The Big Picture

In a couple of weeks I will begin teaching a class on Ephesians for the women of my church. I’ve spent a long time preparing, and I’ve read those six chapters more times than I can count. But the more I read it, the bigger it gets, and the less capable I feel of plumbing its depths. 

But it’s not just Ephesians. The whole Bible is like this. The more times I read it, the more I see it as a TARDIS. Dr. Who fans know that the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) is a time machine. It looks like a 1960’s English police box, big enough to hold two or three people. But once you step inside, you find yourself in an impossibly huge space. In it you can access the far reaches of the galaxies—past, present and future. Step out again, and it’s still little bigger than a phone booth. Likewise, when you open the pages of scripture the universe opens to you—past, present, future, and beings more glorious than ourselves dwelling in realms that human words can only struggle to describe. 

If you are in the habit of reading through the Bible each year like I am, Revelation is still fresh in your memory. There you saw the curtain pulled back and you beheld the expanse of human history. You glimpsed the invisible, “the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” (12: 9) pursuing a “woman” about to give birth (12: 5). You saw her child, “who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” caught up safely to heaven. You saw the enraged serpent set “off to make war on the rest of her offspring.” You learned her child’s name and who her other offspring are: “those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (12: 17). And you saw in heaven “the book of life” in which all their names were written before the foundation of the world (13:8). 

If you have started your reading plan again in the New Year you have just travelled back to the beginning of time as we know it. You’ve witnessed the creation of the world. You’ve watched God, its creator, muddy his hands, so to speak, in a barely conceivable act of self-expression—the creation of man. And in Genesis 3 you saw all the seeds of Revelation 12 sprouting: the ancient serpent and his deception, humanity’s belief in his lies, his enmity toward the woman, and the promise of the offspring who would defeat him. 

The eternal scope of God’s plan captured the heart of the apostle Paul. Only a plan so ancient and so perfectly executed could be a sufficient ground for his faith. No lesser Christ was worth living and dying for. And Paul knew that we, too, need to grasp this vision if we are going to “stand against the schemes of the devil”  and “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:11-12). So he packed God’s eternal plan of salvation into his six short chapters to the Ephesians. This is why, we will see, it begins before the beginning and ends with a call to (spiritual) arms. This is also, we will see, the basis for our call to a new way of life, a life of holiness, of humility, and of submission. And this, we will see, is why Ephesians, like the rest of scripture, is so big, when from the outside it looks so small. 

This post is adapted from an article originally published here.