Ephesians can be read as a story of creation happening again. Paul begins with redemption through the blood of Christ, moves into the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, describes the creation of one new humanity, and eventually reaches the mystery of Christ and the church becoming one body. Throughout the letter, creation is not treated as a single event locked in Genesis. God continues to create, form, join, and bring what has been separated back into unity.
This movement becomes even more interesting when read beside the mystical Jewish teachings associated with Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Arizal. In Lurianic thought, creation unfolds through different spiritual worlds. Beriah is associated with creation and the upper Garden of Eden, Yetzirah with formation and the lower Garden of Eden, while Asiyah is the realm of action that includes embodied physical existence. The movement is from conception, to formation, to manifestation. Read alongside Ephesians, this creates a useful framework for understanding how something first exists in spiritual potential, is then formed, and finally becomes embodied in lived reality.
Adam as Collective Humanity
The Arizal taught that Adam was more than one isolated individual. His original soul functioned as a collective soul containing the roots of the souls that would later emerge into individual human lives. Lurianic writings describe those souls as arising from different spiritual “limbs” or aspects of Adam, much as a single human body contains many distinct parts while remaining one organism.
This gives additional depth to Paul’s description of Christ as the last Adam. If the first Adam represents humanity gathered into one source before unfolding into many individual lives, then the Second Adam can be understood as the beginning of a new humanity gathered into Christ. Those joined to Him become His Body, while the many individual lives that flow from Him remain distinct members of one larger whole.
The fractal begins here. One contains many, the many emerge from the one, and the many are ultimately called back into unity.
From the Side of the Second Adam
Genesis describes Eve being formed from Adam’s side and then presented to him. The one becomes two, yet the story immediately points toward reunion when the two are called to become one flesh. John later records another opened side at the cross, when Jesus is pierced and blood and water come forth.
Ephesians begins by emphasizing redemption through Christ’s blood. Chapter 2 then turns specifically toward the Gentiles, describing them as those who had once been strangers to Israel’s covenants and separated from the commonwealth of Israel. Through Christ, those who were far away are brought near.
Within this typological reading, the Gentiles occupy an Eve-like position. They are the ones being brought from separation into covenantal relationship through the Second Adam. Christ does not erase Israel to accomplish this. He joins what had been divided and creates, in Paul’s words, “one new man,” or one new humanity.
The image is not one of replacement. It is one of union. The first Adam’s side precedes the formation of Eve, while the opened side of the Second Adam accompanies the blood through which those who were far off are brought near. In both cases, separation moves toward one body.
One New Humanity
Ephesians 3 makes the nature of this union even clearer. Paul calls it the mystery that the Gentiles should become “fellowheirs,” members “of the same body,” and participants in the same promise in Christ. The Gentiles are not merely admitted to stand beside Israel. They are incorporated into the same body.
Marriage provides a useful biological picture for understanding this. Husband and wife remain distinct, yet their union can produce new life that belongs to both without being identical to either one alone. In the same way, Paul does not describe Gentiles becoming Jews or Jews becoming Gentiles. He describes something new emerging through reconciliation in Christ.
The comparison to procreation is therefore symbolic rather than literal. The point is that union becomes fruitful. Two previously separated peoples are joined, and from that joining comes what Paul calls a new humanity.
Creation Becomes Formation
Ephesians does not stop with creation language. Paul says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,” then later describes believers as being “fitly framed together” into a dwelling place for God. Creation is followed by formation.
This distinction echoes the mystical Jewish framework of creation and formation. What is created in principle must still be shaped toward its purpose. An idea may exist before it acquires form, and what has been formed must still be brought into the realm of action.
Ephesians 5 continues this same process through Christ and the church. Christ gives Himself for the bride, sanctifies her, and washes her with the Word so that she may be presented holy and without blemish. The bride is not merely chosen and left unchanged. She is formed.
The Word becomes part of that formation because oneness requires more than proximity. It requires increasing agreement with the one to whom the bride is joined.
Oneness as Alignment
This is where the deeper meaning of “one flesh” begins to emerge. Biblical oneness does not require two beings to become indistinguishable. A body is one precisely because its different parts remain different while responding to the same head.
Paul repeatedly uses this image. Christ is the Head, and His people are the Body. Hands, feet, eyes, and organs all perform different functions, yet life depends upon coordinated response to one governing center.
Oneness therefore develops through agreement. Christ remains distinct from the Father while submitting His will to the Father. The church remains composed of many people while learning to respond to Christ. Husband and wife remain two persons while being called into one covenantal life.
The Word washes because the Word brings what is divided within us into increasing agreement with the Head. Creation gives existence; formation teaches what has been created how to live according to its purpose.
The Fractal of Oneness
The same structure appears at multiple levels, which is what makes the pattern fractal. A single human body contains many members, while many individual people can also become one people. Jew and Gentile are joined into one new humanity, and that humanity becomes one Body under one Head.
The smaller pattern reflects the larger one without being identical to it. Adam and Eve, husband and wife, Jew and Gentile, and Christ and the church each reveal an aspect of the same movement from distinction toward union.
The pattern is not simply two opposites becoming blended into sameness. It is distinct parts entering a larger wholeness through shared life, shared direction, and agreement.
Seen this way, the fractal moves both inward and outward. The same structure can be seen in a marriage, a body, a people, and the relationship between Christ and His church.
The Circle of Oneness
The pattern is also circular. One becomes many, and the many return toward one.
Adam contains the roots of many souls. Those souls unfold into individual lives. Individual lives form families, communities, and generations. Christ gathers divided humanity into a new Body, and the many members of that Body return toward unity under one Head.
This circular movement does not erase the journey. The return is not simply a reset to the beginning. What has moved outward into multiplicity returns carrying experience, formation, and fruit.
For that reason, the circle behaves more like a spiral. The movement comes back toward its source, but it does not return unchanged.
Descent for the Sake of Ascent
Lurianic teaching adds another dimension to the pattern by describing the soul’s descent into physical existence as part of a larger process of ascent. In this mystical framework, the soul enters a world where holiness is obscured by physicality, resistance, and competing forces. Through life in that environment, the soul is able to undergo forms of growth and rectification that would not occur in the same way without embodiment.
This gives new meaning to descent. Physical existence is not merely a fall away from spiritual reality. It becomes the environment in which abstract potential is tested, embodied, and transformed.
That same principle appears in the pattern of Christ. He descends before He ascends. What exists in heavenly purpose moves downward into lived reality before it is exalted.
The movement is not arbitrary. Descent creates the conditions in which something can be formed.
Earth as the Place of Formation
The physical world matters because it contains tension. Patience is easy to describe until something requires patience. Forgiveness remains abstract until there is someone to forgive. Faith can be discussed in theory, yet it becomes real when the outcome is uncertain.
Embodied life gives spiritual principles a history.
This is the realm of action. What exists as belief must become choice. What exists as intention must become behavior. What exists as revelation must become lived experience.
In that sense, earth becomes a workshop of formation. The descent into physical life creates the conditions in which alignment can become visible through relationships, obedience, repentance, sacrifice, creativity, and service.
The First Fruits Carry a Story
This changes the meaning of what is eventually presented to God. First fruits are not valuable merely because they exist. They carry the history of how they were produced.
A harvest contains the story of seed, soil, weather, cultivation, pruning, waiting, failure, and persistence. The fruit is the visible result of an invisible process.
Joshua 4 provides a powerful image for this. After Israel crossed the Jordan, God commanded stones to be taken from the river and erected as a memorial. Future generations were meant to see those stones and ask what they meant.
The stones did not create the crossing. They preserved the story of it.
In the same way, what we bring to God is not only the finished fruit. We also bring the testimony of how that fruit was formed: the places where we struggled, changed direction, learned discernment, surrendered, and came into deeper agreement with Him.
The fruit shows what was produced. The memorial explains how.
Returning With What Was Formed
The circular movement now becomes easier to see. Creation begins in God. What is created moves into formation. What is formed enters embodied life. Embodied life produces choices, relationships, works, and fruit. Through those experiences, the soul is shaped, and what has been shaped eventually returns toward its source.
The return is not merely a reversal of the original descent. If descent truly serves ascent, then the return carries something that was not present in the same way before: experience, maturity, testimony, and fruit.
This is why the journey matters.
The soul does not simply return. It returns having become.
The Great Mystery
Ephesians 5 brings the entire vision back to Genesis when Paul quotes that a man shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. He then says that this is a great mystery concerning Christ and the church.
The mystery of marriage points beyond marriage itself. Oneness appears throughout the structure of creation. What begins as one can become many without ceasing to belong to the larger whole, and what becomes divided can be reconciled without losing distinction.
The first Adam becomes the root of humanity. The Second Adam becomes the Head of a new humanity. Those joined to Christ become members of His Body, and that Body is continually formed through the Word into deeper agreement with its Head.
Seen this way, oneness is both fractal and circular. The same pattern appears within persons, marriages, peoples, the church, and the relationship between humanity and God. Each smaller expression reflects something of the larger whole.
Creation moves toward formation, formation moves toward embodiment, embodiment produces fruit, and the fruit returns to God carrying testimony. The descent was not meaningless. It created the place where something could be formed that could not have existed in the same way without the journey.
We do not return to God carrying only what we became. We return carrying the story of becoming.