GOD’S NEW SOCIETY

One of my prized possessions is a first edition copy of God’s New Society by John Stott. It is inscribed: “Ted and Antoinette, with love, gratitude and good wishes, John. Christmas 1979”

In his introduction he writes:

The letter to the Ephesians is a marvelously concise, yet comprehensive, summary of the Christian good news and its implications. Nobody can read it without being moved to wonder and worship, and challenged to consistency of life.

It was John Calvin’s favorite letter. Armitage Robinson called it ‘the crown of St Paul’s writings’. William Barclay quotes Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s assessment of it as ‘the divinest composition of man’ and adds his own dictum that it is ‘the Queen of the epistles’.

Many readers have been brought to faith and stirred to good works by its message. One such was John Mackay, former President of Princeton Theological Seminary. ‘To this book I owe my life’, he wrote. He went on to explain how in July 1903 as a lad of fourteen he experienced through reading Ephesians a ‘boyish rapture in the Highland hills’ and made a passionate protestation to Jesus Christ among the rocks in the starlight’. Here is his own account of what happened to him: ‘I saw a new world…Everything was new…I had a new outlook, new experiences, new attitudes to other people. I loved God. Jesus Christ became the centre of everything…I had been ‘quickened’; I was really alive.’ In his lectures at Edinburgh University in 1948 he referred to Ephesians as the ‘greatest’, the ‘maturest’ and ‘for our time the most relevant’ of all Paul’s works. For here is ‘the distilled essence of the Christian religion, the most authoritative and most consummate compendium of our holy Christian faith’. Again, ‘this letter is pure music…What we read here is truth that sings, doctrine set to music’. Ephesians is today ‘the most contemporary book in the Bible’, since it promises community in a world of disunity, reconciliation is place of alienation and peace instead of war. Dr Mackay’s enthusiasm for the letter raises our expectation to a high point as we begin our study of it.

In June 1966 I had to sit an examination of Ephesians in Greek for my graduate degree at Durham University. I had to translate two paragraphs into English and comment on four other passages as well as one other question. I am not a linguist so I had to almost memorize the whole letter in Greek and English. Miraculously I managed to pass!

Some years ago I preached through Ephesians in 19 messages. They were published in SOUL FOOD, Volume 4. Beginning March 25 I will have another opportunity to lead a Men’s Bible Study at Amelia Plantation Chapel on Ephesians. It will meet every Tuesday at 10.30 a.m. through to June 10. We will use the John Stott study guide entitled Building a Community in Christ. All men who are looking for what John Mackay experienced are welcome.