Text: Ephesians 1:3-14; Hebrews 2:10-18
In the book of Ephesians Paul often speaks of the mystery of the Gospel or the mystery of the ages or the mystery of Christ or the mystery of God’s will. A mystery to Paul would be something hidden that is being made known, revealed. The mystery is that before God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created anything, it was his will to unite humanity to himself that we might be a praise to his glory which means to live worshipfully in and from his communion of love. From the Book of Genesis we know that God, the Trinity created humanity in his image, which means that the nature of our life is our being bound together with relational bonds. To be human is to be persons in community…the foundation of the image of God. God’s will was, is, and always will be for human community to reflect the community of self-emptying love who is the life of the Trinity. This reflection is the praise of God’s glory.
Another way of thinking about this is to say that the Trinity set out to make humanity his corona in creation. A corona is the crown of light that occurs around the moon during a solar eclipse. When the moon moves directly between the sun and the earth, everything goes dark except for this crown of light encircling what looks like a big black hole. The Trinity is unknowable like the blackness of that hole because he is not of this creation, but the Trinity wants humanity to be his shinning forth like that circle of light which coronates the moon during a total solar eclipse. It is the Trinity's will from before all time to unite humanity to himself that we being in the image of God might truly be the visible corona of his glory. Now here's the kicker, the heart of this mystery. This means that it was God’s will from before all time for God the Son to incarnate himself as Jesus of Nazareth in order for humanity to share in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by grace, as a blessed gift.
To sum up so far, the Trinity for the sake of sharing himself brought this universe into existence to love it. He created humans in his image in the hope of coronating his creation with the praise of his glory. He would do this by God the Son becoming human himself and passing that glorified humanity onto us by giving us the Holy Spirit. This is going to sound radical, but God the Son becoming human in Jesus Christ was not something the Trinity decided to do because humanity has sinned and fallen short of his glory. The Trinity was going to include humanity in his communion anyway and that, my dear friends, is what Paul calls the mystery of the ages in Ephesians and to the praise of God the forgiveness of our sins, the healing of our brokenness, and the destruction of death in the end is the inevitable result of God the Son becoming human in Christ Jesus and uniting humanity to himself by the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the inner life of the Trinity sin cannot be, brokenness cannot be, and death cannot be. When those things come into contact with the life of the Trinity, they cease to be. The Trinity's will to unite us to himself has always been. What has changed is that because of our sin which brought death and its futility, God the Son incarnate would have to suffer death and all it’s futility in order to destroy it and the fear of it –the devil’s favorite tool.
The Trinity's version of reality is that he, the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will shine forth his glory be making humanity his corona. Therefore, what humanity would have been and we still will be, the reflection of the personal, communion of self-emptying love that the Trinity is. Our version of reality is a bit different. We live in a very troubled world. The image of the Trinity in us is very broken. Our created intent was for us to live in perfect harmony. Yet, it is at the level of relationships that we are most greatly marred and broken. Sin has utterly corrupted our capacity to be the image of the Trinity and thus, this creation now has for a crown something that more resembles a virus or a cancer; a humanity that brokers death. The Bible’s claim for why there is death is that it is the result of our sin. Paul describes human existence as slavery, slavery to the fear of death, a quite apt description. Death ends our existence. Knowing that this life won’t last forever provokes a small handful to make peace and the rest to indulgence. It is no lie that the most grotesque and indeed evil atrocities done by humans have in one way or another been as a result of our fear of death.
Our reality of sin and death is a slavery in which every one of us is both victim and perpetrator and it is futility and we have no innate means to escape it. Nevertheless, this reality of futility and our inability to free ourselves from it is not why God the Son became human as Jesus Christ. But, praise be to God it is by Jesus Christ that we are freed from it. God the Son has become human as jesus of Nazareth, has taken on our flesh and blood that sins and dies, and by his death and resurrection the Trinity put death to death and destroyed Satan’s power to make us fear it. Jesus Christ is the corona. He has sanctified humanity, which means he’s made humanity holy in himself, which means we are now capable of living in our created purpose of being the corona provided we live in union with Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father.
Christ Jesus has set the entire human race free from its slavery to sin. Therefore, we need not live as those who fear death anymore. That is the hope that we have to proclaim. We, like Christ Jesus, shall be raised from the dead because he lives in us. Paul says we share the same blood and flesh with Jesus Christ just like families share the same flesh and blood. If you pardon the analogy we have the same DNA, the Holy Spirit. He is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters no matter who we are or what we have done or left undone. So great and incomprehensible is the love of the Triune God of grace.
The Trinity in his will to bring us to glory, to make us his corona, has made Jesus who is the author of our salvation perfect through suffering. Jesus was made perfect through his sufferings…not just his last few hours, truly he was like us in every way and thus suffered just as we do in every way. He knows our every weakness. He knows what it is like to fear death. His perfection is in that he did not renounce the Father's purpose for his life by succumbing to Satan’s tempting him to use his power to preserve his own life in avoidance of death. That is the same temptation we face as we live in him. We know him who is our purpose. We are the children of God because he dwells in us we share the same flesh and blood with God the Son. It is his glorified flesh and blood that we will receive when we too die. We need not fear death. We’ve a glorious future, as we too shall be resurrected. The Lord’s Supper is a ready analogy for this. By partaking of the bread and the wine we share in his flesh and blood. You may not think so highly of the meal as I do, but I would readily admit that when we partake of that meal together we are participating in Jesus Christ’s own worship of his father and that, my friends, that is the corona. When we share the Lord’s Supper we are letting God’s glory shine forth. We most certainly are becoming his corona. Worship in heart, service, and voice in Christ as the result of being filled with the Spirit is the shinning forth of God’s glory and a small taste of our future.
God’s creating purpose for us was, is, and always shall be to make us the praise of his glory, the coronation of creation. The Son of God becoming human as Jesus Christ, his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven has accomplished this. He shares it with us now by pouring his Spirit upon us, indeed he is with us sharing our flesh and blood and we his. When Paul says that Jesus helps us to face temptation he means that Christ Jesus is in us covering us with his faithfulness and bringing us to worship. With him in us we pass through death and have no reason to let ourselves be manipulated with the fear of death to act according to it.
To say something practical here briefly, to live in the help of the Lord is as Isaiah wrote: “I will recount (remember) the gracious deeds of the LORD, the praiseworthy acts of the LORD, because of all that the LORD has done for us, and the great favour to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he said, "Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely"; and he became their saviour in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old (63:7-9).” To remember isn’t just to remember; it is to live in the memory. Worship always living in the sure knowledge of the love, kindness, and blessing that the Lord has poured upon you in making you his children through Jesus Christ. He was born to die for us. He has set us free. Worship and live in that freedom. Amen.
