An X-File

I was once trying to get a sermon out of Ephesians 1.12-14 and it seemed obvious that I should look for two parallel statements both ending with the phrase, “to the praise of his glory.” Paul here begins talking about two groups of people (“you” and “we”), and he later reveals that these two groups are (from his perspective) we Jews and you Gentiles. The text read in the New American Standard:

to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation–having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

After wrestling with this and coming up with nothing. I glanced at the Greek. I realized the first verse had been altered in form. It was not, “to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory” but rather “to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ” as the old original American Standard Bible translated correctly.

This meant my quest for two parrallel statements, each ending with “to the praise of his glory” was not going to meet with success. Once properly translated, there was less in common between verse 12 and 14 than I had originally thought.

But then I noticed that we had an AB-BA pattern between the two verses:

This seemed interesting. Paul spoke of the Jews who had hoped in Christ first and then of the Gentiles who had become heirs of the promise. Both seemed like future-oriented ways to describe conversion to Christianity. But it seemed awfully uncertain that Paul was intentionally writing to make that specific point.

But then I noticed something else. Paul had chosen to repeat the same thing in two different ways, describing the Christian message as “the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation.”

I went through two iterations before everything suddenly fell into place. Here’s the structure of Ephesians 1.12-14 with some Greek words transliterated in brackets:

This pattern is called a “chiasm” by Bible scholars, from the Greek letter chi which looks like our “X” (thus the lame title for this column). It means the passage has an inverse parallelism to teach the careful reader something. In this case, the centrality of the Gospel is literally demonstrated (D.D’) and the future nature of Christian salvation is brought out as we see that we are trusting Christ because we are hoping for a future glory and we have a basis for such hope because we have been made heirs (B.B’).

Furthermore, this analysis brings out more clearly what Paul seems to be saying by speaking of “the Gospel of your salvation.” He will later write that the Gospel-mystery, for which he is an ambassador in chains (6.19, 20) that was especially made known to him by revelation is that “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (3.6). The Gospel message can be narrowed down to the declaration of the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, but Paul sees Christ’s resurrection as the reconciliation both of man to God and man to man:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (2.13-22).

Though Paul undoubtedly believes that the Gospel is also good news for Israelites, in Ephesians he is stressing its reference to the Gentiles. By calling it “the Gospel of your salvation” in a context which implies that “we” seems to mean “us Jews” and “you” refers to “you Gentiles,” Paul is already hinting at where he is going in the letter.

Mark Horne is a member of the Civitas group, and holds an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary. He is assistant pastor at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, and is the executive director of Logo Sapiens Communications. He writes at www.SolomonSays.net , and is the author, most recently, of “ Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men ” from Athanasius Press. This article was originally published at Theologia .

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