A Wide Door for Effective Work
This Sunday, we begin reading Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Paul spent longer in the great regional capital city, Ephesus, than anywhere else during his missionary journeys. On his third missions trip, Ephesus became his base of operations. According to Acts, chapter 20, he spent three years there, publicly preaching and privately instructing.
Did he spend so long and work so hard in that difficult, large urban setting because the place was congenial, and the labor effortless? To find the answer to that question, we look, not to Acts, or the Letter to the Ephesians, but to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. In that letter, Paul explains his delay in traveling to Corinth because he had so much to do, right where he was. He writes to them that he is unable to leave before Pentecost because “a wide door for effective work has opened to me.” He also observes, “There are many adversaries” (1 Corinthians 16:9).
The work was not only arduous and perilous, it was spiritually and emotionally demanding. “Remember the three years I was with you—my constant watch and my care over you night and day, and my many tears for you” (Acts 20:31 NLT).
Ephesus was, at first, a small congregation. Paul’s initial work was to build up the sincere believers (Luke calls them “disciples” in Acts 19:1). Sunday services are not seminars to impart lectures to interested listeners or provide an aesthetic experience. They are the gathering and building up, in one another and in Christ, of a body which glorifies the Father.
Paul also had a commitment to religious people who lacked a lively experience of, and trust in, the grace of God in Christ extended to every human being. Such persons, consciously or not, actually put their trust in the family and practices they grew up with, often with a vague, or even serious, commitment to “live a good life.” These are those who, although brought up in the church (the synagogue, Acts 19:8), have no genuine access to “the kingdom of God.”
Paul’s work did not stop at the boundaries of the culturally religious. We know, from Romans 15:20–21, that he preferred to reach those “who had never heard.” Recruiting Christians or self-described Christians from other places they might be, is not evangelism. Evangelism begins after the steps described above mobilize the laborers in the harvest.
Lastly, Paul considered “adversaries” an important reason to stay at his work. We see in Acts and Paul’s letters that he was in a constant struggle with the corrosive effects of worldly paganism. “Who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is the temple keeper of the great Artemis, and the sacred stone which fell from the sky” (Acts 19:35). Paul understood that the fundamental operating assumptions of political and social identity in his city were idolatrous and deluded. Paul also knew that Christians were in constant danger of being seduced by false “gospels” and false “teachers.” These counterfeits of the true faith purported to challenge the spirit of the age, but actually encouraged a capitulation to it. These “fierce wolves” speaking “twisted things” would rise up from within the “church” itself (Acts 20:29–30).
All these realities were Paul’s encouragement to continue ministering. Without his mindset of faith in Christ, and love of God and neighbor, the work is impossible. Following in his teaching and life, it is indispensable.
—Fr. Eric
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