New Year, New Me!

As we approach a New Year, you may be considering your goals for 2024, as a lot of people say, “a new year, a new me!”.

I certainly consider my goals, at the end of each year I reflect in my annual journal and consider what I would like to achieve and do better at in the year ahead. As Christians, choosing to put on a “new me” is part of our daily lives, not only personally but in our families and church communities, we ask ‘how can I be more like Jesus?’. I've been exploring the book of Ephesians for my Lay Ministry training (if you're not sure what that is, feel free to ask me!), and it uses key ideas and images to walk us through the process of finding and putting on our new self, guiding us on how to have that “new year, new me” attitude towards our daily walk with Christ. Whilst it is a short letter, Ephesians is packed with rich theology. There is so much we can take from this book on both a deeply personal level, and for our church community.

The book is split into two key halves, chapters 1-3 explain the gospel story, and chapters 4-6 model how this should affect each aspect of our story, personally and in community with others. Put simply, it shares ideas on who Jesus is, what he has done and calls us to respond. I'll explore the two key halves of the letter (you may want to grab your Bible and read along with me!).

Let’s set the scene, it’s 60 AD and Paul is sat, imprisoned by the Romans, writing to a set of Christians in modern-day Turkey, likely a mix of former Jews and Gentiles, a people he knows and loves. We see, from Acts 19, that he visited Ephesus, a huge city, the hub for worshiping Greek and Roman Gods. Paul travelled there as a missionary and saw extraordinary transformation, leading many to Jesus and witnessing them receive the Holy Spirit. Perhaps he was reflecting on this time as he wrote the first chapter of Ephesians, explaining what is means to receive the adoption and hope that God has called us all into.

What ties this book together is Paul’s fervent desire for us to understand what Jesus has done for us and that when we really grasp how much he loves us, our new self comes naturally. For the Jews and Gentiles, Paul offers a new message on how this differs from the way they were living before.

The Gospel

From chapter 1:3, Paul begins by praising God for what he has done in Christ, before bringing his readers into the picture. At this point, it is helpful to consider Genesis 12:1-3 where God calls Abram and blesses his covenant people, the Jews. In this time, the nation was set-apart. Chapter 1:3-5 reveals the beauty of adoption, that everyone now has access to God’s promise, we were chosen before the foundation of the world to receive this spiritual blessing that God always intended to offer us. Wow!

We receive this blessing through redemption, and we begin to see the Father, Son and Spirit work together as the gospel story is told. God bought us back at the cost of Jesus’s blood, covering our sins, and through him we find God’s grace, revealing a whole new way of understanding our lives! In chapter 1:10 Paul explains that God’s purpose was to unify all things in heaven and earth under Christ – his plan was always to create a community of restored humans who are unified under Jesus. Non-Jews have heard about Jesus and the access we have to salvation through him, what Paul says reflects what we see in Acts, where Jews and non-Jews were brought together into the family of God through the work of Christ.

In chapter 1:15-23 Paul prays that we will personally experience the power of the gospel, receiving the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in our knowledge of God, that we will be enlightened by the same power that raised Jesus from the grave, knowing the hope we are called into and acknowledging him as the exalted power over the world.

In the second chapter, he uses the image of being brought from death to life, that in our human nature we are physically alive but spiritually dead. Paul demonstrates that a dead person cannot be made alive again by human methods, instead, like the power that raised Jesus from the dead, only God can bring us to life, and he does this through his love and grace.

After evangelising to the Jews and Gentiles, Paul is now writing a letter to an audience containing both groups. For the Gentile he is making clear that new life is through Christ, for the Jew he is re-iterating that God is the Christ, and it is through him and his work that they find salvation, not through Jewish custom e.g. circumcision. In the same way as people do today, both Gentiles and Jews had come to rely on their own efforts as a route to salvation, where the Gentiles were pleasing Greek and Roman Gods, or the Jews following the hundreds of additional laws they had added, Paul’s message is clear, for the readers then and for us today, that we are saved and 'made alive’ through Jesus alone, with the joy of discovering the redefined calling and purpose that God has set before us.

Through this radical new kingdom, we have all been invited into a new family, with the same promise originally given to the Jews and called to put on a new self. Through hearing about Jesus and receiving his grace, we are brought into a unified community where we can live together in peace and walk in the same inheritance, guaranteed by the seal of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2:11-22).

Our Story

In chapter 4:1, Paul uses “therefore” to link the ‘what’ with the ‘how’, proposing that our position in Christ leads to how we practice life, rather than how we practice life (our works) leading to our position in Christ. He calls us to be convicted by the gospel into living distinctively.

Paul calls the Church to be bound by peace, unified by one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. What’s interesting is that baptism is something that, we may see as individualistic, but what Paul talks about is a baptism into the unity of God’s family, a calling to join the body of Christ, which God is over and works through. It brings a whole new understanding to what it means to walk with God, it’s not only about our personal journey but we are also responsible for maintaining the unity of his Church.

We could be fooled into thinking that by unity, Paul also means uniformity, but he explores how Jesus’s new family consists of all different types of people, who are empowered by one Spirit, using their many gifts to build up the Church. Chapter 4:11-16 talks about the importance of these gifts, that when the church works effectively, we “equip the saints for the work of ministry”. The word “equip” also translates to “complete furnishing”, the idea of putting something right, and the ancient Greek word was used to describe mending nets, the idea that the different ministries within our Church work together to produce strong, mended Christians, fit for the work that God has set before them. When this happens, our Church is expanded and strengthened. This suggests that ministry is the beating heart of the body of Christ, and for us this is such a beautiful image of what God has purposed the Church to be.

On a personal level, Paul, through our calling in Chapter 1, and the unification in chapter 4, uses the image of taking off our old self, and putting on our new self. He compares the two, explaining that we are to replace our deceitful desires for righteous and holy actions, and through the renewing of our minds in the Spirit, we wear the likeness of God. Within this theme, which continues until chapter 6:9, Paul compels us to put ourselves underneath others, elevating them as more important than us, to demonstrate this, he uses the image of a Christian marriage. The wife mimics the church and the husband mimics Jesus, with the wife submitting to her husband (that is, choosing to put herself under the mission that God has for marriage), and the husband loving and giving himself up for his wife, a powerful example of respecting one another and laying down your life for someone else.

When considering what putting on a “new self” looks like, the final chapter of Ephesians is the icing on the cake. Paul gives us his closing advise on how to protect the unity of God’s people and the new self that we are walking in, by using the image of putting on “the armour of God”. The different parts of this armour relate back to elements mentioned in the first half of the letter, helping us to stand against the powers of darkness. I love where it says "In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one." (Ephesians 6:16), so cool!

Paul’s hope for the Ephesians, and my hope for you as a reader as you enter 2024, is that you feel convicted to put on this armour daily, responding to Paul’s request to receive the gifts of the gospel and live out the calling that God has prepared for us. If not, are there elements of the gospel message you need to receive again, or perhaps for the first time? To trust God and follow his conviction is to be rooted in the knowledge that you are loved beyond measure. Remember, he chose you, before the foundations of the earth.