The Relational Mission

Reflections and comments on Ephesians 1:1b from a missional perspective. "of Jesus Christ" Paul is a "sent one" of someone else. To be sent requires someone to do the sending. An apostle does not send oneself. An apostle is one who represents the one who sent him and he represents him not only in words, but also in the way he conducts his life. Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ. This is an important distinction. He was sent in the same way that Jesus was sent. An apostle of Jesus is sent to live as a representative of the life of Jesus, the kind of life that led to his death. We can see this in the words of Paul in Philippians 2:1-11. We are all to have the same mind as that of Christ Jesus. Let me use the words of Deitrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics to go deeper into this: "Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of the person who lives responsibly ... His entire life, action and suffering is vicarious representative action ... All human responsibility ...

Reflections on Ephesians 1:1 from a missional perspective. "Paul, an apostle ..." Being that Ephesians is a crucial book for the missional conversation—as it is one of the most quoted books of the Bible in the missional literature—I thought I would immerse myself into this book for a while. While I'm doing this, I'll write weekly entries sharing my reflections. Let's start with the opening words. I'm not going to get into authorship and all those questions. I'd rather focus on what we have from a canonical perspective. As my teacher Gordon Fee always said in the first lecture on an epistle, this greeting is a typical of the time. This is the way letters began, the authors name followed by a title or self description. If we took this pattern in the world today, someone from the accounting world for instance might write, "I'm John Doe, a certified public accountant with Ernst and Young." Of course we have letterhead that takes care of thi...