THE GOSPEL HAS ALWAYS BEEN about change and choice. Change from an old way of life without Jesus Christ to a new way of life with Jesus Christ is a staple of God’s message to us in Scripture. Choice, however, regarding what we do with our new status in Jesus Christ has been an equally important part of the message. Does it really make a difference, this new status, in the way we live? Do choices really reflect the change adequately? Change and choice might be called the twin pillars of the Good News.
Ephesians is one New Testament book that emphasizes these twin pillars. Although Klyne Snodgrass, the author of this excellent commentary, warns about a too easy dichotomy between the first three chapters that describe the change from life in the darkness to life in the light and the second three chapters that talk about hard choices that this new order demands, the subject matter does lend itself to recognizing at least an emphasis on change in the first half and choice in the second half. Salvation, conversion, or change, Paul tells us, is a gift of God: Formerly you were of the “uncircumcised,” now you are of the “circumcised.” You used to be “foreigners and aliens,” now you are “fellow citizens.” This change in status demands choices—choices between disunity and unity, good and bad family life, good and bad social structures.
This talk about changes and choices does indeed make Ephesians read like a contemporary letter. Almost everything in it rings a bell for anyone concerned about modern culture. The words themselves—change and choice—are buzz words in contemporary self-help psychology, education, and vocational guidance. Application in such a climate seems like a no-brainer—except for one consideration. Is it possible that the relative emphasis between change and choice is different for twenty-first century readers and first-century readers? Both are interested in change and choice, of course. But would a first-century reader look at the relationship between change and choice a bit differently?
It is possible that for a first-century reader, the miracle of change, of salvation given freely as a gift from an omnipotent God, was the focal point of this kind of discussion. That God (or the gods) existed would have been assumed as a matter of fact. That these gods controlled both the exceptional and the everyday—weather, crops, war—was likewise beyond question. But would such a God take the time to bring about change in me, an individual sinner? Most first-century gods were shorthand for Fate, an inevitable, unchangeable destiny to which I was born and, if I was smart, resigned. That God would actually put in place a mechanism to provide lasting change in my life—this was the unthinkable. The choices of life follow hard on the “change” of conversion; a God that can work such a change is fully capable of giving us an inspired guidebook, a Bible, to outline the choices we must now make.
For moderns, change is not all that unthinkable. Go into your local bookstore and go to the self-help psychology section. The rows and rows of books you find there are all about change: Change your body shape in thirty days; change from a business failure to a business success by following these seven key principles. No, change (even if it is human-initiated change) is pretty much assumed by modern individuals. The focal point for moderns is choice. Because we have relocated the capacity for change from an all-powerful God to human reason, the choices of “how we should then live” are as varied as the number of human beings who propose them. If God does not change, then choices become central. And moderns are besieged, literally overwhelmed, with the variety of choices we face in everything—from how to raise our children, to how we should love our neighbors, to what we should eat, to whom to vote for in political elections.
The great wisdom in Ephesians, as Professor Snodgrass so ably shows us, is its emphasis on both change and choice as the twin pillars. One cannot exist without the other. And the place that change and choice ever and again come together is in our liturgy and worship. Ephesians is filled with prayer and praise for our great and sovereign Lord, who shows us, as we worship him, that one cannot become a new creature without acting like one, and that knowing how to act can only come if one recognizes the great change brought about in the new life in Jesus Christ.
—Terry C. Muck