Essential Services Part 2: Think cosmic, act local

In last week’s post, we started to look at the essential why of church, and came to the conclusion that the key purpose of a local congregation lies beyond itself—in the cosmic, heavenly, spiritual congregation that Jesus Christ is building. This is the primary reality of church in the New Testament, and the local, immediate purposes that we pursue in our churches lives stem from this larger, heavenly reality.

But how exactly? How does the big, primary reality of the heavenly church provide an essential why (and how) for our church life now?

With the possible exception of Colossians, no epistle answers this question more profoundly than Ephesians. And so as good apprentices to Scripture, in this post we’re going to learn from the Apostle how the big why of Jesus’ heavenly church connects with the everyday why and how of earthly church life.

[A quick note: So as not to get bogged down too much along the way in the wonderful but intricate details of Ephesians, I’ve provided some endnotes for those who want to chase up some of the intricacies; they are referred to along the way like this (#1).]

In heaven and on earth

You can tell how massive and mind-blowing the opening chapter of Ephesians is, because half way through Paul pauses to pray for his readers’ comprehension—that God would open the eyes of their hearts to grasp how extraordinary it all is (and he prays much the same again in 3:16-19).

According to Ephesians 1, God’s plan is to shower spiritual blessings in the heavenly places upon the adopted, blood-bought people that he has chosen from all eternity to be the inheritance of his Son.(#1) The risen Jesus Christ is the One in whom everything is brought together, “the things in heaven and the things on earth” (1:10).

This introduces one of the major ideas of the letter: that the work of God in Christ creates a new reality that spans heaven and earth.

Through hearing the gospel and responding to it in faith, all God’s people (both Jews and Gentiles) are united in the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who sits now in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority (1:20-21). We are all now there, spiritually speaking, blessed in the heavenly places ‘in him’—or as 2:5-6 puts it, as Jews and Gentiles, we have all now together been made alive and raised up and seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.(#2) This is the body of Christ, his heavenly gathering or church, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

This cosmic, heavenly reality keeps re-emerging throughout the letter, described in various ways—for example, it’s the holy temple in the Lord in which both Jews and Gentiles are being built together (2:19-22); and it’s the heavenly assembly that Gentiles are now also members of through Christ—thus revealing God’s extraordinary wisdom to the powers that be in the heavenly places (3:1-12; #3).

However, very importantly, this heavenly gathering has an earthly existence too. It’s ‘the whole family in heaven and on earth’ (3:15; #4).

In fact, the agenda of what we do here and now on earth is determined by our membership of that heavenly church and family. This comes out in multiple ways throughout the letter, especially as Paul urges his readers in the second half of the letter to ‘walk’ in a manner worthy of their calling. In light of the heavenly reality, we are called to act in a certain way now; to think cosmic, and act local.

The various aspects of this worthy local walk provide us with the agenda that should direct our everyday lives and our local earthly churches. Let me tease out three of these essentials that are prominent in Ephesians, with one eye on our current unusual covid circumstances (and also leave one as a cliffhanger for next time).

1. Building the body through apostolic ministry

The first essential item is to build the heavenly church by taking part in ‘apostolic ministry’. ‘Apostolic ministry’ is my catchy summary (!) of the earthly work that builds and grows the heavenly church. It’s the divine work that Paul himself has been commissioned to participate in as a go-between (or minister) of the gospel.(#5) Like the rest of the apostles, he has been entrusted by God with the gospel of Jesus and sent off like a courier to deliver it everywhere, to see it take root and grow, so that all who believe its promises might be included in the body of Christ (3:6).

But the apostolic ministry doesn’t stop with the apostles. By Christ’s gracious gift, it spreads out to a much larger web of gospel activists—starting with the apostles and prophets and evangelists, and cascading out through pastor-teachers and ‘the saints’, and to every single member of the body, all of whom speak the truth of Christ in love to grow and build the body (that’s a quick summary of 4:8-16; #6). What Paul himself is doing as a courier of the word of Christ, he wants the Ephesians to be doing with each other in all sorts of ways (whether in daily conversation in 4:29, or in singing to one another in 5:19, or in fathers teaching their children in 6:4).

As we find ourselves rethinking our local church ministries post-covid, this agenda item must be at the very top. Our purpose is to build and grow the heavenly body of Christ by seeing its earthly members gathered in through evangelism and conversion, and then grown through the same apostolic ministry of the word—a word that is preached and spoken and shared in a multitude of ways by all the members of the body.

For ministry leaders, this can be expressed in a simple (and essential) question: how can I create, foster, equip and organize as many effective contexts and opportunities as possible in which the word of truth is being spoken by the members of the body for the building of the body?

2. Growing and fortifying members in a threatening world

This building purpose takes place in the context of an ongoing triple threat, traditionally summarized as the world, the flesh and the devil. These were the forces that rendered us spiritually dead in 2:1-3, and they remain as oppositional forces in our earthly lives. In chapters 4-6, Paul speaks of putting off the old corrupt desires and practices of our former lives, and leading a new life of love (4:17-5:2); he speaks of the deceptive, malignant influence of the ‘sons of disobedience’, the darkened, foolish, worldly culture in which we walk every day (5:3-18); and he urges us to be strong and well-armed for our fight against the spiritual schemes and attacks of the devil (6:10-20).

The earthly reality in which we live as members of the heavenly church is full of spiritual warfare. This too generates a key purpose for all our earthly action: to resist, persevere and stand strong in the face of the various earthly threats and powers we face, and to express more and more in our lives the character of the ‘new humanity’ that has been created in Christ.(#7)

This, too, is what the ‘building’ work of church life is aiming at—to grow and fortify the members of Christ’s body as they face spiritual threat. This is partly why the past few months of isolation have been so unsettling, and so potentially dangerous. We rightly worry about the spiritual effects of people being deprived of many of the usual avenues for fortifying apostolic ministry. We have all done our best to pull together online opportunities to address that need, but as things start to thaw out, we will need to face the reality that months away from the usual strengthening effect of fellowship will have taken its toll. Some may be slow to return, or not return at all. Others may have found themselves caught up in sinful, sel