Jamie Greening's Blog

There is one particular line in this parable that cuts me to the quick. It is the rapid verbs and swift action against the son in verse 39. I can’t even imagine how Jesus could deliver that line and not wince or cringe at the violence coming his way. Yet he stood there and gave this lesson to people who had ears but did not hear, eyes but did not see.

This is the third of these parables I have translated. What I have below is the text followed by italicized notes on the translation. Following that, there are some comments and observations about the actual parable itself and its meaning. I do apologize as this is a rather lengthy post — but it is a lengthy parable!

A Translation with Textual Notes of Matthew 21:33-46

33. You must hear another parable. There was a man who owned an estate. He planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress, built a tower, leased it to growers then went away.

The verb ‘hear’ is imperative. That is why I have included ‘must’. If I were going completely colloquial I might translate the opening as ‘sit down and listen to another parable’. 

The ‘owned’ is our old friend household despot from the parable about workers getting paid the same amount (Matthew 20:1-16, also link here).

34. He sent his servants to the growers at harvest time to take his fruit.

35. The growers seized his servants; they beat one, killed one, and stoned another. 

Technically the language is ‘one they beat, one they killed, and one they stoned’ but the way Jesus sets up the phrase it is not about order or number but the random variety of it all. He is painting the growers as something like gangsters who terrorize. The only thing people can count on is their random violence. It would probably be better rendered ‘some they beat, some they killed, and some they stoned.’    

36. He again sent other servants, more than the first time and they did the same thing. 

Everything in me wants to add a clarifying ‘and they, the growers, did the same thing.’ But alas, I resisted that urge. 

37. At last, he sent his son to them saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 

38. But when the growers saw the son, they said amongst themselves, ‘Come on now, lets’ kill him and take his inheritance.’ 

You will forgive me adding a bit of flare to the grower’s conspiracy. The actual phrase should probably be literally rendered as ‘Here, come now!’ as if pointing at him as he walks up toward the vineyard’s gate. In my head I hear it in British English as though spoken by ruffians. But then again, I have an overactive imagination. 

39. They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 

The first verb, seized, is a participle, so it could be ‘seizing’ or ‘when they seized him’ but it reads better to make it aorist, simple past with the others. They seized. They threw. They killed. 

Of course, in Mark’s telling of this same parable (Mark 12) the order is reversed. They kill him and then throw him out of the vineyard. And yes, that does make a difference if you’re thinking of a hermeneutic of the crucifixion. 

40. Now then, when the master of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those growers? 

There is a word shift here because earlier Jesus calls him that wonderful word – household despot – which I render here as landowner. We might even call him an entrepreneur of a start-up or a venture capitalist. Now, though, Jesus calls him the ‘kurios’ which is the word for lord. In the right context, it means the Lord and often refers to Jesus himself. Here it means bossman, el jefe, but is definitely designed to be nomenclature relevant to Jesus as Lord.

41. They said to him, ‘He will destroy those nasty evil people then lease the vineyard to different growers who will give him harvest in its season.’ 

So ‘nasty evil’ – kakous kakos – is a bit of fun. It is a double negative meant to convey these were odious, murderous, socially unacceptable people. 

This is not a textual comment but a note on the response. Nothing is said about the loss of the son or of the servants for that matter. The audience Jesus shows their coldhearted and calloused condition by really only responding with a care about the harvest and investment return. 

42. Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures, ‘The stone the builders rejected became the cornerstone, for this is from the Lord and it is amazing in our sight.’

The quote from Psalm 118:22-23 is directly from the Greek (LXX) Old Testament. The in some renderings, particularly the NIV, cornerstone is rendered as capstone, which is very unfortunate and confusing as these are not the same thing. The language in the Greek New Testament seems clear to me as it combines two words, ‘corner’ and ‘head’. If the language only had ‘head’ then I can see where it might be the capstone or keystone, but the deliberate use of ‘corner’ seems to rule that out. 

43. This is how I say to you that the kingdom of God will be lifted from you and will be given to a people who will do the fruit of it. 

Literally Jesus says the kingdom ‘will be lifted up from you’, which carries the image of a burden that is too heavy for them to carry so it is taken off their shoulders. They had failed, and therefore the ‘burden’ of bearing fruit shall be given to others. Of course, the import question is who is the ‘you’. I have some ideas, and those are below in the comments. 

44. [And those who fall upon the stone will be crushed to pieces, and anyone upon whom it falls will be pulverized.]

This whole verse is in brackets because its authenticity here is in question. It is a certain authentic phrase in the Lucan account (Luke 20:18) but not all ancient manuscripts agree it should be in Matthew, and therefore may be a scribal error – a learned scribe no doubt who was familiar with the Lucan version and added it in here. Because the wording is not an exact copy of Luke, I feel like this has its own history. I tend to view it as authentic.

45. When the chief priests and the pharisees heard his parables, they knew he spoke about them. 

It is plural, parables. There is a cumulative effect of these parables that Jesus delivers in the temple courts that has such an impression on the religious leaders. Any one parable could be dismissed, but the constant drumbeat from the lips of the Galilean, combined no doubt with turning over tables and chasing people around with whipcords, is what led to the events of Good Friday.

46. And even though they sought to arrest him, they feared the crowds for they held him as a prophet. 

The opening of this verse is clunky, ‘and even though’ but Matthew doesn’t give a very solid transition to this thought in the text. Indeed, it feels to me like he missed a word in there somewhere, as it reads ‘And seeking him to arrest they feared the crowds’. It needs some cleaning up but the best I got is ‘even though’. 

Comments and Random Thoughts

I have spent three weeks wit this parable, and I have more notes than I could ever possibly either here or in any context, really. It is quite the rabbit hole, if I may be allowed to refer to a scripture in that way, for once you go down it, you are indeed akin to Alice for every line and every word is an Wonderland of meaning and rich exposition. Nevertheless, there are a handful of things I wish to share.

First, this parable is found in the other two synoptic Gospels, Mark has it in chapter 12 and Luke has it in chapter 20. There are subtle differences in the telling of the parable, but not enough to change meaning. The biggest differences are the waves of servants sent to the vineyard’s growers and then at the end, where Luke and Matthew seemingly drag and allusion to Daniel 2 into the interpretation of exactly what the stone is doing. Most scholars favor Mark, as they always do, as being the oldest and the one upon which the others depend upon. As mentioned above, a theological difference is the difference between Matthew 21:39 and Mark 12:8 where they kill him and then throw him out of the vineyard. Matthew is obviously arranging the material to reflect the march out of Jerusalem to the place of execution on Good Friday.

Second, a lot of ink is spilled from various smart people about the world of this parable – is it a possible scenario that could actually happen or is Jesus speaking in hyperbole, as he is prone to do in parables. Let’s start with the set-up, would someone in the first century spend the kind of money and invest in a vineyard and then leave? Some say absolutely not and it is a set-up. Others say it absolutely is, and more to the point the very pharisees and scribes listening to Jesus would be the exact kind of people who this pointing to. They all would have had estates in the countryside while they themselves spent their lives in the city of Jerusalem. Jesus has their attention when he speaks of troublesome growers who don’t pay the proper percentage at harvest time. Another aspect is the grower’s actions. Are they psychotic to think that by killing the servants and then the heir the land could actually become theirs? We don’t normally think of land ownership as working that way, but if we see these growers as proto-communists who are revolting against the landed gentry of the day as a way of thumbing their nose at Rome’s empire, it suddenly becomes plausible. They have worked the land for at least four years, and see it as theirs, and reject the claim of private property and capitalism.

Third, there is no doubt the parable is Jesus’ commentary on Isaiah 5:1-7 and the Song of the Vineyard. I’ve got more on that to come, but here, let me think about the form of the exposition. Jesus starts with a clear allusion to Isaiah with the feverish set-up verbs in v. 33 — planted, put, dug, built, leased, and left. Luke doesn’t have that kind of set up in his version, but Matthew leans in hard on it. So the parable is set in the world of the Isaiah song, and then it finishes with a direct quotation from Psalm 118 and a possible allusion to Daniel 2. Now the sermon is beginning to sound a lot like a Jewish midrash, which was commentary on two or three passages but woven together in an a way to reinforce one idea. My suspicion is that Jesus’ sermon is picking up where someone else left off after the Isaiah scroll had been read publicly in the Temple.

Fourth, in the Isaiah 5 foundation story the problem was the fruit. The landowner, The Lord, is disappointed that his vineyard, Judah, had not produced good fruit. It was wild and useless rather than the good sweet grapes for wine. In Isaiah, he abandoned the vineyard and let it be overtaken and overgrown. He withdraws rain. He forgets about it, because the problem is the fruit. For Jesus, the problem is not the fruit, it is the growers. The fruit is good, so good the landowner wants it. But the growers are the problem.

And here is the problem for the modern interpreter, Jesus obviously promises that the vineyard will be given to others. Some have used this passage to promote a replacement theology or supercessionist ideas which in plain language mean the church has replaced Israel in all things – covenants and promises – and the church and only the church are the people of God. At first glance that idea seems right, but deeper reflection shows the fallacy of it, because it hinges upon texts like this, and Jesus is not saying the vineyard is replaced with another vineyard. He is saying the growers, which represent the priests, scribes, pharisees, and leaders of Israel are being rejected. Jesus is the fulfillment of so much of the promises and covenants to ancient Israel, but it strikes me as am major mis-reading of the Bible and of the gospel message to remove Israel from God’s plans. He has a plan. Not sure what it is, but he has one. I don’t view the church as a replacement, we are an addition, and that leads me to he next idea here.

Fifth, when leaders go bad, God takes action to remove them. It may take a while, and he will certainly attempt to bring them into line first, but he has no problem with removing leadership and starting over. I feel this is happening right now in our culture in the United States. Far too many churches have bad shepherds who do not believe, do not serve, do not care, and have zero interest in being transformed into the image of Christ. This is how you end up sexual abuse, manipulation, financial exploitation, and crass commercialism that sees evangelism as marketing, attendance as marketshare, and stewardship as revenue. I think God is cleaning house and it is painful, but he is removing bad leadership, and in my honest opinion (IMHO) he can’t move fast enough.

Sixth, and I will not belabor this, but the stone the builders rejected from Psalm 118 is fascinating. To start, as part of the Hallel it was something very well know by everyone who would have heard Jesus. The Hallel was recited at every major religious festival. Quoting it would be equivalent to quoting lyrics from ‘Amazing Grace’ or Casablanca. Second, Peter quotes this in Acts and in 1 Peter. My perception is this is one of several texts (along with Psalm 110, Habakkuk 2:4 and others) that were part of a list of Old Testament texts early Christians used to preach the gospel. In this parable, Jesus is the originator of this connection. Verse 44 pairs it the stone that crushes the idol in Daniel 2, which gives even more vivid imagery. Jesus is rejected by the Jewish leadership and he is the destroyer of the world systems.

Seventh, and this is the last one, I promise, although there is much more here. But this last idea is one of imagination. Textually this parable is linked to Isaiah 5, but we know the vineyard is a symbol of Israel, or Judah — the people of God. Here we see the inhabitants of the vineyard expelled. It reminds me of Eden, in which the inhabitants, the growers, rejected God and were expelled. There is a big picture issue in which any task, any vineyard, any work God gives us is to be done for him and according to his ways. When we fail to honor him or follow him, there are consequences. We all are growers who have leased things out for a little while. We own nothing. And when the Lord requires of us to provide his ‘cut’ or his ‘fruit’ of the harvest, well, now we see there is a financial stewardship aspect to this parable as well.

Eighth, okay, so one more will not hurt you. Jesus spoke this parable, referencing the stone, in the temple. Later his apostles would marvel at the stones and how beautiful the temple was (Matthew 24:1-2) and Jesus said not one stone will be left on another. It took a generation, but the words of Christ were fulfilled, and the vineyard was taken away from those leaders.

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What is obedience? that seems to be at the heart of yet another parable with a vineyard setting. As straightforward as it seems to be at face value the more you peel back it the more enigmatic it becomes. Below is my translation from the Greek New Testament. I have included textual notes beneath each verse.

After that I provide some comments. It is not a long passage, although I could have included the squabble that came before it to elongate it, but the parable is my focus right now.

 

Translation of Matthew 21:28-32 With Notes

28. What do you think about this? A man had two children. He came to the oldest and said, ‘Child, go work in the vineyard today.’

Traditionally this is called The Parable of the Two Sons but Jesus doesn’t use the word for son. He uses the word for child. We can deduce the gender by the use of other words in the text as male, but it is quite interesting Jesus does not use the word son but child. Combine this with the way he uses both male and female ‘offenders’ such as tax collectors and prostitutes and we learn we should not make this parable gender specific in its application or telling. 

Also, ‘older’ is actually ‘first’ in the text. So, it could read, ‘He came to the first and said…’

29. But he told him, ‘I don’t want to.’ However, later on he had a change of heart and went out to work the vineyard. 

Rather noticeably the word for ‘change of heart’ is not the same as the usual word for repent, metanoia. The word here, metamelomai, could be remorse or regret. The older child regretted what he had said to his father and this led him to go to work, therefore I have decided ‘change of heart’ is a better rendering for the story. 

Here, as in the next verse, the sentence ends with ‘went out’ but I have added ‘to work the vineyard’ for clarity although that phrase does not appear in the text.

30. Then he came to the youngest and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I am on it, Boss!’ but he did not go work in the vineyard. 

The word I have translated as ‘boss’ is ‘kurios’ which is usually translated as ‘Lord’, especially when it is directed toward the Father or the Son. Yet, in the language of the day, it didn’t always mean divinity. It actually meant master or patron. I decided to play with it, thinking the younger is issuing a little flattery in his speech. The curios thing is that he does not call him father, and the father does not call him by name. 

What I have translated as ‘youngest’ is literally in the text ‘other’, so ‘he came to the other son and …’

31. Which of these two did the will of their father? ‘The first,’ they said. He said to them, ‘Truly I say to you tax collectors and prostitutes will go into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

            The verb ‘will go’ helps us understand the vineyard is the kingdom of God. 

32. For John came to show you the way of righteousness but you did not believe him. Tax collector sand prostitutes did believe him. Yet you have seen but have not changed your heart so as to believe. 

‘The way of righteousness’ to my mind is a reference to Isaiah 35, which seems to have been understood as a describer of The Baptist’s ministry. 

We again see the change of heart verb. Now it applies to groups of people in the real world, not in a parable. The Pharisees who were challenging Jesus did not have a change of heart when John preached at them and therefore they did not ‘go out to the vineyard’. The tax collector and prostitutes did.  

Comments and Random thoughts

The verb ‘change of heart’ is found in two other places in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 7:8 and Hebrews 7:21 it is used to describe a regret about the past that you wish could be undone. The older son feels that regret. He wishes he hadn’t talked to his father that way. If he could go back and undo it he would, but he can’t, so he simply changes his life and does what the father asked of him. 

The verb is also used in Matthew 27:3 to describe the way Judas felt after he had betrayed Jesus. He has a change of heart and tries to give back the silver. This of course is impossible. The inability to act on his change of heart led him to the place of such guilt and shame that he took his own life, which is the opposite of going out into the vineyard. Judas ‘doubled-down’ on his regret and died in his sin. 

 I want to crawl into the mind of these children. First let’s think about the younger child. When he (and remember, it could easily be ‘she’ as well) told his father he would go out, did he mean it at the time or was it always a lie? Did he do what so many people do today and pay lip service to the father but never intend to obey? Or, as is more likely in my mind, did he actually intend to do what he said, but as time got away from him and his mind was preoccupied with other things, he just never got to it that day. The sin was not of intent but of follow-through, of commitment.

He became interested, perhaps, in other vineyards. Maybe there was a pretty girl or a handsome man in the vineyard next door.

He might have been busy with an online game with his buddies and just couldn’t pull himself away because deep down he would rather his friends think more highly of him than his father think highly of him. 

The ball game was on at the same time the work was happening in the vineyard.

We could speculate all day long about this because we have all been guilty of being preoccupied right out of the kingdom’s work at one time or another. And as such, regardless of what our intentions are, we are disobedient. 

The older son, though, said no at the start. This was a hard no, because in order to reverse his course he needed a heart change. He firmly and definitely never intended to go out into that vineyard when he told his father no. He had other plans for his life. He wanted to study engineering or accounting. He wanted to learn Latin and move to Rome. He hoped to make a lot of money in the up and coming AI boom. So he told the father in no uncertain terms, ‘No!’ It might have been that he had already worked all week in that vineyard without any break. It might be anger at the father for being such a slave driver. Maybe he was sore from the previous day’s labor, or was injured, or needed to take care of some person issues because he’d been working so hard he’d let things go. We can speculate all over the place as to whether he was justified or not in his refusal to work. Saying no is not always a sin.

But then he did change his heart. He accepted the call. Eventually, his love for the father outweighed whatever other plans he had.

Now I am thinking about my own life. 

What things have I told the father, ‘No’ and now I need to search my heart and change it? Where am I being disobedient to his call upon my life? Now I realize I am both the older child and the younger child all at the same time. 

More random thoughts in no particular order:

It is a parable that is an allegory. The father is God, the vineyard is the kingdom of God, and Jesus assigns identity parallels to both children.We should remember the other story with two children, which is in Luke 15 about the prodigal child who comes home. Jesus doesn’t say the younger son doesn’t get to go in, ergo the religious leaders are exempt from the Kingdom, but he does say they loose their priority entrance and preferred seating. Also, space may run out. Consider those who show up late in the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25. The ministry The Baptist is elevated by our Lord here in that believing in it is what gets the tax collectors and prostitutes entry into the kingdom. Tax collectors and prostitutes are the lowest run of society and are outcast. We should not get bogged down by identifying these historically but rather think of their analogous components today. Belief and change in heart, trust and transformation, are the requirements for entry into the kingdom, not social standing or religious achievement. Without transformation faith is only a nice idea, and without faith transformation is impossible. As Jesus unwinds this story, I can’t help but wonder how old these children were in his mind?This parable should never be used as a text for raising children or in how to approach disobedience in our children. Jesus is not giving us a parenting lesson, he is giving us a lesson using every day experiences of parenthood about the kingdom of God. There are textual variants to this parable. In one, it is the younger child who obeys rather than the older, in another the group affirms the one who said yes but didn’t go is actually the one who did the will of the father, which is nonsensical.

I do not know if it is an abomination or blasphemy. I lean toward blasphemy first because it uses the Lord’s name in vain, which it to say it takes lightly the name of the Lord by using it for worldly ends. But it is rightly also an abomination in that it the primary sin is one of idolatry.

What is Greenbean on about now?

Well, I made a mistake yesterday (Sunday). I was about to start the process of buckling down to internalize the flow and memorize key parts of my sermon about Isaiah 35. In an unguarded moment I made the mistake of looking at my phone and taking one last scroll through Facebook before I put it aside until after the worship service was over. That was the mistake, because what I saw almost immediately was this.

Screenshot

The United States Government, through the Department of War, quotes Isaiah 6:8 in a recruitment add. The blasphemy of it, the abomination of it, irked me and really made it hard for me to focus on the Way of Holiness in Isaiah 35.

The first mistake this war commercial makes is by swapping the Lord’s call to Isaiah with a call from the country to serve, it puts the United States at a place where only the Lord should be. In other words, Caesar, Darius, Nebuchadnezzar, and Pharaoh would all agree with how the Department of War is using this passage — to serve the state, the empire, is the same as to serve the gods. That is idolatry.

The second mistake, and there are many here, is to use Isaiah, of all prophets, for warmongering. A mere four chapters earlier Isaiah writes of his beautiful vision of a future where people no longer train for war, swords are reshaped as ploughs, and spears are repurposed as pruning hooks. Isaiah is not necessarily anti-war, but he is definitely not into battles and killing as a solution for problems. In fact, Isaiah could rightly be understood as someone who argues for a ‘sit back and let God take care of your enemies’ policy.

A third mistake, and this shall be the last I touch on, is the twisting of calling inherent in this kind of heretical prooftexting. Isaiah was called by the Lord in Isaiah 6 through an amazing theophany to preach to a nation a message of coming judgment and woe if it did not repent of its immoral and unethical ways. That calling is almost the opposite of asking young men and women to swear an oath of willingness to die in battle in service of the nation.

I am not a pacifist.

I am not against the military. Indeed, some of the finest people I’ve ever know have worn the uniform and stood watch.

I am not even against recruiting young people to serve. Many lives have been made better through the discipline and opportunity which military training brings.

I am, though, very much against using the Holy Bible in a way that it should never be used. What the War Department has done is foolish, thoughtless, sloppy, arrogant, and evil. It is evil because it is an abomination of desolation. It is blasphemy of the holy.

I implore Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump to repent of this sin publicly and vow to do better.

That is the only correct title IMHO for Matthew 20:1-16. Most Bibles are wrong, because they title it ‘The Workers (Laborers) in the Vineyard’ but I think that misses the point. The lesson is not about the workers or their work. It is about the payment.

In September (September 20th, to be exact) I am dipping into the Revised Common Lectionary for my preaching texts because they include some delicious parables Jesus told from Matthew’s gospel. I don’t follow the lectionary often, and when I do it is usually only during holidays or the occasional one-off. But this fall I am following that old-fashioned tool because the subject material is exciting. I have begun translating these texts from the Greek New Testament as part of my daily devotions so as to let the parables work on my own heart long before I start thinking of them as sermon source material.

This image from Atlanta, Georgia reminds

us Jesus’ set up is not unfamiliar to the economics of our time

I share with you now my translation of Matthew 20:1-16 along with some translation notes after each verse. At the conclusion, I will make a couple of observations about the parable, but not many. You’ll have to come to worship service on September 20, 2026 to hear all my thoughts.

Matthew 20:1-16 With Textual Notes of Dubious Quality

1. For the kingdom of God is like a man who went out early in the morning to hire day-laborers for the vineyard he owned. 

It doesn’t say what time exactly, but the flow of the text feels like it was 6AM, because the time comes in three hour increments.

The word for vineyard owner is a fun word oikodespote – household despot! We once had a dog for whom this title would have been appropriate.

2. After negotiating with the workers to $200 for the day’s work, he sent them out to his vineyard. 

This was the biggest translation issue – what to do with the wages. In the story Jesus says ‘a denarius’ which is loosely equivalent to one day’s wages. We have no such coinage unless I were to use ‘one Bitcoin’. The problem with that is one Bitcoin is far too much for one days labor, and these wages are not meant to be understood as a lot of money. The man in the story agreed to pay normal rates for employment – not being too generous and also not being exploitative. I chose to think of $20 an hour for ten or eleven hours of work. In truth, the amount doesn’t matter, because the story is about how all get the same amount, regardless of what that is. 

3. When he went out again, around nine in the morning, he saw other workers in the marketplace without jobs. 

The word here, and again in verse 6 means ‘idle’, but I chose to emphasize work opportunity because idle, although I use it later in verse 6, has a negative connotation of laziness. These workers are not lazy, they just don’t have a job.  

4. He said to them, ‘Come on out into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is fair.’ 

The word for fair means ‘right’ and in the same word-family as righteousness. Nothing is negotiated and no set amount is promised, only that the salary will be fair to the worker.

5. So, those workers also went out to the vineyard. Then, he went out again around noon, and at three in the afternoon doing the same thing.

There is a lot of movement in this verse. The workers go in groups to the vineyard while the vineyard owner keeps going out into town to find more workers. 

6. Around five in the evening he went out and found other workers. He asked them, ‘Why have you stood here idle all day long?’

There is that word, ‘idle’, again. I use it here because it is possible the vineyard owner is accusing them of not being proactive in looking for work. In other words, maybe he is shaking his head as he asks, ‘Why are you still standing here and not working somewhere?’

7. They said to him, ‘No one hired us.’ Then he said to them, ‘Go out into the vineyard.’

With this recruitment there is a ‘go’ command. Those of us who have read the New Testament a time or two hear the phrase ‘go out’ with a different understanding than day laborers.

8. Now, when early evening came, this owner called his manager and said, ‘Pay the workers their wages; go from first to last.’ 

This is the first time we’ve seen the manager, who apparently is responsible for payroll. The fascinating bit here is the order to pay the last first. It is against common practice, and it also guarantees that those who were first will see how much those who are last receive. The landowner is guaranteeing the squabble that is coming. 

9. Those who started at five o’clock received $200. 

From the text, the settling of accounts seems like it is taking place at 6PM, so these workers have indeed worked an hour or less. 

10. Those who had come to work first assumed they would get more, but they received the same $200 as the others. 

Jesus drops into the mind of the workers and for the first time he tells us what they were thinking. The entire story up to this point has focused on the thinking and motivation of the vineyard owner. 

11. They took it, but complained to the vineyard owner,

            Verses 11 and 12 really should be one verse. I don’t know why they are separated.           

12. saying, ‘You gave those who started last, those who only worked an hour, the same you did to those of us who carried the burden all day in the heat!’

It was tempting to render their whining as ‘we worked like dogs all day in the scorching sun’ because that is the feeling in the words. The vocabulary emphasizes the weight of their work, carrying around heavy things and that they did this in the heat. The point of their argument is those who came later did not suffer the heat nor the burden. They probably just had clean-up duty. 

13. He answered one of them, ‘My friend, I have done no injustice to you. Did you not agree to $200 a day?

He didn’t answer all of them – he only answered one of them, probably the most vocal, the one who may have been the union rep. The word injustice is that same word, with a negation prefix as I translated ‘fair’ earlier. I could have rendered it, ‘I have not been unfair to you,’ however I think ‘injustice’ carries more pop.

14. ‘Take what is yours and leave. I want to give the same to the last as to the first.

What I can’t decide is if the ‘take what is yours and leave’ is only about this particular evening or is the vineyard owner parting ways forever with this batch of workers saying, ‘I will never hire you again, you little complainer who can’t mind his own business.’ 

15. ‘Is it not legal for me to do what I want with what is mine? Or is it evil in your eye that I am good?’

Legal here is lawful. It is certainly lawful for in this time period workers had zero protection in their workplace. Yet, it also has a moral feel to it in that the vineyard owner has done nothing wrong to anyone. 

‘Is it evil in your eye’ is often rendered as ‘envious’ or ‘greedy’ because the phrase is seen as an idiom of sorts. Maybe. I am not really buying that. I think Jesus is calling out the complainers worldview that wants ‘fairness’ rather than ‘grace’. This story is about the divine mercy and the grace of not being fair. 

16. In this way, those who are last will be first and those who are first will be last.’  

Now the challenge is this: what to do with this one verse proverb at the end? I feel like Jesus did not say it at the end of this parable. I think Matthew wrote it describing his understanding of what Jesus was teaching. Don’t be lulled to sleep by red-letter editions. Note that the same sentiment is repeated right before the parable begins in 19:30 to summarize what is often called The Rich Young Ruler.

Stray Thoughts On Payments Parable

My first thought is we must resist the urge to read into this parable anything close to what might have been actual labor practices in the first century. This is clearly a set up that begins with normal activity that then becomes absurd on purpose to prove a point. And this parable is absurd. No one who hires people on a regular basis would ever engage in this kind of behavior because it would reward laziness and create bitterness.

That leads me to the second stray thought which is the Kingdom of God is not fair. It is also not equal. It is good that it is not fair, because if I got what was fair then I would be much poorer, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and in all the ways that matter than I am. If the kingdom of God was equal, we would be bereft of the beauty of diversity. Sameness is bland banal tool of the devil and evil.

One more stray thought, and it pointed at my heart: why do we all want to be first when the kingdom emphasizes the last? I need to work at being the last one in line more often. Curiously, the ‘last’ business applies to both groups at various points in the narrative. The ‘last to come’ are blessed by receiving the same wages, while the ‘last to get paid’ have access to a deeper blessing if they are willing, the blessing of hard work and to hear, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’ (Matthew 25:21).

I had the privilege of praying with a group of other pastors and community leaders, including County Judge Bryan Wilson at the Burnet County Courthouse this morning (2 July 2026). My assigned task was to pray for the governments of our nation, which came after a reading from 1 Timothy 2:1-4 which encourages us as believers to pray for worldly leaders that we may live our lives in peace.

Prayer for Governments on the 250th
Birthday of the United States of America

Almighty God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
We acknowledge this morning that you are the head, the shepherd, the guide, the source of all that is and we beseech you, O Lord, to lead us.
We also recognize that in your grace you have given us human leaders, both in the kingdom of God and in the kingdoms of this world – and it is for the leaders of our nation that we give thanks and pray.

I pray this morning for President Donald Trump, for his health to be good, for his family to be a source of joy, and for his countenance to be lifted up. I pray you protect him, and all those in elected office, from harm and violence. I ask that President Trump be surrounded by men and women of integrity and skill who will give him good counsel as to what is best for our common good.

I pray also for those elected to the House of Representatives and United States Senate, and the leadership of both parties – Republicans and Democrats – to likewise experience the blessings of this life and the peace which comes from accomplishing meaningful work that makes a positive difference in our nation.

I pray also for the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court, who make decisions which impact our daily lives and the lives of so many Americans. May they be thorough in their deliberations, intentional in their verdicts, and free from the politics of the moment or the pressures of fear.

I pray for the men and women serving our nation in the armed forces. I pray you bless their service and sacrifice with the special gift of your presence that assures and comforts.

The leaders, Lord, who have the greatest influence on our day-to-day lives are our neighbors and friends here in Burnet County – so we pray for our County Judge Bryan Wilson, for our Sheriff Calvin Boyd, and for the various deputies and officers of our cities and towns – for them to be protected from harm as they labor to provide a safe and pleasant community where we all may thrive. We bring before you mayors, city councils, school boards, and the various organizations, clubs, and groups which provide much needed leadership for our very active and growing part of the nation.

Now, O Lord, I lift all of these – our president, our elected leaders, those in the judiciary, our fighting forces, and all those who serve the nation in any capacity – from secret service to legislative assistants – and I pray for them all to have courage, courage to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. I pray for them to be brave, brave enough to withstand the corrupting power of money and the special whims of the billionaires, bravery to engage important issues rather than kicking them down the road. I pray for them all to have wisdom, wisdom that comes from sound advice, from learning, from experience, and most of all from you – for we all are lacking in wisdom, so we appeal to you from above.

I perceive, O Lord, there is a wound upon the soul of our nation. It is a self-inflicted wound which can only be completely healed by you and primarily through the work of your people in the various expressions of the Kingdom of God in our local churches. But certainly, part of that healing should come from our elected leaders and governments. I ask that you use our leaders to be healing agents who will help us live up to the wonderful ideal of being one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In the name of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. Amen.

There are some truly bad ideas in the world: Pineapple on pizza, for example, is a very bad idea. Not wearing sunscreen when at the beach is not a very good idea, either. Trust me, I know.

But some ideas are epically bad, and the great state of Texas has stumbled into one — or perhaps, ran blindly into it. As best I can understand what has been decided is public schools will require students, starting in the year 2030 for students in the seventh grade, and eventually will include high school, to read excerpts from the Hebrew Bible. It looks like there is a focus upon the Psalms, the minor prophet Jonah, Lamentations, and Genesis. The emphasis in the New Testament is the beatitudes, The Prodigal Child, and 1 Corinthians 13. Other Bible stories, like David and Goliath, seem to be sprinkled in.

Reading these passages, and children reading these passages, is a VERY GOOD IDEA. I love all of these, because I love and treasure the Bible. The INCREDIBLY BAD IDEA is having these passages taught in public school. There are several reasons why, I think, any clearheaded person of faith would want to avoid such a disaster.

First, and perhaps foremost, is the issue of responsibility. It is the responsibility of parents and local churches to teach religious lessons. The move by the board seems like a shifting of responsibility onto the public schools. This is part of the ever increasing trend toward centralizing child rearing through the school and taking it away from parents. The only difference is this is coming from the extreme right rather than the usual suspects, the extreme left.

Second, I object to the way in which this biblical material is being characterized as ‘literary’. Yes, the Bible is literary but look at the list — it is being taught along side Aesop’s Fables, Greek mythology, and Dr. Seuss. When you teach the Bible alongside these subjects, you turn it into a bloodless fable that really has no bearing other than metaphorical, moral, or as entertainment. Do you really want people growing up thinking David slaying Goliath was not any different than Achilles killing Hector and dragging his body around? Or that the beatitudes are like … checks notes … anything else?

Third, there is nothing more frightening to me, as a person who has studied the Bible for five decades and loves it dearly than to hand it to people who may not love it, treasurer it, or care for it, and expect them to teach it. That would be like asking me to teach the Koran or Aggie fight songs. More to the point, I don’t want a Catholic, a Mormon, or worse, an atheist, teaching my children what Paul means when he says, ‘faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love.’ Can you just imagine that sentiment in the hands of a heathen? This is how you get a whole generation to believe the Bible is all about, ‘follow your heart.’ Ugh.

Fourth, this decisions is an attack upon the authority of the local church. Politicians are sticking their fingers in our eyes, saying, ‘we don’t need you, we can take care of religious education all by ourselves’. That is a a big step toward a popularized religion that is devoid of prophetic thunder or spiritual transformation. If faith is appropriated by the state in this way it will not be long before it sticks a legal sword into the throat of the church and demands it abdicate.

Fifth, people will think they are Christian, and therefore eternally secure, because they read a little Bible in school. That hasn’t worked out well in parts of the world where culture and church are intertwined — I’m look at you, England, Germany, and France.

Sixth, and I will finish with this, today Christian leaning politicians run Texas, but it is not hard to see a future, maybe in fifty or sixty years, where due to cultural decline and the feckless habits of a neutered church, it is people of no faith or other faith in charge of this kind of curricula. I only shudder to think what might happen.

As you can tell, I think the TEA has made a tragic mistake. I do not necessarily believe they are bad people or have nefarious goals. I do believe they have not though this through and have been bullied by loud-mouth politicians who are trying to prove how spiritual they are by using the law for things the law cannot, and indeed should not, do.

Thank you so much for hanging in there with me! Today, we finish up this series from Ephesians 1. I think you will likely agree with me that a person would be hard pressed to point out a section of scripture that is more theologically rich and simultaneously compact as these opening lines to Paul’s epistle’s to the church at Ephesus.

Related PostsVerse 20

Who worked through Messiah by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right in heavenly places

He worked through Messiah by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right in high heaven

The two most interesting parts of translating this passage is at the beginning and the end. It starts with a repetition of one of those words from verse 19 (click here if curious), the one that ‘energy’. Here the meaning is ‘worked’ but it might also mean ‘acted’ or accomplished. Curiously, there is an attempt by many to make this verb a noun even though it is clearly a verb here and works best as a verb. People want to make the line open with, ‘which power’, stripping it of action. Nonsense. I wrestle with the little pronoun that starts, translated ‘which’, because I think ‘he’ makes more sense, ‘He worked through Messiah . . . ‘

The second interesting part of this is the ending, where exactly is Messiah seated? A strict rendering from Greek to English would be ‘in the heavenlies’. This is where my mind explodes with imagination because we must remember that the word heaven in the Greek New Testament has as its basic meaning, ‘sky’ or maybe ‘up there’, and could be thought of as ‘outer space ‘ even though they had no concept of outer space the way we do — yet they meant above their heads and all that was above their heads.

That is the heavenlies.

Yet, we must take seriously the usage of the word heaven by early Christians as a way of talking about the dwelling place of God rather than simply as ‘up there.’ To that point, Paul doesn’t simply use the word for heaven, but t his oddball word that alludes to heaven’s realms or even maybe worlds.

Where is this seat? Paul’s answer is, really really high.

Verse 21

far above all rulers, authority, power, dominion, and every category that is labeled, not only now, in this age, but in the coming age.

so far above all leaders, law, power, control and every so called important name and not just now, but now after.

Doesn’t this sound like a praise and worship song? I mean, you would think Chris Tomlin wrote this? But no, Paul did, in the Bible, long ago, and it is a thought that has been echoed over and over and over again reverberating throughout the worship of the church in song, liturgy, prayer, and praise. Let me use this moment to say one more time, anyone who says something as silly as Paul never wrote beautiful poetics is lacking in aesthetic appreciation. He was incredibly poetic at times, and this is one of them. Let me introduce you to the Poet Paul.

You’ve heard of the Apostle Paul, let me introduce you to the Poet Paul.

Easter is coming, and Easter is Jesus defeating everything and being put above everything — and anything — that you can think of.

The fun part of this verse, from the aspect of the language, is the catch-all after dominion. Literally it is two words side by side that mean ‘name that is named.’ It might mean titles, like king, or prefect, or governor. I can see that — it fits. At first reading it seemed to me like the blessed apostle was thinking about categories of authority in this world and moving out; so he starts with rulers, then systems of government, and then he moves to economic power, and finishes with a spiritual side with the word dominions and then just in case he missed something, he throws in the ‘any other governance.’ Jesus is above it all.

Jesus is above the king. He is above the president and congress. He is above the judge. He is above the highway patrol. He is far above the constitution. He is above the tech bro trying to run the world. He is above the father domineering his household. He is above the general. He is above the journalists telling you what to believe. He is above the influencer on social media. He is above the athlete.

He is above the devil. He is above crystals. he is above Zeus. He is above karma. He is above Torah. He is above witchcraft. He is above sage cleansing. He is above superstition.

There is nothing equal or above him. He is over all.

Worthy is he therefore of our praise.

Verse 22

He subjected everything under his feet and gave leadership over everything in the church.

He put him in control and in charge of everything in the church.

This sentence actually starts with ‘and’, but I dropped that for clarity. It reads better without it.

The Father placed the Son at the top of the organizational chart. Everyone reports to him. He reports to no one. There is no board he is accountable to. He is the boss.

I wrestled with the idiom ‘under his feet’, because it is a good idiom and we all know what it means. It likely refers to the practice of victorious kings placing their feet on the neck of a vanquished foe to show dominance. Jesus has won and defeated death, and therefore has put everything under his feet. Yet in translating it, it means more than the idiom, so went with in my ‘loose’ rendering the idea of control. Jesus is in control, and any rebellions are short lived.

It is shocking to read the last word in the verse, church. Paul uses the straightforward ‘ekklesia’ so familiar to many of us. The text has been talking about Jesus in cosmic terms and the universal nature of Jesus’ glory and now he narrows the focus to the church. I think there is a reason for this, and it might not be what you think.

You think, and you would not be wrong, that Paul means to emphasize Jesus is the head of the church above pastors, bishops, elders, deacons, and the illuminati that is any group of senior adult women. That is true, Jesus is above them all and he is the Good Shepherd of his church leading it and guiding it by the power of the Holy Spirit. But I think Paul is making another point as well. Jesus is above all those powers and authorities mentioned in verse 21 — dominions, rulers, powers, authorities — remember those?– and the extension by which he exercises rule over those is through the church, his hands and feet in this world.

Read it clearly: The church is above all rulers, authorities, powers, dominions. When the church bends the knee to the constitution, to the president, to the judges, to the authorities then it has forgotten who the boss really is. I am not advocating for lawlessness — far from it — I am advocating for us to remember our true citizenship is in heaven and our allegiance is to the kingdom of God. We have a higher morality than ‘is it legal’ and we have a higher calling than politics.

Verse 23

which is his body, the fulfillment of everything, filling all people.

which is his body, which means everything for everyone.

This amazing ending to the chapter is the kind of thing you spend 100 pages on, or simply let it speak for itself. Let me try, though, in a sentence of two.

The church is his body, and in the church is the fulfillment of all that language we’ve been discussing in this chapter — adoption as children of God, forgiveness, deliverance, election, power, spiritual maturity, resurrection, and eternal life. It is impossible for a human being to experience these things outside of the church because it is through the church that these realities — adoption, forgiveness, deliverance, election, power, spiritual maturity, resurrection, and eternal life are mediated.

Yes, the church is frail, it has serious problems, and it needs constant reformation. Nevertheless, it is God’s plan for the world, and it is a good plan because who else can help a broken world heal and move forward than people who have likewise been broken and then healed?

Thank you for reading this specific blog post, and all of the Ephesian posts if you have done so. I really do appreciate it. This has been my own lenten study this year, and it has been a privilege to share it with you. I encourage you to lean in toward Jesus, travel the path to the cross on Good Friday, and then wait outside the tomb on Easter Sunday. As you do, you are not alone, the church is with you.

The Apostle Paul now moves from the vertical to the horizontal, thinking more about human beings than God. This focus will not last for long, though. It never does.

With each verse, I am giving you my ‘straight’ or ‘by-the-book’ translation of the text from the Greek New Testament, and straightaway behind that I am providing you with what I call my ‘loose’ rendering that is faithful to the text yet strives for vernacular rather than technicalities. But first, if you’re interested in starting at the beginning, here are the relevant links:

For Introduction Click Here
For verses 5-9 Click Here
For verses 10-14 Click Here
For verses 3-14 all together Click Here

Now, let’s get started, shall we?

Verse 15

All this to say, I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.

As it relates to all this, I kept hearing about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.

I love how Paul tries very hard to segue naturally from whatever it was you may have decided the theological tour de force of 3-14 was into a kind of, ‘now about you’ kind of thing. You might translate it, ‘Anyhoo, I heard about what was going on with you and your faith in Jesus…’ The original language is just two words that could mean ‘through this’ or ‘because of this’. Old school would have this be substantively understood for ‘reason’ or ‘thing’. ‘Because of this thing’ or ‘For this issue’. However you do it, it is an awkward break from the revelry of deep theological insight to, ‘now about you and some of the reason I am writing you.’

‘Anyhoo, I heard about what was going on with you and your faith in Jesus…’

We addressed in an earlier post as we were just beginning down the Ephesians 1 trail. We addressed then the oddity of Paul saying ‘he heard about them’ but the book of Acts teaches us Paul spent three years in Ephesus, the longest place he ever stayed anywhere. At that time we speculated if this might be evidence that Ephesians was a kind of circular letter not necessarily just intended for Ephesus. I told you then there were other reasons. I told you we would do that later. Later is now. Here are your basic options.

It was not written by Paul, but by someone else in Paul’s name. It had been several years, at least five or six, since he had actually been in Ephesus, therefore what he is hearing about is recent activity.The church, especially the leadership, had changed and though the same body not the same people.

I reject out of hand the first option, and though I understand the third one, I tend to favor number two–it had been a while and now he is hearing about their expression of faith and love. These folks in Ephesus had recently done something that impressed Paul.

Verse 16

I never stop giving thanks for you, making sure to remember you in my prayers

I never stop giving thanks for you, so much so I make it a point to remember you in my prayers

You can easily tell there is not much difference in these two renderings, as the verse is pretty straight forward in whatever language you put it in. Paul is thankful for them, and that thankfulness leads him to pray for them. There are two things that spring to mind, though. First, the idea of prayer and memory should cause us to think of Jesus’ words about communion — ‘do this in remembrance of me.’ Memory is a key act of worship, and as we see with Paul’s memory, also an important part of ministry and community. Sometimes we can’t help but forget because we are frail and weak creatures but sometimes our forgetting comes from laziness and sin. Forgetting can be a sin, which is why meaningful acts of worship will always call us to remember, remember who God is and who we are.

A second thing that comes to my mind is exactly how did Paul remember all these people? I am assuming he had these kinds of contacts all over the Mediterranean world. Did he have a list? I like to think Paul had a prayer list and that when he hands people over to the devil it means he has scratched them off the list. I’m looking at you, Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20)!

My point is, I can’t believe he left it to chance or was capricious about it. He would have had some sort of system to his prayers, some method of remembering who to pray for and when — Monday was Ephesus, Tuesday was Philippi, Wednesday was Corinth, etc…

Verse 17

so that the God of our Lord Messiah Jesus, the Father of Glory, may give you a wise spirit, a revelation of knowledge of him,

because I want the Father of Glory, the God of our Lord Messiah Jesus, to give you spiritual wisdom, revealing a knowledge of him,

The sentence continues from the thought he began in verse 16. In verse 16 he says he’s praying, now he begins to tell us what he is praying. It sounds like two things, one being wisdom, specifically a spiritual kind of wisdom or maybe a wisdom that flows from spiritual maturity and the second then is knowledge of God. Giving spiritual wisdom and revealing knowledge of him. In the original language, Paul has put the word for spirit and the word for wisdom side by side, creating a kind of compound word, ‘spirit-wisdom’. I feel like I need more spirit-wisdom. Maybe someone out there is praying for me to have it.

Think on it, though, and it becomes not two things but one thing for a knowledge of God is the only path toward spiritual wisdom. We might understand it as spiritual maturity. He is praying for them to be grown-ups, and act like it. The time to behave like spiritual babies is over, he is praying for them to grow up.

We can’t leave this passage without mention of the great Arian problem here. Arius was a condemned heretic who taught Jesus was a secondary, created being by God rather than the eternal word. For modern reference, his view was not too different from Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Arians used this verse to push the case — ‘The God of our Lord Messiah Jesus’ to mean Jesus worshipped God just as we do, ergo he is a secondary being.

That kind of hermeneutic may be riveting, but it fails in at least three ways. First, it fails to consider the entire witness of scripture which teaches us Jesus is eternal and he is God. One would have to reject the Fourth Gospel’s opening lines to embrace Arianism: ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God.’ Second, it fails in that it stretches this single phrase, which Paul is thickly stacking, to where Paul doesn’t intend it to go. This ‘The God of our Lord Messiah Jesus’ is more about affirming to a people in a cultural pluralism that the God he is referencing is the God of the Old Testament, not a philosophical god of the Greek intelligentsia nor is it a pagan god of the pantheon. Third, Arianism fails to understand that the Trinity, three personalities and one God-substance, work in such perfect harmony that they are one yet each has a specific role, and in the role of savior Jesus became submissive to the will of God — the Triune God of which he is part — all the way to the cross. Submission, in the kingdom of God, does not mean lesser.

Verse 18

having enlightened the eyes of your hearts to know what is the hope of this call, what the riches of his glorious inheritance are among the saints.

illuminating the eyes of your hearts so you know the hope of his call, the fabulous riches of our inheritance to all the saints.

What strikes me most about this verse is the mixing of what we would understand the internal organs of the body do. We think of our hearts as ‘feeling’ organs although most of us understand the heart is a pump and what we often refer to as our heart is actually an emotional response based upon a lot of things going on biologically, not the least of which are hormones, serotonin, and a much more. So when a person says ‘my heart hurts,’ unless they are having a medical cardiac episode, they mean there is distress in their soul, in their feelings.

By contrast we think of the brain, or the mind, as the place where we know things. Our brains think, remember, plan, scheme, and do all sorts of wonderful things related to knowledge.

Paul is aware of this difference, as well. He will at times talk about the renewing and transforming of our mind, and he will likewise mention the anguish of the heart. So he knows that difference, even if he might use different words. But here he prays for their hearts to enlightened, and he even talks about the eyes of the heart. He wants them to think with their hearts.

The word is not ‘opened’ — he is not praying for the eyes to be opened, but to have enough light to see. Their eyes are already opened, because they have given themselves to Messiah Jesus. He wants this to happen so that they may know — to know with the heart as well as with the mind — about our future inheritance.

Paul is praying for them to feel what they already know. We might call that the eighteen-inch journey from head to heart. Praying others make that journey is not a bad idea. He is not praying about salvation, but spiritual enlightenment.

Paul is praying for them to feel what they already know.

Verse 19

and what the exceeding greatness of his power, according to his might and strength, working among those of us who are believing.

and more, the exceeding greatness of his power working among us believers by his might and strength.

This sentence is clear in its intent, isn’t it? It connects itself wit verse 18 as what Paul is praying, and spiritual enlightenment means understanding something about God. What is that something? To describe it, he stacks one word on another.

Exceeding — surpassing, overlapping.

Greatness — the word is close to ‘mega’ and so big, vast, large.

Power — this is our old friend ‘dunamis‘ that carries the idea of ability.

Working — the root word for ‘energy’ in English.

Might — it means strength and power in conflict or war.

Strength — normal human strength to do work or lift something.

No one word should be focused on too much here because the blessed apostle has grabbed the entire lexicon of words to make one point. He is praying for the Ephesian Christians to realize how big and powerful and strong God is. And that big, powerful, strong God is stronger, bigger, and more powerful than language can communicate.

Before we wrap up, please indulge me for a little word play. The ancient Greeks thought of ‘working’ or ‘energy’ power as a kind of actual power, something active right now, whereas dunamis power is more about potential power. A sleeping horse is dunamis. A running horse is energy. Both have power; one is at rest and the other is motion.

God is both.

Before moving on from this amazing and theologically rich sentence, I thought it might be helpful to look at it once, altogether. I will be using my ‘loose’ translation from the Greek New Testament, though, for this particular exercise.

Speak well of God, the Father of our Lord Messiah Jesus, for he has spoken well of us, with all the spiritually rich good Messiah words, selected to be holy people, as if we were blameless in his sight, it was love ever since the foundation of the world — his plan was always adoption to him through Messiah Jesus, and it was something he really wanted, it made him happy in celebration of his fantastic grace, graced in the beloved one, in him, through his blood, we have deliverance, the forgiveness of wrongdoing, and so the wealth of his grace which flooded us with all wisdom and insight showing us his mysterious will, and he was happy to show us — and all in him, re-establishing everything in heaven and earth around Messiah as he oversees the ticking of time — we were selected in him, it was his purpose, his forever plan, everything happening according to his will that we be in celebration of his glory, pre-hoping in Messiah the person who, after you heard the true words about the good news of your salvation, then marked you with an emblem in the Spirit about the holy promise who is the down payment on our inheritance, until the whole estate is ours, praise his glory!

As you could well imagine, there have been innumerable attempts by people, all smarter than me, to organize this sentence in some comprehensive way. Many of the views see verse three as an opening to a hymn, a eulogy, or doxology. Some see three parts of a hymn which follow, each to a different part of the Trinity. This view has 4-6 as being to the Father, 7-12 for the Father, and 13-14 to the Holy Spirit. Other schemes for organization involve the use of key verbs like ‘having chosen’ and ‘predestined’ and ‘having made known’. Others think it a baptismal hymn that Paul has adopted and inserted into the text. For the record, I chuckle at this one because it is the favorite of New Testament scholars. They think everything was a ‘baptismal hymn’.

All of these views on what this is have some validity and are interesting, but in my view this is simply a really great example of Paul being like you and me in the sense we just keep adding one describing phrase after another. If you listen to people pray, especially pastors, this is exactly how it often happens, a kind of wandering communication that gets wrapped up in one glorious thought after another. More specifically, listen to people speak to one another, and you will rarely find clear verbs and nouns and sentence structure but instead phrases that run together like this:

We went to the store to get milk, you know the good milk not that nasty two-percent kind that mama doesn’t like and wouldn’t you know it but as we were turning around the corner from the cheese because I had to grab some of that delicious brie while I was at the store — I just love that stuff, warmed up and topped with honey then you dip into it crackers and some green olives on the side — but it was right there that we ran into Suzie Sunshine and her new ‘boyfriend’ for the month because I called him by the name of the last guy which was Randy because of the fact I thought I had met this new guy, turns out his name is Franklin and he is very particular about that Franklin because when we were getting ready to leave I called him Frank and both Suzie Sunshine and Franklin corrected me and then the next thing I knew they had invited us to come over to their house for supper on Saturday night because of the fact Suzie was making up a big dish of lasagna to celebrate her son’s birthday — I can’t remember his name but I think it is something like Dakota or Darren, who turned ten years old last week but they couldn’t celebrate the birthday then on account of the flu.

There are a couple of characteristics of this doxology that are fascinating to me. First, the scope of Ephesians 1:3-14 is universal in its vision for salvation. The text is rooted in Old Testament ideas, but the vision has enlarged to all humanity who call upon Jesus as the selected and chosen ones. Election then is based upon faith and response, not genetics or whims. Second, the key idea in the whole thing is the sovereignty of God’s plan, which is to make us children of God through Jesus. Third, I do see the Trinity in these verses where by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are working together in different through this unveiled mystery to bring about our deliverance. Anyone who would deny the biblical teachings the Trinity must first sit with this passage for a good long time and ponder, if not three personalities doing three different yet related things, then what? There is no other explanation for what we find here. Praise be to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Also notice, please, that when it finally ends, I opted for an exclamation point rather than a period, for I can’t imagine Paul coming to the end of that and not shouting, either aloud or internally, ‘Praise his glory!’

Related posts

Before moving on from this amazing and theologically rich sentence, I thought it might be helpful to look at it once, altogether. I will be using my ‘loose’ translation from the Greek New Testament, though, for this particular exercise.

Speak well of God, the Father of our Lord Messiah Jesus, for he has spoken well of us, with all the spiritually rich good Messiah words, selected to be holy people, as if we were blameless in his sight, it was love ever since the foundation of the world — his plan was always adoption to him through Messiah Jesus, and it was something he really wanted, it made him happy in celebration of his fantastic grace, graced in the beloved one, in him, through his blood, we have deliverance, the forgiveness of wrongdoing, and so the wealth of his grace which flooded us with all wisdom and insight showing us his mysterious will, and he was happy to show us — and all in him, re-establishing everything in heaven and earth around Messiah as he oversees the ticking of time — we were selected in him, it was his purpose, his forever plan, everything happening according to his will that we be in celebration of his glory, pre-hoping in Messiah the person who, after you heard the true words about the good news of your salvation, then marked you with an emblem in the Spirit about the holy promise who is the down payment on our inheritance, until the whole estate is ours, praise his glory!

As you could well imagine, there have been innumerable attempts by people, all smarter than me, to organize this sentence in some comprehensive way. Many of the views see verse three as an opening to a hymn, a eulogy, or doxology. Some see three parts of a hymn which follow, each to a different part of the Trinity. This view has 4-6 as being to the Father, 7-12 for the Father, and 13-14 to the Holy Spirit. Other schemes for organization involve the use of key verbs like ‘having chosen’ and ‘predestined’ and ‘having made known’. Others think it a baptismal hymn that Paul has adopted and inserted into the text. For the record, I chuckle at this one because it is the favorite of New Testament scholars. They think everything was a ‘baptismal hymn’.

All of these views on what this is have some validity and are interesting, but in my view this is simply a really great example of Paul being like you and me in the sense we just keep adding one describing phrase after another. If you listen to people pray, especially pastors, this is exactly how it often happens, a kind of wandering communication that gets wrapped up in one glorious thought after another. More specifically, listen to people speak to one another, and you will rarely find clear verbs and nouns and sentence structure but instead phrases that run together like this:

We went to the store to get milk, you know the good milk not that nasty two-percent kind that mama doesn’t like and wouldn’t you know it but as we were turning around the corner from the cheese because I had to grab some of that delicious brie while I was at the store — I just love that stuff, warmed up and topped with honey then you dip into it crackers and some green olives on the side — but it was right there that we ran into Suzie Sunshine and her new ‘boyfriend’ for the month because I called him by the name of the last guy which was Randy because of the fact I thought I had met this new guy, turns out his name is Franklin and he is very particular about that Franklin because when we were getting ready to leave I called him Frank and both Suzie Sunshine and Franklin corrected me and then the next thing I knew they had invited us to come over to their house for supper on Saturday night because of the fact Suzie was making up a big dish of lasagna to celebrate her son’s birthday — I can’t remember his name but I think it is something like Dakota or Darren, who turned ten years old last week but they couldn’t celebrate the birthday then on account of the flu.

There are a couple of characteristics of this doxology that are fascinating to me. First, the scope of Ephesians 1:3-14 is universal in its vision for salvation. The text is rooted in Old Testament ideas, but the vision has enlarged to all humanity who call upon Jesus as the selected and chosen ones. Election then is based upon faith and response, not genetics or whims. Second, the key idea in the whole thing is the sovereignty of God’s plan, which is to make us children of God through Jesus. Third, I do see the Trinity in these verses where by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are working together in different through this unveiled mystery to bring about our deliverance. Anyone who would deny the biblical teachings the Trinity must first sit with this passage for a good long time and ponder, if not three personalities doing three different yet related things, then what? There is no other explanation for what we find here. Praise be to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Also notice, please, that when it finally ends, I opted for an exclamation point rather than a period, for I can’t imagine Paul coming to the end of that and not shouting, either aloud or internally, ‘Praise his glory!’

Click Here for Introduction and Verses 1-4

Click Here for Verses 5-9

Click Here for Verses 10-14