エフェソの信徒への手紙3:1-2　Ephesians 3:1-2,

こういうわけで、あなたがた異邦人のためにキリスト・イエスの囚人となっているわたしパウロは……。　（エフェソ3:1）

パウロはエフェソの人々などの異邦人にキリストの福音を宣べ伝えたために、ユダヤ人から迫害されて裁判を受けることになり、未決囚として拘束されていたのです。しかし、パウロは「キリスト・イエスの囚人」という表現に、文字どおりの囚人という意味だけでなく、キリストに捕らえられた者という象徴的な意味も込めていたのでしょう。

パウロは、ほかの手紙でも自分のことをキリストに捕らえられた者と述べています。たとえば、フィリピの信徒への手紙3章12節では、自分がキリストと同じような「死者の中からの復活」という救いを「何とかして捕らえようと努めている」と言って、その理由は「自分がキリスト・イエスに捕らえられているからです」と述べています。「捕らえられている」と翻訳されているカタランバノーというギリシア語の動詞の受身形は、文字どおりには「〜のものとされている」という意味です。つまり、パウロは、自分がキリストに所有されている者であると述べているのです。

また、コリントの信徒への手紙二の2章14節では、「神に感謝します。神は、わたしたちをいつもキリストの勝利の行進に連ならせ、わたしたちを通じて至るところに、キリストを知るという知識の香りを漂わせてくださいます」と記しています。「勝利の行進」というのは、ローマ帝国の軍隊が外国の軍隊に勝利してローマの都に帰って来るときの「勝利の行進」をたとえとして考えているのでしょう。そして、「勝利の行進に連ならせ」というのは、勝利した軍隊の兵士としてではなく、敗北して捕らえられた捕虜として「勝利の行進に連ならせ」られているということなのでしょう。パウロはクリスチャンになる前は、ユダヤ教のエリートの教師であり、クリスチャンを迫害していた人でした。ところが、クリスチャンを迫害するためにダマスコへと旅をする途中で、天におられる復活のキリストの語りかけを聞いて、回心し洗礼を受けてクリスチャンになりました。パウロはキリストを迫害していて、反対にキリストの力に敗北して、キリストに捕らえられ、クリスチャンになったのでした。そして、そのことを恨んでいるのではなく、感謝しているのです。なぜなら、自分がキリストに敗北し捕虜であることによって、キリストの勝利が証しされているという不思議な事実に気づいたからです。

（3月23日の説教より）

In a country like Japan, where many people believe in the so-called “myriad gods,” i.e., all the gods and goddesses, it is probably unusual and special to live believing in God the Father of Jesus Christ. Many people think that Japan has its own traditional religions, and that Christianity is a Western religion. However, if you think about it, even in the West, ancient people believed in the gods of Greek and Roman mythology, and they also believed in a dualistic theory of good and evil that was different from the teachings of Christianity. In this ancient Western world, there was a man called Augustine who believed in God the Father of Jesus Christ, and who wrote works based on that belief, and who had a great influence on people in later generations. In the first chapter of the first volume of his book Confessions, Augustine wrote the following words of confession to God the Father of Jesus Christ.

Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.

These words express the feelings of Augustine, who wandered on his life’s journey until he finally encountered Christ and found peace. And I think that many people who have come to believe in God the Father through their own life experiences will also be able to relate to the words, “Our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”

Augustine was born in the town of Thagaste in North Africa in 354 AD. At the age of 16, he left for Carthage, the centre of North Africa, to pursue his studies, where he began living with a woman. At the age of 18, he had a son, but his relationship with this woman was long-lasting and eventually ended in a breakdown. Augustine’s mother’s strong disapproval forced him to leave her after 16 long years. This was due to the fact that Augustine had become a professor at Milan and his mother thought that her son’s official wife should be a woman of status. Augustine then became engaged to a new woman. However, because he had to wait two years before this fiancée was old enough to marry, Augustine also began a relationship with another woman. In this way, Augustine in his youth lived a life caught up in lust.

In addition to his struggles with lust, Augustine was also influenced by the teachings of Manichaeism. Manichaeism was a religion founded in the 3rd century by a man called Mani in Persia. According to Manichaean teachings, the world is a place where light and darkness, good and evil, are in opposition. Good belongs to light, and evil belongs to darkness. Good is life, soul, spiritual and mental, while evil is death, material and physical. Therefore, according to the teachings of Manichaeism, human beings were not created by God, but were created by the “prince of darkness” in order to hold on to the soul, which is the part of us that is light. Human beings have two elements within them: light and darkness, good and evil, but they are forced by the evil principle to inevitably commit evil acts. Manichaeism teaches that salvation comes from becoming aware of the light within us and freeing ourselves from the darkness of the physical body. The chosen priests are dedicated to this salvation, and they live ascetic lives, observing strict precepts. The general believers are taught that they can partake in salvation by serving the priests.

Augustine was drawn to Manichaeism because he found comfort in the Manichaean teaching that people do not do evil of their own free will, but that the dark element of the body compels them to do evil. However, later, Augustine was converted through his study of the philosophy of Neoplatonism and the Bible, and he returned to the teachings of the Bible. One day, as Augustine was praying in distress, he heard the voice of a child singing “Take up and read; Take up and read,” from the next door. Then, when he opened the Bible, he came across the words of Romans 13:13-14, “Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Augustine confesses that as soon as he had read these words, “by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away (Confessions, Book 8, Chapter 12). In this way, Augustine comes to understand that all beings created by God are good, and that evil is the act of disobedience by human beings created by God. He also comes to believe that salvation is not achieved by freeing the soul from the body, but by refining the soul and turning it towards God. Furthermore, he comes to believe that it is entirely by the grace of God to be motivated to turn towards God.

In this way, Augustine was delivered from the lust and false teachings that had previously held him captive by being captured by Jesus Christ. I think we also can experience to being delivered from the things that had previously held us captive by being captured by Christ. And this was also the experience of the apostle Paul, who preached the gospel of Christ to many people. In verses 1 and 2 of today’s Bible passage, Paul writes as follows.

For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you.

When he wrote this letter, Paul was thought to have been detained as an unsentenced prisoner awaiting trial by the emperor in the city of Rome. This is probably expressed by the phrase “a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” Paul was actually detained in Rome because he himself requested to be tried by the emperor. The story goes as follows. Paul, who had preached the gospel of Christ to the Gentiles in various parts of the Roman Empire, returned to the city of Jerusalem with representatives of the Gentile churches, carrying with him a donation to support the church in Jerusalem. While he was in the Jerusalem Temple with the Jewish Christians, he was persecuted by the Jews who held a grudge against Paul, and he was nearly killed. This was because it was thought that Paul had brought Gentiles, i.e., non-Jews, into the inner garden of the temple precincts, which was only open to Jews. As I have mentioned before, the precincts of the Jerusalem Temple were divided by a wall into an outer court, which was open to Gentiles, and an inner court, which was open only to Jews. The wall was inscribed with a warning that read “any Gentile entering the inner court will be put to death.” Paul was thought to have ignored this warning and taken Gentiles into the inner court of the Jerusalem Temple. In fact, Paul did not do this, but the Jews who were hostile to Paul thought this was the case. The reason for this is given in Acts 21:29, which says, “For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.”

Paul, who had been dragged out of the temple precincts and nearly killed, was taken into custody by the Roman army guarding Jerusalem and sent to Felix, the Roman governor stationed in Caesarea. He spent two years in confinement under Felix’s custody. After that, Festus, the governor who succeeded Felix, tried to curry favour with the Jews who were accusing Paul, and suggested that Paul’s trial be moved to Jerusalem. If Paul were to be tried in Jerusalem, where there were many Jews who held a grudge against him, there was a risk that he would be executed without a fair trial. So, Paul appealed to the Roman emperor. He then made the dangerous journey by ship and was escorted to Rome. The last part of the Acts of the apostles describes Paul’s life in Rome at this time: “He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:30-31).

Considering Paul’s life, we can understand why he introduces himself in the first verse of today’s passage as “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.” Paul was being held as a prisoner awaiting trial because he had preached the gospel of Christ to the Gentiles, including the people of Ephesus, and was being persecuted by the Jews. However, Paul probably intended the phrase “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” to have a symbolic meaning of someone captured by Christ, as well as a literal meaning of a prisoner.

In other letters, Paul also refers to himself as a person who has been captured by Christ. For example, in Philippians 3:12, he says that he presses on to make the resurrection from the dead his own and he says that the reason for this is that “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” There, the passive form of the Greek verb katalambanō (καταλαμβάνω), which means “to be made one’s own,” is used. In other words, Paul is saying that he is the one who belongs to Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14, he also writes, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.” The phrase “triumphal procession” is probably a metaphor for the triumphal procession of the Roman army returning to Rome after a victory over a foreign army. And the phrase “leads us in triumphal procession” probably means that Paul was led in triumphal procession, not as a soldier in the victorious army, but as a defeated prisoner of war. Before becoming a Christian, Paul was a teacher of the Jewish elite and a persecutor of Christians. However, on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, he heard the voice of the resurrected Christ in heaven and was converted, baptised and became a Christian. Paul persecuted Christ, but on the contrary, he was defeated by Christ’s power, captured by Christ and became a Christian. And he is not resentful about it, but grateful. This is because he realised the strange fact that his defeat and captivity by Christ is a testimony to Christ’s victory.

What about us? We used to think that our lives belonged to us, didn’t we? We thought that since our lives belonged to us, it was natural to live doing what we wanted. But we were made aware that living doing what we want is actually living as a slave of our own desires. In other words, we were made aware that living doing what we want is actually living as a slave of the power of sin that seeks to control us. As Paul writes in 2:3 of this letter, “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.” Of course, in Paul’s case, as a teacher of the Jewish Pharisees, he was living his life faithfully observing the Ten Commandments and various laws of the Old Testament. So, it is not that he was involved in idol worship or committing fornication. However, he realised that by observing the law, he had thought to himself, “I am righteous” and “I am doing good,” and that he had been living his life fixated on his own righteousness and his own goodness, but in reality he had been “living in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.”

In verse 2 of today’s passage, Paul writes about his own path, saying, “You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you.” “The stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you” refers to the fact that Paul, who had persecuted the Christian church as a Jewish teacher, encountered the resurrected Christ who spoke to him from heaven, was converted and became a Christian, and then became a person who preached the gospel of Christ to the Gentiles. According to Acts 26:16-18, when Paul was converted, Christ told him of his mission as follows.

“I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

Paul did not reflect on his own actions and think to himself, “It’s not good to persecute Christians,” or “Christ’s teachings are good, so I should believe in them and preach them.” When he encountered Christ, he realised that what he thought was right was actually “carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.” He then became aware of his own sins, was baptised, and received the forgiveness of his sins. Furthermore, he was sent by Christ to allow even Gentiles to receive the forgiveness of sins. In other words, Paul stopped living according to his own thoughts and began to live according to Christ’s thoughts.

Our experiences as Christians may not be as dramatic as those of Paul or Augustine. And even after coming to believe in Christ, we may still have a strong sense that our lives are our own, and we may not be able to entrust our lives to Christ. But precisely because of this, we need to constantly remind ourselves that “I am a captive of Christ.” As I said at the beginning of today’s sermon, living as a Christian in Japan is a special thing, living with a faith that is different from that of the people around you. So, it is easy to feel that you don’t want to be seen as special or different. However, if you live your life with your eyes fixed on Christ, with the feeling that “I am a captive of Christ,” you will not be so concerned about how the people around you see you. And before you know it, you will be able to bear witness to Christ to the people around you.