Jamie Greening's Blog

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

Our goal in this blog post is to finish the long sentence, which began in verse 3. I have not, by design included any periods or broken the sentence up into smaller sentences. Most renderings will though, creating seven or eight sentences where there is actually only one. Why did I leave it as such? Because the length and quality of dependent clauses is part of the message. What the blessed apostle is attempting to communicate cannot be done simply and succinctly, or indeed, ever completely.

CLICK HERE for introduction and vv 1-4.

CLICK HERE for vv 5-9.

Remember, I am giving you each verse as my translation from the Greek New Testament in two formats, the first one is a ‘straight’ rendering and the second is a am calling a ‘loose’ translation in which I am trying to capture modern usage or a more conversational feel.

Verse 10

recapitulating in Messiah all things in heaven and earth as he manages the fullness of times

re-establishing everything in heaven and earth around Messiah as he oversees the ticking of time

In the previous post I called this verse a doozy–and indeed it is. There are four main words to talk about. The first one is the key verb that the NRSV translates as ‘gather up’. That is a fair attempt. It could also be one ‘sum up’, as in a tidying up of ideas. The actual word, though, is far more interesting than that, because the root is ‘head’ — and it has the intention of saying ‘put back under the head’ which is about reordering or reorganizing. Theologians often think of this word as ‘recapitulate’, which is one of my choices.

A big part of the plan is this great reset in which Jesus takes his place as the head of everything, not just the head of the church but as the head of all things in heaven and earth. We who follow Jesus believe that he is the Lord, and that he is God, which is true, but the reality is he has not yet carried through with this reset in it totality. He is waiting.

Which takes us to another of the important words, the idea of administration. The word Paul uses is a familiar one, even in English, as it is the root word for ‘economy’ and sometimes is connected to the way a house is run because ‘home’ is a root noun in the compound word oiko-nomia. It would be fitting to say something like, ‘in the administration of . . .’ but I chose to verbify* it with manage or oversee. God is the steward, or the manager, of the house of the universe. What exactly is he managing?

Time, or precisely, the unfolding of time (kairos, not chronos) in a cosmic and historical way. The phrase here is almost identical to Galatians 4:4, which is one we read at Christmas, right? ‘In the fullness of time God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law.’ In that usage the phrase the empahsis is upon the birth of Jesus at ‘just the right time.’ Here, the meaning is different. Here it is about time unfolding, and perhaps Paul is thinking of epochs in his mind with the early Genesis narrative, then Patriarchs, then Moses, the monarchy and now Greece and Rome. Someone is overseeing all of this, keeping a hand on the steering wheel, and that person is God. He is the keeper of times. I will come back to this in a moment.

The fourth interesting part of this is the location, heaven and earth. It is universal in scope, not regional or local. He is the Messiah of Israel, and he is the Son of David, but he is so much more.

All of this together, then, in this one verse, teaches us that God is the master of time, and he is unfolding history, managing time the way a steward might run a household or a farmer might tend a garden, and when the timing is right he will act in such a way as to put everything that exists under the direct leadership of Jesus. This hasn’t happened yet, but it will.

This is how we know Paul is talking about time fulfilled, at the cross where deliverance was made (1:7) and in the future consummation when all will be set right and Jesus will take control of the nations directly.

As I write these words and examine this passage in the pre-dawn hours of the fourth Thursday of Lent in the year of our Lord 2026, the world is in serious trouble. War rages in Ukraine, tensions are high between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the United States and Israel have attacked Iran and Lebanon, which, in retaliation, has nearly crippled oil and energy supplies for much of the world. Inflation is climbing. Justice is called into question because pedophiles run free. Corporations have used AI in a careless way to mercilessly reduce workforces and jobs are drying up. Even in side the church leadership is cruel and immoral, seeking power and fame rather than faithfulness. Things look bleak, and time seems spinning out of control. Yet faith, real faith, remembers that God is the keeper of times, and he is managing it, overseeing it, administrating it alongside history in such a way that human beings are given maximum freedom until it is time to give an account. That moment will be when Jesus sits upon a throne and everything will come under his direct control. This will not happen before he is ready, and what is more, faith understands and gives thanks for the fact that God has kept us from blowing the planet to smithereens. That we are still here is evidence of his amazing greatness in keeping the times.

*Verbify is not a real word, but it should be.

Verse 11

in whom we were chosen, having been predestined according to the purpose of everything happening according to the plan of his will

we were selected in him, it was his purpose, his forever plan, everything happening according to his will

You can feel that this is a summary statement of the previous few thoughts. As such, it is a repetition of things we’ve already talked about. The interesting thing is how the language employs so many different ways of saying ‘this was always God’s plan’. There is one word that means ‘it will all work out’ and another word for ‘intention or purpose’ and another word for ‘will’ and then the word ‘chosen”, which is different than the word for election in verse 4 and can carry with it a feeling of appointed. Everything is appointed, willed, intended, purposed, planned, and will all work out.

What will? Everything will.

Verse 12

for us to be in praise of his glory, anticipating hope in Messiah

that we be in celebration of his glory, pre-hoping in Messiah

A big part of the plan was for us to praise, to celebrate this glory. This is a point I can’t leave without highlighting the purpose of worship — celebration and praise. It is God-centered, about his glory and his amazing work. Yes, human need and the human condition are also part of the content, but the focus is, and must always be, on what the Lord is doing and working through it. Too much of worship is focused solely on human emotion, generating ‘feels’, and targeting a growth curve in attendance. Such a focus is hogwash idolatry. We praise God, we celebrate God, in art, beautify, song, and word because who he is and what he has done and what has promised he will do.

The word for ‘hope’ has a prefix before it that can either mean ‘first to hope’ or ‘hope before.’ Given the context of praise and glory, I chose to focus on the pre-hope. Pre-hope is what comes before hope; which is to say, pre-hope is optimism before we fully know what good things might be in store for us.

I need more pre-hope in my life.

Verse 13

whom you, after you heard the true gospel of your salvation, thus being marked with a seal in the promised Holy Spirit

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

You don’t know how tempting it was to translate the word ‘mark’ as spiritual tattoo. Disclosure — I have no tattoos, but that is kind of the idea being mentioned here by Paul to describe being marked by the Spirit. The biggest question we have to ask is whether this is about baptism or about the arrival of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life, which occurs at the moment of belief.

I opt for baptism based on the connection between baptism and circumcision, which was the ‘mark’ of the Old Covenant. Paul has no problems equating the two, and does so explicitly in Colossians 2:11-12. Our baptism is a spiritual tattoo that marks us as being in Christ, and as recipients of the Holy Spirit, and thus among those who have. been delivered, which is to say, the church.

Speaking of Holy Spirit, you should take note in my alternative translation, I moved ‘spirit’ from the word ‘holy’. I do believe it is a reference to the Holy Spirit, but the word holy itself is not next to the word spirit, rather it is at the end, closer to promise. The idea of promise can take us in many directions, all of which may be legitimate, but contextually promise is tied to the forgiveness of sins and the inclusion as a child of God. That is the sacred promise.

Verse 14

who is earnest money of our inheritance, until the deliverance of the estate, to the praise of his glory.

who is the down payment on our inheritance, until the whole estate is ours, praise his glory!

There it is, 257 words in that sentence, now complete, and how do we celebrate finishing it? By playing every New Testament students favorite game: Can you keep up with Paul’s ever switching metaphors? Here, at the end, he switches from the beautiful language of family and adoption, and spiritual marking of covenant, and turns to finance to describe the Holy Spirit’s work in our life. And, from our perspective, it is muddled. It sounds to our ears like he is confusing the process of buying a house — in which earnest money is put down to show intent to actually buy — and the inheritance of an estate after a will has been processed.

Yet, that is not how I read it. I read earnest money here as not about buying a house, but it is, work with me — as though the parents have died, and the children are given some ‘money to live on’ until the process of switching over the estate is finished and they may claim full ownership. The Holy Spirit here is a kind of ‘executor’ of the will, then, providing for day-to-day things now while at the same time working toward the day when the heir is in full control.

The Holy Spirit is our access to God for daily living until the fullness of times, the mystery is completely revealed, and the metaphor becomes reality.

And never forget, the one who died, leaving us this beautiful inheritance, is Messiah Jesus.

Click Here for introduction and verses 1-4.

The opening two verses of Ephesians are focused upon greeting, then verse three begins the incredible long and prepositional phrase filled sentence that continues all the way to verse fourteen. Three and four are instructive about who God is and who we are. Now we turn to verse five.

Remember the methodology, I am giving you first with each verse my ‘straight’ translation of the verse from the Greek New Testament, and right behind my ‘loose’ rendering designed to be a little more vernacular driven. Then I give brilliant insight!

Verse 5

he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Messiah, in him, according to his good pleasure

his plan was always adoption to him through Messiah Jesus, and it was something he really wanted, it made him happy

Predestination is another one of those loaded words, like election in verse 4, which causes no small amount of speculation and handwringing. I prefer here to think of it as I do in my ‘loose’ translation, as plan. God had a plan, and because he is God that plan cannot be thwarted — not by the devil, not by any king, and certainly not by me. I can ruin my own life, and I can do things which have disastrous consequences for others, but what I can’t do is thwart the plan of God.

I also think we stretch the idea of predestined and even plan too far into thinking about our lives as though for each decision, for each step, for everything there is the ‘perfect God-ordained plan’ and we have to find it or else we are out of God’s will. This kind of thinking leads to neurosis. God’s plan doesn’t work like that — read this text carefully and see his plan was to simply have us as his adopted children. That’s the plan! There is no perfect divine will for what to order for breakfast or even necessarily where to work or live. The plan is to be his child and delight in his parentage.

This plan makes him happy. The word is eudokia, which is often translated as pleased. Here Paul puts that word close to the word for will, God’s will. It is a mistake, I think, to combine these as ‘goodwill’. That is not what he means. It is goodwill that we are adopted children of God, but the point is that him being our parent and us being his children makes him happy and it was something he wanted. Throw in ‘predestined’ and it was something he always wanted.

He always wanted to be your abba, to be your dad. Always.

Before moving on, I want you to know this is, by my reading (and I can be wrong at times) the first of many times Paul employs the Greek preposition kata which is often rendered as ‘according to.’ So the verse ending phrase could be, ‘according to pleasing his will.’ I bring up kata because Paul will stretch this little four letter word to amazing heights throughout this chapter. Everything is seemingly ‘according to’ something. His use of the word functions as a bridge, connecting ideas. So in this verse the idea being connected is God made us children, and this was something he wanted (his will) and it made him happy (pleasing).

You will see kata again soon, in verse 7. And 9. And 11. You get the point.

Verse 6

in praise of the glory of his grace, which he graced us in the beloved

in celebration of his fantastic grace, graced in the beloved one

Yes, in this verse grace works like a verb and a noun. The first usage is as a noun, something that exists — Gods grace. Grace is always best defined as something we don’t deserve that we get. As such, it is a gift. An unmerited gift, an unearned favor. Paul teaches us to celebrate the grace of God, which here is the gift of being his child. What a wonderful thing!

Then he turns around and uses the same word as a verb, a simple past tense word. We could render it as ‘gifted’, but if I did that I would want to render the noun the same way, such that ‘in celebration of his fantastic gift, gifted in the beloved one.’ It is legitimate translate grace as gift, but grace is such a powerful word, I chose to go with that instead.

The point of this verse, though, is not the grace, that was in verse 5, the point here is that it is a gift made possible by ‘the beloved one’ who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus’ made the adoption possible. And this is a point of praise.

Verse 7

in whom we have deliverance through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according other riches of his grace

in him, through his blood, we have deliverance, the forgiveness of wrongdoing, and so the wealth of his grace

As I wrote in the introduction, this is the verse that brought me into this examination of the whole chapter. I made a pretty significant word change from most translations by opting for ‘deliverance’ rather than redemption. One possible option is the word ‘liberation’ — which I really like. Through Jesus we are liberated, as prisoners to sin or as people oppressed by evil. Freedom! Those who were in darkness have seen a great light!

The price of our freedom was Jesus blood. I have neither the expertise nor the imagination to ever understand what that actually means or why? Why did my liberation require the blood sacrifice of Jesus? Wasn’t there another way? What is the connection between blood, death, and deliverance? I can answer the biblical motifs, and I can give the definition of words like atonement and propitiation, but I don’t understand what has happened.

But I know something happened, and that it happened is proven by Jesus living yet he died, and I know that he has bestowed on me the wealth of his grace. I know I needed delivering, I needed saving, and no one else could do it because no one else understood how to do it or was perfect enough to get the job done. Only Jesus.

That I know.

Also, notice our old friend ‘according to’ kata.

Verse 8

which overflowed among us in all wisdom and insight

which flooded us with all wisdom and insight

Which word do you like better — overflowed or flooded? There really is no difference except for feel: overflow conjures David’s cup overflowing because it is not big enough to hold the blessing of God in Psalm 23. Flood feels more violent, like Noah’s boat being pounded by rain.

The best way to appropriate this is to think about your own way of walking spiritually. Does wisdom and insight ‘flood’ your thoughts or does your mind slowly ‘overflow’ with wisdom and insight? Does it seize you all at once and drown out everything else, or does it saturate you and soak you thoroughly?

What matters, then, is not how you got wet, but whether or not you are saturated with wisdom and insight. Wisdom here is sophia, a word not too unfamiliar to many of us. Sophia is personified in the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament it is a gift of God to those who follow Jesus. The second word, though, is a little more pointed in that it connects to the mind as an act of thought. Paul uses the verbal form of this word in Philippians 2:5 to teach us to ‘think like Jesus.’ This is the stuff of transformed minds.

Now flip it and learn that a fool with no sense is lacking spiritually.

Verse 9

making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his pleasure, set forth in him

showing us his mysterious will, and he was happy to show us — and all in him

Paul will get progressively more mysterious as this chapter goes on, but here, here we need not dwell on what we think it might be. We know what the mystery is, it is Jesus’ atoning blood. The mysterious will of God was to make us children through Jesus — and it was something, again Paul point out, he was happy to do. It was not a burden to him, but a love.

I feel like that this point, with the word ‘mystery’ that Paul didn’t understand what was happening with the blood of Jesus any more than I do. It is a mystery, the mystery of God in Christ that he delivered us and that price is his blood. We are privy to that mystery because we recognize that our sins have been forgiven and we live in grace.

That is the mystery; why he would give so much for us, why does he love us so deeply? That is unknown, but what is known is that he does!

Let’s save verse ten for next time, as it is a doozy!

Throughout this Lent I have been studying Ephesians 1. I was drawn there not long ago to reflect upon the well known passage in verse 7 about our redemption being through Jesus’ blood, and this redemption is the forgiveness of sins. I let my eyes wander up and down the page, and in so doing my heart and mind raced with anticipation of what treasure might be found in this chapter.

I was not disappointed — God’s word never disappoints — but there was so much more there than I’d ever realized, and thus is the nature of the Bible. No matter how much you study it, there is always more. This more has a quality of being that which cannot be fully communicated, for Ephesians spoke to my soul.

What I want to do is cover it slowly in a few blog posts, but that is hard to do because vv 3-14 are famously one long sentence, about half the chapter, and it defies any logical attempt at organization. That hasn’t ever stopped theologians from trying, but it really is just one clause after another, attribute upon attribute stacked as logs and timber erected upon a giant bonfire set ablaze to the glory of the Triune God working in Christ for our benefit.

I have translated this from the Greek New Testament in two formats, one format is what might be called a ‘straight’ rendering that is formal. The other format is an attempt at vernacular, or ‘loose’ reading that tries to communicate in everyday language what I perceive the Blessed Apostle was teaching us. I will line these up together with each verse, the ‘straight’ rendering first, and then the ‘loose’ rendering behind it.

So, without any more delay, let us begin with verse 1.

Verse 1

From Paul, an apostle of Messiah Jesus due to God’s desire, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful people in Messiah Jesus.

This letter is from Paul, who is an apostle of Messiah Jesus, and it is all because of God’s will. It is to the holy people in Ephesus, the faithful people in Messiah.

This opening is hotly debated among scholars. The issue is the ‘in Ephesus’ which doesn’t appear in all the earlier manuscripts. This has led some to speculate it was a circular kind of letter that was read aloud by one congregation and then passed on to others. The biggest defense for this view is that later (v. 15) he will talk about the Ephesians like he didn’t know them except by reputation, yet in the book of Acts he spent three years there. If this was a circular letter, that makes sense. To the contrary of this, very early on in church history it was accepted this letter was written to the Ephesian church, and there are other explanations for the apparent lack of knowledge in verse 15.

A note is needed here about ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’. I regularly choose to translate the Greek rather than transliterate it, which is what we do if we use the term Christ. Though more familiar to us, the word ‘Messiah’ , each time it is used, reminds us of the connection of Jesus to Israel and of the continuity of salvation to God’s people.

Toward the end of this verse there is a cadence that builds with the preposition, ‘in.’ The letter is sent to the holy ones ‘in Ephesus’, the faithful ‘in Messiah.’ These people are in two places at one time. Physically they are in Ephesus, that is where they live — a classic Greek city of the Roman Empire filled with idols, evil, and all manner of worldliness. These people are holy people in an unholy place. At the same time, though, they are also ‘in Messiah’. It is one of Paul’s favorite idioms to refer to those people who have placed their hope and trust in Jesus — again, more familiar to us as ‘in Christ’. There is more going on with the ‘in Messiah’ language than can be brought out here, but it is enough to point out now the holy people in Ephesus can only stay holy if they remain faithful in Messiah. His language is precise and meaningful here, these are not throwaway appellations. They were made holy by Messiah, staying faithful is up to us.

As we live in an age in which so many people who claim to be holy ones in Jesus seem to seek power, wealth, influence, and cruelty it is easy to identify with the difficulties of being faithful. If we are not mindful of faithfulness, we may end up as the Ephesian church eventually did, as Jesus warns them in his own letter food in Revelation 2, ‘I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at the first’ (Revelation 2:15).

Verse 2

Grace and peace to you from our Father God and our Lord Messiah Jesus.

May grace and peace be to you from our Father God and our Lord Messiah Jesus.

Grace and peace are beautiful things, especially the grace and peace which flows from God. However, we would be working the text too hard if we overplay this blessing, because even heathens in the ancient world opened their letters like this, with bestowals of grace and peace and such niceties. What makes this different is that the grace and the peace are derived in the Godhead rather than as some kind of unconnected hope that the recipients will be enjoying life.

Verse 3

The God and Father of our Lord Messiah Jesus be blessed, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in highest heaven through Messiah

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

Now we begin the long sentence of over two hundred words. The structure of this verse is not hard to handle, with a three-fold blessing. First, we bless God, second God has blessed us, and the blessings are located spiritually in heaven.

As you can see, my ‘loose’ translation plays with the word ‘blessed’, for I am trying to capture something of what I think is the intended feel. For Paul, ‘bless’ was verbal, something we actually do with our mouths. In this way, it is more akin to praise in the modern vernacular. I fear for us the word ‘bless’ and especially ‘blessed’ has lost most of its power. We don’t think of bless as something we do, we think of it as a state of being. I want to recover the action, so I chose to take the word back to its roots which is to ‘speak well’. We should speak well of God rather than blaspheme him, because he has spoken well of us insofar as he loved and forgave us. The vocabulary of blessing is a heavenly vocabulary taught to us by Messiah Jesus. If that feels a little mysterious and hard to get your mind around, well, get ready for a ride because so much of Ephesians 1 has that same mysterious mood to it. The Apostle is trying to describe some things here which, quite frankly, are indescribable and can only be experienced. Spiritual blessings, Messiah’s words, are among those mysterious.

Verse 4

inasmuch as he chose us, in him, to be saints, blameless in his sight, from the foundations of the world, in love

selected to be holy people, as if we were blameless in his sight, it was love ever since the foundation of the world

The ‘in love’ phrase, agape, comes as the last the last two words in the verse but I have to tell you it is hard to know what it should be attached to. It would be a legitimate move to put it first, ‘he chose us in love, in him . . . ‘ or it could be molded even to a ‘He lovingly chose us . . .’

The verb ‘chose’, or the cognate ‘elected’ is a strong word, and Paul employs it as a token of God’s care here. How a person views election will determine their understanding of what this verse means. If one takes it to mean a kind of divine plan of choosing some for salvation and choosing others for damnation which has no bearing on individual will or liberty, then this verse confirms God’s plan for salvation to only a select group of people, the chosen ones.

If, however, you take it to mean God chose Jesus as the means, the weight of ‘in him’ nestled alongside such terms as election, and that plan has been forever percolating, then the idea of election is not about excluding some and including others but rather election is what The Lord has done that any of us, and all of us, might find forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life in Jesus. This, as you might guess, dear reader, is my preferred reading for I do not perceive we have a whimsical, capricious God who robs us of liberty and choice. In other words, I am not a Calvinist.

The devotional aspects of verse four are such that I feel I could preach this passage all day long. The impetus of meaning seems to be that because of his choice to love us, God sees us as holy people who are blameless. We know, without doubt, this is not the case. We are not holy. We are profane, vulgar, immoral, and violent. There is little about human beings that is sacred. We are certainly not blameless, either. We are, in fact, liars, criminals, haters, greedy, gossips, murders and lazy.

A pessimist would read this verse and say that if it is a true depiction of God’s feelings towards us, then he is in denial about the actual human condition. But that is not the case. Something far greater is happening, which is why I started this verse with ‘love.’ God has been blinded by his love for us. Love always changes how we see people. Whereas the neighbors might see a grumpy man, a loving wife sees a protector who keeps watch over his family. Paul is teaching us here that God is in a way, hopelessly in love with us. When he looks at us what he sees is a holy and blameless people, because when he looks at us, and this is a metaphor of course because God doesn’t have eyes, but when he looks at us he sees Jesus and his love on the cross.

God is blinded by love. That is the only explanation for why he puts up with us.

Okay, that is enough for now. There will be more to come.

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First things first, and the thing most people really might appreciate: if you’re just wanting to watch the best of these, here is my top five: Sentimental Value, Hamnet, Sinners, FI, and the animated film Arco. Be aware, though Sinners has bloodsucking banjo playing vampires who speak the same language as the megachurch that planted a satellite campus down the street from your church.

It is evident Oscar is going through some things. I have never seen so much cinematic sadness and sorrow before. Every single movie this year seems determined to make people cry. Sure, there have been plenty of sad movies in the past, but not every, single, one. I talked with Mrs. Greenbean about this, and it must be a reflection of the general sorrow in the world which stems from war, political turmoil, and economic upheaval. The sorrowful ennui has robbed the movies of optimism, joy, and fun. Hollywood has decided the world needs a good cry.

There is only one exception to this, and I will get to that later when I discuss best picture nominees. I don’t want to tip my hand too soon.

But one more thing to say before we get into predictions. For all their sorrow, all of the movies nominated for best picture are good movies, there really is only one true stinker in the batch and that is Marty Supreme. In fact, I am hoping Marty Supreme is the movie that ruins Timothee Chalamet career. At the same time though, none of these are great movies, either. In ten years, no one will reflect on or remember these movies at all. Good, yes, but unremarkable. They all would lose in just about any other year.

Okay, predictions — and I only predict major categories, which I define by categories I care about.

Best picture — One Battle After Another has become the favorite after its dominance at BAFTA, and I will not be mad if it wins, but I think Sentimental Value is more likely to win. Now, I hope, though, I hope, F1 wins. If I chose who the winner was, it would be F1 because it is the only movie that has any kind of feel good, joy, optimism at all. It is also the only complete, start to finish, solid movie. F1 will not win, but I can hope for a pleasant upset, right?

Leading Actor — None of these are great performances, but I think Michael B Jordan wins for Sinners. He was really good in that movie. Wagner Moura was outstanding in The Secret Agent, but that movie was so oddball it hurts his chances. The other three nominees were pantomimes, or caricatures of stereotypes. I still can’t believe Paul Mescal didn’t get a nomination for Hamnet.

Supporting Actor — It should go to Stellan Skarsgard, and I would be okay if Benicio Del Toro won. Again, Sean Penn may win because . . . Hollywood . . . but I found his performance was a hack job and the character made no sense and I think the Battle vote will be split.

Leading Actress — This is the most competitive category all around. I could make a case for every one of these women to win. Rose Byrne’s performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You stays with you long after the credits roll, and to be honest, that should have gotten a best picture nomination rather than Marty Supreme or The Secret Agent. However, the winner will be Jessie Buckley. She is phenomenal in Hamnet. Just outstanding.

Supporting Actress — It should be Wunmi Mosaku from Sinners. They split the Sentimental Value vote with two from the same movie.

Animated Feature — Zootopia 2 was a fatal error, the other four are delightful in their own way. KPOP Demon Hunters will likely win, but I hope for Arco. The colors, drawing, and gentle storytelling about deep subjects across a science fiction background are very alluring to me.

Casting — I think this is a new category, one of those made up things to make someone happy. This is the only category I think The Secret Agent should win. It was perfectly cast. Sadly, I bet One Battle After Another Wins because it bravely casted two previous Oscar winners. Right.

Cinematography — Train dreams, and to me this isn’t really close.

Costume Design — Frankenstein.

Directing — This is probably the most coveted. Anderson will likely win for One Battle After Another, but I hope Chloe Zhao wins because even though Hamnet wasn’t the best movie this year, her work directing such familiar material in a minimalist format should be rewarded. She pulled so much out of every single actor.

Documentary — Come See Me In the Good Light — again, sorrow, sadness, tears.

Film Editing — It is a coin flip between F1 and Sentimental Value. Probably Sentimental Value, because in that movie, editing is so important to the plot it is almost a whole character in and of itself.

International Feature Film — Sentimental Value, and this is one of only two locks. If you’re betting, bet this.

Makeup and Hairstyling — Frankenstein.

Music, Original Score — Sinners, and this is the only other lock. In any non-Sinners year, the winner would be Bugonia.

Music, Original Song — Golden from KPOP Demon Hunters.

Production Design — Frankenstein.

Sound — F1, as much as I pull for this film, Sound is probably its only legitimate shot at an Oscar.

Visual Effects — Avatar: Fire and Ash, but we are all so bored of that.

Writing (Adapted) — The winner has to be Hamnet.

Writing (Original) — Blue Moon might sneak in with the hoity toity crowds, but this is really a two movie race between Sentimental Value and Sinners, and I think Sentimental Value takes the Oscar simply because it is far more relatable to most peoples lives than banjo playing bloodsucking vampires starting a fellowship and community focused musical nighttime cult.

Some quick analysis here, and that is the movies were not as sexual this year as the last several — I mean, last year the best picture was practically a porno. Gross. So not as many boobies and bottoms, but the language has intensified. I think it is true that only Train Dreams and the animated films have no horrific curse words. There is also a lot of drug usage and gore.

Okay, if you haven’t already, go watch Hamnet and Sentimental Value to cry, and then watch F1 to feel good again.

I’m serious. This is the best ever. I did the field work for you, and have found perfection.

Of course, there is a caveat here in that everyone’s tastes are different, but for reals, this is the best.

I began working with tomato soup at the beginning of winter. My wife and I host her crochet clutch each Christmas for their party. I had already made the decision to make them Yankee pot roast as the main cause, but what to serve for the soup course? I had never made tomato soup before, so off I went. For about a month I began working on the recipes, variations, seeing what other people did and over time. We ate a lot of questionable soup of varying quality during those weeks. Eventually, though, bingo! I food this one, and I wanted to share it with you because let’s face it, the world feels out of control right now and the comfort a great bowl of tomato soup just might be what gets us through.

So now, the ingredients list.

Tomato Soup by Jamie Greening

2 twenty-eight ounce cans of Manzano whole peeled tomatoes

2 onions, one yellow one red

3 garlic gloves, crushed then diced

1/3 cup of finely chopped basil

1/3 cup of freshly grated pecorino or parmesan

2 cups of vegetable broth

1 tablespoon of sugar

salt and pepper to taste

Equipment: Dutch oven and immersion blenderProcedure

Let’s dive into how to make this very simple yet delicious and winter-sustaining dish.

First, crush and slice the garlic. Then, slice the onions, both of them. This feels like way too many onions, I know, but trust me. Both onions, sliced. Then melt the butter in a large Dutch oven and once melted, add the garlic and let that sizzle for about a minute, then all of the onions. Stir over medium to high heat. Don’t intentionally burn the onions, but don’t get weirded out if they brown the pan a bit. There is flavor in those scorch marks!

When the onions reduced down significantly, add all of the tomatoes. Stir, and as you stir, crush some of the larger tomato bits. Let those simmer together, just the onions, tomatoes, and butter for about ten minutes.

Add the basil, then slowly add the vegetable broth. Let this cook for another five minutes, then add the sugar. The sugar is not to sweeten it, but to offset some of the acidic bite. Unlike other recipes which work too hard on this, I think we want some of that acidic flavor, I mean, after all, this is TOMATO SOUP here. We want to taste those delicious vine ripened red globes of goodness.

Let this cook for another five minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

It is at this point you bring out your hand immersion blender. Blend the soup directly in the Dutch oven for about three or four minutes, or until smooth. This is one of my favorite parts, because playing with the immersion blender is fun.

When you finish blending, stir in the pecorino cheese. Bring the soup to a bubble, and then turn the heat off, cover with a lid, let set for about twenty minutes. Don’t worry, if it is a good Dutch oven, it will remain plenty hot, but the rest gives all those flavors time to learn to dance together. To be fair, I would likely be better to make this the night before, let it set in the fridge, then warm it up and serve it. Soups, stews, chowders, and chili all taste better the second and third day.

After twenty minutes, serve with your favorite crackers, toasted bread, croutons, or a decadent grilled cheese sandwich. I usually put some more pecorino on top, and maybe some of that basil laying around.

Options and Variations

The first variation is the broth. Many people will want to prepare this with chicken brother. Most recipes do, but mine does not because chicken masks the wonderful flavor of the onions, whereas a vegetable broth brings it out.

A second variation is cream. Most recipes for tomato soup call for a heavy whipping cream to be added. This is always justified for ‘bringing down the acidity’ which I think is ridiculous. ITS TOMATO SOUP! Forget the cream, this is not a bisque.

People who use chicken broth and cream in their tomato soup are wanting to pare back the tomato-i-ness of the soup. I don’t now why anyone would want to do that.

A third variation is the cheese. I prefer pecorino precisely because it is a bit milder than parmesan, but regular old parmesan will work just fine as long as it is freshly grated. Never buy pre-grated cheese unless you have no other recourse.

A fourth variation is the basil. Many times I have skipped the basil altogether and the soup is delicious. It doesn’t have that next level roof-of-the-mouth joy that basil gives, but it is just fine without it and maybe even more palatable to people who like food a little on the boring side.

A fifth variation are the tomatoes themselves. Again, Manzano are preferred, but I have taken to using half Manzano and half regular diced tomatoes. I can hear a purist out there shouting about fresh tomatoes, but I see no advantage here as canned tomatoes are wonderful and you don’t have the problem of peels and seeds.

At some point, you just have to go on the record so that in the future it will be known where you stood on important cultural, social, and yes political issues.

I want to go on the record as being absolutely opposed to the trend of referring to meat as protein on menus. It has crept up ever so slightly, but now seems to everywhere. ‘Choose your protein’ is not something that sounds appealing to me. To be fair, I often do not want meat, especially meat prepared by some place that might have less than sanitary prep areas, so I get the desire to not have beef, poultry, pork, or fish but don’t call meat protein. I know there are other types of proteins besides meat, but the word protein does not belong on a menu. Ever. I don’t know what focus group they are looking at, but yuck. And no, I do not want to add a ‘protein foam’ to my coffee. That sounds like the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. What next, they will stop selling potatoes and now you must order a ‘starch’? Would you like to upsize that with more amino acids? I mean, when I get my enchilada plate number three, I can get beans and rice or no beans and rice, but I never order legumes and starch.

I want to go on the record as being against the United States taking any aggressive action toward Greenland, Denmark, or any other ally. I can’t believe I live in a time-period where this is even something we are talking about. We already have a military base there, we have historically had pretty much free rein in the region, and it belongs to people who by all appearances really like us. Please, please, someone talk some sense into our leaders and stop this. Just stop it.

I want to go on the record that the catch in the football game Saturday night in the Bills versus Broncos game was the worst call I’ve seen in a playoff game since the famous Dez Bryant catch that wasn’t against Green Bay many years ago. Fans will remember what I am talking about. I am not unhappy for the Broncos, as I am not a fan of either of the teams, but anyone with any sense at all knows the Bills were robbed. It doesn’t mean they would have won the game, but it certainly turned things around.

I want to go on the record that I shed no tears for Nicólas Maduro in Venezuela. He is a very bad man; we may have done that nation a great favor in arresting him. I also want to go on the record that we (The United States) has no business ‘owning’ or ‘controlling’ or ‘seizing’ the economic or political machinery of Venezuela. Prosecute Maduro for his crimes, but let Venezuela solve its own problems. Offer help, assistance, and advice, but coercing oil is not a good look for America.

I want to go on the record that I think the Supreme Court should rule in favor of states that have put limitations on accommodation for what are called trans-students. I know this puts me at odds with many who cite this as a civil right, but it is not a civil right. It is a healthcare and biology issue. If an adult wants to change his or her body I am all for the freedom to do so, and the rights that person has in society to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, children, whose bodies are still changing and raging with hormones and the confusion of adolescence, do not have enough experience or wisdom to make such monumental changes which will last with them for the rest of their lives. States make decisions for children about alcohol, tobacco, driving, military service, passenger safety, employment, right to sign a contract, and so many other things. This is not a hard one to understand the state having the right and responsibility to regulate. For the record, I am not opposed to a student behaving, dressing, or using identifying language anyway they want, but I am opposed to medical or surgical procedures in minors and I am against competition in sports. Title IX was a great achievement, and the trans-movement jeopardizes it.

I want to go on the record, thinking again of sports, that the super-conferences have ruined college football. It is not that any one conference is better than others, but that a conference is meaningless because all the teams don’t play each other, therefore, there is no sense of true strength, or even who is truly the best team. The NCAA should break up these super conferences for its own good. It will not, because right now the money is so vast, but the direction it is headed will end in ruination and the game will suffer. We need a true playoff for the conference champion, and then only conference champions should play each other. Problem solved.

I want to go on the record that while I think AI has great benefits for many fields of innovation and endeavor, such as science and medicine, the governments of this world need to act now, and very soon, to regulate and restrict its use as it relates to the creative arts (images and music) and of human likeness. By restrict, I mean imposing terrible penalties upon those who generate and spread deep fakes and slanderous lies. We are nearing a place where it is impossible to tell real from fake, and if we let people do this without consequences, then we will lose the most important glue that holds society together, and that is trust. When we can no longer trust our eyes and our ears, then society will implode.

I want to go on the record that I don’t think protesting accomplishes much at all. If you want to change things, vote, organize voters, inform voters, drive voters to the polls, register people for mail-in-ballots, and participate in the process of actually electing people who advocate for the things you believe in. Protesting is an enormous waste of time and often has the opposite effect you think it will have. Registering ‘outrage’ is silly. However, it is a constitutionally protected right, and pivotal to the founding of our nation. I’m looking at you, Boston Tea Party. I’d like to think we are mature enough as a society that officers who are doing their job and enforcing the law are safe even as protesters who think those enforced laws are unjust are likewise safe. I will further go on the record that I believe our government is pursuing a wholly unjustified ’round-up’ and is doing so in politically motivated locations. Anyone else notice how it is Minneapolis and not Houston where these things are going down?