Paul in Ephesus
Paul in Ephesus
In today’s video, you will see our group walking around the ancient ruins of Ephesus, just outside of Kuşadası, Turkey. The old city was abandoned when the port kept filing in with silt. So, the people abandoned the old city and move to the port of Kuşadası. Because the old city was just abandoned, we have one of the most intact and complete ancient cities from that period of time.
One of the first things one realizes when walking around the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus is that the people of this region and era were not backward people living in ignorance. The sophistication of their art and architecture, the prolific state of literacy, their technology (which included indoor plumbing), and the advanced state of engineering show that when Paul and other early Christians came to promote the Gospel in the Greco-Roman world, they were dealing with knowledgeable people who could not be hood-winked or won over by a cock-n-bull story. The Gospel would have to contend for both the hearts and the minds of these people.
In the book of Ephesians, Paul makes the astounding claim that God has reconciled all creation to himself in Christ. The story of Jesus is about God rescuing the world from the alienating powers of sin and death. The Gospel also teaches that in Christ, God is reconciling all the world’s peoples to each other. Thus, Christians are called to live as new people, as the vanguard of those who stand on the edge of new creation.
That is still a story that the world needs to hear and believe. God loves this world and has not abandoned it to ruin. The world’s destiny is be charted in the direction of the One who died for our salvation. That means that we have hope for the future. We have the confidence to move forward, no longer emotionally arrested, no longer mentally paralyzed and debilitated by fear and discouragement.
We also need to believe and act on the reality that the people of this world can share a common future in which the needs of all people are met, the dignity of each upheld, and the freedoms and dreams of each encouraged. Otherwise, we can keep following the well-known path in which a sense of scarcity has us at each other’s throats and in which power is always used to exploit. But Christ’s offers a better alternative.
Finally, while we wait for the new creation, we live into this new reality by aligning our lives with Christ, allowing him to shape us and empower us for life in the reign of God.
At the end of this video, you will hear my reflections on our way from Ephesus. The sound quality is not great, but the ideas were worth sharing.