In the last Bite, we had discussed that we only want to take a glance at what has been true in the past about the recipients of the letter of Ephesians. We cast our eyes over every believer’s Spiritual Resumé. Every person who has been called by Christ as well as every person who will be called by Christ has the same Spiritual Resumé. Starting from the moment of conception, all are dead and all were children of wrath. That is some bad news.
But this is only a glance! As believers, we do not need to ponder the horrid condition we were in.
If I was in a catastrophic car crash with blood and gore everywhere, but survived, I would not look over the police report photos (if there were any…I’m not a police officer) and dwell on the horror of it. Glancing at them and marveling that God pulled me through, yes. Dwell on them, no. Maybe some people would, but I think the important thing to take from the glance is the marvel. The awe over the power of God.
So with the horror of what all believers once were, we will continue to glance in this Bite, focusing in on what the recipients followed. Who and what leads all pre-believers?
Following
Focusing on our section (verses 1-3), let’s read all of our passage again. Keeping Context King is important.
2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:1–10 (ESV)
Paul tells his audience they “followed the way of the age”, basically. As I consider that, I think it is fairly self explanatory if we stop for just a minute. I don’t know about nowadays, but my mother used to say to my sister and me, “If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?” Yeah. Sadly, pretty much we would’ve.
As far as study goes, we will focus more on what is more difficult to understand here in the section.
Prince of the Power of the Air
Recognizing that we probably have content in our backpacks about who this is, imagine I have a sign posted.
We are not going to bring previously taught ideas about who this prince is to our study. Having been in the church for a while, too, I have ideas I’m leaving at the door. When we lean into the things we’ve heard other people say and don’t investigate for ourselves, we may be opening ourselves up to having opinions about topics we actually know nothing about or even worse, wrong theology where we become dogmatic but still have no real information.
Paul tells us that the audience, as pre-believers, used to be lead by some Things. One of those is the prince of the power of the air. The first thing to notice about this phrase is that it does not appear anywhere else in scripture. As we study scripture, when a phrase or topic is rarely mentioned, we need to recognize that it is not something we can ever press into firm doctrine. Since Paul himself, nor any other biblical author ever used this moniker, there is a red flag that we might not actually be able to definitively interpret who or what this is.
As I was looking around for information in my Logos Bible Software, I found some information about the sense of the word air. Ephesians 2:2 is listed as an example. This is what I found: “demonic realm ⇔ air n. — the sky understood as the realm where evil spirits dwell and come from (to exercise their influence).”
Seemingly, there are scholars that see air as related to the demonic realm. Again, I don’t see definitive data to support that. But we will take it under advisement.
With more questions than when I started, the next thing I look at is different translations.
| ESV, NASB, RSV | prince of the power of the air |
| NET | ruler of the kingdom of the air |
| LEB | ruler of the authority of the air |
I made the variations boldface to be able to distinguish them more readily. From the versions I usually use for comparison, we can see that prince is also translated as ruler twice and that power is translated as both kingdom and authority. Analyzing these variations, it seems safe to say based on scholarly translators’ work that this entity is in some kind of governing position and it has some type of realm or dominion. Let’s start a list of what we’ve learned so far.
- Lead pre-believers and they follow
- Has a realm or dominion
Sticking to our concentric circles, we can consider what else Paul said to the recipients about entities of this sort. The context of this verse is about putting on the armor of God and standing against the schemes of the devil.
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)
In this verse, can you see how Paul describes these entities? Rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, spiritual forces. When we consider the study note 24 in the NET Bible which is attached to the phrase world rulers of this darkness, it appears that all of these descriptions have the same referent. Here is the note:
As not only a student of the word, but also a student of other things, I love to learn in general. I didn’t know what this word meant and in case you didn’t either, I included the definition.
ap•po•si•tion \ˌa-pə-ˈzi-shən\ noun 1 a: a grammatical construction in which two usually adjacent nouns having the same referent stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of a sentence (as the poet and Burns in “a biography of the poet Burns”) b: the relation of one of such a pair of nouns or noun equivalents to the other
1
Just as we could write, in this context, “a biography of the poet” and “a biography of Burns” and the two nouns both refer to the same man, Paul is writing of evil entities and all of the nouns and their corresponding modifiers have the same referent.
Also of interest in 6:12 is that the nouns are plural. There is more than one ruler. There is more than one authority. There is more than one power and force. Whatever these entities are, there isn’t just one being described, there are multiples. Let’s jot a note on our list of what we’ve learned about this entity.
- Leads pre-believers and they follow
- Is a governing entity
- Has a realm or dominion
- Is one of many rulers
- Names that can be used for him or any of his kind: ruler, authority, cosmic power, spiritual force
One more reference from the NT before we take a turn into the OT.
13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
Colossians 1:13 (ESV)
What we see in Colossians is that there are two realms. That’s right, two teams and that’s it. Domain of darkness or kingdom of the Son. Since the prince of the power of the air was leading the pre-believers, that is obviously not the kingdom of the Son. This idea was mentioned in Ephesians 6 as well, but here it is clearly laid out in opposition. Bad guys and good guys. Let’s add this information to the list.
- Lead pre-believers and they follow
- Has a realm or dominion
- Is one of many rulers
- Names that can be used for him or any of his kind: ruler, authority, cosmic power, spiritual force
- Is a ruler in the domain of darkness
What does this mean for our study of the prince of the power of the air? If it is a prince or a ruler, it appears it may have subordinates. Keeping in mind we are merely GLANCING in the rearview mirror (I’m reminding myself as well), I hesitate to even mention Daniel. But to avoid a fun-house mirror and keep the view clear, I think we should take a brief trip into the OT to consult our friend Dan.
To set the stage for Daniel’s conversation in his vision, let’s look at the NET’s note 11 in Daniel 10:5. This is clarification for the man with whom Daniel chatted.
“An unnamed angel” is how the translators of the NET think of this messenger. This helps us to understand the next verses we’ll look at. Daniel is having this conversation most likely with an angel, based on the description.
What follows are excerpts from chapter 10 that have to do with the experiences of the messenger or what events are upcoming. He was detained by the kings of Persia and one of the chief princes (Michael) came to help him. We are not concerning ourselves with what is happening in the vision as far as the Israelites go, that isn’t what we are studying currently. We will not enter into the rabbit hole of visions and prophecies at this time. As diligent students, we are focusing on the information the messenger shares with Dan that will help us better understand the spiritual realm that has impact in humans’ lives.
12 Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. 13 The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, 14 and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.”
Daniel 10:12–14 (ESV)
Skipping a few verses, the messenger now talks about the upcoming events. There is going to be a battle he will wage with Michael’s help against those who fought against this messenger.
20 Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come. 21 But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth: there is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince.
Daniel 10:20–21 (ESV)
What we want to take away from these verses at this time is that there are true blue rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places with organization of an army and battles that are fought. This isn’t storybook nightmare material; this is reality. Let’s add to our list.
- Lead pre-believers and they follow
- Has a realm or dominion
- Is one of many rulers
- Names that can be used for him or any of his kind: ruler, authority, cosmic power, spiritual force
- Is a ruler in the domain of darkness
- Is part of a hierarchy and organization of evil in the heavenly places
Knowing this shouldn’t cause us angst or spur us on to unnecessary absorption with the supernatural evil that exists. Nothing has changed in the world if this is news to us. God is still on the throne, Jesus still won over Satan, sin, and death. All is still right. Paul simply wanted the audience to realize the reality of what they once followed. That isn’t all though.
The Spirit that is Now at Work
We already know now that there is an organization of authority and realms that we can’t see. There is nothing shocking hiding behind this spirit that Paul mentions here, but I wanted to point out that this spirit is probably different than the prince. Twofold purpose: another example of leaving our backpacks at the door since it looks like in English these are the same entity, and what we learn will further support the hierarchy we’ve seen.
Let’s look at the NET Bible study note 8 on the word spirit.
NET Bible translators noticed that the cases for the two nouns are different. (We are not going to discuss cases in Greek right now–besides my life has been in so much tumult, I’ve had to pause in my Greek study for now, so I don’t know what these mean exactly yet. Yet.) One is accusative and one is genitive. They briefly explain that Greek doesn’t work that way. The conclusion is that the ruler (in ESV prince) of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
The point? The bad guys are organized and if you look around in the world, they are effectively organized. And everyone everywhere at one point followed these rulers, princes, and spirits.
Wrap Up
Like I said earlier, nothing has changed in the world now that we have this information. Interestingly, the amount of information contained in scripture concerning the unseen forces is minuscule. Why is it that so many people seem to be obsessed with the topic that is glossed over in scripture? Because we don’t need more information. The entire topic of angels and demons and their realm is not our concern. Knowing that there are battles there, knowing that they are organized for battles, knowing that there are regions over which they have dominion in their organization and where they do battle–all of it is actually like verses 1-3.
It is to be glanced at.
I just got up to put wood on my fire and was thinking about other areas in life where this idea of glancing is true. If I had a little person in my house hanging out, I would tell the little person, “This wood stove is hot. Don’t touch it.” Then I would get out the box of Legos that my husband has played with and my kids have played with and that they may play with.
If the little person spent all of their time in my living room staring at the stove, examining it, putting their little hands near it to check if I was right, they would miss all the fun and wonder that is contained in that box of glorious Legos. Keep an eye on the stove to manage the distance, but focus on the marvelous joy that every box of Legos offers.
Same with us with regard to what is not fully explained in scripture. Keep an awareness that there are forces of evil, but focus attention on the joys and the relief from darkness that Christ has provided.
Our Bible Study Bite for today is about this idea that not everything is fully explained in scripture. And that is okay. If there are gaps in knowledge, we can be satisfied with the knowledge we have. No need for speculation. No need to try to find a “deeper meaning” in the shallow amount of information. Or to try to find “hidden meaning” to fill in gaps or excuse a lack of information. No! As students of the word, we will be satisfied with what is given in scripture and not succumb to conjecture in any of its forms.
Next time we will continue to interpret our passage, gazing as Paul intended on what God has done in the life of every believer.
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- Merriam-Webster, I. (2003). Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. (Eleventh ed.). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.