A month ago I met Tim Gombis and was highly impressed with him as an intellectual and person. He is the author of the new book The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God (IVP Academic). At my meeting with him I heard some of his story and journey through evangelicalism, experience teaching undergraduates at Cedarville University, life in inner-city Springfield, OH and involvement with a missionally-centered church plant. The last two specifically piqued my interest as I am both planting and have interest in impacting my own city, Grand Rapids.

I was also interested in his church plant, city story because I’ve found it to be unusual for academics to also have more pastoral persuasions, especially ones that drive them to care for widows and orphans and the poor. This pastoral interest is coupled with his academic experience to produce a lucid, engaging (re)examination of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.

Tim’s basic take on Ephesians is different than I have heard it before. He voices the manner in which it is typically read, a reading I myself have generally embraced: “Ephesians is often read as if it is a doctrinal treatise…Paul first lays out his doctrinal position and then lays out a system of ethics based on the doctrine.” (14) Typically the first three chapters are thought of as doctrinal re-telling of God’s Story of Rescue, while the later three are the ethical responses to that re-telling.

Tim believes we should read Ephesians differently: “Ephesians is a drama portraying the victory of God in Christ over the dark powers that rule this present evil age, and the letter becomes a script for how God’s people can continue, by the power of the Spirit, to perform the drama called the triumph of God in Christ.” (19). For Tim, the entire letter must be read through 6:10-16, the passage on divine warfare. He argues that the ideology of divine warfare from the ancient near east, reflected in the OT, shapes Paul’s entire argument in Ephesians.

This is different than I have ever heard or read Ephesians before. I, like others, believe this latter passage in ch. 6 to be simply the ending of the things that he has talked about beforehand. Instead Tim reminds us the way in which a letter ends actually often drives its entire argument and tenor. Through his book, Tim helps us see that divine warfare imagery saturates Paul’s letter. As he puts it, “Ephesians has a tightly woven narrative structure that is driven by the pattern of divine warfare” (30) which is bound up with Paul’s exhortation in 6:10 to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his mighty power.”

So how does this thesis cash out? How does reading Ephesians through the lens of divine warfare play out in interpreting the rest of the book?

1) We need to recognize there are more actors than meets the eye. Eph 1:20-23, 3:10, and 6:10-18 clue us into this reality with the language of “powers and authorities.” Tim argues this language of “powers and authorities” is consistent with the Jewish worldview that conceived of the cosmos being dominated by suprahuman cosmic forces (36). “For Paul’s inherited world view, based on the OT, the heavesn are populated with archangelic ruler figures to whom God had originally delegated authority over aspects of creation.” (40) Those figures rebelled and now hold sway over all activities on the earth.

As Tim says, “The powers orient cultures of the world so tat humanity will develop patterns of sin, enslaving them in spiritual death. Their aim is destruction and the enslavement of humanity.” (47) Here in Eph Paul does not so much address the powers themselves, but aims to “speak of destructive social patterns and exploitative relational dynamics that tempt humanity—dynamics such as racism, idolatry, addiction, systems of oppression and the wide range of systemic evil.” (50)

He believes this concept of “powers and authorities” are neglected actors on God’s stage, actors we need to pay more attention to by naming them and resisting them.

2) Becoming aware of these characters, Tim argues, is Eph goal in order to call its readers to participate rightly in the drama of the world. It shapes and transforms our imagination so that we as the church become a “faithful and joyful cast of players.” (60) Faithful and joyful participation means joining in with God’s mission as his gospel characters. And because we are in Christ and inhabit a new location with a new mission we “no longer live by the rules and social patters that we find ‘in America’ or in ‘suburbia’ or in ‘the world’ as these are configured by the present age…I now live ‘in American’ as it is in the process of being reclaimed by God in Jesus.” (73)

As a gospel character in God’s drama on God’s mission, we are “set apart by God to carry out his mission to love, redeem, reclaim and restore the world.” (81) This is the essence of election that Paul speaks of: “Paul is meaning to affirm that those who are called to participate in and perform the gospel of Jesus Christ are those who have their origin in God’s heart and mind from all eternity,” not a commentary on who is in and who is out. (76-77)

3) One of the major points is that God has been victorious over the powers and authorities of this age in Christ. In chapter 2 Paul reherses God beginning to fulfill his promise to reclaim and redeem his creation, restoring his world and humanity to their original condition. (105) Now the Church stands as the monument to the triumph of God over Satan and the powers of evil. As Tim challenges, “If the church does not faithfully embody God’s love in Christ, then God’s victory is diminished. We must celebrate our new identity, walking in good deeds rather than in patterns that formerly enslaved us. And we must cultivate communities of restoration and reconciliation where there has been alienation, bitterness, and division.” (106)

Those are powerful, potent words!

We begin to embody this victory through “cruciform weakness.” Our answer to the “powers and authorities” must always be cruciformity, operating in weakness and humility. (126) Tim encourages the church to “put our imagination to work, creating alternative strategies that embody weakness and humility, resisting the temptation to seek power and control.” (127) A primary venue through which he sees the necessity for cruciformity is in politics and culture. I agree. My own experience with working on Capitol Hill in Washington DC was the exact opposite: the church scrambling and scratching for a place at the table in order to push agendas for pietistic conformity. Instead of posturing ourselves before the culture in weakness and humility as Christ did on the cross, too often we try and wield power in order to force submission. As Tim points out this is not the way of Christ.

Tim points to the example of Paul in chapter 3 for the type of weakness that is needed in the church, a weakness which actually leads in an explosion of cultural and societal transformation. He points out that Paul was selected to make known the mysteries of Christ to the Gentiles, but he was in prison, a major weakness and embarrassing revelation. Yet, “Paul made use of [the power that God exercised when he raised Jesus from the dead] in his situation of weakness and shame, and we can too as we perform cruciform roles in the drama of God making all things new through the death and resurrection of Jesus.” (131)

4) I love Tim’s emphasis that “the church is the arena of God’s triumph over the powers and the agent of God’s glory of the cosmos.” (134) This is a high view of the church in an increasingly negative view of the church! He goes on to say, “That is, the power are the spectators of church life. As the church lives its reconciling and unifying communal life, the powers come to know God’s strength, wisdom, and triumph.” (134) These are powerful words, words which I take to heart as a church planter trying to create a new expression of the church to act as a subversive, embodying agent of God’s triumph over the powers and authorities of this dark age.

5) Finally, Tim ends where Paul does: carrying out divine warfare. “According to Ephesians, the church performs the cosmically significant role of divine warfare through mundane embodiment of God’s life on earth. Cosmic conflict does not involve defiant chest thumping in the face of the defeated powers. On the contrary, we are called to purposeful, humble, cruciform faithfulness as we perform Jesus for the good of the world.” I love this emphasis on the “mundane embodiment of God’s life on earth.” In calling the church to “subvert the cultural corruption of the powers,” he does so through an emphasis on the mundane on the day to day living that testifies to the new life of Jesus that powerful counters to old patterns of this world.

By and large this was a good book, a challenging book that made this theologian think in categories I don’t often think in. As a mild form of critique and revelation on my own theological struggles, the books large emphasis on the evil, sin, and death of this world was systemic and narrative: meaning, the problems in the world are the systems and stories, rather than the individuals that make up those systems. I tend to view our sin problem as much more individual and related to our human condition/nature, rather than in his emphasis on the powers and corrupt systems. While I appreciate this revelation of the spiritual power that do hold sway over the world and tempt individuals into sinning, the type of language that he used reflects traditional and contemporary liberals that simply view sin and evil as systemic and narrative, with little to no consideration of the sinful condition and nature of individuals, resulting in the dismissal of original sin. At times I thought he didn’t nuance this view of evil enough and converse with the individual interaction with those evil systems and stories of which he (and apparently Paul) speaks. But then again, perhaps my own theological prejudices are getting in the way of engaging Paul in more biblical categories!

I would recommend this book to students and pastors who are interested in getting another take on Ephesians. This is not meant as a commentary on the letter, as Tim even says. Instead it is a supplemental guide to the book along side more exegetically oriented tomes in order to bring out some new and interesting insights into what Paul is communicating, for the sake of activating the Christians toward “mundane embodiment of God’s life on earth” and His victory through “cruciform weakness.”

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. The outcome of my review was not contingent upon receiving it.