Seeing the Greatness of His Plan

Ephesians Study

Chapter 3

Ephesians 3:14-15 -- Seeing the Greatness of His Plan

Amplified Bible:

14 For this reason [seeing the greatness of this plan by which you are built together in Christ], I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

15 For Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named [that Father from Whom all fatherhood takes its title and derives its name].

Seeing the greatness of this plan, Paul understands HOW we have been built together in Christ.  He says that he bows his knees before the Father of our Lord.  In the Old Testament, we are given an visual aid of the plan of salvation, the roles of the Godhead, and a pathway that takes us back to God although we have been captured by the enemy (Satan).  According to ancient Hebrew pictographs, that capturing is called sin.  

We generally focus on the lamb.  It was sacrificed morning and evening by the priest and showed the initiative of heaven towards us daily.  There was the sacrificing of the lambs that individuals did for personal sins.  There was another sacrifice that we may not equate to what Paul is writing.  It was the sacrifice of the red heifer which signified Christ crucified outside the camp for all mankind. 

The bulls were offered within the camp and not usually burned entirely.  The use of a (female) red heifer was not directly connected with the worship of the sanctuary.  The offering of the red heifer was done outside the camp.  It was not only for the Israelite, but for the “stranger or gentile” in the group (Num. 19:10).  The offering was not a regular offering…only done occasionally.  It was universal in its scope.   It was a corporate offering.  It typified Christ being made sin and a curse for us (Heb. 13:12-13).

The use of a heifer was to show that Christ would come through a woman.  The symbolism of this sacrifice is so deep, and I encourage you to do some study around it.  It really has nothing to do with Israel today.  The red heifer has already been offered once and for all according to scripture. 

Once offered, it was burned and the ashes were used for purification ceremonies.  The ashes were sufficient for all the people. When a person or a family needed purification, a fresh heifer was not required to be sacrificed. One was sufficient for all, including the sojourning stranger. So the sacrifice of Christ is sufficient for everyone. There is enough virtue in His sacrifice for the sins of the world. (1 John 2:2). The ashes were stored for all future needs. The sacrifice of Christ is stored up us as an inexhaustible fountain of merit to which we have daily access for the purging of our consciences (Heb. 9:13, 14; Zech. 13:1).

An interesting point, as far as I have been able to research, is that the offering of the red heifer was going on when Christ was crucified.  It was on the Mount of Olive (outside the camp).  Being above the temple, the priest could look into the temple when they made the offering.  They saw, as did the Roman centurion, the curtain split from top to bottom.  No wonder the centurion said, “…this was a righteous man…the Son of God.”  This was in the sight of Jesus as He was on the cross.  The last fulfillment of the red heifer in the life of Jesus the Christ was His Crucifixion. The red heifer was a purification from defilement, those that had been contaminated by a dead corpse. We have passed over from death to life, Christ is our Passover. We are one with Him, Christ is our Atonement. 

The ashes were then put into fresh water.  When needed for purification rites, a brush was made of cedar and hyssop tied with the red thread.  In the crucifixion, we have a visual of this event.  ”Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and put on him a SCARLET robe” Matt 27:27-28.   After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon HYSSOP, and put it to his mouth. After Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said, "It is finished!" Then he bowed his head and died (John 19:28-30).  The cedar (some sources say juniper) is wood and could well have been the cross.

If that is a stretch for our minds, remember that the passover included a hyssop branch dipped in the blood of the lamb and applied to the wooden doorpost.  There is a reason for the use of hyssop…it is antibacterial and antiviral.    Notice that David says in Psalm 51:7: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Chemically, hyssop can cleanse our memory of sin as can Frankincense (Num. 5:15).  Again, this is an illusion to the purification process of the red heifer.   

"For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctified to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Hebrews 9:13-14

Paul, being schooled in Judaism and a Pharisee, understood the meaning of these types and symbols even if at the time he did not apply them to Christ.  When he met Christ on the Damascus road, he understood that these all referred to Christ.  He understood that the scripture had been fulfilled, that the Messiah had come and been crucified for Jew and Gentile (those outside the gate).  Again, I cannot look at the crucifixion as I did before taking this journey with Paul, and I give thanks that we are seeing “the greatness of His plan.”  God had us all in mind from the beginning…Jew and Gentile…being blessed with the oneness of the Godhead and restored to the original intent of God.

God is in our life to transform our life.  The value of love of everyone and everything will manifest in our lives as it did in Paul’s.  We will take every thought captive into Christ and stop taking the things of life and people personally.  This is a discipline that we invite the Lord to do for us.  Someone once said that the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.  Inviting Christ into our thoughts and giving Him permission to take those thoughts captive is the practice of the better.  It is the Divine working in humanity that brings about the miracle of transformation.  It is the working of His plan that was established from the foundation of the world and which found its fulfillment in Christ at the cross.  With Paul, I bow the knee in worship of this magnificent God.