Thoughts on Ephesians 2

Today’s reading: 2 Samuel 19; Ephesians 2

I’ll start today by saying that what I am talking about here is definitely not the main point of Ephesians 2. What I want to talk about is something that I misunderstood for a long time that had some harmful side-effects, and it is an interpretation I have heard from others as well, and I wanted to talk about it in case it was causing anybody else undue stress in their Christian life.

What I am talking about is a verse I actually mentioned a couple days ago in our conversation about faith and works, verse 10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

As a product of modern Western culture, my automatic tendency is to over-individualize everything. As a result, how I read this verse was that God had a set of preordained good works that He had specifically prepared for me to do. I don’t remember if I was first taught this perspective or if I came to it on my own, but I have certainly heard it expressed many many times over the years. Often people use it as an encouragement, intending something like, “In Christ, your contribution to the Kingdom is so important that God Himself has prepared specific opportunities for you to contribute, so don’t squander what He created for you, and instead run harder and harder after Him!” But as much as this was intended as encouragement, for me, personally, this was always incredibly stressful. What if I missed one of those opportunities? God has prepared these good works for me, but I’m sinful and still have the free will to not walk in those good works, so does that mean if I miss one I’m out of His will? Is it a domino effect that from that point forward my walk with Him can never be what He intended because I didn’t walk in the good works He had prepared for me? You can see how my thinking would spiral from this…

The result, for a time at least, was feverish work for the Lord, not motivated by gratitude or grace, but motivated by the fear of stepping too far out of line and therefore being unrecoverably outside of God’s will. It seems odd, looking back, but the fear was that once this had happened, no mater how well I lived after that, it would permanently be marred because I didn’t make the right choice way back when. Now, I’ve written a few posts lately on this topic, talking about God’s will and our free will and preference and how much less rigid and linear God’s will really is compared to how many Christians think about it, so I am not going to go down that road again today. Instead, I just want to look at the passage and why I would say this isn’t about you and me individually.

If you read through Ephesians up to this point, or even just the rest of the paragraph that this is the last sentence of, you might notice that Paul uses a lot of plural language. He uses “us” and “we,” but even when he says “you,” every instance is plural. This is not addressed to an individual, but to a church, to a community of Christians, and we have to recognize that context as we read these verses. What Paul is saying is that we, as the Body of Christ, are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we, as the Body of Christ, should walk in them. Now, certainly, the Body of Christ is made up of individual Christians, and for the Body of Christ to carry out these good works requires individual Christians to step up, which is why I have no qualms pointing to this verse as evidence that while works are not required for salvation, they should be part of the Christian life. However, when Paul says that God has preordained good works for us, he is talking about for the church, not for each individual Christian.

To some, this may seem like a distinction without a difference, but I think it is an important distinction to make. God gives us a lot of freedom within His will. There are functions and roles that He calls the church to fulfill, and He also gifts people and places them in the Body to be able to work together and meet those functions and roles, but He doesn’t really say how those functions are specifically to be carried out in each context. A lot in the work of building up His kingdom He leaves up to His people to work out and decide how to pursue His goals.

If this is individual, then we can very much make the wrong choice between two good options. Let’s say, for example, that you have a new job opportunity available to you. It doesn’t seem like any greater time commitment than your current job, but the pay would be significantly better. You pray about it and seek counsel, but get no clear direction from God one way or the other. It would seem like God is giving you the freedom to make the choice yourself. But where are God’s preordained good works for you? Did He preordain for you to share the gospel with people at your current job, meaning you would be violating His plan for your life to take the other job, or did He preordain for you to make more money and give it to a specific ministry effort, meaning you would be violating His plan for your life to stay in your current job? If He has preordained the good works for you personally that you are to walk in, there is only one right answer here, and if you get it wrong, you are outside God’s will and desire for you. But if these good works Paul is talking about are not individually ordained, but prepared beforehand for the Body of Christ, then we have true freedom to make real choices in life as we faithfully pursue Him and the building up of His kingdom here on this earth.

It can be such a relief to realize that it’s not all about us. The Bible was not written from or for a hyper individualistic culture like we have today, but one that valued community much more than individuality. It’s important for us to remember that as we read, study, and seek to apply God’s word in our lives.