defends and advances the spiritual regime. His belt is truth; his breastplate is righteousness; his marching boots are “the gospel of peace”; his shield is faith; his helmet is salvation; his sword is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (6:13-17). The sword of the spirit thus hangs on the truth; righteousness protects his heart; salvation protects his head, which directs the course of the rest of his body. His boots protect his feet, which march in either defensive or offensive operations; since the aim of any war is peace (as Aristotle observes) the Christian war aims at peace, peace on the only terms that can endure, the peace of agapic not erotic love. The shield of faith is “above all” the other accoutrements of battle, as it enables him “to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (6:16). Paul puts the defense of the faith above its advancement, although he was himself perhaps the most effective evangelist the Church has seen; he doesn’t want to extend the range of Christ’s regime at the expense of allowing it to rot from within. Hence his epistles to the several Christian churches.

What action does Christian warfare consist of? Prayer and vigilance: Christians should be “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” —with guidance from God and care for all members of God’s city. What role will Paul play in this war? As God’s ambassador: He shall “open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,” its witness to Gentiles as well as Jews; even in the prison, “I am an ambassador in bonds,” an ambassador who, unlike other ambassadors, stays in one place and speaks not ‘diplomatically’ but “boldly, as I ought to speak” (6:19-20). He is an ambassador who appoints his own ambassador, who is not imprisoned but free to travel to Ephesus, so that “you may know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts” (6:22), showing them how Paul bears witness to the Gospel even as he sits in a jail of the Roman regime. The epistle itself shows that, too.

Paul ends with a blessing. He wishes peace to his brothers in the Christian family. He extends agapic love and faith to them, as well. This peace and this love are from “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (6:23). This peace, and not any peace, is the aim of Christian warfare. To peace and love with faith he adds the wish for the grace of God for all those who “love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity” (6:24). Just as agapic love must be protected by the shield of faith, that love itself must be real, not feigned, in a spiritual regime, a regime not satisfied with mere outward compliance with its laws.

Paul thus contributes to the founding of the Christian regime in Ephesus and, by extension, anywhere. He identifies its Ruler; he describes its way of life; he discusses its purpose. Of the four elements of a regime identified by Aristotle, he takes little note of the regime’s form or structure, its ruling institutions, although he does list the functions of its several officers, including his own. The unique character of this regime is its spirituality. It does not fight physical wars. It exists within other regimes, threatening them in challenging their spiritual foundations. With regard to those other regimes, the Christian founding is at once the least threatening and the most dangerous of all foundings. It in no way resists the physical power of those regimes, posing no military threat, no threat of domestic insurrection. It does resist—more threatens—their underlying claims on the human soul.