The Best Thing Ever Put in an Offering Plate

This passage is not about pantheism (which is entirely false), or about God’s omnipresence (which is true and which the Bible does teach). It is about the much greater truths that God has given His own being to Christ, His eternally begotten Son, and that He has also given Christ to the church. In other words, think of this passage in terms of Christmas. It is the story of a double gift. The Father gave Himself to the Son, and then gave His Son to us. That is the glorious truth proclaimed in this final verse-and-a-half in Ephesians 1. God our Father eternally gives His own divine being to His Son Jesus Christ, and (as if that were not enough!) He has given His Son to us, the church, as our head and husband! Those double gifts, of course, tie in with the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. They have implications for our attitude toward hostile powers and towards the course of world history. But the two basic truths are the eternal generation of the Son and the Father’s gift of His Son to the church, His bride and body and seed. It is those two truths that define and shape every aspect of Paul’s thought and therefore ought to define and shape every aspect of ours. If you know the Father as the eternal begetter of the Son, and if you know the Son as the Father’s gift to you as you are a member of the church which is His body, then know God’s power for which Paul never ceased to pray! Now let’s unpack that truth as we trace it through these profound words.