From weakness to glory series—Week 2: Ephesians 1:11-23: ‘Spiritual wisdom’.
You may have heard in recent weeks reports of a sudden spike in road accidents. Heavy rains have caused slippery conditions resulting in numerous serious incidents. Low lying fog caused havoc on the South-Eastern freeway with a chain crash between several vehicles.
But a report from rural Victoria wins the award for the most bizarre accident. You can see from the photo that this prime mover has come to grief. What do you think has happened? Anyone like to guess? Has it collided with another vehicle, or a train at a level crossing? Well, none of those.
The poor driver ended up in a canal! Heavy fog reduced visibility so severely that the driver had crossed through an intersection without realising, wandered from the road completely, crashed through a fence, and ended up in this water-filled ditch. While the driver received medical attention and was hospitalised, he was not in a serious condition. Unfortunately, many other accidents in the last few weeks resulted in fatalities. What has caused them? Police said a common factor was that drivers did not adjust to the conditions. It seems that the drivers were overconfident in their assessment of the situation and in their own ability and continued their journey without recognising the dangers…even though they couldn’t see.
At times it is right and good to trust our capabilities, instincts and logic. In fact it’s even necessary. For example, children are warned about ‘stranger danger’. If we feel like something’s not quite right about the people we’re with, we should trust those instincts. Or if we receive an unexpected email asking for our bank details, we’re right to trust our feeling that it’s probably a scam.
But at other times, it’s not right or good to have blind trust in ourselves, as the incident with the truck driver shows. There is a strong parallel here with the spiritual journey in life. Rather than trust in ourselves, scripture teaches us to do the opposite:
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:7, 5-6).
From early in life we are taught to trust ourselves. We’re taught to arrive at conclusions based on what we can see and outcomes we can measure. The human way is to create our own pathways and shape our own life as the captain of our soul. This includes matters of spirituality. People create the divine in our image, and become judge of what is right and wrong. Many modern scholars assert that the God of the bible and the bible itself is untrustworthy and that we need to pull it apart to discover what is really true. The idea that there is an exclusive way to the divine is harsh. The values of inclusivity and equality are seen to be more important than truth. Yet it is false inclusivity and equality because we end up excluding and devaluing anyone who doesn’t agree with our own views. Society generally defines everyone as essentially good and that everyone will end up in a blissful afterlife, a destination which has many different paths, provided we are good people.
Although these values have made a resurgence in recent decades, they are not actually new, or progressive. They are values the human heart has cherished since the beginning, when Adam and Eve listened to the temptation to doubt God, pull his word apart, and empty it of authority. They sought inclusivity and equality, wanting to be like God themselves and decide what was good and evil. They wanted to be spiritually wise and trusted their efforts at reaching spiritual wisdom, by listening to the devil, and listening to themselves, rather than listening to God.
But in doing so, they became spiritually poor, and bankrupted the human race of spiritual wisdom. In Corinthians Paul describes the natural human condition common to all people: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
Last week we heard from scripture how from the moment of conception we cannot see spiritually. We cannot know the one true God or come to him. We are spiritually blind, spiritually dead and spiritual enemies of God. Not only do we not accept spiritual things, but they are offensive.
It comes naturally to be offended at the message that we are not essentially good in our own nature, that we need to be taught and guided, and that we need to be completely remade before we can see the Kingdom of God. Human pride is our greatest hazard which causes us to stumble. We don’t like the thought of relinquishing ultimate control of our life. We bristle at the suggestion we might need to change patterns of thinking or behaviour. It is the human way to be angered at the message that we are sinful and are not deserving of divine favour, because we see ourselves as good people who have tried so hard to be good and have done so many good things.
This is the reason for such persecution of Jesus and his church that we hear of in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus commissions his disciples to go and preach that the Kingdom of heaven is near—it is close by in the Person of Christ, and people need to turn to him for salvation. People will either receive this message and those who bring it, or reject the message and those who bring it—the same as today. Jesus warns his people: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” (Matthew 10:14-15).
Jesus teaches them: “Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues.” He says: “All men will hate you because of me.”(Matthew 10:22). Even families become divided over Jesus. In some cultures, children are disowned by their family for converting to Christ, and therefore vulnerable to government authorities…but treasuring the joy of Christ and following him is a risk some are prepared to take.
Those who think they are already wise and who reject Christ and his word are like a truck driver in fog, pressing onward, steering the course of their life even though they can’t see, all the while headed for a ditch.
So today, it’s timely to ponder: why are you not among those who scoff at God’s word? Why are you not among those who reject Christ and his teaching? Why are you not among the world’s worst tyrants? Why are you not a Mormon, or a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or scientologist, Jehovah’s witness or Christadelphian, who all deny the divinity of Jesus and therefore the triumphant power of the Cross? Why are you not among those who bury pain and deny reality of brokenness by clinging to worthless idols like drugs or alcohol, retail therapy or money and possessions, which cannot heal or give life but only enslave those who behold them? Why are you not an atheist, or those who consider God’s word worthless, who therefore have no life in the face of death?
Why? Because God has come to you, and given you the first fruits of his Holy Spirit—or as Paul puts it in Ephesians, the deposit of the Spirit—that you might have true wisdom from above, to know what the world cannot know and see what the world cannot see—Jesus as the way, and the truth and the life. No one can attain true wisdom if they were to read every book in all the world’s universities. Like the Holy Spirit, wisdom is a gift. Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” (Matthew 11:25). Paul says to the Ephesians: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17).
The early disciples were to go out into the towns and proclaim that in Christ, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is near.’ As people hear that message, the Holy Spirit comes to bring faith in Christ so that they have true wisdom from above. You too have heard that message. You too were chosen by your Father in Heaven—even before the foundation of the world—to hear the message of truth and put your hope in Christ. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is
a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.
Through his Spirit, God gives to you the wisdom that is different than the so-called wisdom of the world. It is less about information to having right answers and more about a right relationship with the Divine. Paul says: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” That is not a prayer that we would know more things about God…but that we would know God himself as our relationship with him grows. Paul writes to those who are already Christians—the church at Ephesus—so implicit in Paul’s prayer that the Ephesian Christians know God better is the need to grow in faith. Learning wisdom from the Spirit is not limited to baptism preparation, or confirmation classes. It is lifelong, because God’s word is living and active, always bringing a fresh meaning to current situations.
True wisdom from the Spirit is knowing God, who we cannot see with our eyes, so that we can see him with our heart. The Holy Spirit has come to you to open the eyes of your heart so that you can know how much God loves you, what plan God has for your life and how he works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. True wisdom is not leaning on our own understanding, which will only result in us going off track to a hapless end, but joyfully commending ourselves and all we have to God, letting go of everything we would seek to control and cling to, counting it loss in comparison to Christ. It is to look upon life with the eyes of Jesus and see all that God wants us to be and become. It is to know God as the God in control of all there is, the one who suffered for us and grieves with us and binds up our wounds, the one who leads and guides, and nurtures and provides for his people in humanly impossible situations, even in unexpected and miraculous ways as he did in ancient days through the wilderness, so that we learn to be totally reliant on him as we walk through the wilderness of the world today.
God chose you before the foundation of the world, to open the eyes of your heart by giving you the Spirit of wisdom, to know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people. The Psalmist wrote: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.” (Psalm 111:10). May we never grow complacent before the Holy God who has saved us, but show the world by our devotion that God is an almighty God to be revered and honoured by treasuring his word.
For those who do, God is not only God almighty, but God, our Father Almighty. Your Father has sent the Holy Spirit to you through the message of truth, so that you might have the wisdom to put your hope in Christ always. James writes: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (James 1:5).
Keep on praying for your Heavenly Father to continue pouring out upon you the Holy Spirit of wisdom and revelation, for you to see with the eyes of your heart the path of his making that he leads you on through this world, until the time you receive from him your heavenly inheritance. To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Pastor Tim
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Time after Pentecost, 2026
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
“…the Holy Spirit has come to show us God who we cannot see with our eyes, so that we can see him with our heart.”
- Why can’t people without the Spirit fully understand spiritual things?
- What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?
- What is the difference between knowing things about God, and knowing God personally?
- What are some areas in life where people rely more on their own understanding than on God’s wisdom?
- Why do you think wisdom is something God gives rather than something we achieve on our own?
- What means does God use to give us wisdom?
- How can trusting God (Proverbs 3:5–6) change your decision-making?
- What habits help you stay sensitive to the Spirit’s guidance?
- Do you actively ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom, or do you tend to rely on yourself?
- What is one area of your life where you need the Spirit’s wisdom today?
- How can people grow in listening to the Holy Spirit more consistently?
- What step will you take this week to seek God’s wisdom more intentionally?
