CHAPTER 33
The Father Who Names the Nations
Steven C. Hawthorne
Steven C. Hawthorne leads a mission and prayer mobilization ministry called WayMakers. After co-editing the Perspectives course and book in 1981, he launched a series of research expeditions among unreached peoples in Asia and the Middle East.
Seeing things from God’s point of view may be the best way for us to envision an evangelized world. Our promise-keeping God has made it clear that He will bring forth blessing amidst every people. To bring forth blessing to every ethnicity, Christ has been unfolding His work throughout ethnohistory, pursuing His purpose in the intricacies of every passing season. To fulfill our work of world evangelization, we must think clearly, not only about how to bring the gospel to all nations but how God’s blessing will abound to all generations.
We Live in a Generational Story
Since the beginning of languages and diverse cultures at Babel (Gen 11:1–9), God has displayed His loving concern for all humanity by speaking of families, or all the peoples of the earth. How did He show His concern? In Genesis, the event after the Babel disaster is God speaking to Abram (12:1–3). God promised not only to bring His life and blessing to all peoples but to do so with the succeeding generations, the descendants, the “seed” of Abraham (22:18; 26:4; 28:14). In the Abrahamic covenant we see God dealing with the totality of humanity as a family of many families with generational longevity and identity.
God the Father of All Peoples
In the coming of Jesus, God marvelously revealed Himself as Father. Jesus taught us clearly to trust the Most High God to act toward His people with devoted, vigilant parental love (Luke 11:13). In Christ, each person is known and loved by the heavenly Father as a daughter or a son. But the magnitude of God’s fatherly love surpasses concern for each individual. Our God pursues the redemption and honor of multigenerational peoples, as if each one of them were to Him a daughter or a son. The Father is bringing His entire family—a family of peoples—back to Himself.
Every Generational People Named, Known, and Prized
Consider again Paul’s prayer in his letter to the Ephesians:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. (Eph 3:14–15 NASB)
Paul prays to the Father—the same “Father of glory” to whom he prayed earlier (1:17). He is also the Father of “every family in heaven and on earth.” The Greek word here for “family” is a specialized word, patria. This word was used to emphasize the multigenerational lineage of enduring peoples. The word implies an ongoing identity with an ancestry as well as an expectation of descendants, the children and grandchildren to come.
Paul says that each of these multigenerational families, or peoples, “derives” its “name” from the Father. Essentially, Paul wrote that each of the peoples is named by God. But what does it mean to be named by God? In the hon-or-shame culture of that day, a name called out one’s destiny, identity, or anticipated honor. Just as a human father knows the name, nature, distinctive worth, and likely destiny of each of his sons and daughters, the Father knows and names each of the peoples. Paul can sense the Father’s joy and delight with the unique beauty and unfolding story of each of the peoples. Paul also knows the heartbreaking sorrow of the Father as He grieves for the people lost to Him. No wonder Paul bows his knees before this magnificent Father. It is all we can do to number the peoples. Our Father God names them.
The Father is bringing His entire family—a family of peoples—back to Himself.
To understand what and why Paul was praying, we should recognize whom he was praying for. Paul was praying for gentiles—non-Jewish people who, before being joined with Christ, understood themselves to be “excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise” (2:12 NASB). Paul wanted to assure them that because of Christ’s work on the cross, they had been reconciled to God, joined with the people of Israel as a single entity, “in one body,” to enjoy “access in one Spirit to the Father” as God’s people (2:16–18 NASB).
The Glory Coming to the Nations
All of that matters because Paul was praying for their glory (3:13). Really? Glory will come to people? Isn’t all glory supposed to go to God? What is this glory? The glory God has in store for the peoples of the earth is the fulfillment of His purpose for His global people—that, together as one people, all the diverse nations would be honored to experience their worship being received by God in the beauty of His joy.
Paul used the biblical imagery of a living temple to express the splendor of the relational nearness that God desires with His people. The foundation of the building has already been laid. Construction is underway:
Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. (2:20–22 NASB)
Paul prays that God would act “according to the riches of His glory” (3:16 NASB) so that ultimately a temple made without hands, the “dwelling of God in the Spirit” (2:22) consisting of “all [not just some of] the saints” would be filled with “all the fullness of God” (3:18–19 NASB).
It’s tricky to imagine or value such an ineffable, ethereal thing as “the fullness of God.” That’s why Paul clearly alludes to the biblical accounts of the construction of the tabernacle and the temple. God called for the tabernacle, not because He needed a house to live in but because He desired a tangible way to be relationally near His people. “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them” (Exod 25:8 NASB). To “dwell” is not a matter of physical location. This kind of dwelling is God’s way of being immensely near His people in celebratory, relational fullness.
When they finished building the tent, “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” as a visible cloud (Exod 40:34–35 NASB). And generations later, when the son of David finished building the greater temple, again “the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’s house” (2 Chr 7:1–3 NASB).
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:16–21 reveals that he was confident that Christ was in the process of constructing what these biblical stories had prefigured: God would gather His entire people, comprised of all peoples, to Himself. They would be His people. He would be their God. And He would dwell, honored and loved, in their midst.
Already the foundation of the later, greater temple had been laid. Paul said that it was being “fitted together” and somehow was organically “growing into a holy temple in the Lord” (2:20–21 NASB). So, Paul prays that those reading his letter (yes, that includes me and you!) would, together with “all the saints,” comprehend the unknowable beauty and magnificence of the house that the Son of David is now finishing. When complete, when “every family” is gathered home, like the tabernacle and temple of old, God will fill His people with His glory—with “all the fullness of God” (3:18–19 NASB).
Paul adds a doxology, which serves as a declaration of hope: “To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” (3:21 NASB). The glory of God resounding in the manifest beauty of Christ and the church will somehow encompass all generations. Throughout history God will be seen and celebrated as working to bring forth the fullness of Christ and His church.
Knowing the Father’s Joy and Zeal
Paul tries to persuade his gentile friends not to lose heart when they heard of his tribulations on their behalf (3:13). He assures them that the pain and shame of apostolic labors that he has endured are well worth it. Why? I think Paul knew the heart of the Father of glory. This is the Father who constantly gazes on all of humanity, seeing us all as a great family of many families. This God is unperturbed and never confused about intermarried or blended ethnicities. He sees, knows, and values each of the peoples in all of their over-lapping, intertwining multicultural complexity.
Let’s bow our knees before our Father, the Father of glory, delighting in His growing joy as He draws His full family to Himself.
Like those to whom Paul was writing, we, too, can lose heart for any number of reasons. The tedium and grief of constant opposition are daunting. The costly hassle of cross-cultural labors can be discouraging. Let’s bow our knees before our Father, the Father of glory, delighting in His growing joy as He draws His full family to Himself. As we celebrate the Father’s relentless zeal to gather to Himself some from every tribe and tongue, every language and lineage, we will find our hearts encouraged in the hope of their glory in Christ. 