The purpose of this enlightenment is that through the church the multifaceted wisdom of God should now be disclosed to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms.
A lot is packed in this verse. It is answering the question of “why?”
We have been focused on who and what, and when; what we have; who we are; who did what; what God did; what Jesus did; what Paul did in prayer for these people; and what Paul did as an apostle.
We have some sort of “whys” referred to before.
Ephesians 1:4: We were chosen so that we should be holy and blameless before him.
Ephesians 1:12: He did what he did so that we can be to the praise of his glory,
Ephesians 2:7: We were told that he did it “to demonstrate in the coming ages the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
In all the above, we were still talking about what (as in what happened and/or what will happen), not really why.
For example, you can say I poured the gas into the engine to start the car. But that does not tell us where you are going. There is a reason there is a car in the conversation at all. That is why, in my opinion, this verse answers the big WHY.
Beginning in this verse and explored in the next verse, we have a clear statement of purpose that gets to the heart of the issue, in my opinion.
Paul's stated purpose in communicating the divine truth is that, through the church, the multifaceted wisdom of God will be disclosed to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. It’s as if everything going on is a whiteboard for those entities to learn about God.
So the church is the whiteboard of the divine lecture to rulers and authorities. This stands out because Paul will, in the next verse (v.11), call it the eternal purpose and say that it was accomplished in Jesus Christ.
It is not a temporary purpose, or an individual purpose, or a generational purpose, or a thousand-year purpose, or a tribal or geographical purpose, or a financial purpose, nor a purpose delimited by gender or age. It is the eternal purpose, not a temporary one, that is waiting for an update next year.
That gives greater meaning to Jesus’s saying on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
That is why Paul was adamant in his letter to the Corinthian church that he wanted to know nothing among them except Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Simply put, God's cosmic goal was accomplished in Christ.
So, if you are asking why God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, that might begin to point you toward the right answer. There was an eternal purpose in the mind of God that was not immediately obvious. If one were only reading the first chapters of the scriptures, one might have more questions than answers.
The point is that nothing is by accident, nothing is happenstance. The creation of man was not random; the coming of the Son of Man was not random. God knows the end from the beginning. So even though you see Him react the way He did when Adam sinned, He was not unaware of what was happening.
An illustration:
Even though a teacher might fail a student and the student might think the teacher hates him, the failing grade is serving a greater purpose. Even though the teacher can scold the student and decide not to promote him, the teacher might be aiming for something the student might not see in the moment.
That is my limited attempt to square what happened in the Garden of Eden with the idea of God's eternal purpose accomplished in Christ. Even though the creation was good, even very good, it was not perfect, and in Christ, in whom is the new creation, was the perfection. Perfection means it cannot be diminished or improved. But we see the old creation diminished by sin, but the new creation cannot be diminished.
Until the bringing forth of the Son of God (in whom God’s eternal purpose was accomplished), everything is still a work in progress. Everything is the gathering of raw material; everything is a means to that end, both the good and the bad.
Remember what I accomplished in antiquity.
Truly I am God, I have no peer;
I am God, and there is none like me,
who announces the end from the beginning
and reveals beforehand what has not yet occurred;
who says, ‘My plan will be realized,
I will accomplish what I desire;’
who summons an eagle from the east,
from a distant land, one who carries out my plan.
Yes, I have decreed,
yes, I will bring it to pass;
I have formulated a plan,
yes, I will carry it out.
Listen to me, you stubborn people,
you who distance yourselves from doing what is right.
I am bringing my deliverance near, it is not far away;
I am ringing my salvation near, it does not wait.
I will save Zion;
I will adorn Israel with my splendor.
Everything is working out according to God’s plan, though it may not seem that way.
The point is that whatever happened, God determined that it would happen. But that does not sit well with weak-minded humanity.
And that is okay; God does not owe anyone an explanation for what He does. We are meant to quake before the One who cannot be questioned, who “does as He wishes with the army of heaven and with those who inhabit the earth” (Daniel 4:35).
But at the end of the appointed time I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up toward heaven, and my sanity returned to me.
I extolled the Most High,
and I praised and glorified the one who lives forever.
For his authority is an everlasting authority,
and his kingdom extends from one generation to the next.
All the inhabitants of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he wishes with the army of heaven
and with those who inhabit the earth.
No one slaps his hand
and says to him, “What have you done?”
We are the background color in the masterpiece of divine wisdom in Christ, being painted to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realm.
Paul will cap it up in the book of Romans with rhetorical questions:
But who indeed are you—a mere human being—to talk back to God? Does what is molded say to the molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special use and another for ordinary use? And what if he is willing to make known the wealth of his glory on the objects of mercy that he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us, whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
Humbling, right?