(Ephesians 1:15-23; Hebrews 2:5-10)
How many of you recognize the name of Abraham Maslow? For those who don’t, he was an American psychologist of the last century who was one of the founders of the discipline of humanistic psychology. If you know his name, though, the first thing that comes to your mind probably isn’t “humanistic psychology,” it’s this:
Recently, Maslow’s hierarchy has been on my mind quite a bit. For one thing, Sara is working her way through the online coursework for the Transition to Teaching program, and has discovered that the folks who developed the program are true believers in Maslow’s hierarchy who present it uncritically as the truth about human nature. That’s the sort of presentation calculated to raise her hackles, so she’s been mounting a counterattack in the privacy of our home.
As it happens, she’s had a fair bit of material to hand for the purpose, beginning with the thing that first drew my attention back to Maslow—a remarkably efficient takedown of his hierarchy published a few months ago in Christianity Today. Once Sara started me looking, I quickly discovered an avalanche of arguments against his work; one piece in Forbes declared, “Simple, orderly, intuitively sensible, cognitively appealing and offering order out of chaos, the hierarchy of needs has only one problem: it is plain, flat, dead wrong.”
That article includes this quote from Psychology Today: “Needs are not hierarchical. Life is messier than that. Needs are, like most other things in nature, an interactive, dynamic system, but they are anchored in our ability to make social connections. . . . Belongingness is the driving force of human behavior.” I think that’s a little overstated—I don’t think it’s the only driving force of human behavior—but I like that.
The author of that piece, being a secular psychologist, grounds her conclusion in the dynamics of survival and social development, which is good as far as it goes; but I think the truth of her statement is even deeper than she realizes. The need to belong is one of the great driving forces of human behavior because we as individuals were not created sufficient in ourselves. Our limitations and need for others are not the result of our sin, they are a part of God’s good creative work. Humanity was created in the image of God; each of us bears part of his image, and we were made to live in relationship with each other, interdependent on one another, and thus together to reflect his life. I am a necessarily relational being, and so are you. Each of us was created to belong, to God and to other people; apart from that we cannot be who we are.
God has always been on about creating a people for himself; through the death and resurrection of Christ, he is now building a transformed people. Paul’s urgency to speak about that is so great, he can’t even finish the prayer he begins here in verse 15. When Tom spoke last week about the guy praying at the installation service who spent most of his time talking to the congregation instead of God, it made me laugh, because Paul does something similar here: he wanders out of the prayer in verse 19 and doesn’t really get back to it until the last third of chapter 3. He starts off telling his audience how he’s been praying for them, but he’s so excited to talk about Jesus, he has to get that out of his system before he can settle down to pray.
He does try, though. Notice the first thing he asks: that God the Father would give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. He clearly means the Holy Spirit, but he knows that as believers, they already have the Holy Spirit in their lives; he’s said as much a couple times already. He’s praying they will experience the Spirit of God as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. That’s the foundation of everything that follows.
Taking the words in reverse order, revelation is the uncovering of the mystery of God’s saving work. On our own, with only the wisdom and understanding the world can give us, we can’t make sense of the story of Jesus; any conclusion we might come to about who he was, what he was on about, why he died, or what his death meant will be wrong. It’s only as the Spirit leads us and shows us the truth that we can understand who Jesus is, why he did what he did, or what he accomplished. Thus revelation is necessary for true wisdom. Wisdom is about knowing God’s character and will—which means, in part, knowing his saving purposes—and letting that knowledge shape how we live so that we act in ways that conform to his character and will.
Why does Paul pray this for the Ephesians? So they would know God. It’s important to be clear about what he means, since our modern scientific-capitalist age doesn’t help us here. He doesn’t mean knowing about God—that’s part of the matter, but far from the whole. Remember, the Old Testament uses the verb “to know” to denote sexual intercourse between husband and wife, and I don’t believe that was a euphemism. In the context of a godly relationship, the verb “to know” is used because it denotes intimacy. It means revealing yourself to someone else as they reveal themselves to you; it means setting aside all the things we use to cover or disguise ourselves and, having left ourselves exposed and vulnerable, drawing close to someone who is other than ourselves as they do the same to us. It’s a relational word, not just an intellectual one.
In the ESV, Paul follows this by praying that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened. Our problem with that translation is that, as Marva Dawn put it, “we have absolutely ruined the word ‘heart.’ . . . We just use the word ‘heart’ for feelings and Valentine’s Day—never, in the Bible.” To the Hebrews, the source of emotions was the kidneys, while New Testament writers thought feelings came from the bowels, but our modern English versions translate the Hebrew kilyah (כִּלְיָה) and the Greek splanchna (σπλάγχνα) as “heart” rather than “kidneys” and “bowels”, respectively. Given current English idiom, this is understandable. “My kidneys will exult when your lips speak what is right” would be incomprehensible to most modern readers, while “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your bowels”[1] would be downright misleading. All the same, an important distinction is lost. When the Scriptures talk about the heart, they refer to a whole of which the emotions are only a piece.
There are three aspects to the human spirit: the intellect, the emotions, and the will. We think, we feel, and we do—though not necessarily in that order, or with all parts involved. The heart is the nexus of the three. It’s the core and center of the self, the seat of identity, and the place where the wisdom of God is grafted into our souls. It’s the root from which our life grows.
That’s why one commentator renders Paul’s words as a prayer for clear spiritual eyesight to perceive and understand God’s purposes. In particular, Paul prays we would know three things. First, the hope into which God has called us—the assurance that the good news of Jesus Christ is real, his promises are true, and everything he said he would do is already guaranteed. However unrighteous we might feel now, even if we feel like we’re beyond saving, our salvation is certain and our righteousness in Christ is assured. However much death may seem to rule the world now, God has promised that we will be raised from the dead in perfected bodies to live eternally with him. However short we fall of the glory of God now, Jesus is coming back, and when he comes, we will stand with him in glory.
Second, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the saints. Note: not the riches of our inheritance in God. This isn’t about what we’re going to get—this is much more wonderful. We are God’s glorious inheritance. We are his treasured possession.
I’ve read this passage any number of times, and until I started working on this sermon, I never realized that’s what verse 18 means. When I saw that, it blew me away. I’ve always had this voice in the back of my mind saying, “Yeah, sure, God loves you—but don’t let it go to your head.” Paul’s not worried about that at all. He wants it to go to my heart, and yours, completely unfiltered, not toned down in the slightest. He wants each of us to understand that this is how highly God values us, not because we’re so all-fired wonderful now, but because when he looks at us, he sees us in Christ.
Third, the power of God toward us who believe. If you were here last Sunday, you may remember Steve talking about the strong belief in spiritual powers in the region of Ephesus; St. Jerome, writing around the turn of the fifth century, says the culture of the region “was obsessed with demons and magic and was saturated with idolatry.” Acts 19:19 tells us there were a number of former magicians in the Ephesian church who gathered to burn their books of magic, and that the books burned were worth 50,000 pieces of silver.
Magic was a big deal in Ephesus and the surrounding communities, and belief in spiritual powers was widespread. That belief was strengthened by the strong connection between spiritual and earthly powers. Ephesus was a center of Caesar worship second only to Rome; that paled, of course, next to the worship of Artemis of the Ephesians, whose temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but early in the first century Ephesus built a temple which was dedicated to both Artemis and Caesar. To affirm Jesus as Lord, then, was terrifyingly countercultural: it put you at odds with an alliance of ruthless political authorities and mighty, potentially malignant, spiritual forces.
In response to this, Paul backs up the word truck. In verse 19, he tells the Ephesians he wants them to know “the immeasurable greatness of God’s power toward us who believe, according to the energy of the strength of his might.” Power, energy, strength, might, all of it so great that it exceeds all limits and overwhelms any human capacity to understand how great it is. “You’re worried about all these other powers,” Paul says, “but the power of God blows them all away. They are nothing compared to him. If you’re on his side, you have every other power in creation utterly outgunned.”
In talking about this, Paul shifts from praying for his audience to praising God for his power, and particularly for the ultimate demonstration of his power: the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, by which the utter supremacy of Christ has been conclusively demonstrated. In doing so, Paul is arguing along the same lines as Hebrews 1-2. God raised Jesus from the dead and seated Jesus at his right hand, which is the place of honor, privilege, and power; this is an allusion to Psalm 110:1, which is also used in Hebrews 1. To drive his point home, Paul backs up the word truck again: Jesus is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” As Peter O’Brien puts it, “Whatever levels of power there are in the universe, all are subordinate to him.” What’s more, Jesus is far above “every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the age to come.” No one and nothing comes close to him. The powers of this world—political, cultural, spiritual, chemical—are loud and demanding, but there is an end for them, and they fall silent. Whatever they may say, the cross has the final word.
Paul continues to build with the declaration that the rulers, authorities, powers, and dominions are not simply inferior to Christ but are subject to him: God has put all things under his feet and made him head over all things, for the sake of the church. This isn’t talking about Jesus as head of the church—that comes in later—but an assertion of his absolute authority over the whole of creation, and a statement that he holds and wields that authority for the benefit of his people. If this is so, and if the church is his body, then the conclusion is staggering; as one commentator says, “The church . . . is also in some sense head over all inimical powers, and they lie conquered beneath its feet, just as they lie conquered beneath Christ’s feet.”
This is wonderful and true, but there’s a danger here as well. Working just from Ephesians, it would be all too easy to drift into triumphalism, which would lead us astray. That’s where Hebrews 2 is wonderful. In Hebrews we have much the same crescendo, also drawing on Psalm 8, rising to a similar climax—“Now in putting everything in subjection to Christ, God left nothing outside his control”—and then we get this beautiful moment of raw honesty: “Yet at present, we do not see everything in subjection to him.” As my Christian Reformed colleague Scott Hoezee has put it, it’s like the Hallelujah Chorus, building and building and building, and then there’s that pause, that moment of silence before the last triumphant, overpowering “Hallelujah!” . . . and it’s as if the pastor walks out into the silence, sits down in front of the choir, and says, “But really, if we’re honest, a lot of the time life pretty much sucks, doesn’t it?”
But. But, says Hebrews, this is not the last word. At present, we do not see everything subject to Jesus—but: we see Jesus. We see Jesus. We see Jesus whose crown of glory is a crown of thorns, who is honored for accepting dishonor—we see Jesus who’s been reading the same news we read, and who not only observed our deepest tragedy, he lived it. We see Jesus whom the world trampled under its feet. Hebrews tells us that’s why God has now put that same world under his feet. We don’t see Jesus distant and glorious, majestic and terrifying, we see him as he was made like us in every way and bore every grief and temptation we bear.
Indeed, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, he was tempted far worse than we ever are, because we only go so long and then we break; he never broke. Satan hit him with everything he had, and Jesus took it all and stood fast under suffering far greater than anything we could survive. Of course, he didn’t survive it, for his victory required him to accept suffering to the point of death, and beyond—and he accepted that suffering, and so won that victory, for us. He did it to pay the penalty for our sin, which was beyond all our resources and abilities put together to pay; he did it to set us free from our slavery to sin and bring us out from under the dominance of death, which together were a bondage we could never have escaped, no matter how hard we might try. The voices of shame and condemnation roar through our culture and scream in our ears, but as loud as they may be now, they will not have the last word. Jesus shattered their power by his death and resurrection, and now and forever, the cross has the final word. This is the victory he won; this is how he won it; this is the Jesus we see, and no other.
And this is the one we follow, and the one to whom (and in whom) each of us belongs. We have been made to belong to the one who gave everything to belong with us. Whatever we face, whatever we suffer, whatever we struggle with, he knows. He understands. He’s been there. He still is. He’s with us now. This is the goodness of God.
[1] Proverbs 23:16 (ESV), alt; 2 Corinthians 6:12 (ESV), alt.