Everett Henes: The glorious theater

William Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage.” It’s a poem about the stages of life and how each person plays their parts, having exits and entrances. You finish the poem, wondering whether Shakespeare believes that this stage world is worthwhile at all, or whether we are simply to go through the motions. Perhaps his point is that we shouldn’t take life too seriously since it passes and most of it is acting out predictable parts. I like to think of the world as a stage, but not the way that Shakespeare meant it. John Calvin, the 16th-century theologian, said that this creation is a “glorious theater.” He meant by this that the world is where God’s work of redemption plays out. The world always seems to have wars and troubles going on. Even against that backdrop, the world is the glorious theater of God’s providence.

The Apostle Paul wrote, in Ephesians 3:9-12, “and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.”

God chose Paul, a Pharisee who held both Jewish and Roman citizenship, to proclaim that neither Jew nor Roman had any more right to come to God through Christ. Paul may have been the least of all the saints, but he was perhaps the best one to bring this message of reconciliation. It is not just the Jew and Gentile that will witness what God does through the church but also, “That through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

The word "manifold" means "multifaceted or many-colored" and most likely refers to the unfathomable ways of God and the unsearchable riches of Christ. Simply put, the church (made up of the saints) is a witness to God’s wisdom. Paul says that more than the Jews and the Gentiles are watching. He says that the "rulers and authorities in the heavenly places" are also learning of God’s wisdom through the church.

Who are these "rulers and authorities"? Later Paul will refer to them again when he speaks of those with whom believers do not wrestle; they are those forces of evil also known as fallen angels or demons. The church is a testimony to God’s goodness and plan since the fall in Genesis 3. There God said that the serpent’s head would be crushed and indeed Satan was defeated when Christ was resurrected. Paul knew that Christ himself was the key that unlocks the riches of the Old Testament.

While we wait for the final moment of judgment against Satan and his angels, they watch. Of course, they are not the only angels watching the church. In 1 Peter 1:12, we are told that angels long to look into the things concerning the gospel. What a sobering thing to consider: not only do we live in this world, battling the temptations of sin, the devil, and self but we also are a living testimony to what God has been doing since the Fall. Our lives, like Paul’s, should testify that God can indeed save sinners and as a church the love we have for one another should be a show to the world of God’s love but also to those rulers and authorities that watch and wait for their final judgment.

Paul once again mentions that all of this is according to God’s eternal purpose. The church that stands as a testimony to God’s multifaceted wisdom was the plan all along. Bringing all things together into one under Christ was what God has been going for since the beginning. That this is the case leads to boldness and access with confidence.

We have access to one who is higher than us. God has created all things in heaven, on earth and under the earth and he has given us access to himself in prayer. But we need not walk in cowering if we are in Christ for, we can have boldness in coming to God. We can boldly come before God in trust, confidence, and reliance upon the one who has ordained whatsoever comes to pass.

— Pastor Everett Henes, the pastor of the Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can be reached at pastorhenes@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Everett Henes: The glorious theater