Category Archives: New Testament

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Enthroned above the powers—Ephesians 1:20-23

Today, at least in the West, most of us do not ordinarily think of spiritual powers influencing nations. Western culture emphasizes human autonomy; we run our own lives. But in Paul’s day, many people envisioned spiritual powers setting the tone for nations’ political, moral and intellectual life in powerful ways. Greeks and Romans thought of guardian spirits of nations; Jewish people viewed these as angels under God’s authority, though often as unruly angels hostile to God’s people.

It is significant, therefore, that in Ephesians 1:20-21, Paul depicts Jesus Christ our Lord as enthroned above all hostile spiritual authorities. (Some attribute Ephesians to a disciple reflecting Paul’s thought. For reasons that would require too much digression here, I think that Paul authored Ephesians more directly.)

Paul wrote Ephesians to believers in Asia Minor, including Paul’s previous center of ministry there, Ephesus. Spiritual power was no merely theoretical matter for his audience; many believers there had experienced deliverance from occult practices (Acts 19:18-19). Ancient sources show us that fear of spirits was widespread and gradually growing, reaching a peak by the third or fourth century.

Many such spirits were “ground forces,” but concern about heavenly spiritual powers also abounded. Many believed that the lowest of the heavens, the “air” realm where birds fly, was full of spirits. On a higher level, however, many also believed that Fate ruled through the stars; astrology was thus growing in popularity.

Jewish thinkers usually taught that the stars could not control the destiny of God’s people, whom God ruled directly and protected through his archangel Michael. Nevertheless, they believed in angels who ruled the nations, an idea already found in Daniel (Dan 10:13, 20) and in the Greek translation of Deuteronomy. Paul refers to these powerful guardian spirits as “rulers and authorities in heavenly realms” (Eph 1:20-21; 6:12).

Yet Paul also emphasizes that Christ is enthroned above these powers (Eph 1:20-21). That Christ is above the angels of the nations would have important ethical implications for the problem of ethnic disunity among believers (a major problem in the Ephesian church—2:11-22).

Although of the Gospels only Luke narrates Christ’s ascension, the rest of the New Testament presupposes it, emphasizing that Christ is at the Father’s right hand; “seated” in Eph 1:20 recalls Ps 110:1: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” He has triumphed over the spirits through his exaltation (also 1 Pet 3:22).

The church in the Roman province of Asia had concrete experience with Jesus’s triumph over the powers. The seven sons of Sceva tried to invoke Jesus’s name like a magical formula, thinking that this was how Paul cast out demons. They quickly discovered, however, that Jesus was no spirit they could manipulate; only someone like Paul, authorized as Jesus’s agent to use his name, could use it with authority. Consequently, many turned from their secret practices and acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord (Acts 19:13-20). They had discovered that Jesus’s name is genuinely above all names, including every name that is invoked (Eph 1:21). It was not a magical formula to be invoked by those who do not know him.

Ephesians would encourage such believers, and all of us, that we too are enthroned with Christ above such powers. These powers are under Christ’s feet, and Paul emphatically combines this stark image with the image of the church as Christ’s body (1:22-23). Combined, the images reveal that if the powers are under Christ’s feet, they are also under Christ’s body. Paul certainly envisions Christ being seated with his head at the top of his body and the feet at the bottom. It is thus no surprise that in Eph 2:6 Paul declares explicitly that we have been seated or enthroned with Christ in heavenly places! Someday we will be enthroned with him in a fuller sense (Rev 3:21), but we already experience a foretaste of that reality now.

But what does this mean? Does this mean, as some people seem to think, that we can go around ordering heavenly powers what to do? Here is what the context suggests that Paul means. Being enthroned with Christ above these powers, we are no longer subject to their influence (2:2-6), so long as we follow Christ as our Lord. Through the gospel, believers can actually challenge the corrupted arguments and ideologies through which evil powers influence societies (2 Cor 10:2-5).

Sadly, believers often reflect values of our cultures. In the U.S., for example, this sometimes means materialism, racial and class insensitivity, political polarization and harsh rhetoric. But we can rise above those values, if we allow Christ to renew our understanding. We are no longer subject to the old powers—unless we choose to be.

 

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Should prophecies always be positive?—1 Corinthians 14:3. Part 2

Some people may want prophecies to be positive to guard against abuses, though this is subject to its own abuses (see part 1). Others, however, may prophesy positively as a way of expressing faith.

Prophecy as positive confession?

Some may insist on prophesying only positively as a vestige of an emphasis on positive confession (a more distinctive emphasis in some earlier charismatic circles). When the New Testament speaks of “confessing” something other than sin, however (Mark 1:5; James 5:16; 1 John 1:9), it usually refers to Christ’s followers confessing Christ (e.g., Matt 10:32; Rom 10:9-10; Phil 2:11; 1 John 2:23; 4:2-3, 15; 2 John 7; Rev 3:5). The one exception familiar to me is a more specific confession of faith in Heb 11:13: some heroes of the faith confessed that they were outsiders to this world, because they awaited the promised New Jerusalem to come (11:16). If we examine biblical proverbs about the tongue together as a whole rather than speculating about some verses in isolation, it is clear that Proverbs also speaks not about “confessing” something to make it happen but about how we speak affects others and our relationships with them.

Of course we should speak and live like those who believe what God has spoken! And of course we should pray in faith in God’s grace and power—why waste words praying if we’re not trusting God to hear us? But that’s not the same as confessing something as an intended act of faith that God will do it and calling that prophecy. “Who speaks and it comes to pass, if the Lord has not commanded it?” (Lam 3:37). That limitation is surely implicit even in Mark 11:23 (“whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and hurled into the sea,’ … it will happen for them”). If you don’t believe me, go test it empirically on some mountain and see what happens, especially if there’s not been any seismic activity there recently.

 

Faith is only as good as its object. God is absolutely trustworthy. His voice is absolutely trustworthy. Our hearing … well, most of us do need to mature in that. Our fallibility limits both our prophesying and our teaching. “For we know only partially and we prophesy only partially” (1 Cor 13:9).

When the Bible talks about humility, that principle should invite attention to being epistemically humble too. I was quite impressed with my knowledge in my 20s. I know far more in my 50s, but also am far more aware of how much I have yet to learn. Hopefully by my 200s, I will know fully as I am known; what I know now is very limited compared to that future knowledge.

Recognizing true prophecy

There are some who are specially gifted in hearing God’s voice, have cultivated that gift, and walk humbly before God. Mesfin, a brother from Ethiopia, did not know that I was a writer. Yet he prophesied to me about two big books that I would write, the second larger than the first. Since I was already working on my Acts commentary (which turned out to be 4500 pages) and could not imagine writing a book larger than that, I was confident that he was at least partly mistaken. Only later did I discover that my miracles book (merely 1100 pages) would be completed and published before the Acts commentary. Similarly, three people in Congo who did not know each other independently prophesied to Médine Moussounga, who later became my wife, that she would marry a white man with a big ministry. I am glad to be married to her, but my whiteness was not something that I arranged.

Conversely, on some major personal decisions (such as whom to marry), it is not always easy for us to hear God clearly. Sometimes, in fact, our personal biases can get in the way (e.g., as in whom to marry—did I mention that?) It helps when wisdom and whatever ways we have learned to hear the Lord line up. But the issue of personal guidance better belongs to a different post, so I mention it here just to reinforce what most of us already know: God is infallible, but God is not who we are.

 

True prophecy must be consistent with Spirit-inspired Scripture and led by the same Spirit who inspired Scripture. The biblical gift does not always tell people what they want to hear. If we’re just learning to hear God’s voice, if we don’t have mentors like Samuel or Elisha (who supervised some younger prophets in the OT), and if we don’t have the safety net of other first-generation hearers of God for peer review (as in 1 Cor 14:29), some messages remain fairly safe.

If it’s truly biblical, it’s good. (If you feel like God is telling someone that he loves them, there’s no risk of getting that one wrong.) If it’s an appropriately encouraging word spoken in a timely way, it’s good (Prov 15:23; 25:11). If it exalts Jesus and builds people up in faith in him, it’s good. If it draws people to Christ, it’s good. But of course, such words can be Spirit-led without even calling them prophecy, or without us always even being conscious that the Spirit’s fruit moves us to such words.

But for beginners in hearing God’s voice, such basic discernment is a great place to start, allowing us to “test” our own words (cf. 1 Cor 14:29). And for brothers and sisters striving to serve the Lord, most such words will indeed encourage and strengthen them. May we have encouraging words all the more!

Nevertheless, a rule that limits all prophecy, or even all exhortation, to what sounds encouraging runs the risk of missing larger divine warnings if judgment or suffering lies on the horizon (cf. Jer 28:6-9). This was a serious mistake of most prophets in Jeremiah’s day. “They have healed the wound of my people flippantly, declaring, ‘Peace! Peace!’—when there is no peace” (Jer 6:14; 8:11). Biblical prophets sometimes told people where their lost donkeys were. But we had better not lose sight of the bigger picture—because what lies on the horizon will impact many of us.

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Should prophecies always be positive?—1 Corinthians 14:3

When as a young Christian I attended a Pentecostal college, a beloved administrator warned me that prophecies should always be positive. That did not match all the prophecies I read about in the Bible.

It also did not match all the prophecies I had given; for example, I had felt led to warn one Christian friend who was living unmarried with their partner that they knew better and that God was displeased. That is actually a very tame way of putting it. The message was more like, “Because you have esteemed the Lord lightly, you are lightly esteemed. Because you have dishonored the Lord, the Lord will dishonor you,” etc. I felt awful delivering that message to a friend, and I felt that I was not allowed even to stay for tea; I had to leave right after delivering the message. Had it been anything but that I felt the Lord leading me to do it, I would have talked it over with my friend in a friendlier way. (Soon after that they did quit living together—after the partner disappeared with some of my friend’s property.)

But some of the ideas about prophecy at this training school were formulated, I think, in understandable reaction against stories about a recent movement that abused prophecies and prophesied falsely and harmfully. In any case, one of the ideas was that you should never prophesy to individuals (despite how common that was in the Bible), and another was that prophecies should always be encouraging.

New Testament prophecy is for encouragement—always?

The administrator supported his position with 1 Cor 14:3, which declares that prophecy is for “strengthening, encouraging and comfort” (NIV), “edification and exhortation and consolation” (NASB), or “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (NRSV, a translation that didn’t yet exist back then). The second Greek term can include an appeal or (as in the NASB) exhortation as well as comfort, but the idea is generally positive. Paul probably did expect mostly positive prophecy for the Corinthian house church gatherings.

At the same time, the prophetic process could not have been entirely positive. Prophetically gifted persons were to collectively evaluate the prophecies (1 Cor 14:29), which would probably mean that not all prophecies would pass muster. Even when spoken in an encouraging way, such corrections may not have felt entirely positive to some of those whose prophecies were not confirmed by their peers. Often in 1 Corinthians, Paul himself corrects the church, and believes that his own (apostolic) authority is greater than that of the local church prophets (14:37-38). And ideally, prophecy included revealing people’s secret sins (1 Cor 14:24-25)—although one had certainly better be sure one has genuinely heard from the Lord before trying something like that. (Even if one is right about the sins, blurting them out is not always the most effective way to bring restoration; cf. Gal 6:1.)

A couple of the clearest samples of prophecy recorded in the New Testament are the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2—3 (what “the Spirit says to the churches”) and Agabus’s prophecy to Paul in Acts 21:11. The prophecy in Acts 21:11 was that Paul was going to be bound in Jerusalem. This was not very encouraging news, but it was consistent with what the Spirit had been saying to Paul in other cities as well (20:23; cf. 21:4).

Two letters to churches in Revelation were quite comforting; both were to persecuted churches, although one was told that the Lord would deliver them from their trial, whereas the other (Smyrna, in Rev 2:10) was encouraged to be faithful to death. Meanwhile, the other five churches received varying degrees of reproofs, two or three of them rather severe. (As an aside, those who claim that prophecy should never claim, “Thus says the Lord,” also overlook these same most explicit passages of prophecy in the NT. But again, one had better be sure before one frames a message in those terms. The more we claim to speak for the Lord, the stricter our judgment if we are wrong; that is true even with the gift of teaching—James 3:1. Ouch.)

Guarding against immaturity

Some circles that insist that all prophecies must be positive may intend this limitation as a precaution against those who are immature in the gift harming people with harsh messages. If you’re going to make a mistake in a setting where prophecy can’t be quickly tested, it seems better for it to be harmless. To be truly harmless, though, it shouldn’t promise blessing to the wicked any more than God’s disfavor on the righteous (Prov 24:24; Isa 3:10-11). And Samuel was probably fairly immature in prophecy when, in his first experience of it as a boy, he was sent with a harsh message to the high priest who was raising him (1 Sam 3:11-14). Although Eli believed him (3:18), and I confess to envying Samuel’s clarity in hearing from God (3:19), I would not want to have been in Samuel’s sandals right then.

It is true that we should seek to encourage people with our words whenever possible—that is definitely a good rule of thumb for what is normal (cf. Prov 12:18; 15:1, 4; 25:15; Eph 4:29; Col 4:6). But if you’re going to be arrested in Jerusalem it might be helpful to know that in advance (Acts 21:11), and if your church’s lampstand is going to be removed if the church fails to repent of its lovelessness (Rev 2:5), it’s better to know that so we can respond. In fact, if we fail to warn people to turn from genuinely sinful ways, their blood is on our head (Ezek 3:18-20; 33:6-8; Acts 20:26-27).

Some people, however, may prophesy only positively as a way of expressing their faith. Is this biblical? I will address this question in part 2.

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Resisting the Devil—Ephesians 2:1-3

The Dead Sea Scrolls present every human action as caused by either the Spirit of Truth or the spirit of error (which the scrolls identify at times with Satan). But were they right? Biblically, God is omnipresent and sovereign, but Satan is not. Extreme demonology was not, however, limited to the sectarian group that likely authored the Dead Sea Scrolls.

As fear of demons grew, by the third century even sober rabbis warned that if one extends one’s right hand, one extends it into a thousand demons, and if one extends one’s left hand, one extends it into ten thousand demons. (Left-handedness was apparently deemed a disadvantage in the third century.)

By contrast, Paul does not think in terms of Satan or demons’ omnipresence. He was certainly ready to describe temptation (1 Cor 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11), deception (2 Cor 11:14) and persecution (2 Cor 12:7; 1 Thess 2:18) against believers as the activity of the devil. But he also envisioned the devil’s indirect influence through the values of the world. That is, he did not assume that a demon had to be present for someone to imbibe values from the surrounding world, values that are ultimately demonic in origin. (Cf. 1 John 5:19.)

Paul speaks of how believers lived before becoming followers of Jesus: they followed the ways of (literally) “the age of this world” (Eph 2:2). Judeans generally distinguished the present evil age, under the dominion of evil empires and the angels of nations that influenced them, from the glorious age to come, when God would rule directly and unchallenged. Paul’s “age of this world” (“the ways of this world,” NIV; “the course of this world,” ASV, NASB, NRSV; ESV; “this world’s present path,” NET) refers to the present age, characterized by the present world system.

Paul seems to identify the ways of the present world with those of the ruler who has authority in the air (Eph 2:2; “the prince of the power of the air,” NASB, ESV; “the ruler of the power of the air,” NRSV; “the ruler of the kingdom of the air,” NIV, NET). “Air” was the title that Paul’s contemporaries gave to the lowest of the heavens. This was where the “birds of the air” lived, but also where spirits were believed to be active. The Bible elsewhere calls this ruler over the realm of evil spirits “Beelzebul” (Mark 3:22), i.e., Satan.

Paul declares here that this spirit is active and working among those who disobey God (Eph 2:2).

Paul also says that those of us who became followers of Jesus were earlier disobedient, following fleshly passions as if there was nothing higher to live for (2:3). Passions by themselves are not evil but if they control us rather than being used for their God-given purpose, they function as evil. Thus, for example, sexual passion is useful in marriage; without reproductive impulses, humans would have died out. But God expects us to use reason and the power of his Spirit to control and channel these impulses in the right ways. Everyone has physical passions, but not everyone controls them or even realizes the extent to which this is possible.

The devil, then, knows where humans are vulnerable and exploits them, and often does so indirectly through secondary media that affect how we think and feel and act, from road advertisements to commercials to soap operas to parents’ modeling to friends and so forth. The “age characterized by this present world” reflects how the devil works through promoting demonic values without implying that there are demons hiding inside the world’s television sets, computers or road signs.

Where have we unthinkingly absorbed the values of the surrounding culture? If we spend more time listening to the fallen world’s values through television or the internet than immersing ourselves in God’s ways in Scripture, we probably act on some of those values without realizing it. (Of course, some things communicate fallen values much more than others. A documentary can be helpful; pornography always is evil, directing human passion in an illicit direction. Some ideas may be mixtures. Even news can be selected and framed in such a way as to persuade, so we should critically evaluate what we receive, whether a news outlet is “liberal” or “conservative.” But we should also be willing to be self-critical in light of correct information through such sources.) Elsewhere Paul speaks of the spiritual warfare involved in confronting false ideologies, worldviews, and ways of thinking with God’s truth (2 Cor 10:4-5).

But let’s not miss the main point of Eph 2:1-3. Paul does not expect us to deliver ourselves. Rather, we should recognize our deliverance in Jesus Christ. As Christ has been exalted above all heavenly powers (Eph 1:20-21), so have we, enthroned in him (2:6). Thus we are no longer dead in sin, bound by the devil (2:1-3), but we have been been made alive in Christ and exalted with him (2:4-6). We should no longer act like those whose way of thinking is corrupted for sin (4:17-19, 22), but rather be renewed in our thinking (4:23), robing ourselves with Christ, in whose image we have been re-created (4:24). (The language of 4:24 evokes that of humanity created in God’s image in Gen 1:26-27; now we are re-created to be what we were ideally meant to be.)

In light of this deliverance, we can no longer protest, “The devil made me do it.” Paul declares that we should not cede ground to the devil (Eph 4:27). What does Paul mean by ceding ground to the devil? In context, part of the way that we resist the devil is by speaking truth (4:25), limiting anger (4:26), sharing with rather than cheating others (4:28), speaking in ways beneficial to others (4:29), abandoning harshness, hostility, slander and mistreatment of others (4:31). We should be kind and compassionate, and we should forgive one another as God forgave us in Christ (4:32). It is by loving that we avoid giving ground to the devil.

The Bible talks about delivering those who are oppressed by the devil, offering examples of Jesus casting out demons, and his followers continuing to cast out demons in his name. But Paul addresses Christians in Ephesians, Christians who through faith in Jesus have already been delivered from the devil’s sphere. He treats a different kind of “spiritual warfare” here.

In our own daily lives as followers of Jesus, we also resist the devil by how we treat one another—through virtues such as truth, righteousness, faith, and our salvation (Eph 6:14-17). We advance into the devil’s territory and take ground back by the good news of peace, God’s message (6:15, 17).

Spiritual warfare is not just spooky or spectacular. From day to day, it involves our relationships. Elsewhere Scripture teaches that the world’s values include bitter envy and self-seeking, which are demonic values (James 3:14-15). By contrast, heaven’s values, unmixed with these, include gentleness and peace-seeking (3:17-18). Satan sometimes disguises his values with religious clothing (2 Cor 2:10-11; 11:13-14), so we cannot take for granted that simply because something is religious, it is good. People often give religious justifications for spiteful behavior and slander, but in so doing they reflect demonic values. Instead, let us follow the way of Christ, who humbled himself to serve others, and in whom God has brought forgiveness to all who trust him (Eph 4:32—5:2).