Praise Comes before Thanksgiving: Saint Paul’s example in Ephesians

This time of year in my circles everyone is thinking of Thanksgiving, especially of Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a time of the year when it’s permissible to forget Saint Paul’s teaching about moderation and self-control (1 Tim 3:2). So then, sure, have another helping of turkey, and make sure you get some more mashed potatoes and gravy!

No doubt our loving Father in heaven has given us all these things to enjoy, if we receive them with thanksgiving and share our bounty with those less blessed than we are (1 Tim 4:1-4; 6:6-8; 17-19). But we’re missing the point if we’re flattening out Thanksgiving by focusing on earthly things—our health, our home, our income, our turkey with all the trimmings.

If your attitude of gratitude is flat this year, you need to verticalize it with the perspective of praise. That’s what we learn from Saint Paul in Ephesians.

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Check out our previous Thanksgiving posts here

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First, let’s get a handle on Ephesians

We read of Paul’s tumultuous ministry in Ephesus in Acts 19:1-41. Apparently he wrote to the church several years later while under house arrest in Rome (Acts 28). It’s interesting to compare Paul’s calm language in Ephesians with his emotional outbursts in Galatians. The church at Ephesus was stable when Paul wrote to it. He could reflect on the revelations God gave him rather than put out fires.

Paul writes Ephesians in a way that really stretches the way people wrote letters back in his day. After saying “hello” in 1:1-2, the typical letter back then would immediately mention a reason for thanksgiving and offer a brief prayer to some god or another. Paul’s letters usually do this too, with notable exceptions like Galatians and 2 Corinthians. But in Ephesians Paul is primed to praise God, and off he goes praising God in 1:3 all the way to 1:14 with hardly a pause. This heartfelt, effusive praise to the God of all grace in 1:3-14 unexpectedly intervenes between the greeting in 1:1-2 and the expected thanksgiving and prayer that is postponed until 1:15-23. Paul postpones thanksgiving so he can prioritize praise.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is often portrayed as pivoting from doctrine in chapters 1-3 to duty in chapters 4-6, with much stress put on “therefore” in 4:1. Frankly, this approach isn’t all that helpful, because there is doctrine in chapters 4-6, and duty in chapters 1-3. Ephesians isn’t a deep doctrinal treatise followed by a long preachy section. In Ephesians Paul weaves duty into doctrine and doctrine into duty. His teaching about who we are in Christ—our new identity in him— is the basis of his encouragement to become that Christlike person in practice. When you read Ephesians, pay attention to the tandem relationship of doctrine and duty! What we believe guides how we behave. Who God is and what he has done for us in Christ inform and equip us to live for him.

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Here’s a bit for you Greek nerds— you’ve probably heard that Pauline ethics is essentially a matter of becoming who you are in Christ. Grammatically speaking, the hortatory subjunctives and imperatives express the “becoming” part. That’s based on the indicatives that express the “who you are” part. Moving from imperatives to indicatives often involves the conjunction γάρ (gar), typically translated “for” or “since.” Moving from indicatives to imperatives often involves the conjunction οὖν (oun), typically translated “therefore” or “so then.” Our behavior should be comparable to (ὡς), “as, consistent with” our beliefs.

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Here’s an example of becoming who you are, with intertwined doctrine and duty, belief and behavior, indicatives (in bold) and imperatives (in italics) — Ephesians 4:31-5:2 (ESV)

³¹ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³² Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as (ὡς) God in Christ forgave you. 1 Therefore (οὖν) be imitators of God, as (ὡς) beloved children. ² And walk in love, as (ὡς) Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Praise before Thanksgiving

It’s not unusual to find praise and thanksgiving intertwined in the Bible, and either word can come first in the pairing. Praise and thanksgiving are roughly equivalent to approval and appreciation. We tend to think of praise as our response to God’s awesomeness, and thanksgiving as our response to God’s blessings, but it’s not that simple in the Bible. Here’s some examples from the Psalms in the NIV:

I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness;
    I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High. (Ps 7:17)

I will praise God’s name in song
    and glorify him with thanksgiving. (Ps 69:30)

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
    let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
    and extol him with music and song. (Ps 95:1-2)

Enter his gates with thanksgiving
    and his courts with praise;
    give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
    his faithfulness continues through all generations. (Ps 100:4-5)

Returning to Ephesians, Paul’s thanksgiving and prayer for the Ephesians in 1:15-23 come only after his praise to our glorious triune God in 1:3-14. The amazing prayer for increasing spiritual wisdom in 1:15-23 flows from the amazing praise of our awesome God’s glorious grace in 1:3-14:

• Praise to God the Father (1:3-6), who has blessed us by loving and choosing us to praise the glory of his grace.
• Praise to God the Son (1:7-12), whose shed blood brings us forgiveness and enables us to participate in God’s ultimate plan to bring the entire universe under Christ’s glorious lordship.
• Praise to God the Holy Spirit (1:13-14), who seals our hearts with gospel truth, guaranteeing our future participation in our glorious inheritance in Christ.

Paul’s praise to God in Ephesians 1:3-14 destroys the distinction that many make between thanksgiving as appreciation for our circumstances (what God has done for us) and praise as acknowledging who God is. There’s even a popular song, Because of who you are, that does that. Paul does acknowledge who God is here, but he is overwhelmed by what God has done, and his praise is based on God’s amazingly gracious activity in bringing sinners together under the lordship of Jesus by the work of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God alone.

Thanksgiving and praise aren’t defined by distinguishing between who God is and what God has done. Rather, thanksgiving and praise both flow from gratitude for God’s being and blessings. Both express recognition and appreciation for the excellence of God’s character and the gracious majesty of his plan. Thanksgiving expresses gratitude, and praise expresses approval. God is eternally worthy of both! May our attitude of gratitude be deepened from the perspective of praise. Let’s express our public approval of God this Thanksgiving, not just when we pray for the meal but everyday by lives transformed by the gospel.

Beyond warm fuzzy feelings

My concern about the Thanksgiving holiday is that we confuse thanksgiving with warm fuzzy feelings about serendipitous circumstances. Thanksgiving is not simply being happy that we have a warm house on a cold day and that we got the turkey for only $.49 a pound at Meijer. It’s not just the relief we feel when the Republicans and Democrats in the family don’t have a knock-down, drag-out brawl over the pumpkin pie. Being pleased by a pleasant situation is not thanksgiving. Simple cheerfulness is not thankfulness. True thankfulness is directed in praise to God, speech that reverently acknowledges and approves his goodness and faithfulness.

Thanksgiving is active and vertical, not passive and horizontal. Appreciation for our cushy circumstances has to be expressed to the Author of our circumstances. Real thankfulness to our good and faithful God leads to our worshipful recognition and admiration of God’s glory and grace.

Will you say a hearty “amen” of approval for God’s grace and goodness this Thanksgiving?

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Psalm 103 (NIV)

1 Praise the Lord, my soul;
    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
² Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits—
³ who forgives all your sins
    and heals all your diseases,
⁴ who redeems your life from the pit
    and crowns you with love and compassion,
⁵ who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

⁶ The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all the oppressed.

⁷ He made known his ways to Moses,
    his deeds to the people of Israel:
⁸ The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
⁹ He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
¹⁰ he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
¹² as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

¹³ As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
¹⁴ for he knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.
¹⁵ The life of mortals is like grass,
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
¹⁶ the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more.
¹⁷ But from everlasting to everlasting
    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
    and his righteousness with their children’s children—
¹⁸ with those who keep his covenant
    and remember to obey his precepts.

¹⁹ The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
    and his kingdom rules over all.

²⁰ Praise the Lord, you his angels,
    you mighty ones who do his bidding,
    who obey his word.
²¹ Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,
    you his servants who do his will.
²² Praise the Lord, all his works
    everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul.